The Quiet Architect Behind Akshay Oberoi’s Karjat Home

Actor Akshay Oberoi now has a terracotta brick farmhouse in Karjat, Maharashtra. He and his wife, Jyothi Vynatheya, asked architect Nishita Kamdar to make it rustic, intimate and warm, and the family uses the Akshay Oberoi Karjat home about twice a month.

Oberoi said in a statement today that the house took 1.5 years to build and that landscaping is still underway. The photos that went out a week ago already look like a finished retreat, which is the gap this house lives in.

A Terracotta Farmhouse Sits Half on a Slope

Karjat sits some 60 km from Mumbai, close enough for a weekend and wet enough that the monsoon is part of the architecture. Oberoi’s private farmhouse is clad in locally sourced red brick, set against a dark charcoal low-slung roof, and built partly on a slope, with forested hills behind it. Mottled cows graze the parcel. A natural stream runs nearby, the sort of water that draws fireflies after rain.

Visitors meet an open courtyard paved in flagstones, planted with shrubs and a frangipani tree, before they reach the wooden door. That door was salvaged from a 200-year-old bungalow in Jaipur and reused here, its relief work older than anyone in the family. The brief Kamdar was given was short: rustic, intimate and warm. The pictures sell that brief. The plot is doing slower work.

THE HOUSE AS IT STANDS

People looking at the photographs keep stopping on two things: the old door and the skylights. The brick box is new. The door is not, and the roof is cut to let weather and light in, which is the whole point of putting a house this far out of the city.

Why Akshay Oberoi’s Karjat Home Stays Unfinished

The family is not treating the farmhouse as a closed design job. They come down about twice a month, put objects on shelves, and leave again, so the rooms pick up personality in visits rather than in one handover. Oberoi, an avid gardener, still has the land to till. Landscaping work is still going on, even though the house was already used for Christmas 2025 and New Year 2026 with friends and family.

That occupancy rate is the design. A house that is empty 28 or 29 days in a month cannot be run like a Mumbai flat. Plants die. Drip lines clog. A stream bench does not get built unless someone keeps coming back with the same idea. The unfinished look is not a styling trick. It is what twice a month produces.

Oberoi said the farmhouse is more than a property, calling it a sanctuary where he can step out of Mumbai’s pace and spend time with his wife and their son, Aviyaan. He also said the house would not have been possible without recent work. The statement landed today, seven days after the house photos did.

THE YEAR THE HOUSE CAME INTO VIEW

1. Christmas 2025 and New Year 2026: The family already uses the farmhouse with friends, while planting work continues around it.
2. August 26, 2026: Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups opens, and the terracotta house is posted the same day.
3. September 2, 2026: Oberoi says construction ran 1.5 years and that landscaping is still not done.

He has said that a home surrounded by nature was always the aim. The calendar shows they were living in that aim before the pictures were public, and that the ground around the brick is still a building site.

Nishita Kamdar Has Practised This Karjat House Before

Kamdar is a Charles Correa Gold Medal-winning architect, and the studio she opened in 2014 has spent a decade on houses that try to stay tied to their site, plus furniture through her Pieces of Desire label. Oberoi and Vynatheya did not invent the Karjat weekend house. They hired someone who had already built one.

Years earlier she completed a 100-foot Karjat farmhouse she designed for another city couple, a long teak-and-steel roof over glass that opens onto mango trees. That house, not this one, used local granite, metal, glass and wood, and a layer of roof insulation that kept rooms about 5 degrees cooler than the air outside. She described that earlier job as comforting rather than contemporary. The Oberoi brief (rustic, intimate, warm) sits in the same sentence.

Hold the two houses apart. The 100-foot mango-tree farmhouse is a different plot and a different client. What carries over is the method: low furniture so the clearing stays in view, materials that belong to this belt of the Sahyadris, and a roof that has to deal with heavy rain. Karjat’s weather swings hard, hot in summer and soaked from June to September, and a charcoal low-slung roof on a slope is a rain tool before it is a look.

