Twelve years of briefs makes a decent dataset. The house that families ask us for in 2026 is not the house they asked for in 2014, and the difference is not a matter of style.
The formal living room is disappearing
The room kept for guests, used four times a year, furnished more expensively than the room the family actually sits in — it is going. In its place, one large room that has to be good enough for both, and a much greater emphasis on being able to close part of it off.
Two kitchens, honestly discussed
The open kitchen has won on plan and lost on practice, because Indian cooking produces more airborne oil than any extraction system will fully capture. What we now design, openly rather than apologetically, is a presentation kitchen open to the living space and a working kitchen behind a door with its own extract, its own sink and its own light.
Multi-generational, without hierarchy
More of our residential work is for three generations than at any point since we started. What has changed is the brief: parents are no longer given the smallest room at the back. They are given the ground floor, the best aspect, and a plan that does not require a stair.
The best-designed room in a multi-generational house should be the one the grandparents use, because they are in it for the most hours.
Working from home is a permanent requirement
Not a corner of the bedroom. An actual room, or at minimum a defined workspace with a door, decent light and a wall behind it that looks acceptable on a video call. This is now specified in about seven of every ten residential briefs we take.
And the climate is in the brief
Cross-ventilation, shaded west elevations, deep reveals, ceiling fans specified alongside air conditioning rather than instead of it. Ten years ago this was our suggestion. Now it arrives in the client’s own brief, usually in the first meeting.
- Utility and laundry planned properly, not squeezed into a balcony.
- A defined place for shoes and deliveries at the entrance.
- Storage for luggage, which every brief forgets and every household needs.
- Somewhere for the household staff to sit that is not the kitchen floor.
