Zarrah 丨 Design Ethics Studio丨印度新德里

Zarrah sits at the southern edge of New Delhi, India, where Asola’s farmland estates and forested edges give the project its setting. Designed by Design Ethics Studio, the house treats hospitality as its central brief, reworking an existing structure into a residence that can shift from intimate evenings to large gatherings. Its strongest moves come from what was already there: an inherited footprint, a retained HVAC system, and a pool that becomes part of the interior life of the home.

About Zarrah

Zarrah stands on four acres of manicured grounds at the southern edge of New Delhi, where the city thins toward Asola’s quieter landscape. Designed by Design Ethics Studio, the house is less a conventional private residence than a place calibrated for hosting, able to hold a small gathering one evening and a much larger event across the lawns the next.

That emphasis on hospitality begins with constraint rather than freedom. The project inherits an earlier footprint, an existing HVAC system, and a pool that cannot be demolished. Instead of treating those conditions as liabilities, the design team uses them to define the house’s new order, giving the renovation its clearest sense of purpose.

The facade is entirely reworked to align with the interiors. Polished stone, cedarwood, blackened steel, and glass establish a sharper exterior expression, one that signals the tonal contrast inside without overstating it. The material mix gives the house a contemporary edge, but the more important move is spatial: circulation is studied closely so rooms connect with ease and doors open the house outward when the scale of an event grows.

Flow becomes the project’s real structure. The interiors are arranged to expand and contract with use, allowing social rooms to read as separate settings while still operating as part of a continuous sequence. Large openings soften the boundary between inside and outside, so the house can draw the lawns into its orbit when required. In practical terms, this is what allows Zarrah to function across very different kinds of gatherings without feeling either oversized or compressed.

The drawing room acts as the social center of the house. Here, custom furniture in muted tones sits against marble wall cladding with a painterly surface, while brass appears in restrained accents rather than broad gestures. A bespoke chandelier gives the room a focal point, but the larger effect comes from balance: soft seating, expressive stone, and metallic detail are held in careful proportion.

The dining room extends that material attention. A book-matched exotic stone table anchors the space, its veining echoed by brass-framed suede-green dining chairs. Tropical wallpaper introduces a softer, more atmospheric register, shifting the room away from formality without losing its sense of occasion.

Elsewhere, the mood deepens. The Party Den moves toward darker contrast, built around a black and white marble bar, mirrored shelving, and a red lacquered fireplace. It is the house’s most overtly theatrical room, but it remains tied to the project’s larger logic: each space is tuned to a different kind of gathering, and each contributes to the rhythm of hosting.

One of Zarrah’s most unusual interventions comes from the old outdoor pool, which is transformed into an indoor leisure space through waterproofing and a complete spatial rethink. What begins as a fixed obstacle becomes one of the project’s defining features. In the private rooms, the atmosphere shifts again, with earthy taupes, charcoal blues, velvets, matte wood paneling, CNC-cut woodwork, and fabric-clad walls creating a quieter register.

Custom lighting, furniture, marble inlay, and metal fabrication run throughout the house, but the project’s discipline is as technical as it is decorative. Integrating the old HVAC system without disturbing the new interiors requires extensive coordination, and that hidden work is central to how the house performs. At its best, Zarrah shows how a renovation can turn inherited limits into the framework for a more exact and more usable kind of luxury.