A perennially blooming urban nest in Mumbai city

This tiny terrace illustrates how humans can commune harmoniously with nature in an urban context.

Curated by: Rupali Sebastian
Photographs: Yash Prabhu and Srivibhu Viraj; courtesy unTAG

Living in a city like Mumbai that constantly keeps you on your toes, most of us want to come back home to detach and disconnect from the urban hustle bustle. unTAG designed The White Blue Nest, a petite 400-sq-ft terrace garden overlooking the extensive Manori creek and the majestic Gorai Pagoda, precisely as such an anodyne for city-frayed nerves. The 15th-floor outdoor haven is where the owner, an ebullient lady, unwinds and invigorates herself, cocooned by various seasonal flowers, alongside a tropical green palette. This miniature urban oasis possesses a microclimate of its own, and occasionally hosts the neighbouring avifauna, who fly in for water, nectar and shade. With sightings of kingfishers, kites, sun birds, bulbuls and more in this bio-diverse urban nest, the terrace also offers the best views of the migratory wetland birds like black cormorants flying in their flocks, every evening. 

Inspired by the sandy beaches and the deep blue hues of the Arabian sea, the hardscape is conceptualised as an earthy palette of Indian shahabad stone and plastered white walls, complemented by a white Indian marble terrazzo seating and printed azure blue flooring inlay. These elements are further complemented by the living, breathing canvas of the colourful, textured and fragrant softscape woven out of bougainvillaeas, champas, heliconias, gokarna and more. This urban nest also features an ornately crafted washbasin niche, an upcycled Indian jhoola, and a raised deck at the far end, for panoramic sunset views of the creek.

“It’s a landscape of transformations, constantly adapting, and pleasantly surprising every day, every week, every season, wherein the flora and fauna continue to live symbiotically,” say unTAG’s founders Tejesh Patil and Gauri Satam. “It’s been quite a collaborative journey towards weaving this nest with our client, wherein we have created an exemplar of how humans and nature can co-exist amiably, even in an urban setting.”

Fact file

Project: The White Blue Nest
Location: Mumbai
Area: 400 sq ft
Principal architects: Tejesh Patil and Gauri Satam
Design team: Srivibhu Viraj and Kavya Shah