Studio
A working architecture office in Kathmandu.
Design Cave is an architecture, interiors and construction practice based in Kathmandu, Nepal. The studio designs hotels, restaurants, houses, apartments, retail and mixed-use buildings, and takes projects through to construction where a client wants a single team from drawing to handover.
The ground we work on
Kathmandu builds on tight plots, under a by-law that counts every setback, in a climate that is bright for eight months and then hands you a monsoon. Most of what we draw is shaped by that: where the light comes from in December, where the water goes in July, and how a party wall meets a neighbour who has already built.
How the work is made
A plan first. We test how a building is entered, how a kitchen serves, how a family moves between floors, and how a shop meets the pavement — and only then how it looks from the road. Options are drawn rather than described, and the trade-offs are said out loud. Drawings leave this office checked.
Where we work
The Kathmandu valley, and out to Chitwan, Nawalparasi, Dolakha and Hetauda. For clients abroad, we design from here and deliver here; we have also drawn for a site in Sydney.
Clients in India, Australia, the United Kingdom, Europe and elsewhere write when they want a project designed or delivered in Nepal. International design commissions are also taken.
Identity and websites
A new hotel or restaurant needs to be found as well as built. When a hospitality or retail client asks, the same office can take the identity and the website. It is a service, not a second business, and it never comes before the building.
- Projects published
- 34
- Towns and neighbourhoods
- 30
- Building types
- 6
- What does Design Cave design?
- Hotels and resorts, restaurants and cafés, houses and apartments, shops, showrooms, workplaces and mixed-use buildings, with the interiors drawn in the same office. The studio also produces larger public-realm and settlement studies.
- Does Design Cave also build, or only design?
- Both. Many clients appoint the studio for design only and take the drawings to their own contractor. Where a client wants one team from drawing to handover, Design Cave takes the project through construction, including tender documents, contractor coordination and site supervision.
- Where is the studio, and where does it work?
- The office is in Kathmandu, Nepal. Projects are across the Kathmandu valley and beyond it — Chitwan, Nawalparasi, Dolakha and Hetauda among them. The studio also designs for sites outside Nepal; a house on the project list was designed for Sydney, Australia.
- I live outside Nepal. Can you still take the project?
- Yes. That is a normal arrangement. You send the site papers and the brief; the studio surveys, draws and reports from Kathmandu, deals with the municipality, and — where appointed for delivery — supervises the contractor. The person answerable for the drawing is the person answerable for the building.
- What should I send in a first enquiry?
- Where the plot is, what you want to build, roughly what you are prepared to spend, and when you want to start. A survey drawing or a few photographs of the site helps. Write to contact@designcave.com.np or call +977 9768774976.
- Do you take interior-only projects?
- Yes. A large part of the published work is interiors inside a shell somebody else built — restaurants, shops, offices, apartments and single rooms in existing houses.
- Do you also do websites or branding?
- For hospitality and retail clients, yes — identity and website, so a new hotel or restaurant opens with something to be found by. It is secondary to the built work and is not offered as a standalone agency service.