Lakeside Condo

Lakeside Condo is a stand alone home that sits on the lake side at the outskirts of Pune, Maharashtra, in India, designed by architect Tarun Tyagi to give its residents shifting experiences across every hour of the day. The core idea was to foster a human connection with nature while reducing the time inhabitants spend with technology. The result is a glass house perched on the land, built from wood, steel and glass and supported on two RCC columns, sitting like a bird above the ground.

The plan draws on Frank Lloyd Wright’s principle that spaces in a residence should move in a continuous flow. Jaalis, the perforated screens long used across Indian architecture, replace solid walls, and there are no intermediate doors. The sequence begins at the porch, passes through the foyer, and opens into a living space joined with the kitchen and dining area. The bedroom sits just behind the living area, partially visible through a jaali separation, and leads out to a spacious balcony that overlooks the lake. A docking platform set into the water lets a boat be roped close to the home.

Building Lightly Beside Water

To build on a lake ringed by mountains is always a challenge, because whatever one adds, however beautiful, still takes something away from the setting. Tyagi’s strategy answers that tension directly: lift the house on slender supports so the land below stays largely untouched, then privilege the view. The two columns reduce the footprint that meets the ground, a familiar move in sensitive sustainable architecture where designers try to leave a site as close to its natural state as possible.

Glass does much of the conceptual work here. It gives the inhabitants privacy when they want it while keeping the lake view present from nearly every room, so the water reads as part of the interior rather than something framed at a distance. The jaali screens add a second layer, filtering light and air and softening the boundary between inside and outside in a way familiar to anyone who has studied Pune and its wider region. For a single-family home of this kind, the quiet ambition is clear: let the structure recede so the landscape stays the main event.