Sheabaz Residence

Architecture at its most expressive stops being a backdrop and becomes a piece of sculpture in its own right. The Sheabaz Residence, completed in 2025 in BTM Layout, Bangalore, is conceived exactly that way. It is a home imagined as a study in bold geometry, where the form is not a neutral shell around the rooms but the whole point of the design, shaped to be striking from the street and serene to live in.

Across its four levels the house performs a careful balancing act between drama and calm. Sharp cantilevers and glowing edges give it real presence, while warm materials and green terraces keep it from ever feeling cold or severe. In the sections that follow, we trace the ideas behind the geometry, the materials, and the way this residence dissolves the line between inside and out.

Architecture as Sculpture

The brief for the Sheabaz Residence called for a home with a clear and confident identity, a house that would hold its own on the street and give its owners a sense of arrival every time they returned. The studio answered not with ornament but with form, letting bold geometry do the work that decoration does on more conventional homes.

Treating the house as sculpture meant thinking about it in three dimensions from the very first sketch. The massing, the way the volumes slide past one another, and the shadows the building casts on itself all became part of the composition. The result is an elevation that feels carved and deliberate rather than assembled from standard parts.

That sculptural ambition is held in check by a second, quieter goal: the house also had to be a calm and comfortable place to live. Much of the craft of this project lies in reconciling those two aims, so the drama of the exterior never intrudes on the serenity of the spaces within.

Four Levels of Cantilevered Slabs

The defining move of the house is a series of angular cantilevered slabs that slice outward and fold back across its four levels. Rather than stacking the floors neatly on top of one another, the design lets each level reach out and pull in, so the building steps and overhangs as it rises. This is what gives the residence its dynamic, sculptural profile.

These cantilevers are more than a visual flourish. The projecting slabs shade the openings beneath them from Bangalore's strong sun, shelter the balconies they cover, and create a rhythm of solid and void that keeps the tall elevation from ever feeling flat. The house looks different from every angle as the planes overlap and separate.

A Luminous Line Drawing at Dusk

The edges of these slabs are traced in continuous cove light, and this single detail transforms the house after dark. By day the cantilevers read as crisp planes of concrete and white; at dusk their outlines glow, and the entire elevation resolves into a luminous line drawing suspended against the evening sky.

Building the lighting into the architecture itself, rather than washing the house with external floods, is a subtle and effective choice. The geometry that defines the residence by day becomes the source of its glow by night, so the home has two distinct characters and never looks quite the same from one hour to the next.

Black Marble Against White Volumes

Material contrast is the second pillar of the design. A deep black marble, veined and richly textured, anchors the composition and gives the house its gravity. Set against crisp white volumes, the dark stone reads as a bold, grounding presence, the visual weight that keeps the floating cantilevers from feeling weightless.

The pairing of black marble and white is a deliberately high contrast palette, and it suits a home that is meant to make a statement. The veining in the stone brings a natural richness and movement to the otherwise clean surfaces, so even the flat planes have something to hold the eye up close as well as from a distance.

Weight and Lightness in Balance

Much of the elevation's power comes from the play between weight and lightness. The dark marble grounds the base and key vertical elements, while the white volumes and glass railings lift and lighten the upper storeys. The two work as a pair, each making the other more legible, and together they give the house its poised, sculptural balance.

Warm Timber Screens

To keep the house from reading as purely hard and graphic, warm timber screens soften the top floor and the entry. Where the black and white palette is crisp and cool, the wood introduces warmth and a human, tactile quality exactly where it matters most, at the threshold you touch on arrival and the upper level where the family retreats.

The screens do practical work alongside their warmth. They filter light and views on the upper floor, offering privacy and shade without shutting the rooms off from air and daylight. At the entry they signal welcome, breaking the severity of the geometry with a softer, more intimate material just as a visitor steps inside.

This careful placement of timber is what lets the house hold drama and intimacy at the same time. The bold moves stay bold, but they are tempered with warmth wherever the building meets the body, so the residence feels as good to inhabit as it looks from the road.

Balconies, Greenery and a Vertical Garden

Every level opens to glass railed balconies layered with greenery, and together they carry the garden vertically up the facade. Instead of confining planting to the ground, the design lets it climb the building, so trailing green softens the edges of the cantilevers and threads life through the geometry at every storey.

The glass railings are important to this effect. Because they are transparent, they let the greenery and the occupants read clearly against the architecture, keeping the balconies feeling open and light rather than boxed in. The green becomes part of the elevation itself, a changing, living counterpoint to the fixed planes of stone and white.

Bringing the Garden Up the House

Layering planting across the levels does more than decorate. The greenery cools the air around the openings, filters the view for privacy, and gives each floor its own connection to nature even high above the street. Over time, as the plants grow and drape further, the vertical garden will only deepen, letting the house settle into its own foliage.

Dissolving Inside and Out

Inside, the residence is designed to feel open and serene, and the key to that is generous sliding glazing that dissolves the line between inside and out. Wide glass panels slide away to merge the living spaces with the balconies and greenery beyond, so the interior borrows the light, air, and view of the outdoors and never feels closed in.

This blurring of the boundary is what makes the home serene to live in despite its bold exterior. The same cantilevers that create drama on the street become deep shaded terraces from within, and the glazing turns the greenery into a constant backdrop. The house that looks so sculptural from outside feels calm, bright, and connected to its garden inside.

Rooted in BTM Layout

Set in BTM Layout, one of Bangalore's busy residential neighbourhoods, the Sheabaz Residence shows how a single family home can carry genuine architectural ambition within a tight urban context. Its four levels make full use of the plot, while the cantilevers, screens, and vertical garden give it a presence that stands out among its surroundings.

Completed in 2025, the house is a clear expression of how Unitz Dezignz approaches sculptural residential design: bold in geometry, disciplined in material, and always mindful of comfort and climate. It is a home that is at once striking from the street and serene to live in, which was the ambition from the very beginning.