Project 51 A(h) Tucks a Split-Level Family Home Beneath a 50-Year-Old Bay Leaf Tree in Kerala

On 20 cents of land in Kottayam, India, a single 50-year-old bay leaf tree stood at the top of a tapioca plantation that fell roughly 20 feet from one end to the other. Most builders would have flattened the grade and possibly removed the tree. Project 51 A(h) did neither. Instead, the architects conceived the house as a fallen leaf, a multi-tiered sequence of brick and white gabled volumes that steps down the slope in sync with the terrain, leaving the tree unharmed at the summit and treating it as the gravitational center of every sightline below.

What makes Bay Leaf House genuinely interesting is not the metaphor but the mechanics. At only 2,200 square feet, the home manages to serve an Indian joint family across a cascade of split levels, each one opening laterally to its own slice of landscape. The section is the real plan here: public life sits higher, private rooms tuck lower, and a continuous corridor along the garden edge stitches everything together. It is a compact house that reads as generous because the architects let the slope do the spatial work.

A Porous Threshold

Arrival is deliberately loose. Rather than a single formal entrance, the house presents a composition of distinct volumes: a white gabled form and an adjacent brick pavilion laced with perforated screens. The lattice brickwork is not decorative wallpaper. Oriented along the East-West axis, these porous walls channel prevailing winds into the interior while deflecting the tropical sun, a passive climate strategy that eliminates the need for heavy mechanical cooling in most spaces.

The contrast between the solid white plaster and the open brick lattice gives the facade a visual rhythm that hints at the layered program inside. You can already sense that this is not a single-volume house. Light and shadow move differently across each surface, signaling the shifts in level and function that define the section.

The Staircase as Spine

The open timber staircase is the most critical element in the house. Crafted from reclaimed wooden planks salvaged from a demolished home, it threads through a double-height dining volume lit from above by a skylight. The result is a vertical clearing in the middle of the plan: a space where all the split levels become legible at once. Standing at the foot of the stair, you can read the kitchen below, the dining platform beside you, and the corridor leading to bedrooms above. The skylight pours light down the exposed brick wall, turning the stair into a lantern.

This is also where the open kitchen meets communal life. Designed specifically for a joint family, the kitchen level steps down slightly from the dining area, placing cooks at a natural conversational height with those seated at the table. It is a subtle move, but it collapses the hierarchy between cooking and gathering that rigid floor plates typically enforce.

Courtyards and Turquoise Doors

A covered courtyard flanked by perforated brick walls and planted beds operates as the social hinge of the house. The turquoise timber doors that face into this court are a bold color note against the earth tones of brick and concrete, and they serve a practical purpose: when open, they erase the boundary between inside and out, turning the courtyard into an extension of the living space. When closed, they provide privacy and wind protection during monsoon season.

The bedrooms are quieter but equally considered. The grandparents' room on the lower level opens directly to a paved patio with garden views, offering a retreat that does not require navigating stairs. The children's bedroom, positioned between an indoor courtyard and a raised attic floor, has the feel of a treehouse: compact, elevated, and full of possibility. A timber headboard wall, concrete wainscoting, and brass pendant lights give the private rooms a material warmth that complements the rougher textures of the public zones.

Plans and Drawings

The section drawing reveals the full logic of the design. The split levels cascade from the bay leaf tree at the highest point down through the living areas to the lower bedrooms, each floor plate shifting just enough to maintain a visual connection to the landscape at its own elevation. The sloping roof follows the overall gradient, keeping the roofline low and reducing the building's profile against the hillside. Planted terraces and retained trees are drawn with equal weight to the architecture, reinforcing the project's ambition to read as landscape rather than object.

Why This Project Matters

Bay Leaf House is a useful counterexample to the assumption that topographically challenging sites demand either expensive earthworks or elevated platform construction. By distributing a modest 2,200-square-foot program across the natural slope, Project 51 A(h) achieved spatial diversity that a flat-site plan of the same area simply could not deliver. Every level has its own character, its own relationship to the outdoors, and its own degree of privacy, all without a single wasted corridor.

More broadly, the project demonstrates that material economy and emotional richness are not opposed goals. Toughie interlock bricks, reclaimed timber, and an East-West orientation do the heavy lifting for sustainability, while the bay leaf tree, the skylit stair, and the turquoise courtyard doors give the house its identity. In a residential market saturated with gesture-driven villas, this is a house that earns its form from the land it sits on.

Bay Leaf House by Project 51 A(h), Kottayam, India. 2,200 sq ft. Completed 2023. Photography by Prasoon Suresh.

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