Can a Modern Home Feel Indian Without Looking Traditional?

Sooner or later, most briefs for a house in Mumbai arrive at the same sentence: modern, but it should feel Indian. It is a fair thing to want and a hard thing to specify. Ask ten people what they mean and you get ten pictures, and most of them are made of objects. A carved door. A brass lamp. An arch.

Objects are the quick route and the weak one. A house dressed in Indian things is wearing a costume, and costumes come off. The slower route is to look at what Indian houses have always done and do it again in a contemporary way: meet the sun, shelter from the rain, keep a graded threshold between the street and the family, and leave room for people to sit and talk in the in-between places. A house feels Indian because of how it behaves. The look follows.

This guide is for people planning a home in Mumbai or elsewhere in India. It takes five ideas in turn: the courtyard, the threshold, the screen, material and ritual. Each ends with questions to put to your architect.

Start with behaviour, not appearance

Charles Correa put the whole argument in three words: form follows climate. He took the architect's old rule, form follows function, and pointed it at the weather. [1] A building in a hot country, he held, should work with the sun, the wind and the rain instead of leaning on machines to undo what its walls let in.

Balkrishna Doshi, the first Indian architect to win the Pritzker Prize, was cited by the jury for work that was serious, never flashy or a follower of trends, and for drawing on local craft, climate and a deep understanding of culture. [2] Neither man designed from a catalogue of Indian motifs. Both began with conditions: heat, rain, light, and the way a family uses a house across a day and a year.

Our studio's published principles say it directly. There is no predetermined style or model, and the approach should suit the local climate, landscape and culture. That is a useful discipline for any brief. Begin with the conditions, then see what they ask for.

Open to the sky

The courtyard, or angan, is the oldest Indian answer to a house that has to stay cool, bright and private at the same time. A square of open sky lets hot air rise and leave, brings daylight into rooms that would otherwise sit in the dark, and gives the family somewhere outdoors without leaving home. Correa kept returning to it. The courtyards at his National Craft Museum and Belapur Housing helped manage the climate and gave people a place to gather, and his Tube House in Ahmedabad drew cool air through the building and out through a vent near the roof. [1]

None of this needs a traditional look. In the illustrated house the court is a plain stone floor with one tree and a thin channel of water, and the slab above stops short of the sky. In a city flat it might be a light well, a terrace garden or the gap between two wings. What matters is that part of the house is open above, and that the rooms around it use that space.

We have drawn on the idea in our own work. Bhandari House in Bhinmal, Rajasthan, is built from thick walls, sheltered courtyard spaces and carefully placed openings that answer the local climate. The Garden Glory penthouse in Thane wraps about 5,000 sq ft of living space in a 10,000 sq ft terrace garden, so every room looks out to green.

A courtyard also has to drain, because whatever falls from the sky lands in it. The floor needs a fall and an outlet that will not clog, which is the subject of our piece on designing a house for the monsoon.

Ask your architect

• Where does the house open to the sky, and which rooms look onto it?
• Where does the rain go once it lands there?
• If the plot is tight, can a light well or a terrace garden do the same job?

The threshold

Before the front door there used to be a place to sit. In Gujarat it is called the otla, a raised, open step along the front of a house that works as a seat and a resting place overlooking the street. [4] In the chawls of Mumbai and Ahmedabad, a shared veranda played a related part, joining small rooms to each other and to the street. [4]

The idea survives in a modern plan without any change of style. The entrance in the illustration is raised a few steps above the garden. It has a built-in stone seat against the wall, a deep overhang and a plain timber door, and nothing is carved. It works because it gives a visitor a pause. There is somewhere to arrive, to wait and to take off a wet shoe before the house begins.

Privacy in an Indian home has always been graded, from street to step to verandah to room. A modern house that opens straight from the road into the living room gives that up. It is better to decide on purpose how many stages sit between public and private, and what happens at each one.

Ask your architect

• How many stages are there between the street and the living room, and what happens at each?
• Is there somewhere to sit at the entrance?
• Is the door set back under cover, or flush with the wall?

Light, air and privacy

A jaali is a perforated screen, traditionally of stone, that lets light and air through while keeping out the sun, the rain and the eye. [3] Yatin Pandya notes that it is a climatic device before it is a decorative one. In humid places such as Kerala the openings are larger, to move more air, and in dry regions such as Rajasthan the patterns are denser, to cut the sun. [3] The pattern follows the climate, not the other way round.

The test of a contemporary jaali is whether it still does that work. In the stair hall in the image, a wall of plain square terracotta units filters the afternoon sun across the stone floor and the plaster beside it, and the pattern on the floor moves through the day. The lattice is simple because the shadow is the decoration. A busy pattern would only compete with it.

