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Residential Spaces

Traditional Indian households lived by the joint family system whereby the many occupants and complex interpersonal relationships necessitated clearly demarcated spaces. Public and private areas were separate, and women kept protected from the public gaze. The internal courtyard was the center, restricted to family members, with rooms opening out on either side, ensuring privacy to their inhabitants.

The stone façades of havelis in Rajasthan. Ornate jharokhas (balconies) with wooden shuttered openings project out onto the street. They are shaded by arched chhajjas (eaves).

North India: The Haveli

The haveli or mansion was the house of the rich, owned by either the nobility or by rich traders who attempted to imitate the lifestyle of royalty. Often built on narrow streets, the outer walls of larger havelis rose 3-4 stories high, casting shadows on their neighbors. Interiors thus remained cool. The narrow streets also acted as wind funnels, further cooling the buildings.

The haveli was built on a high plinth, with steps leading up to the entrance. The first room, facing the street, was the baithak or public area. It signified the transition between the public space outside the house and the private or personal space within. This was a totally male domain into which women rarely entered. The baithak opened out into another room, beyond which, completely shielded from the gaze of strangers, was the central courtyard.

A pillared and covered corridor called the baramdah or verandah ran around the courtyard on all levels, leading into various rooms that formed the living quarters. Rooms on the upper floors also had canopied balconies called jharokhas looking down into the street. Shielded by carved stone latticework screens (jaalis), they allowed the inhabitants to look out without being seen, and also served to break the force of hot winds, allowing the interiors to be airy. There was usually a teh khana or basement, which was the cool retreat of the house and also the place where valuables were stored. Security was, in fact, a major determinant in the plan. Doors had low lintels and high thresholds, probably to ensure that an unwelcome person could not enter easily. The staircases, too, were twisted and narrow, with uncomfortably high risers.

Section of a typical haveli showing the hierarchy of private and public spaces and connecting passageways.

Kerala houses are constructed on fairly high stone plinths to prevent rainwater from entering. The pitched roots are also designed to drain off the rain. These usually have an open gable, the Malabar gable, to ensure air circulation, a necessity in the hot and humid climate of Kerala. The building above now houses the Napier Museum.

Ornamentation was a key feature of havelis. It also served as a major unifying element in the somewhat organic planning of the house. Owners of havelis vied with each other to create opulent mansions with painted interiors and ornate stone-and woodwork.

South India: The Kerala House

Homes in Kerala follow rigid systems of planning and orientation. The generic Kerala house is known as the nalukettu, nalu meaning "four" and kettu meaning "courtyard." The house thus comprises four blocks around a courtyard.

The courtyard, according to the Vaastu Shastra (see p. 30), is the point of equilibrium and harmony in the domestic building. It pro vides a focal point for the home. Based on this principle, the nalukettu is surrounded by a deep, covered verandah, whose inward-sloping roof rests on a pillar at each corner. Rooms are arranged around the verandah in a linear fashion. The roof is pitched and extends over the exterior walls to cover another verandah, usually in the front portion of the house.

Within this basic layout, the tarawad or house of the Hindu Nair community, follows rigid principles of orientation. A tarawad must face east, and the entrance is always flanked by the image of a demon to ward off evil spirits.

Within the tarawad, areas are designated according to direction. Thus, the cooking area, known as the vadakkina, must be in the north, while the southern end, known as the tekkina, is reserved for other domestic chores. The four blocks of the tarawad must be oriented in the cardinal directions around a central courtyard known as the nadumuttam.

The traditional Mappila or Muslim house of Kerala, has a central courtyard and is two-storied. The main entrance leads into a lobby or enclosed verandah, with a pair of windows opening through three arches giving onto the true verandah. The raised floor is paved with stone tile or colored lime plaster. Here stands a kinathara, a platform some 0.6 meters above floor level-a combined prayer area and sitting space. The rooms become plainer and more functional as one passes toward the women's quarter at the back, the most private part of the house. From one side of the semi-private lobby, stairs ascend to the finest room, the mullapuram.

