Design Thinking

Human scale street scape built with local bricks, where colour and texture of light filter through narrow streets. Even during the hot summers, these streets are very comfortable to move around in, or to sit and relax at the doorway of any house. Located in old Jalandhar, Punjab, it is a prime example of a low-rise-high-density urban texture very prominent in this region. In most of the cities of northern India, we always call older settlements as old Delhi, old Jalandhar, old Ludhiana or old Amritsar. These are more than 100 year old settlements, densely knit urban fabrics with street and courtyard houses. Three side covered houses borrow light from central courtyard or from the front. In the front, living room and bedroom face the street and entry to the house is through an arched gateway finished with carved wooden doors. Central courtyards are surrounded by the other bedrooms, kitchen and washrooms. Depending on the size of the courtyard we often find a small decorative tree in one corner providing shade and colour, while there is a common space for multifunctional household works.

Terraces are mostly occupied during winter mornings as a space to sleep outside on a charpai. Although each house has a distinctive character, you will find an auspicious sign of god and goddess above each entrance.