Two things decide whether a screen earns its place: how big its openings are, and which way it faces. The openings should suit the climate and the privacy you need, and the screen should stand where there is light worth controlling. A jaali on the wrong side of the house is a picture on a wall. We have used jaali designs in the Garden Glory penthouse, and at a wedding venue in Raipur we reinterpreted the detailing of Rajasthani architecture through a contemporary lens.

Ask your architect

• What is the screen for: sun, privacy, air or all three?
• Which direction does it face, and how large are the openings?
• How will it be cleaned and maintained?

Material and craft

Indian houses have always been made from what the place offered, and the materials were chosen for how they behave. Stone stays cool underfoot. Thick masonry evens out the temperature across the day. Lime plaster can be patched and recoated. Teak ages well. The reasons are practical first, and the beauty comes with them.

Our Tirupur villa is a good example: cool stone floors, lime render on the outside and heavy masonry walls that moderate the heat inside, all chosen for the Tamil Nadu climate.

The illustration shows a Kota stone seat, a lime-plaster wall, a teak door with a brass hinge and a handwoven throw. None of it is exotic. Together these carry the Indian character through touch, with hand-finished surfaces, visible joints and brass that darkens with use, and not through pattern.

Craft asks something of the client. A hand-finished wall is not perfectly flat, and stone has veins. Say so at the start, so nobody mistakes character for a defect.

Ask your architect

• Which materials suit this climate, and why?
• How will each finish age, and how is it repaired?
• Who will make it, and can we see a sample in daylight?

Ritual and orientation

Many families want a place for daily prayer, and some ask for the house to follow Vaastu, the traditional Indian principles for orienting and planning a building. Several of our homes were designed with Vaastu in mind. The Tirupur villa was designed strictly to Vaastu and climate, and the Mist View Bungalows in Lonavala follow Vaastu principles with south-facing roofs for solar panels.

A modern plan can hold both, if you ask early and write down which requirements are fixed. Moving the kitchen or the entrance late in the design is expensive. Orientation is also a climate question, so the two conversations belong together.

The prayer space does not have to be a cabinet in a corner. In the illustration it is a recessed niche in a lime-plaster wall with a stone shelf, a brass lamp and a plate of marigolds, softly lit and beside a timber screen. It is quiet, and it belongs to the house. Give it a wall, some light and a little distance from the busiest room, and it will do its job.

Ask your architect

• Which requirements, Vaastu or otherwise, are fixed, and which are preferences?
• Where does the prayer space sit in relation to the entrance and the busiest rooms?
• Is there a safe place for a lamp, and somewhere for the smoke to go?

The same ideas in a Mumbai flat

Most of the people reading this live in flats, so it is fair to ask whether any of it survives on the fifteenth floor. It does. The balcony becomes the verandah, a sliding timber screen does the work of the jaali, and a stone floor and a lime-washed wall do the quiet part.

These are two versions of the same living room. In the first, Indian character is applied: a carved arch, a gilded frame, heavy brocade, brass on every surface. In the second it is built in: a balcony that works as a verandah, timber screens that filter the evening light, a stone floor and a few handmade textiles. Both are handsome rooms, and the first suits some people and some occasions. Only the second would still feel Indian with the objects taken away.

Before you brief your architect

A few questions to settle at home first.

• How does your family live across a day, and across the seasons?
• What do you want the house to feel like? Name feelings, not objects.
• Which traditions are non-negotiable, and which are habit?
• If every decorative object were removed, what would still make the house yours?

A modern home that feels Indian is one house, made carefully for its climate and its family. The sun, the rain, the street and the household each get somewhere sensible to be.

To see how we handle this in built work, look at the bungalows we have designed in Alibaug and Lonavala, Bhandari House or the Tirupur villa, or read about our process. For the inside of a home, see our luxury interior design in Mumbai, and for budgeting, what an architect costs.

Terms used in this guide

• Angan: a courtyard, the open-to-sky space at the centre of a traditional house.
• Jaali: a perforated screen that lets in light and air while giving shade and privacy.
• Kota stone: a hard, fine-grained limestone from the Kota region of Rajasthan, widely used for flooring.
• Lime plaster: a traditional wall finish made with lime, which can be patched and recoated.
• Otla: a raised, open step or platform at the front of a house, used for sitting.
• Vaastu: traditional Indian principles for orienting and planning buildings.

Sources

[1] Down To Earth. Remembering Charles Correa, one of the pioneers of sustainable architecture.

[2] The Pritzker Architecture Prize. Balkrishna Doshi, 2018 Laureate.

[3] Wikipedia. Jali, including the views of Yatin Pandya.

[4] Aishwarya Morwal. De-constructing the Sense of Inside and Outside in a Chawl.

Research accessed 1 October 2026. Descriptions of our own projects come from their project pages. All the images illustrate ideas and atmosphere, not completed work.