The interior courtyard of a nalukettu. The courtyard is a transitional space between the public and private realms. Extended roots provide much needed shade in the hot and rainy seasons.

Vernacular Architecture

India's rich diversity has given shape to an equally rich vocabulary of vernacular architecture. Just as political and historic events were major factors in shaping monumental buildings in India in the past, so geography, social customs, local materials and, above all, the climate have been important influences on the forms of personal living spaces.

Interior of a village hut revealing clay relief work and pieces of mirror used for decoration. A further decorative element is often a quilted wall hanging.

Vernacular architecture evolved in an organic manner using local craft skills. It can broadly be divided into two distinct categories on the basis of the construction material used. The kachcha building is one that is made from short-lived natural materials such as mud, grass, bamboo, thatch and sticks and its form is dictated by the practical limitations of the material. Structures made with these materials have a short life and require constant upkeep and replenishment, not only in hostile weather conditions but throughout the year. They have the advantage, however, of being cheap. The pukka structure is one made from stone, burnt brick with plaster, seasoned timber, clay tiles or any other material that is resistant to wear and tear, and does not need constant repair and replenishment. Such structures, while being stronger, are much more expensive to build. As villagers' earnings increase, vernacular building, mainly confined to rural locations, combines these two types to create the semi-pukka structure. The dream of every villager is to finally own a pukka home although the kachcha structure has its own beauty, derived less from decoration (which is common due to religion or superstition) and more from its pure, practical shapes.

The villagers of Banni in the Kutch peninsula of Gujarat build circular houses of mud. A conical roof frame is filled in with thatch tightly tied around it. There are usually no windows. As families increase, new homes are built, eventually clustering around a common open space or internal courtyard. Decoration is an intrinsic part of the Banni house and includes mud relief, paint and embedded colored glass.

Diverse Materials

In the hills, the walls of houses are made of random rubble or ashlar, using bits of flint or stone, packed with mud mortar. A variation consists of a timber frame and bonding, with the space between columns filled with random rubble in mud mortar till the sill level and then with finer stonework. Wooden beams and rafters support roofs made of locally available slate tiles which are sloping, to drain off rain or snow.

In contrast, the roofs of houses in the plains are flat, allowing access to the terrace, used for sleeping in the hot summer. They are made of stone slabs supported on a metal framework. Walls are made of either mud or sun-baked brick, and plastered on the inside and outside with mud mixed with hay, chaff and cowdung, and sometimes whitewashed with lime (also considered a disinfectant).

Bamboo, flexible but extremely resilient, is used widely as material for walls, scaffolding, platforms and floors in the northeastern region and in the eastern states of Bengal and Orissa. Thatch from various plants-coconut, paddy, elephant grass-is widely used all over the country as roofing material. In the south, clay tiles are the most common pukka roofing material. The structural material for construction in the south is usually casuarina or the coconut palm, good for roofing and roof beams. Floors can be either compacted earth, or laid with stone. Clay flooring with a traditional, painstakingly prepared red laterite polish is also commonly used in the south.

Variations in Form and Infrastructure

Homes in the hills are usually two-storied, with domestic animals occupying the ground floor and humans the first floor. This ensures safety for the livestock as well as warmth during the cold winter season. In many houses, a verandah runs along one side of the house, and on the upper floors this verandah projects out, resting on brackets or corbeled out. The attic is used to store grain, root vegetables, chillies and corn.

The roofs are always pitched, and in the northeast, with a very wet climate, have deep projecting eaves to prevent rainwater from damaging the walls. The plinths in this part are raised on bamboo poles, to counter floods.

In the high and dry plateau of Ladakh, the pitched roof gives way to a flat one with houses having more than one floor, built close to one another, with connecting passages.

In arid southern Rajasthan, mud is fashioned into dramatic shapes and the walls are rounded, allowing the desert winds to whistle past without damaging them. A cluster of structures faces a common courtyard. Rectangular forms are more common in the northern desert region.

On the west coast, fishing settlements have thatched roofs of coconut fronds or thick, dried paddy projecting over large verandahs, which can be used as a work space during the heavy monsoons.

