Set within a residential neighborhood in Bhusawal, Maharashtra, Between Two Suns brings together two adjoining plots as one expansive home for a multigenerational family. The brief began with a desire to accommodate ten members under one roof, but the design evolved by asking a more fundamental question: what does living together actually require? Rather than simply multiplying rooms, the house creates relationships between them.

A home for ten people could easily become an exercise in scale, filled with rooms, corridors and carefully separated territories. Here, the idea is almost the opposite. The architecture steps back, allowing family life to occupy the foreground. Designed for three generations, the house brings together grandparents, parents and children without forcing togetherness or sacrificing individuality. Its courtyards, balconies, bridges, gardens and long visual connections turn movement through the house into a series of small encounters.

Between Two Suns Finds A New Meaning In Multigenerational Living | Humanscape

A glimpse across a courtyard, a child moving between rooms, a parent pausing beside a garden or a grandparent sitting beneath a shaded opening becomes part of the everyday rhythm. In this sense, the architecture is less an object and more a generous setting for a family to grow into.

The movement of the sun becomes another invisible organiser, shaping the quality of light experienced throughout the day. This house feels expansive without becoming impersonal—a composition of connected spaces where togetherness remains possible, while every member of the family can retreat into their own rhythm.

Bringing Two Plots Together

The origins of the house lie in two adjoining plots of approximately 2,200 sq ft each. The family initially considered building separate homes, but ultimately chose to remain together in a single residence. That decision became one of the project’s defining architectural conditions. With ten members across three generations and four children growing up together, the house needed to accommodate different routines without fragmenting the family.

The initial brief was also deliberately reconsidered. A proposed 14,000 sq ft programme was reduced to approximately 9,700 sq ft, based on the idea that sustainability begins with questioning what actually needs to be built. This reduction did not diminish the house; instead, it sharpened its priorities.

A Home Organised Around Togetherness

At the heart of the house is a spatial strategy that allows family members to remain connected without constantly occupying the same room. The central courtyard becomes the quiet hinge between the east and west portions of the residence, while long corridors and balconies extend the sense of connection across its considerable length. The design deliberately avoids the feeling of a large house becoming a collection of isolated rooms.

Instead, visual relationships are established at multiple levels: one can see towards another room, look across the courtyard, catch movement along a balcony or remain aware of children playing elsewhere. The project page describes this as a network of interconnected spaces, where courtyards, terraces, bridges and visual links allow three generations to remain aware of one another.

The Courtyard as the Family’s Common Ground

The courtyard is not treated as a leftover open space but as an active part of the domestic programme. Positioned between the two blocks, it gives the house breathing room while bringing daylight, air and greenery deep into the plan. The taller western portion helps shade this central space, making it more usable through the day. From different points within the house, the courtyard becomes a constantly changing visual presence.

Bedrooms, balconies and circulation spaces look towards it, allowing family members to remain connected even when engaged in separate activities. Here, the courtyard becomes a natural meeting ground—an informal stage for children, a place to pause, a source of greenery and a visual anchor that repeatedly brings the family back into one another’s orbit.

Letting the Sun Shape the Rooms

The title of the house finds its architectural expression in the way sunlight is choreographed through the plan. Rather than treating daylight simply as an environmental requirement, the design uses the movement of the sun to give different rooms their own temporal character. The eastern and northern sides are more open, while the southern and western edges are buffered to temper the harshness of the climate.

In the bedrooms, morning light becomes a gentle way to begin the day; elsewhere, warmer evening light accompanies spaces of gathering. The strategy is particularly significant in Bhusawal, where temperatures can reach approximately 47°C. The house responds not by sealing itself away, but by carefully controlling how much sun, air and openness enter at different points.

