Resort living is often associated with distance—something experienced on holidays, rarely Embedded into daily life. For a family of seven in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, however, that sense of retreat was exactly what they hoped their home would evoke. They wanted it Underfoot, Uverhead, woven into the grain of daily life. Principal architect Pal Thakkar of Pal’s Living listened, and then gently offered them a penthouse design they hadn’t asked for, but immediately recognised as their own: Wabi-sabi.
Pal’s Living
“They instantly resonated with the Japanese philosophy”, recalls Pal. “Its warmth, clean restraint, and its ethos that nothing needs to be excessive to feel extraordinary.” And so, across 1,500 square feet of a two-floor penthouse design, she began layering a vision that is at once deeply serene and quietly sensuous. The architect christened the home Fold Abode because, as he conceived it, every element unfolds into the next. Here, forms cascade, nest and reveal themselves gradually. The name became the design concept. The concept became the architecture.
A single colour governs the walls, floor, and ceilings throughout: ivory. Against this monochrome field, walnut wood furnishings intertwine across cabinets and ceiling panels, as a grounding counterpoint. They have created a hybrid that refuses purism in favor of livability, in which wabi-sabi is interwoven with modern lines.
That refusal manifests most clearly in the communal zone, where no partitions interrupt visual flow. The double-height living room presented the project’s first spatial puzzle: an oblong footprint, narrow but vertically generous. “A tricky volume to navigate,” Pal admits. Mirrors on the TV wall’s upper half reflect the grand ceiling overhead, multiplying spatial perception. A cluster of pendant lights hangs “like blooming flowers,” as Pal describes them, introducing an organic gesture into the geometric volume. Opposite, arched niches cradle curated artefacts above storage cabinets whose amorphous grooves transform utility into sculptural presence. “It doesn’t look like storage,” Pal notes. They made it to look like an art piece.
Remarkably, they fashioned the textured TV backwall using waste material—fragments left over after most of the project had been completed. These fragments were cut into abstract shapes and finished with textured paint to achieve an undulating stone effect. Two ends of the same room hold two distinct personalities: contemplative and layered on one side, textured and primal on the other.
They customized all furniture—from sofas and coffee tables to beds and wardrobes—through iterations until each piece fit the overarching vision. Abstract artworks by Milli Rajpura dot the abode. “They flow with the penthouse design theme,” Pal explains, “and don’t confine the viewer to a definitive meaning.”
Beneath the staircase, a miniature garden takes shape, lit from within by warm integrated light. It blurs the threshold between inside and out: it reminds that in a wabi-sabi home, people never fully keep nature at bay.
Adjacent, the dining area features a six-seater ensemble where fluted teakwood base supports stone tabletop, paired with leatherite chairs.
A shouldered archway beckons into the kitchen, where chocolate brown lower cabinets meet marble-finish upper storage.
They have designed handleless mechanisms with grooves for function, clad the dado in a seamless tile sheet, and finished the countertop in faux granite. Clean-lined efficiency maximizes spatial functionality without sacrificing the home’s warm minimalism.
Ascending to the upper floor of th penthouse design, the staircase delivers you to a lobby that Thakkar conceived as a ‘pause moment’ before entering private quarters. A clay portrait anchors one wall; a bench completes the tableau.
Each bedroom confronts two-feet-deep structural beams; rather than conceal them, Pal treated them to integrate rather than intrude.
They employed malleable laminate on the backwall in the master suite, choosing the material specifically for its ability to bend into fluted curves.
The television wall generates an organic yin-yang rhythm; the floating media unit below it is fronted by three-dimensional teakwood blocks that catch light with quiet theatre.
The daughters’ shared room resists the obvious. Neither too feminine nor too adult, it balances a fluted back wall with a framed artwork of a lady—set deliberately within an existing niche so that the canvas and the architecture become one composition.
The son’s room alone breaks from the home’s monochrome DNA: a vintage tapestry depicting a perspectival European street claims an entire wall, indulging a younger sensibility without disrupting the overarching vision.
Louvered shutters conceal storage, and a floating study table maintains spatial lightness even as pattern introduces visual weight.
“To see the residence come alive was extremely gratifying,” says Thakkar. “Every detail turned out how I envisioned it.” In Fold Abode, the resort feeling the clients sought was found not in grandeur, but in the quiet, imperfect perfection of things that unfold just right.
The Author is a Faculty at School of Design & Innovation, RV University, Bengaluru.
Fact File
Designed by: Pal’s Living
Project Type: Penthouse Interior Design
Project Name: Fold Abode
Location: Bhavnagar, India
Project Size: 1500 Sq.ft
Principal Architect: Pal Thakkar
Photograph Courtesy: On the Move Island
Text Courtesy: Mehar Deep Kaur
Art Installed by: Mili Rajpura
Products / Materials / Vendors: Sofa, Curtains, and Fabrics: Soham Sales Bhavnagar / Lights: Wipro, Neptune Lights / Kitchen Back Splash & Basin: Simpolo / Laminate, Veneer & other decorative products: Thakkar Plylam / Laminate : Keding Global, Greenlam / Sanitory: Jaguar
Firm’s Instagram Link: Pal’s Living
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