DINTERPLAY Architects Wraps a Palanpur Family House in Lime Plaster, Stone and Terracotta Screens

Neeti-Lime House sits in Palanpur, in the hot, arid north of Gujarat, and it carries its argument in its name. Neeti is Sanskrit for intention or guiding principle. DINTERPLAY ARCHITECTS, led by principal architects Krunal Patel and Shreya Bhavsar, treats that word as a working method. Each decision answers to climate, to context, or to the rituals of the family who lives here. The house was completed in 2025 and spans 560 m² over two levels, joined by a staircase the architects modeled on the human spine.

The interesting part is not the regional palette. Lime, Kota stone, sandstone and terracotta show up in plenty of contemporary Indian houses as surface quotation. What matters here is that lime is treated as a building system rather than a finish. It is a breathable skin that the architects count on for thermal comfort, and the rest of the envelope, dry-clad sandstone and terracotta screens, is arranged to support that. The question we kept asking was whether a house this polished inside can still honor the slow, porous logic of its outer walls. Mostly, it does.

A Lime Skin Built for Heat

From the street, the house reads as a group of plastered volumes in warm blush and ochre, broken up by stone and brick lattice. The lime plaster is applied by hand, and you can see it in how the walls take light: palm shadows soften across the surface instead of cutting sharp edges into it. On one side wall, a row of round openings punctures the plaster, a small gesture that makes the wall read as thick and inhabited rather than as a thin cladding layer.

Lime earns its place in a climate like Palanpur's. It lets moisture move through the wall, it stays cooler to the touch than cement render, and it ages without cracking into failure. The ochre facade with its tall vertical timber fins makes the same point in a different register. Shade there comes from depth and repetition, not from mechanical cooling.

Sandstone, Terracotta and the Filtered Threshold

The entrance porch sets up the house's relationship with light. A brick lattice panel sits beside a stepped approach, so you arrive through a zone that is half shaded and half open. Higher up, a stone-clad volume holds a recessed window above a terracotta screen. The sandstone is dry clad, hung rather than mortared, which leaves a ventilated gap behind the stone. That detail rarely gets photographed, but it does real work in a hot climate.

We like that the screens are not uniform. Brick, terracotta and timber each filter differently, and the facade becomes a record of where the family wanted privacy, where it wanted breeze, and where it wanted a view of the frangipani.

A Staircase Modeled on a Spine

The staircase is the house's central object, and the architects are open about its source: the human vertebral column. A slender steel spine carries open timber treads, with a glass balustrade that keeps the whole assembly visually light. In the living room it reads almost as furniture, floating in front of a white wall striped with sunlight.

The anatomical metaphor could easily have tipped into gimmick. It holds up because the stair does what a spine does: it organizes the house around a single vertical axis and lets the two levels move together. Beside a perforated screen window, the treads scatter dappled light onto the landing, which makes climbing the stairs part of the house's daily light show rather than just a way to get upstairs.

Living and Dining on Patterned Kota Stone

Inside, the floors combine leather-finished and polished Kota stone in patterns, with fine inlaid lines running through the living room. The pairing is clever. The matte leather finish grips the foot and calms glare, while the polished bands catch light from the openings and carry it deeper into the plan. A timber-framed television wall anchors the living area without trying to steal the scene.

The dining nook is compact, with a round glass table set between floor-to-ceiling timber cabinets and facing a leafy tree. A wash basin alcove in dark veined stone sits just off the living room. These are modest rooms, and the restraint suits them. The joinery is warm and generous, but the plan never loses its sense of daylight.

Bedrooms Tuned to Trees and Daylight

The bedrooms trade spectacle for calm. Sliding glass doors frame tree canopies, a low timber bed keeps the room's center of gravity near the floor, and an exposed concrete soffit overhead stays honest about the structure. In one room, a wall of faceted timber triangles rises above a built-in desk beside a deep wooden window recess. It is the most decorative move in the private zone, and its depth echoes the thick-wall logic of the exterior.

That window recess is worth noticing. Its depth tells you the outer wall is substantial, and in a hot, arid climate thickness is a passive asset. It is good to see the interior admit this rather than hide it behind flush plasterboard.

Thresholds and the Path to the Pooja

This is where the idea of Neeti becomes legible. Brass inlay strips set into the floor mark the passage to the Pooja space, so the route to the prayer room is announced underfoot before you reach it. A narrow corridor ends in a timber door with frosted glass and inlaid symbols, and a shaft of sunlight crossing the polished floor gives the approach an almost processional quality.

Many contemporary houses push the prayer room into a leftover corner. Here, ritual shapes circulation. The corridor's timber door frames and glossy floor slow you down and change your posture. It is a small architectural decision with large domestic consequences.

Plans and Drawings

The ground floor arranges rooms around a central living space, with a garden, a parking bay and an entrance court that sets up the layered arrival seen in the photographs. Upstairs, a multipurpose hall and a bedroom with closet and store open onto a lower terrace beside the tree canopies. The terrace level steps again, from a lower terrace to an upper one that holds rooftop equipment panels. Read together, the plans show a house that sheds mass as it rises and gives its upper floors over to outdoor space and shade.

Why This Project Matters

Neeti-Lime House is a useful counterexample to the sealed, glass-and-render villa that has become the default for upper-middle-class housing in Indian towns. DINTERPLAY ARCHITECTS shows that a family house can be contemporary in plan, refined in detail and still built on materials that breathe and age gracefully: lime, dry-clad sandstone, terracotta and Kota stone. None of them is exotic, and all of them suit the climate.

The deeper lesson is about method. Naming a house after a principle is easy. Following that principle through envelope, stair, flooring and the route to the Pooja is harder, and that consistency is what you notice here. Some interior moments lean toward showroom polish. Even so, the house makes a convincing case that intention, applied room by room, can be its own architectural language.

Neeti-Lime House by DINTERPLAY ARCHITECTS (principal architects Krunal Patel and Shreya Bhavsar), Palanpur, Gujarat, India. Area: 560 m². Completed: 2025. Photography: Pratikruti09.

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