Privacy Without Isolation

For a joint family, privacy cannot simply mean closing a door. Every individual still needs places that belong to them—a corner to read, sit, meditate, watch the rain or simply be alone. The house responds with a collection of small, highly personal spaces distributed throughout the plan. A sunken seat beneath a neem tree creates a contemplative retreat, while another corner combines a stone bookshelf with a swing. I

In one bedroom, movable stone fins and a pergola provide access to fresh air and sky while retaining a visual relationship with people moving outside. These are modest interventions, but they give individuality to a large shared residence. Privacy is therefore treated as a gradient rather than a binary condition.

Long Corridors, Short Distances Between People

The unusual longitudinal quality of the plan becomes one of the house’s most memorable spatial experiences. Long corridors do more than connect rooms; they become places of pause and observation. At points along the route, the view opens towards a garden, a courtyard or another part of the house before narrowing again as one approaches a more private room. This creates a gradual transition rather than a sequence of abrupt thresholds. The arrangement was particularly important for a home of this size, where distance could otherwise make family members feel disconnected. The corridors therefore operate simultaneously as circulation, buffer and social space. Standing balconies and jharokas add another layer, allowing residents to look across levels and remain visually aware of activity elsewhere

Rooms That Grow With the Children

The four children, ranging from about one and a half to ten years old, were an important consideration in shaping the house. Their rooms are designed not merely as bedrooms but as spaces that can adapt as childhood progresses. The older children’s room connects visually and spatially with the parents’ bedroom through an intervening corridor and roller blind, allowing independence without complete separation.

Inside, the architecture leaves room for play, craft, sleepovers and changing interests. A narrow space between beds can become a side table, an additional sleeping surface or a place for floorbased activities. Walls finished with pigmented acrylic putty allow children to draw and write, with marks that can later be wiped away. The house therefore accepts childhood as an active, sometimes messy presence rather than something architecture needs to control.

Stories Woven Into the Interior

The interiors derive much of their character from the family’s own memories and regional associations. Children’s wardrobes carry painted landscapes inspired by the Maharashtra countryside—wheat fields, banana plantations and local wildlife—created with the help of their drawing teachers. Textiles introduce further layers of storytelling, with sambar deer and blackbuck motifs associated with the nearby forest landscape appearing across rooms.

Family history is embedded in a similar manner. Military medals, pens and other belongings of a great-grandfather who served as a government translator during the British era are displayed alongside photographs and personal objects. Antique basalt deep-stambh pieces, sourced from an old cellar, become more than decorative artefacts; they carry an association with gratitude and remembrance

Designing for Everyday Realities

In a home shared by three generations and four young children, everyday safety becomes as important as spatial experience. The open staircase was therefore treated with particular care. Rather than closing it off with conventional railing, the tension cables forming its railing were spaced based on the child’s anthropometry, allowing the staircase to remain visually open while making it safer for small children. Maintenance was considered with similar pragmatism. A concealed corridor allows residents to access and clean the double-height glazing and care for indoor planting without relying on specialist services. Even electrical and plumbing systems were organised within a curved central wall so that maintenance could be undertaken more easily in a smaller town.

A Background for a Family’s Future

Between Two Suns ultimately proposes a quieter understanding of what a large family home can be. Its achievement lies less in its scale than in the relationships it creates between people, landscape, climate and memory. The house brings ten people together, yet gives children room to grow, grandparents places to pause, parents opportunities for privacy, and the family as a whole a generous network of shared spaces. Courtyards, gardens, balconies, water, stone, wood and daylight provide the physical framework, while photographs, textiles, heirlooms and children’s drawings gradually make it personal. Sustainability is approached not through excess technology, but through asking what genuinely needs to exist. In the end, the architecture recedes just enough for family life to become the most visible—and enduring—part of the house.

Fact File

Designed by: Humanscape

Project Type: Residential Architecture Design

Project Name: Between Two Suns

Location: Bhusawal, Maharashtra, India

Project Size: 9700 Sq.ft

Principal Architects: Ar. Gaurav Chordia

Landscape Designer: Ar. Aishwarya Deshpande

Photograph Courtesy: Onil Shah

Firm’s Instagram Link: Humanscape

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