House of Memories by Sohaib Ilyas

_project: House of Memories
_film by: Sohaib Ilyas
_editor: Akash Maheshwari
_architecture: Studio Lagom
_location: Valsad, India

Architecture has always been more than the sum of its walls, lines, and proportions. Beyond structure and material, it holds an invisible layer - the human one. The way light filters through a room at dawn, the sound of footsteps across old tiles, or the smell of morning coffee in a sunlit kitchen - these moments form the real architecture of life. Increasingly, filmmakers are exploring this intersection between space and emotion, showing that architecture lives not in static images, but in time, atmosphere, and experience.

Among those exploring this poetic convergence is Sohaib Ilyas, whose film House of Memories recently won the Architecture Hunter Awards (AHA) in the Videos category. His work moves beyond traditional architectural documentation, unfolding as a cinematic meditation on belonging, memory, and the gentle dialogue between people and space.

“During my visit, I met the family who lives in the house, three generations together and something about them immediately resonated with me,” Sohaib recalls. “There was a certain warmth and rhythm in the way they occupied the space, how they interacted, how light and routine intertwined around them. It felt deeply human.”

The film portrays these ordinary yet profound rituals, “praying, reading, listening to music, getting a shave, moving through light and shadow”, with disarming intimacy. For Sohaib, House of Memories is “less a documentation of design and more a quiet portrait of belonging, of how architecture becomes a vessel for memory and emotion through the people who live in it.”

His cinematic approach mirrors the honesty of the spaces he captures. “It always begins with observation… I don’t try to impose a story, but rather discover the one the space itself offers,” he explains. The visuals are tender and understated, the camera often handheld, “allowing life to unfold naturally around it.” Sound, too, plays a key role, “the wind, the birds, the subtle hum of daily life”, all weaving into what Sohaib calls an emotional language that lets the audience feel architecture rather than merely see it.

As he puts it, “Architecture isn’t static; it’s constantly shifting with light, weather, and human presence.” Through film, those shifts become perceptible, revealing not just how we inhabit spaces, but how spaces, in turn, inhabit us.

_article written by Daniela Moreira da Silva
_film by Sohaib Ilyas
_film curatorship by Architecture Hunter
_image credits: Ishita Sitwala