The project began with demolition. The cleared Jodhpur site offered the freedom to shape the space with intention. The layout determines how natural light enters and how people move through the interiors. Carefully chosen materials bring warmth and comfort to the space.
A Jodhpur Cafe Rebuilds A 1960s Home Without Losing Its Soul | Soul Source India
The young owners wanted a contemporary home with no vintage or heritage styling. They made this preference clear from the outset. Despite Jodhpur’s strong association with traditional architecture, they envisioned clean, minimal and unfussy interiors. The design embraces this contemporary approach throughout the space. Natural light and carefully chosen materials bring warmth to the interiors. The result feels like home without relying on familiar nostalgic details. Warmth had to come from proportion, material, and light instead.
Designing in Jodhpur comes with its own realities. Compared to larger cities, there are fewer vendors to draw from and fewer specialists for technical detailing, so every ambitious idea has to be tested against what is actually buildable with the resources at hand. The sky roof over the bar is a good example. We wanted a feature that would flood the space with natural light and give it a sense of openness, but getting the proportions right took several rounds of adjustment. Waterproofing was an equal concern. Jodhpur’s monsoon is brief but intense, and a single leak would have undone the entire effect. We worked closely with our site team to detail the roof so it could handle heavy rain without compromising the clean lines we wanted from below.
The walls brought a different kind of challenge. We wanted a natural, breathable finish with real depth and movement rather than a flat painted surface, which led us to a lime-based cimento. It’s a finicky material to get right: the final colour and texture shift depending on application technique, drying time, and even the day’s humidity, so arriving at the right result meant multiple trial patches before we were confident to move ahead. The payoff is a wall that behaves almost like a living surface, one that catches and shifts with the light throughout the day in a way flat paint simply cannot replicate.
If there is one design element that captures the spirit of the project, it is the lighting over the bar. Four large pendant lamps, crafted from hand-worked paper mache, hang from the sky roof, catching and softening the natural light that pours in during the day and glowing warmly after dark. Smaller versions of the same bowls appear again along the staircase leading to the rooftop; some used as light fixtures and others simply as wall decoration. These hand painted vessels introduce texture and irregularity against the cleaner architectural lines.
We describe the overall language as warm or soft minimalism. The palette stays earthy and muted, letting the cimento walls, natural materials, and handcrafted lighting do the talking. Every choice had to support three ideas at once: light, texture, and warmth. The sky roof delivers the light. The cimento walls carry the texture. And the handcrafted details supply the warmth, including the antique brass lighting that hang over the tables.
More than any single material or feature, the project was guided throughout by its name Ghar, Feel Like Home. We took the comfort of a family home and translated it into something current: minimal, considered, and built for how people actually want to spend time together, talking, working, eating, drinking coffee — in a space that asks nothing of them except to stay a while.
The result is a cafe in Jodhpur built on the footprint of a 1960s home, carrying none of its original walls but all of its original intention: a place that, despite being entirely new, still feels unmistakably like home.
Fact File
Designed by: Soul Source India
Project Type: Restaurant /Bar/Cafe
Project Name: GHAR 2025 Feel Like Home
Location: Defence Lab Road, Cantt Area, Jodhpur
Year Built: 2025
Duration of the project: 8-9 Months
Project Size: 6000 Sq.Ft
Principal Designer: Cathy Blundell
Design Credits: Janvi Kalwani
Photograph Courtesy: Amit Sankhla
Firm’s Website Link: Soul Source India
Firm’s Instagram Link: Soul Source India
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