Bansbari Family House

Bansbari Family House

  • Residential

  • 2024

A multigenerational family home in Bansbari designed around a series of transitional outdoor spaces that mediate between urban density and private domestic life.

  • Location

    Kathmandu, Nepal

  • Category

    Residential

  • Year

    2024

The Bansbari Family House was commissioned by a three-generation extended family seeking a home that could accommodate both collective and individual life — a structure where grandparents, parents, and children could share daily rhythms while retaining meaningful private territory. The site is a rectangular plot of 420 sqm in a dense residential neighbourhood north of the Dhokaima area, flanked on three sides by neighboring buildings and opening only to the east. The brief asked for five bedrooms, two living spaces, a roof garden accessible to all family members, and a degree of future adaptability as the family's needs shift.


The design organizes the house as a series of horizontal layers stepping up the slope of the site from south to north. The ground floor is given largely to the oldest generation — a self-contained apartment with its own entry, garden terrace, and kitchen, connected to the main house by an internal door that can be closed for full independence. Above, two floors accommodate the younger family members across three bedrooms, a shared living room, and a study. The building section is manipulated to create a sequence of intermediate spaces — a shaded loggia off the ground-floor terrace, a double-height stairwell lit by a rooflight, and a first-floor covered terrace that functions as an outdoor room in the cool months — that give the house its spatial variety and light quality.
 

Total built area: 485 sqm across three floors plus roof terrace. Structural system: reinforced concrete frame with brick infill, designed by engineer Sushil Khadka to current Nepal National Building Code

External brick laid in a stretcher bond using reclaimed units from a demolished structure on the same street — a material decision that connects the new building to the neighbourhood's existing fabric. Teak windows and doors fabricated by Shiva Timber Works, Lalitpur; all ironmongery hand-forged in local blacksmith workshops.

Materials were chosen for durability and ease of future maintenance: exposed concrete structure with brick infill, plastered internally in a warm off-white, and detailed externally with a deep-set window system that provides solar shading without reducing daylight. Teak joinery throughout was fabricated by a workshop in Lalitpur and finished with a hand-rubbed oil that the family can maintain themselves. The roof garden was planted with a mix of vegetables, herbs, and seasonal flowering species chosen by the family's eldest member, a retired biology teacher.