Architecture · Interiors · Construction
Design Cave is an architecture and interiors practice in Kathmandu. We plan hotels, restaurants, houses and commercial buildings, draw the interiors in the same office, and — where a client wants one team from first drawing to handover — take the project through construction.
Most of the work is in Nepal. We also design for owners living abroad; the house on this list in Sydney was drawn here.
Work
Hotels, restaurants, houses, retail and mixed-use buildings — across the Kathmandu valley, out to Chitwan, Dolakha and Hetauda, and one house for a Sydney site.
Capability
Most practices hand a project on at least twice — to an interior designer, then to a contractor. We can hold all three, or any one of them.
Site, plan, structure and elevation. We start with how a building is entered and used — arrival, circulation, service, light, where the rain goes — and work outward to what it is made of. Drawings are produced to a standard a contractor can price and build from.
Interiors are drawn in the same office as the building rather than bought in afterwards, so a kitchen has a service route and a dining room has a plan behind it. Finishes are specified for the traffic the room will actually get.
Where a client wants one team from drawing to handover, we take the project into construction: tender documents, contractor coordination, site supervision, and the decisions that only get made once the concrete is poured.
Working with the studio
Four stages. You can stop after any of them, and plenty of clients do — some take the drawings to their own builder.
01
What you need, who will use it, and what the plot, the by-laws and the climate will allow. If the site is in Nepal we walk it. If you are abroad, we work from the survey, photographs and a call — and then walk it for you.
02
A plan that works before an elevation that pleases. Two or three options, drawn rather than described, with the trade-offs said out loud.
03
What the building is made of, how it is lit, how the rooms are finished, and how it will look after five monsoons. Interiors are resolved here, not later.
04
Drawings a contractor can price and build from. Then, where we are appointed for delivery, supervision on site until handover.
From outside Nepal
If you live abroad and are building in Nepal, the difficulty is rarely the design. It is that nobody is standing on the site on a Tuesday morning when a decision has to be made. We survey, draw and report from Kathmandu, deal with the municipality, and — where we are appointed for delivery — supervise the contractor, so the person answerable for the drawing is the person answerable for the building.
We also design for sites outside Nepal. The Sydney house was drawn in this office.
Contact
A plot number and two photographs are enough to start a conversation. We will tell you what is possible on it.
