Family Suite with Machan Loft — Himalayan Views, Kumaon

The Kumaonis have always read the landscape from height. The watchtower; the machan; was how a community understood its valley: what was moving in the forest, where the weather was turning, what the mountains were doing before the clouds came in. The Kutir Suites are built around that instinct. Each of the four suites in the Annexe, set approximately fifty metres from the main house; contains a king bedroom below and, above it, a sleeping loft built in the tradition of the machan: a platform that puts you above the room, above the ordinary sightlines, with the Himalayas framed in the window beyond. Children invariably claim it. So, often, do adults. The suites are multi-level by design. A private living and dining area sits separately from the bedroom, which means a family or a group of close friends can be genuinely together and genuinely apart within the same accommodation. Togetherness that has architecture behind it is a different thing from togetherness by proximity. The Himalayan views from the living room are not incidental. They are the orientation of the room; the reason the windows are where they are and the furniture faces the direction it does.