Kamdar’s city life is the other half of the brief. She has spoken about her own 850-square-foot Mumbai home as a cave to unwind in. Oberoi is buying the opposite of that square footage: land, cows, a stream, and a courtyard that is already outside. The architect who draws tight city rooms is also the one Mumbai families call when they want the 60 km version of quiet.

Rainwater Harvesting Comes Before the Art

Oberoi wants rainwater harvesting and drip irrigation on the land, then mango and jackfruit trees, and a small bench beside the stream. Those are not decorative notes. They are the jobs a Karjat plot sets once the brick is up. Summer in this taluka still sends tankers into villages. The monsoon fills every drain, then the dry months ask where the water went. Harvesting roof water and feeding it through drip is how a twice-monthly household keeps trees alive without standing on the plot every morning.

Jackfruit is a long crop. Young trees want regular moisture for the first years, and orchard guides recommend drip lines that can cut water use by 40-50 percent by putting it at the root. Mango wants the same patience. A family that drives in twice a month cannot flood a field by hand and hope. Drip is the only way the fruit plan matches the occupancy plan.

THE LAND WORK STILL AHEAD

• Rainwater harvesting: Capture the monsoon on a roof already shaped to shed it, and hold it for the dry months.
• Drip irrigation: Feed mango and jackfruit at the root so a house that is empty most days does not waste a tank.
• Tilling: Turn the parcel from a lawn with cows into ground that can take trees.
• Mango and jackfruit: The two fruit trees named so far, both slow, both thirsty when young.
• A bench by the stream: Still a sentence, not a place to sit.

Walls are meant to take work by homegrown artists later. That art is in the same queue as the trees. The house can look complete in a photograph because the courtyard, the door and the brick are done. The garden and the walls are the part that only exists if the family keeps returning.

The Jaipur Door and the Lego Sculptures

Inside, the shelves are being filled with puzzles, books and Oberoi’s vinyl. Lego sculptures made by Oberoi and Aviyaan are already part of the décor, which is a polite way of saying the son’s building time is on display. That is not a styling package. It is what a family puts down when they are not trying to freeze a house on the day the photographer leaves.

To me, it looks like something that belonged to an ancient civilisation once.

Akshay Oberoi, actor, on the salvaged Jaipur door

The door is the one object that was finished before they arrived. Everything else is meant to accrue: records, puzzles, Lego, then Indian art on the walls. That is a long inventory for a place they see twice a month, which is why the house is being allowed to stay slightly empty. A finished holiday home would have had the art hung before the first guest. This one is waiting for the next drive down from Mumbai.

The official pictures of that courtyard, the brick and the door are here:

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Oberoi’s other line about the stream is smaller and more useful. “It would be nice to build a little bench to sit by the stream too,” he said. The door is in the photographs. The bench is not.

Toxic Opened the Day the Photos Landed

Oberoi was last seen in Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups, the Geetu Mohandas film led by Yash, with Nayanthara, Rukmini Vasanth, Huma Qureshi, Kiara Advani, Sanjeeda Sheikh and Tara Sutaria. It opened on August 26, 2026, the same day the terracotta house was posted. Industry tallies put the opening at Rs 101.10 crore and the worldwide gross, after the first five days, at Rs 285.20 crore.

TOXIC, IN THE SAME WEEK AS THE HOUSE

• Release date: August 26, 2026, the day the Karjat photos went out.
• India opening: Rs 101.10 crore.
• Worldwide tally: Rs 285.20 crore after five days, per industry counts.

The film is a gangster story. The house is cows, vinyl and a frangipani. They shared a date because that is how publicity weeks work, and because Oberoi himself tied the farmhouse to recent work. He said he felt blessed, and that the projects he has been in made the place possible. The statement is dated today. The landscaping, he said, is still not done.

What you can sit on is a flagstone courtyard under a charcoal roof. What you cannot sit on yet is the bench by the stream. That is the honest measure of a Karjat second home used twice a month: the brick is up, the door is older than the film, and the trees are still a plan.