How does one restore a segment of a heritage building in ruins, when there are no photographs that can testify to its former life, no promises to return to it owing to its location and a meagre budget at one’s disposal? Such was the brief for the restoration of the southern wing of the famed Kilimanoor Palace – its Thekkekottaram. Most renowned as the ancestral home of Raja Ravi Varma, the Kilimanoor palace is unusual in its architecture of great simplicity and rustic charm. While most parts of the palace have withstood the test of time, the Thekkekottaram formed one of its most deteriorated segments. As the structure fell into disrepair, what risked being lost was not merely a building but a repository of shared memories. The brief, thus, was not to recreate precisely what existed before, but to breathe new life into it while respecting its memory, retaining its character and preserving its spirit. A segment of a continuous sloping-roofed row-house arranged around the palace’s central naalukettu, the Thekkekottaram forms a self-contained world within the palace grounds, enclosed by a high compound wall. A unique feature is its twin open-to-sky courtyards separated by an intervening wall that demarcates the home into its northern and southern wings. The northern wing, a series of narrow rooms flanked by verandahs on both sides, originally housed the bedrooms and living areas and formed spaces that lacked light and ventilation.