Contemporary houses in urban India negotiate between the two parallel conditions: the desire for spatial generosity and the long-established culture of collective living. The family rarely questions how they distribute, inhabit, and share the space. LJ House, a 6300 sq ft residence in one of Ahmedabad’s first residential neighborhoods outside the walled city, addresses this question directly. It prioritizes collective living over individual spaces, an approach that draws from the spatial logic of traditional pol houses of the city, without replicating them.

This Urban Ahmedabad House Prioritizes Collective Living Over Individual Spaces | Studio Saransh & IKSOI

Shared Inquiry

The house brings together Studio Saransh and IKSOI Studio through a shared, iterative design process. The teams shape the spatial planning, built form, and ways of inhabitation through continuous inquiry. The brief called for a multi-generational home for a family of six, capable of functioning both as a single residence and as two independent units over time, while negotiating the desire for a larger home within the constraints of a limited urban plot.

Collective Living

The design begins by deliberately redistributing spaces at the programme level. It asks whether the excess footprint of individual spaces can support collective areas instead. The approach draws from the spatial logic of traditional pol houses.
Individual rooms serve rest and daily routines, while shared life extends beyond them. Shared thresholds, courts, and circulation spaces create a stronger sense of collective living.

In keeping with that logic, the ground floor is conceived as a collective space with living, dining, and kitchen arranged in an open-plan layout, thereby allowing flexibility in use. These spaces extend into a series of courts placed along the edges of the plan, bringing light and ventilation while maintaining a controlled interface with the street. A high boundary wall acts both as an acoustic buffer and a visual barrier, allowing the outdoors to function as a usable extension of the interior spaces.

Upper levels are organized as compact clusters, each accommodating two bedrooms and a shared living space that functions as an extension of the rooms. This arrangement allows each floor to function as an independent unit when required in the future, recalling the vertical stacking of pol houses, where multiple generations occupy floors within a single domestic framework.

At the uppermost level, the house opens to a partially enclosed terrace that allows for both collective and individual use across different times of the day. It completes the vertical sequence of the house, moving from an inward, grounded base to a more open and elevated condition. Conceived as an active inhabitable space, the roof accommodates seasonal and everyday domestic use.

Movement through the house is structured around a central stair and adjoining void that brings daylight into the space. The staircase is deliberately discontinuous, with each flight opening into a living space, drawing directly from the spatial logic of pol houses, where circulation is embedded within collective spaces to reinforce everyday encounters.

Besides its functional and social role, the stairwell also establishes a visual connection between the floors, thereby allowing one to keep an eye on the lower level for security. The shifting geometry, reading almost like an asymmetrical heart, produces varied spatial conditions, allowing each level to be experienced differently while remaining part of a continuous volume.

The built form of the house emerges from the constraints of a limited plot size, client brief, and the city’s hot climate. A compact footprint and the need for adaptable independent units result in a vertically stacked volume, organized as a dense, inward-looking envelope. Openings and voids are selectively carved to mediate light, privacy, and heat gain simultaneously. A high compound wall reinforces the perception of a single, continuous volume.

On the upper levels, the form is modulated through curved profiles that emerge from multiple practical considerations: the need to reduce structural dead load, minimize horizontal surfaces prone to dust accumulation, and break the visual rigidity of the vertical volume. These curves complete the mass as a series of inverted tiers, softening its silhouette while retaining its overall monolithic character.

Climatic Logic

The construction embeds climate-responsive strategies into the design. External walls use a double-layered system with a cavity to reduce heat gain. Large openings on the ground floor bring ample daylight into the interiors. Deep-set openings on the upper levels respond to orientation and limit direct solar exposure. The design keeps openings on the external facade to a minimum, following Ahmedabad’s climatic logic. This limited fenestration improves thermal performance while maintaining comfort indoors. A central courtyard and strategically placed voids support cross ventilation across all levels.

The material palette is restrained. The exterior is finished in a textured, earthy surface that gives the building a consistent presence within its dense context. Stone is used selectively at edges and surfaces subject to wear. Internally, a single flooring material runs through the house, which allows the spatial organization to remain legible. Walls, floors, and ceilings are kept in low-contrast, matte finishes to read as a continuous volume, with softened edges reinforcing the perception of the house as a carved form, while the staircase is articulated in a darker tone to register it as a fixed, anchoring element within an otherwise continuous and monotone interior.

Furniture is treated as a distinct layer within this envelope. Predominantly crafted in locally sourced teakwood, the pieces introduce warmth and scale while maintaining a clear visual separation from the architecture. Their higher contrast against the otherwise muted interior reinforces this distinction, allowing them to read as objects placed within a continuous spatial volume, rather than extensions of the built form.

LJ House redefines the contemporary urban home by recalibrating how space is distributed, shared, and inhabited. Within the constraints of a limited plot, it negotiates spatial generosity through compact private rooms and expansive collective spaces organized in a vertically stacked framework that allows for shared living and future adaptability. In doing so, it redefines minimalism as a redistribution of space, where the footprint of the individual is reduced to prioritize collective living.

Fact File

Designed by: Studio Saransh & IKSOI

Project Type: Residential Architecture Design

Project Name: LJ House

Location: Ahmedabad

Year Built: 2026

Built-up Area: 6300 Sq.ft

Interior Design: Studio Saransh

Photograph Courtesy: Ishi Sitwala

Source: Archdaily

Firm’s Instagram Link: Studio Saransh & IKSOI

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