Ridgeline House
2024- Category
- Residential
- Location
- Wayanad, Kerala
Architecture & interiors · South India
Buildings for
the long view
We are an architecture and interior design studio working in laterite, lime, concrete and timber — on houses, libraries, workplaces and the odd museum. Every project starts as a section drawing, because light is decided before anything else.
- Practice since
- 2009
- Studios
- Kozhikode · Bengaluru
- Latitude
- 11.26° N · 75.73° E
- Currently
- Taking 2026 commissions
Site section · Ridgeline House, Wayanad
The studio
Eighteen people, two studios, one way of working
Atelier Nord was founded in 2009 above a hardware shop in Nadakkavu, with one drawing board and a residential extension. The practice has grown, but the method has not: we measure the site ourselves, we draw at full size, and we stay on a project until the last junction is right.
We work slowly and take on few projects at a time — around nine a year. That is a deliberate constraint. It means a partner is on every site every week, and it means we can say no to a brief that the plot cannot carry.
- In practice since
- 2009
- Projects delivered
- 94
- Awards & citations
- 12
- Studio members
- 18
Selected works
Three houses, a library and a coast — drawn in section
Coastal Pavilion
2023- Category
- Cultural
- Location
- Kannur, Kerala
Terracotta Courtyard
2023- Category
- Residential
- Location
- Kozhikode, Kerala
How we work
Three positions we do not trade away
Every practice says it listens to the site. These are the specific things we do about it — the arguments we will have with a brief, and the ones we will lose gracefully.
Light is the first material
We set the section before the plan. Where the light enters, how high it reaches at noon in April, what it lands on — those decisions fix everything downstream, and they are almost impossible to correct later.
Honest to the hand
Materials are specified as they arrive: laterite that still reads as quarried, concrete that keeps the grain of its formwork, teak that will grey. Nothing is applied to look like something it is not.
Climate is the client
Kerala gets two monsoons a year. A building here is designed for water, shade and cross-ventilation first, and mechanical cooling last — which is also, incidentally, how it stays cheap to run for fifty years.
Capability
What we are asked for, and what we deliver
Architecture
Full architectural service from first site visit to the day the keys turn. We stay on a project through construction — the drawings are only half of the work.
Interior Architecture
Interiors designed with the building rather than onto it: the same drawing set carries the wall, the cabinet and the light that lands on both.
Masterplanning
Masterplanning at the scale where buildings become a place — blocks, streets, shade, water and the sequence in which they get built.
Adaptive Reuse
Adaptive reuse and conservation. The greenest building is usually the one already standing, so we start by asking what can stay.
Recognition
- 2025
AD100 India
Practice of the Year, shortlist
- 2024
Indian Institute of Architects
Public Building Award
- 2023
Dezeen Awards
Civic Building, longlist
- 2022
ArchDaily
Building of the Year, nominee
- 2019
Domus India
Emerging Practice
Start a project
Tell us about the site. We will tell you what it can hold.
Every commission begins the same way — a conversation, a walk around the plot, and an honest read on whether the brief and the budget can hold each other. That first conversation costs nothing.
- Telephone
- +91 98464 60337
- Response time
- Within two days