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Architecture

24-09-2026

Text provided by the Architect

There is a reason some spaces outgrow their original brief. Conceived as an in-between space rather than a conventional room, Verandah began with a simple question: how can architecture retain the ease and familiarity of a threshold while accommodating the scale, energy, and changing rhythms of a public dining space?

Located at the threshold of Erandwane within Pune’s dense urban fabric, the project draws upon the spatial memory of the traditional Indian verandah—a semi-open, shaded, and socially adaptable space that mediates between the interior and the outside world.

This idea informed a deliberately porous plan. Rather than reinforcing rigid boundaries, the architecture allows interior spaces, landscape, daylight, and movement to overlap. Openings, transitional zones, and planted edges soften the distinction between inside and outside, enabling the restaurant to accommodate multiple patterns of occupation: quiet mornings, crowded evenings, lingering conversations, and the continuous choreography of people waiting, gathering, and dining.

Pune,Maharashtra,India

Architects	:	Twenty Eight Architects
Area	:	12,000 sq. ft.
Year of Completion	:	2023
Website	:	https://www.instagram.com/twentyeightarchitects/?hl=en

Exterior view of Verandah by Twenty Eight Architects

Handmade brick forms the project’s principal material and atmospheric language. Used not merely as a surface finish, it defines walls, screens, thresholds, and spatial edges while lending warmth, texture, and a tactile character to the restaurant. Executing handmade brick at this scale within a contemporary hospitality environment required a departure from standardised construction methods and close collaboration between the architects, craftspeople, and site teams.

At the time of its completion, such an extensive and spatially expressive application of handmade brick remained relatively uncommon within Pune’s contemporary dining landscape. Verandah’s combination of material craft, landscape, and porous planning helped foreground a hospitality experience shaped as much by atmosphere as by programme.

Exterior view of Verandah by Twenty Eight Architects

Lord Ganesh Statue at the entry of Verandah by Twenty Eight Architects

View from entrance of Verandah by Twenty Eight Architects

Mornings at Verandah unfold slowly, animated by diffused light and quieter patterns of occupation. By evening, the same spaces transform into a dense social field of conversations, queues, movement, and overlapping rituals. The architecture absorbs these fluctuations without imposing hierarchy, supporting intimacy and congregation, pause and movement, solitude and collective life.

Indoor dining of Verandah by Twenty Eight Architects

Verandah demonstrates how a familiar architectural archetype can be reinterpreted for contemporary public life—not through literal replication, but by retaining its essential qualities of openness, shade, transition, and social elasticity.

Over four years of continuous occupation, the restaurant has acquired an identity beyond its architectural brief. Its relevance has emerged through everyday use and public adoption rather than formal documentation alone. The project reflects a broader shift in dining culture—from spaces remembered primarily for food to environments recalled equally for their atmosphere, materiality, and collective experience.