andblack design studio Wraps a Three-Generation Ahmedabad Home Around a Planted, Skylit Central Courtyard

The House of Green Court, completed in 2026 by andblack design studio under lead architect Jwalant Mahadevwala, is a 9,910 sq ft family home in Ahmedabad built for three generations. On paper the brief is familiar: grandparents, parents and children under one roof, each wanting their own room and a shared table. The response is also familiar in Gujarat. The house is organised around a courtyard, a type the city has relied on for centuries to manage heat, light and household life.

What makes the project worth a closer look is how literally it treats the garden as the organising element. A front lawn, a central planted court and a rear garden form one continuous green spine that the house is built across rather than beside. Along that spine, the architects use perforated brick, ceramic block and terracotta screens to control how much one generation sees of another. The result is a house that manages privacy by degree. Very few doors are needed to do that work.

An Arrival Staged in Layers

From the street, the house gives little away. A vertical timber slat gate and a boulder nameplate sit in front of the stacked concrete and brick mass. Behind the gate, the approach shifts to a triangle-patterned tile floor, the parametric paving the architects describe, set against a vertical brick wall and a built-in timber bench. It is a waiting room in the open air, and it sets a slower pace before you reach the door.

The brick jali at the entrance gives a filtered glimpse of the rear garden before you are actually inside, so the courtyard is introduced as a promise rather than a reveal. The crafted brass and wood door, laid out as a checkered grid, marks the threshold with real weight. Beyond it, the foyer continues the material richness: coffered timber ceilings, sculpted cabinetry, a stone sphere set into a planted bed and a gold mosaic wall. Some will find this sequence a little crowded with objects. Still, the spatial logic holds: each step moves you closer to the green core.

A Concrete Base and a Floating Slab

The massing reads as two clear moves. An exposed concrete lower volume holds the shared rooms along with the guest and grandparents' quarters. Above it, the upper level is treated as a floating slab, with deep cantilevered concrete roofs projecting well past the glazed walls below. On the garden side, those overhangs do the obvious climatic job of shading the ground floor glazing from Ahmedabad's sun, and they give the facade its horizontal, layered character.

Brick panels and piers break up the concrete, and timber balcony rails soften the edges of each slab. We like that the brick sits in discrete planes rather than as a uniform skin; it lets you read which parts of the house are solid and private and which are open to the lawn. At dusk, with the ground floor lit and the soffits dark, the house looks like a series of stacked shelves set into a garden.

Screens as the Real Walls

If concrete gives the house its frame, perforated surfaces give it its behaviour. Lattice brick screens shade side courts and terraces, letting air through while breaking up direct sun. A side courtyard beneath a concrete overhang, furnished with two woven chairs among ferns, shows how much usable outdoor space these screens create in a climate where full exposure is rarely comfortable.

Inside, the same idea moves into ceramic. A corridor lined with a white ceramic block lattice faces walnut paneling under a coffered ceiling, and here the screen works socially as well as climatically. According to the architects, a terracotta screen separates the guest and grandparents' spaces from the shared areas. That is the project's most important move: the elders' rooms are close enough to be part of daily life but are visually buffered from it. Exposed brick walls running into slate terraces and dining spaces keep the material palette grounded and continuous from outside to in.

The Green Court at the Centre

The central court is the house's engine. It is a double-height planted bed beneath a large skylight, ringed by perforated block walls, with gravel, ferns, a seated stone figure and a terracotta sphere. Daylight arrives diffused from above, and the architects describe the vegetation and the opening overhead as working together to support air movement and create a cooler microclimate at the heart of the plan. That is classic courtyard thinking, scaled into a contemporary detached house.

The court also does the visual work that the brief demands. From the stair, the dining area or the upper landing, nearly every route passes this green void, so family members encounter each other across it without sharing a room. Sculptural pendant lights and bamboo foliage seen through the skylight make the space read as a lantern by night and a garden by day. The religious statuary adds a domestic, devotional note that many Ahmedabad families will recognise.

Stairs, Brass and Fluted Glass

The stair is kept as light as possible: floating timber treads on a steel stringer, a glass balustrade, and vertical brass rods that catch raking sunlight. Because it rises beside the court, the stair becomes a viewing platform rather than a shaft. A brass-framed fluted glass partition beyond a perforated screen continues the theme of partial visibility. You sense movement and light on the other side without a clear view in, which is exactly the calibrated separation the brief calls for.

Living and Dining Between Two Gardens

The plan splits social life by formality. The formal living room, with its green velvet sofa, faceted timber table and concrete panel wall, opens to the front garden and the public face of the house. The family room and dining area extend toward the more private rear garden through sliding glass. A stone-topped dining table on a sculpted walnut base sits on the axis between the court and the rear lawn, which makes the meal table the point where every generation meets.

This front-to-back gradient is a quiet but effective idea. Guests are received at the front, family gathers at the back, and the courtyard sits between them as a buffer. The furnishings lean decorative, but the spatial arrangement is disciplined.

The Private Upper Floor

Upstairs, under the floating slab, the mood turns inward. Covered balconies with timber railings, woven lounge chairs and potted plants face the trees, giving each bedroom zone its own shaded outdoor room. A balcony lounge with a black rocking chair, pleated linen and board-marked concrete shows the house at its calmest. The bathroom is more playful, with a floating curved vanity against a wavy blue plaster wall and a red coat stand. It is a reminder that individual rooms were allowed their own personalities within the shared frame.

Plans and Drawings

The ground floor plan confirms the strategy: parking and a large lawn at the front, living areas and bedrooms arranged around the central court, with the garden threading through. The first floor wraps bedrooms, a lounge and walk-in closets around the internal courtyard and central stair. Higher up, a small home theatre volume sits on a curving planted terrace beside a grid of solar panels, and the roof plan adds skylight grids over the stepped core and a small rectangular pool.

The elevation and section show the house stepping back as it rises. Each terrace sets back from the one below, so the overhangs shade the floors beneath them. Read together, the drawings show a house that is roughly symmetrical in organisation but loosened at the edges by planting.

Why This Project Matters

Multi-generational living is still the norm for many Indian families, yet new houses for these families often end up as stacked flats with a shared staircase. The House of Green Court argues for something better: one house whose privacy is set by screens, distances and sightlines rather than locked doors. The terracotta screen between the grandparents' quarters and the shared rooms, and the court everyone passes, are simple devices. Together they let three generations decide, day by day, how close they want to be.

It also shows that the courtyard house remains a working climatic tool in Ahmedabad, not just a heritage reference. Deep slabs, brick and ceramic jali and a skylit planted void do real thermal work alongside the mechanical systems. We would have welcomed more restraint in the interior styling, but the architecture underneath is clear, rooted and adaptable to how the family changes over time.

The House of Green Court by andblack design studio (lead architect Jwalant Mahadevwala), Ahmedabad, India. Area: 9,910 sq ft. Completed: 2026. Photography: Ishita Sitwala | The Fishy Project.

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