Rajasthan villages traditionally shape homes around courtyards that bring people together during festivals and family gatherings. These courtyards also protect homes from heat, dust and public exposure. These homes are rarely static. They expand and contract with occupation, shifting between intense communal use and private life. It is within this layered condition of climate, community, and absence that House Between Walls in Rewatra finds its ground.

Light Wells Bring Light and Privacy Into House Between Walls in Rewatra | Studio UF+O

Prachi Parekh and Vineet Vora of Studio Urban Form + Objects designed the house to balance two opposing conditions. Its position facing the village square connects it to communal life, allowing the home to accommodate social gatherings during festivals and family functions.

At the same time, it remains unoccupied for long stretches, where privacy and safety become as important as openness. Set within a hot, dusty landscape that also experiences frequent power shortages, the house needed to remain comfortable and resilient even when mechanical systems were unreliable. Thus, the architecture emerges from this tension as a deliberate spatial response.

Instead of organizing the house around a traditional courtyard, the architects Prachi Parekh and Vineet Vora of Studio Urban Form + Objects began with climate, enclosure, and use. The question was not how to recreate a familiar rural house, but how to control light, heat, air, and dust within a tightly bound site while allowing the house to open and close with ease.

The result is a house that remains deeply responsive to its climate and occupation patterns, without leaning on recognizable vernacular forms. The house sits on a long and narrow plot, enclosed on three sides. With only one active frontage addressing the square, the architects resolved the project through a singular front elevation. The architecture takes shape through the plan and section, allowing the building to remain robust as its relationship with the street shifts. It responds equally to moments of intense activity and long periods of quiet.

Within these constraints, the walls themselves become the primary architectural devices. Rather than treating them as fixed boundaries, the architects offset the party walls to carve out two linear light wells that run along the length of the house. These voids create a buffer between the house and its neighbours. They allow openings to bring in light and air without directly exposing the interiors to the street or adjacent properties.

Raised to full height, the walls establish privacy and security while shaping how light and air enter the interiors. Reflecting on this decision, Prachi Parekh explains that a conventional courtyard was never the starting point. “The idea wasn’t to begin with a form or a template of how houses in this region usually look, but rather how they need to work, climatically and socially. Once we shifted that lens, the architecture followed.”

The design carefully calibrates the proportions of the light wells. Sunlight enters indirectly, softening glare and limiting heat gain while maintaining a steady quality of daylight throughout the day. Unlike a central courtyard that concentrates light at one point, these linear voids distribute light along the edges of the plan, allowing interior spaces to remain uninterrupted and generous. The design controls ventilation rather than leaving it to chance. It also reduces dust ingress, an essential consideration in this landscape.

These light wells also generate a series of small, protected outdoor spaces. Bedrooms and upper-floor areas open onto them, creating intimate terraces that remain usable across seasons. In contrast to the collective nature of village courtyards, these spaces allow for more private relationships with the outdoors, shaped by shade, enclosure, and indirect light. Their climatic comfort ensures they remain open and inhabited, rather than sealed off over time.

At the centre of the house is a large living volume that stretches deep into the site.The space accommodates gatherings during village events while maintaining an expansive yet inward focus. A mezzanine overlooks the volume, creating visual continuity and subtly regulating privacy. A deliberately displaced skylight sits beside the mezzanine, allowing daylight to filter through gradually and evenly.

This layered section reinforces both thermal comfort and spatial depth. The house engages most directly with the village at the ground-floor front. Here, a glass brick volume forms the formal living space facing the square. During periods of occupation, this room becomes an active threshold, absorbing people who arrive informally throughout the day. In the evening, when lit, the glass brick facade reads as a soft glow within the village streetscape, signalling presence without revealing the interior.

In the village, a house is always being observed, even when no one is inside,” notes Vineet Vora. “The glass brick allowed us to acknowledge that condition. When the house is in use, it feels alive, often illuminating the village square like a lantern. When it’s closed, it’s clearly private, without becoming defensive.”

Material choices reinforce the restraint of the architecture. A single tile finish is used across floors, walls, and the exterior, lending the house a quiet, monolithic character while simplifying maintenance during long periods of absence. Wood is introduced selectively inside to bring warmth to the interiors without disrupting the overall calm of the palette. These decisions lend the house a quiet monumentality, allowing it to stand apart within the streetscape while remaining rooted in its surroundings.

House Between Walls is defined by what it chooses to hold and what it chooses to keep out. The village, the climate, the family, the long silences all find their way into the architecture. There is no attempt to romanticize rural life, nor any desire to retreat from it. The house remains open without becoming exposed, protected without feeling closed. Its identity is not borrowed from familiar forms, but shaped through space, light, and enclosure. In doing so, it claims its own place within the village, steady and self-assured, unmistakably contemporary.

Fact File

Designed by: Studio UF+O

Project Type: Residential Architecture Design

Project Name: House Between Walls

Location: Rewatra, Rajasthan, India  

Project Size: 4800 Sq.ft

Year: 2026

Principal Architects: Prachi Parekh & Vineet J. Vora

Photograph Courtesy: Niveditaa Gupta

Source: Archdaily

Firm’s Instagram Link: Studio UF+O

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