Village homes have low lintels, made of either stone or wood, ensuring that whoever enters has to bow his head, which not only ensures safety from hostile strangers but is also a gesture of respect. Thick mud walls allow for windows and doors to be inset as well as for simple stone slab shelves to be fixed.

Clay tiles are a popular roofing material for pukka roofs in South India.

A typical hill house with a sloping tin roof.

Elements of Space and Decoration

Modernity is but one of the many overlays that constitute the complex canvas of Indian lifestyles, and in every region the architectural features of buildings have deep cultural resonances of older ways of living. Traditional homes in India share certain spatial and ornamental elements which are common, regardless of where they are located The names of these elements may vary according to the region but their function and character are accepted as indispensable to domestic architecture, just as the zenana (women's quarters) was essential for reasons of purdah and distinct from the mardana (spaces restricted to men).

Elaborate color-filled carvings constitute the façade elements in the havelis of Jaisalmer.

The Courtyard

The Vaastu Shastra defines the focal point of any building as the point of equilibrium. In the domestic dwelling, this is the courtyard, an enclosed private space, open to the sky. Present even in the earliest homes of the Indus valley civilisation, the courtyard is the major spatial element of homes in the plains. In Hindu households, there is a tulsi plant (holy basil) at its center, revered for its healing powers. It is usually contained within a plinth or ornate planter.

The Threshold

The threshold signifies the transition of space from the public to the private. In traditional buildings, the threshold is slightly elevated, both to prevent hostile intrusions as well as to keep out insects and reptiles. Footwear is removed at this point, and one enters the house barefoot.

The Hearth

The cooking hearth, known as the chulha, is the purest space in the traditional house. The area around the chulha is ritually washed before the preparation of the morning meal, and it is essential to bathe before entering it. The women of the house do all the cooking and serving. At all meals, the men are served first, sitting on low wooden stools called chowkis. Sometimes, a second chulha was constructed in the courtyard for boiling water and other purposes.

Not only within houses but between them courtyard-like spaces provide the public interactive area. In hot cities like Jaisalmer, narrow streets open up to provide areas for people to get together. Architectural features include jharokhas and decorated galleries.

The interior of a hut in Kutch shows the women's decorative handiwork with mirrors and relief abstract.

The chulha was designed to use firewood, and the smoke that rose from it was welcome as it killed vermin. Most houses did not have a chimney. In some tribal houses, the apex of the roof was open to the sky and covered by a clay pot that could be lifted when required.

Decorative Elements

The Indian love for color and design is evident in even the humblest of homes. Floors, especially in the areas around the threshold and the family shrine, are decorated with patterns drawn with rice flour, powdered chalk, flower petals or turmeric powder. This ritual decoration, called kolam, rangoli or alpana, whether done daily or for special occasions, is evident throughout the country, although the patterns executed differ from place to place. Walls are also painted or molded in relief with both geometric and iconographic motifs.

Unlike the permanent decorations painted on the façade and on spatially important parts of the house, paintings with washable materials at the entry point celebrate important rituals or festive events, either within the house or outside in the overall context of the community.

Most homes had small niches built into the wall, like the mihrab in mosques, used to keep candles or lamps, to house a shrine, or simply for storage. Kutch homes are covered with such ornate niches. The ornamentation in larger Hindu homes depicted entire scenes, involving figures and deities from mythology, the epics and stories from the Puranas. Usually the location and the subject of the paintings followed a set order. Entrances had auspicious symbols painted on them. The colors used were earth colors. Communities of fresco painters traditionally trained in the art were employed to execute elaborate designs by wealthy patrons.

Structural elements were also exploited for decoration, such as the carved or latticed jharokhas of Rajasthan, brackets and pillars.

Frescoes of religious or mythological scenes adorn the walls of havelis of the rich merchant class in Mandawa, Rajasthan.

An example of Ladakhi wooden pillar capitals painted with bright Tibetan and Chinese motifs which support the ceiling of a traditional house.