#RammedEarth#FarmhouseDesign#SustainableArchitecture Welcome to a 3-acre sustainable farmhouse in Vadodara, where tradition meets modern innovation. 🌿 This project revives the wisdom of vernacular Indian architecture—using courtyards, vaulted brick ceilings, rammed earth walls, and passive cooling systems to create a home that breathes with the land.
🏡 Courtyard – The Home’s Natural Lungs
Inspired by the traditional chowk or angan, the courtyard works as the house’s lungs—pulling in cool air, pushing out warm air, and enabling cross-ventilation. Thick brick and stone walls absorb heat during the day and release it slowly at night, keeping interiors cool in summer and warm in winter. This is the essence of climate-responsive design.
🌌 A Bedroom Rooted in Nature
This farmhouse bedroom blurs the line between indoors and outdoors. North-facing beds catch soft morning light, while vaulted brick ceilings rise 15 feet high—built without beams or steel. Wide windows frame lush canopies by day and starlit skies by night. Cane screens filter sunlight, a hidden study adds privacy, and natural materials—brick, wood, cane—keep the room grounded and timeless.
🌱 Vernacular Wisdom in Construction
This home isn’t built with steel and slabs. Instead, we used:
Rammed earth walls from on-site soil
Exposed brick & local stone
Traditional brick domes
Vaults instead of concrete slabs
Every design choice reduces heat, waste, and carbon footprint—making the house sustainable yet future-ready.
🌳 Hidden in the Landscape
The client’s unique brief: hide the house, not showcase it. The design preserves every old tree on the north-to-south slope. A pathway weaves through greenery, a trellis draped in creepers transitions you inward, and raw black stone walls ground the space. Rammed earth walls, made from the site’s very soil, blend the home into the land as if it has always been there.
🧱 Rammed Earth Walls
Built by compacting layers of local soil, sand, mud, and a touch of cement, these walls are naturally strong, fire-resistant, and regulate temperature. By day, they absorb heat; by night, they release it—keeping interiors naturally comfortable.
🏗️ A 20-Foot Brick Vault
One of the home’s most stunning features is a 20-foot-high brick vault with zero steel rods or slabs. Using compression geometry, each brick supports the next, guided by a custom frame. The result? A structure that’s strong, sustainable, and thermally efficient, keeping the home cool in Vadodara heat and warm after sunset.
🍃 A Forest Café Kitchen
This kitchen is designed like a forest café. It opens eastward to greenery and westward to a serene courtyard, while the south side acts as a heat shield. Just outside, an organic garden supplies fruits, herbs, and vegetables directly to the stove. Above, a self-supporting Rohtak dome ensures passive cooling and soft daylight. Natural finishes—exposed brick, local stone, wood—tie the space seamlessly with nature.
This farmhouse is not just a building. It is a revival of vernacular wisdom—vaults instead of slabs, courtyards that cool naturally, and materials drawn from the earth beneath your feet. Rooted in tradition, designed for the future. 🌍✨
This is one of the most technically daring farmhouse project we have built in India.
It has a 20 feet high brick walled roof that stands without a single steel rod, beam or slab.
Welcome to this 3 acre sustainable farmhouse in Vadodara.
Set on the peaceful outskirts of the city, it's a weekend home for Mr. Sachin Chaudhary and their family.
The house offers 6000 square feet of build up space within 3 acres of land.
But before we draw a single line, client had 3 simple requests.
1. Land should be as it is. No flattening, no cutting. The house should rise and fall on the natural slope only.
2. Save every tree. Not one could be cut. The design should weave around it.
3. Make it feel private. Even in an open space, they didn't want to feel watched.
So every decision from layout to lighting was shaped by nature, not against it.
But before you even reach the vault, the house starts revealing its character.
There is a driveway created through the trees and we have given a separate parking area.
So instead of designing a bold gate entrance, we crafted an experience that reveals the house slowly layer by layer.
The land naturally sloped from north to south, dotted with massive old trees.
We didn't cut a single one. Instead, we let the trees dictate the path.
The walkway winds gently through them, letting nature take the lead.
Next comes the trellis covered with the creepers. As you walk under it, the outside world fades away.
Following this, a black stone rubber wall lines the path, textured, raw and groundy.
Step by step, it all slows you down. And only then the house reveals itself.
But not all at once. It hides behind bold rammed earth walls made from the same soil beneath your feet.
These walls don't just give privacy, they hold the home quietly in the landscape.
The client wanted a farmhouse not to feel like a typical urban home.
That is where the idea of brick vault was born and it is built with minimum reinforcement.
This roof stands tall without a single column or beam, which is the heart of the plan.
Walls are one of the oldest roofing systems known to men.
This has been used in Roman baths, Mughal tombs and Rajasthani havelis.
We revived that roofing system here in Vadodara.
Finding the right people was a task.
Most contractors weren't familiar with these materials or this kind of structure.
So we had to work closely with structural engineers.
We did precise load calculations and planned support for the long span brick vault.
We started with a basic structure, vertical columns at base and curved roof at top.
