The hills around Pune sit at a particular distance from the city, close enough to feel like context and far enough to feel like escape. The 15,000-square-foot villa that Studio Co.create has completed on one of those hillsides for a private client works with that distance as a design condition rather than a view, framing it differently from each room, making it the most constant presence in a home that changes character considerably as you move through it.
The brief asked for a home that could hold large gatherings and daily family life in equal measure, that could be expansive in its public spaces and intimate in its private ones, and that could give each of the five bedrooms its own distinct identity while maintaining a coherent design language across all 15,000 square feet. Ar. Nishita Desai of Studio Co.create resolved the challenge through a palette of stone, warm wood, brass, and textured surfaces, applied differently in each zone but consistently enough that the home reads as a single considered work rather than a collection of individually designed rooms.
The double-height living room, at 25 feet, is the home’s most immediate declaration of intent. Full-height glazing on two sides of the room frames the hillscape, floor-to-ceiling sheers in warm beige filtering the afternoon light into something soft and diffused. A large brass chandelier with multiple disc-shaped pendants drops at different heights from the upper level, its scale calibrated to the volume rather than competing with it. The seating arrangement below is generous: two large pleated cream sofas with orange cushions, deep navy blue ribbed leather armchairs with a presence that reads almost as architectural, a round hammered brass coffee table sitting on a dark textured rug, and pale blue ceramic garden stools with painted botanical motifs placed as occasional tables across the floor. The orange of the cushions and the blue of the armchairs are the room’s two deliberate color notes, warm and cool sitting against each other with enough tension to keep the space from settling into any single mood.
One wall of this room carries a full-height slab of richly veined marble, its grain running in a dramatic, near-symmetrical pattern that makes the stone read as much as an artwork as a surface. Against this, on the opposite side, a section of dark floral wallpaper in black and gold frames the bar area, its botanical pattern dense and decorative in deliberate contrast to the mineral clarity of the marble. The bar itself is fitted with brass shelving and glassware, positioned within the living zone as a sculptural extension of it rather than a separate service element. From the upper-floor gallery, the glass balustrade reveals the living room’s full plan, which organizes the spacious area using color, materials, and furniture scale without walls.
The dining room is a different register entirely. A coffered ceiling in warm walnut with brass inlay detailing establishes an atmosphere of considered formality before anything else does, its grid of warm timber overhead giving the room a sense of enclosure that the open living spaces do not have. Two large chandeliers with curved crystal elements and brass fittings hang above a long marble-topped table with brass edge detailing, the table surrounded by upholstered chairs in taupe with brass legs. A curved console table in cream stone with brass arch legs sits against the wall alongside an octagonal mirror with a brass and dark frame. The room is composed and unhurried, the light through the sheer curtains on the window side falling across the marble in a way that shifts through the day.
The family room sits adjacent to the pool, connected to it through large sliding glass doors that open the room directly to the pool deck, with the home gym visible through the glazing beyond. The mood here is lighter: a mint green paneled wall carries the television, an olive green chaise sofa and a white armchair face a pair of brass cloud-shaped coffee tables on a striped rug, and a brass ring ceiling light with globe bulbs keeps the lighting warm without being dramatic. It is the most casual room in the social sequence of the house, and it looks it in the best possible way.
The indoor pool is the space that photographs least predictably and impresses most in person. The end wall of the pool enclosure carries a sculptural wave-form installation in textured plaster, its undulating surface backlit with warm LED light that makes the waves glow from within and then reflect perfectly in the still blue water below. A dark teal wall behind the wave installation deepens the color of the reflection. A coiled rope-like sculptural element sits on the wave surface. A small grey two-seater settee at the pool edge, blue mosaic tiles in the water, and the upper-floor gallery with a glass balustrade visible above complete a space that functions as both a swimming pool and a room designed around its own light.
The home theater has committed entirely to its own personality. Deep raspberry-red acoustic panels with a subtle embossed pattern cover the walls, purple leather recliner seats with cup holders fill the floor in rows, and Bollywood film posters hang at intervals: Sholay, Mera Naam Joker, Umrao Jaan, and a portrait of Amitabh Bachchan in his early career. Red patterned carpet underfoot and a black ceiling above. It is a room that is entirely and unapologetically itself, which in the context of a house this careful about its own restraint is a welcome and generous surprise.
The games area runs across two adjoining spaces. The billiards room has a cream- and sand-colored pool table with taupe felt at its center, above which a multicolored iridescent chandelier with rainbow-toned tubular forms hangs, its colors shifting as you move around the room. A matching rainbow-finish side table and blue cylindrical wall sconces sit alongside framed billiards-themed artwork, and through the window the Pune hills are visible in the distance, a gold kinetic leaf sculpture catching the light on the other side of the room. The table tennis room next to it takes a different approach: an exposed brick wall in warm yellow-orange tones provides the backdrop, with framed King and Queen playing card artworks mounted on it and a black spider-form ceiling light above. The two rooms share a marble floor but nothing else, each one given enough freedom to feel distinct.
The five bedrooms are where the brief’s requirement for individual character is most fully realized and where Studio Co.create’s range as a practice is most visible. The first is organized around a full-height bamboo fluted panel in warm amber that runs floor to ceiling as the headboard wall, the cane-panelled bed frame and matching cane-fronted bedside tables continuing the material into the furniture, brass arc pendant lights with globe shades hanging on either side, dusty pink walls, and a grey stone floor. It is warm, tactile, and composed, a room that reads as a complete material idea.
The second bedroom takes a softer approach: a sage green botanical wallpaper with birds and foliage covers the headboard wall, and against this a scallop-edged upholstered headboard in pale grey sits with layered cream and linen bedding, a bleached wood bedside with three drawers, a ceramic vase of white lilies, and lace-perforated curtains that let through light in a particular quality. The room is gentle in a way the rest of the house is not, and the contrast makes it feel like a deliberate choice.
The third has a teal blue channelled leather headboard with a brass rail running across the top, a taupe bed frame, blush pink walls, and a large glazed opening to the private terrace with a bird of paradise flower visible in the foreground, the terrace planting close enough to feel like part of the room.
The fourth organizes its headboard wall as an arched alcove, within which a wallpaper in warm sand tones with tropical leaf forms sits framed by the curved arch edge. A rust-colored cloud-form upholstered headboard floats in front of the wallpapered alcove, and a blush pink bed frame with matching arched bedside tables with rounded corners completes a room that is the most quietly playful in the house.
The fifth is the most dramatic of the five. Large format panels in a dark oxidized bronze texture cover the entire headboard wall, floor to ceiling, their surface warm and complex, sitting between stone and metal in visual quality. A wide camel-leather upholstered headboard with a brass rail above it, brown and cream textured bedding, white fluted bedside tables with gold detail, black wall-mounted reading lights, and a marble floor with a geometric inlay pattern. It is the room that most directly references the material ambition of the living room downstairs, and it lands as a destination rather than a place to sleep.
Across 15,000 square feet on a hillside in Pune, Studio Co.create has built a home that holds its scale well; keeps its character consistent without making every room feel like every other; and gives the hills outside the kind of relationship they deserve: present from most rooms, framed rather than simply seen, and part of the house without being something the house depends on.
Fact File
Designed by: Studio Co.create
Project Type: Interior Design
Project Name: Altura
Location: Pune, Maharashtra, India
Area: 15,000 sq ft
Year of Completion: 2025
Lead Architect: Ar. Nishita Desai
Photography Courtesy: Studio Colourblind
