Mahesh and Sajitha’s house in Bengaluru is warm, inviting and sustainable from roof to floor.

When they rebuilt their family home in 2018, architects from Destination Designs salvaged and reused whatever was possible from the old home.

The home is also mostly self-sufficient in its water and electricity needs, thanks to a rainwater harvesting pit and solar panels.

The pit has a capacity to store 8,000 litres of water. “We have two tanks — one for Cauvery water and one for rainwater. During the rainy season, or whenever the tank has water, we only use that for all household purposes. It is filtered and even used for drinking,” says Sajitha.

The roof area, of about 700 square feet, has been fitted with solar panels. All extra energy is transferred to the grid.

“Most of our heavy electricity load is connected to the solar line. The lift, sump motor, the exterior, and the stairway lighting are all powered by solar energy,” says Sajitha.

Through this, Mahesh says they save Rs 6,000-7,000 per month on their bills, which amounts to Rs 72,000 per year.

Jyothika Baleri, principal architect of Destination Designs, who specialises in rebuilding and remodelling, says that they reuse and upcycle items from the old houses in all their projects.

For this house too, the architects carefully took down every door and window of the old house to reuse in the new one.

“We salvage everything we can. We even used the foundation stones when we rebuilt this house. We also got some furniture for the house — a centre table from Jaipur, which we reworked and raised to a dining table height. We also repurposed an old bookshelf,” says Jyothika.

About Sajitha’s house, Jyothika says, “The interesting thing about this home was that because it was built during different periods, every floor was built in a different style, and had different windows and doors. When we rebuild a house, we want to save as much as we can. Some doors, which could not be reused, were converted as legs for furniture.”

The architects also repurposed an elephant howdah from Rajasthan into a ‘throne’ for Sajitha, which she uses for reading.

The terrace is green and the house has vertical gardens to make up for a lack of space outside.

“Our funda is simple — we want to get the juice out of every item present in the house. We have learned not to be wasteful since childhood, and we are applying that to our work now. We refurbish every house that we work on, no house is built new,” says Jyothika.