Imran Khan designed his Karjat home himself after tracking the sun for a year

Imran Khan, who has played an architect in a few films but has no training in the field, designed his house in Karjat on his own. He taught himself 3D modelling, got the software and built the model of the home himself.

Before any plan was final, he gave the land a full year. Through 2021 he kept going back at different hours and in different seasons, watching the sunrise and sunset, the way the streams ran in the rain and how the trees changed. He spoke about it in 2024 in a chat with comedians Sapan Varma, Raunaq Rajani and Prashasti Singh.

The plot is not easy. It slopes, it has seasonal streams, and a cliff sits close by. Rather than reshape it for a standard villa, Imran raised the house so it follows the ground. "The house isn't meant to be the view, it's a shelter from which to admire the view," he wrote when he shared pictures of the place in 2024.

The build borrows from homes in the nearby villages. In place of a concrete slab, the house stands on a stone base with single-storey brick walls, steel roof beams and insulated roofing sheets. A contractor and a structural engineer worked on it with him.

Inside, sloping ceilings and exposed wooden beams sit over open rooms. Big windows face the trees, and sliding glass doors lead out to a wooden deck. The bedroom is plain too: windows on several sides, a built-in wooden unit along one wall, a bed and a lounge chair.

The work took time, Imran said, but it was worth the effort. Doing it himself also cost less than buying one of the ready-made villas advertised in the area.