N Adobe

What you are looking at

N Adobe is a design study and was not built. Two of the views show the same corner elevation, at the end of the day. The third is inside the entrance.

The house is two storeys of stacked rectangles. A white upper volume cantilevers over the ground floor, carried on a single slender column. A board-formed concrete face covers one side. A smaller set-back room sits on the roof, under a low pitched slab. Across the first floor, timber lattice screens stand in a square-batten grid. They stand in front of full-height glazing in teak-coloured frames. They slide, and in these views some bays are covered and some are open. The ground floor is entered through a carved teak double door with an arched panel. It is set in a wall of dark rubble stone. The drive is grasscrete. Agave, bougainvillea and frangipani are planted against granite boulders.

Inside, the same door and stone wall face a polished marble floor with a dark inlaid medallion. A tall brass standing lamp sits in front of it. A glazed planted court is on one side, and the living room opens on the other.

The moves

The screens are the study's main argument. Hospet is hot and bright. A lattice in front of glass does three things at once. It keeps low afternoon sun off the glazing. It lets the window stay open through the hottest part of the day. And it gives the elevation a depth that a flat wall of glass cannot have. Because the screens slide, the facade is not fixed. The house looks different at four in the afternoon than it does at nine in the morning. That is the point of drawing them that way.

The cantilever makes the ground floor a shaded porch without anyone having to build a porch. The rubble stone is local, dark and rough, where everything around it is smooth and pale. It is placed exactly where a visitor stands, at the door.

The Indian vocabulary is used sparingly and where it works. One carved door, one brass lamp, one inlaid floor medallion, against otherwise plain surfaces. The planted court brings the garden into the entrance, instead of leaving it at the gate. On the way in, it lights and ventilates the middle of the plan.

Why we design this way

We design climate first: orientation, shade and air movement set the form before a material is chosen. A jaali, a lattice or a deep overhang belongs in an Indian house because it performs. Not because it signals heritage. A court in the plan is a lung rather than a feature. That reasoning is set out on our pages about climate-responsive homes and contemporary Indian design.

A study is where a plan is tested before anyone commits to it. Every Aalekh project is drawn, visualised in 3D and reviewed by Ar. Pooja Kothari. See the rest of our architecture work, or read about residential architecture in Bangalore.