In Bangalore, The Archive Home, designed by By the Riverside under the direction of Principal Designer Swati Seraan, emerges as a residence shaped as much by lived experience as by design intent.
Conceived for a family of wildlife enthusiasts and creative spirits, the home is not treated as a static container of objects, but as an evolving backdrop for stories, journeys, and rituals. The design approach resists spectacle, choosing instead to translate the emotional landscape of its inhabitants into spaces that feel instinctive, grounded, and deeply personal. Photography, music, travel, and quiet domesticity converge here without hierarchy, allowing the home to feel layered rather than themed.
The interior language is guided by tactility and atmosphere. Wood and stone form the sensory backbone of the residence, lending it a sense of permanence and quiet gravity. Surfaces are intentionally expressive, embracing texture, tonal variation, and subtle imperfection to create depth without visual noise. Distressed finishes and raw material cues soften the architectural framework, ensuring the spaces feel inhabited rather than styled. Live edge timber elements and sculptural furniture gestures introduce an organic rhythm, gently echoing the couple’s affinity for wilderness and landscape. The result is not rusticity, but a calibrated balance between refinement and rawness, where materiality carries narrative weight.
Spatially, the home reveals itself through carefully modulated moments of intensity and retreat. The media room, enveloped in a deep green that dissolves boundaries between walls and ceiling, offers a cocooned environment designed for immersion. It is a space where the family’s dual passions seamlessly intersect, where the quiet review of wildlife captures may give way to late night music sessions. Elsewhere, the home embraces spontaneity and intuition. A modest coffee station positioned beside a metal window grill stands as a reminder that meaningful design often emerges on site rather than on paper. Such gestures imbue the residence with a sense of authenticity, allowing it to feel responsive rather than predetermined.
Art and texture play a pivotal role in anchoring the emotional tenor of the interiors. The living area finds its focal point in a commanding tropical artwork whose presence establishes both mood and identity. In private spaces, material layering becomes more nuanced and introspective. The master bedroom, defined by tactile contrasts and tonal restraint, explores a quieter form of expression where finishes and light collaborate to create atmosphere. Throughout the home, the design maintains a delicate equilibrium between visual richness and calm, demonstrating a discipline that privileges continuity over excess.
Ultimately, The Archive Home transcends conventional stylistic categorisation. It is neither minimal nor ornate, neither overtly dramatic nor deliberately subdued. Instead, it stands as a reflection of lives deeply intertwined with nature, creativity, and memory.
By the Riverside’s design sensibility foregrounds feeling over formula, allowing the residence to function not merely as a designed environment, but as a lived narrative that will continue to gather meaning over time.
Fact File
Project Name: The Archive Home
Location: Bangalore
Size: 2500 sft
Design Firm: By the Riverside
Principal Designer: Swati Seraan
Design Team : Pujitha Reddy, Ayisha .V V
Photography: Nayan Soni