But the real challenge was casting the structure at an angle and shaping the beam just right to support the brick vault above.
Then we built a smaller 15 feet dome.
The lower structure turned out fine.
But when we started layering bricks for the vault, things didn't go as planned.
The bricks were misaligned and the shape didn't come out right.
So we adapted for the next two vaults.
We created custom metal formwork called firma.
These metal frames helped us place each brick precisely and maintain the exact curve and shape we needed.
Today the roof stands strong without any slab or column.
Held together by brick geometry and the skill of everyone who built it.
After the inner layer of brick in the vault was completed, we did final mortar.
Then there was waterproofing and then we added final layer of brick on the top.
Giving it not only structure but insulation and durability.
The thermal mass of this vault keeps the space up to 4 to 5 degree cooler in summer.
Making it ideal for hot climates like Vadodara.
Because of the unique shape and height, we didn't get chance to use the normal ceiling lights.
So here's what we did.
To solve this, we designed special inner profile lights that are mounted horizontally on the vaults.
These lights are carefully positioned to shine upward.
Casting a smooth even glow across the curved surfaces of the vaulted ceiling.
This vault looks effortless right now.
But one wrong angle and it could have all collapsed.
This roof is built on nothing but calculated geometry, skilled craftsmanship and centuries old technique.
The entire house features flooring in Kota and Jaisalmer stone.
But no, two rooms look the same.
We used different inlay patterns in each space to create unique identities and break the monotony.
From the vaults, the home flows towards the central courtyard inspired by Indian chalks and angles.
The living room and kitchen are connected to this courtyard.
It's open to the sky letting warm air rise and escape while drawing in cooler air from shaded zones around the house.
Walking past the courtyard, in the south corner is the kitchen. It feels like a forest cafe.
The west leads into a quiet courtyard and right outside the kitchen window is a fully functional organic garden with herbs, vegetables, even fruits that come straight from the soil to the stove.
We placed the kitchen in the south corner of the house which is perfect according to Vastu.
But it gets harsh sunlight so it can heat up a lot.
So we buffered it from the sun using utility and store room as a thermal shield.
Another interesting and unique design here is the ceiling of the kitchen.
It is rotak dome which is a shallow brick dome built without steel or shuttering.
Every brick was hand laid in a spiral using nothing but gravity, mortar and centuries old meth.
This dome traps warm air at the top keeping the kitchen cool below and helps in passive cooling at its best.
Below the curve, thin slit windows bring in soft light that shifts with the sun which is not harsh.
Everything from countertop to materials. It's natural and functional.
Now in the bedroom, you don't need a light. You wake up with the sun and sleep with the moon.
The beds face north so soft daylight fills the room without heat.
Above the windows, textured screens filter sunlight balancing openness with privacy.
At night, you gaze at stars through the vaulted roof.
This vaulted ceiling rises up to 15 feet without any column or beam.
There is a tucked in study in one room and a console in another behind the bed.
Furniture finishes lime, cane, wood and aluminium with wood like texture that feel natural yet are easy to maintain.
This is more than a bedroom. It's a cocoon of calm built to breathe.
Now moving forward to my favourite part, the bathroom.
We designed two open to sky bathrooms, one with a glass roof and other completely roofless.
Both get plenty of natural daylight and fresh air which helps keep the space feeling fresh and dry.
We used natural stone and textured finishes that create a warm earthy atmosphere, giving the bathroom a calm retreat like feel.
This also ensured privacy while giving you a feeling of taking a shower under the sky.
The walls here use exposed black stone rubber wall which retains coolness and weathers beautifully over time.
We made sure no water stagnates by designing a slight slope and concealed trench drain along the walls.
Let's step back a little and see how the house sits on this land.
Every decision here from orientation to massing was in response to the site.
Why not build 50 feet to the left? Because that could have meant cutting trees, levelling slope and losing wind.
Instead, we studied the light, breeze and land.
As the road enters from the west, we aligned the entry part to create privacy.
There are neighbouring homes to the north east, so we avoided placing windows there.
Instead, we kept those facades solid, ensuring full privacy.
We oriented this house facing north because we get best soft light in the northern direction.
Utilities, store and toilets are placed in southwest area which are generally hotter areas.
And finally, the southwest breeze flows across the house, so the windows are placed to catch and circulate that air.
Architecture isn't just about form, even 5 feet can change everything.
Beyond this house, every corner of this 3-acre site connects with nature.
We designed a gazebo that sits near the orchard.
It's the perfect place to host or reflect.
And the client dreamed of a trail where the kids could cycle through trees.
So, we created a cycling trail that starts at the north garden, curves past the orchard, hugs the natural slope and ends at the gazebo.
This is where vernacular architecture truly came into play.
Vernacular architecture is all about using traditional methods, local materials and climate responsive techniques.
And this home celebrates that in more ways than one.
This isn't just a house in nature, it is a house of nature.
Every decision here, in bricks, soil, slope and shadow, was made to serve one purpose, that is to surrender to this land.
