Residence At 313 Canal Bank Road, Lahore
Ghayyoor Obaid Architects
Text & Photographs provided by The Architects
This private residence, situated on a long and discreet plot off Lahore’s Canal Bank, was envisioned as an inward-looking retreat, spatially rich home that responds to its setting through landscape, sequence, and architectural restraint. Designed for a family of three, the house draws on the legacy of courtyard and garden traditions, adapting them to a contemporary lifestyle.
The project takes conceptual cues from Mughal gardens, particularly in the use of water, framed landscape, and orchestrated movement through space. The experience of the house begins with a broad front lawn, a quiet, green forecourt that creates both psychological and spatial distance from the surrounding city. This open lawn functions as a threshold, setting up a ceremonial progression into the private zones of the home.
Internally, the home is organized into two distinct yet interdependent wings: a horizontal, splitlevel arm that accommodates public and semi-private spaces such as living, dining, and kitchen areas, and a vertically descending arm that steps down into the earth to house a full-sized squash court, gym, media lounge, guest suite, and a fully functional second swimming pool. These volumes fold around the rear courtyard, which serves as the spatial and atmospheric core of the home.
This rear courtyard originally held the house’s most striking feature: a large, operable infinity pool. More than just a leisure element, the pool acted as a defining axis of the home—visually extending the ground plane, anchoring the layout, and providing a sense of openness and scale. Framed by wooden decks and travertine planters, it is the focal point for everyday routines, visible from key spaces including the kitchen, dining, master bedroom, and transitional corridors.
The home’s inward orientation shapes every decision. Openings and view lines are organized around internal gardens, light courts, and terraces. Skylights, clerestories, and double-height voids introduce daylight in ways that are deliberate and measured, allowing for varying intensities of light across the day. In the main lounge, a vaulted ceiling dramatically draws the viewers focus to the large window facing the front lawn.
The material palette reflects the same discipline. The exterior is clad in travertine, installed using a dry-fix system for precision and longevity. The stone’s tone and texture bring warmth and weight, grounding the structure while allowing it to age gracefully over time. Internally, the architecture continues in a language of stone, wood, and marble. There is no decorative layering; instead, spatial rhythm and material continuity shape the atmosphere.
The lower ground level is fully integrated into the experience of the home. Here, a second swimming pool and recreational spaces maintain full daylight and ventilation through sunken courts and carefully placed voids. These areas remain acoustically buffered but visually connected, extending the architectural logic of openness and calm.
Water in this project is not symbolic or ornamental it is lived with. Both pools are fully usable, designed for swimming and integrated into daily life. Other waterbodies provide moments of pause, edge conditions, and spatial orientation. Their placement borrows from Mughal principles—not in symmetry or geometry, but in their ability to structure space, hold reflections, and define experience.
Throughout the home, movement is choreographed rather than dictated. Circulation zones unfold gently, marked by level changes, axial views, and moments of enclosure and release. Long transitional lobbies, framed gardens, and carefully scaled openings guide the user through a shifting sequence of spaces. Nothing is abrupt; everything reveals itself gradually.
In 2020, the rear courtyard pool was replaced by a floating gallery, designed by the architects son, architect Faraz Ghayyoor. While the function of the space changed, its role remained central. The gallery now occupies the same compositional position the pool once did—hovering lightly above a water surface, continuing the home’s dialogue with reflection, light, and quiet presence.
This residence represents a deeply personal design exercise—one that balances inheritance with restraint, and tradition with reinterpretation. It embraces elements of South Asian spatial memory—courtyards, enclosure, light filtration, water—but recasts them in a language that is contemporary, durable, and composed.
A decade later, the house remains relevant not because of stylistic permanence, but because it was built around enduring ideas: that privacy can be generous, that water can be architectural, and that a home should unfold like a landscape—layered, responsive, and timeless.
