BORN IN TORONTO, Gandhi first arrived in Halifax in 2001 as a student at Dalhousie University. Seven years later, he was hired as an associate at MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects, for decades the most prominent firm in eastern Canada’s Maritime Provinces. Eighteen months later, he opened his own practice in a Halifax attic, quickly developing an aesthetic that was darker and more dynamic than his former employer’s spare, elegant precision. When Gandhi photographs his work, he usually does so in winter, and even when designing vacation homes, he imagines them in the blustery, gray months of December and January. His houses are both cocoons and binoculars, swaddling you in warm wood while projecting your vision outward. “Minimalism makes a big difference for an anxious person,” he says.