Tetriscape: Stacking a Whole Community Around One Earthen Courtyard

Tetris rewards a particular kind of patience: pieces arrive one at a time, none of them quite matching, and the satisfaction lies in making them lock. Housing rarely works that way. Programs are usually sorted into tidy, separate buildings: apartments here, the communal hall over there, the restaurant somewhere at the edge. Tetriscape refuses that sorting. It takes the game's logic of irregular pieces fitting together and uses it to build a single large courtyard, with everything else gathered around and above it.

Tetriscape is a residential and communal building in India by Riya Venki. The project received Editor's Choice at Earth Made 2020. In its own words, the design "appears a seemingly simple design, but brings about an aesthetic appeal because it is both visually and intellectually challenging," and its central ambition is clear: "to create a single magnificent courtyard." Rather than dividing habitation and communal living into different blocks, the scheme keeps them together in one composition, and the drawings show how far that idea is pushed.

A courtyard that lives inside the section

The headline drawing reads more like a stage set than a technical section. Two stacks of floors with arched bays at the top frame a tall central void, and that void is crossed at two levels by triangular trusses. Below, a crowd in patterned clothing gathers in the open ground. The courtyard here is not a gap left over between buildings; it is the main room, and the floors on either side behave like balconies facing it.

The trusses matter. They let the courtyard stay continuous vertically while still carrying spaces across it, so the void is spanned without being filled. The upper truss sits beneath the arched roof bays and the lower one floats mid-height, which turns the courtyard into a layered volume with something happening at several heights rather than a single shaft of air.

Program stacked in colored bands across Section AA'

Section AA' makes the project's central claim legible. A small color-coded version of the section lists multi-purpose hall, double occupancy, restaurant, single occupancy, gym, lobby and core, and these do not occupy separate buildings. They run as horizontal bands through both flanking stacks, with the multi-purpose hall under the arched roof and the lobby and gym near the ground. A vertical core runs up one side, and a spiral stair climbs within the courtyard itself. Communal and private uses share the same structure and look into the same void.

The same sheet drops down to the scale of the wall. A section through a rammed earth wall shows an RCC lintel above and a plinth beam below, while plan and axonometric details work through corner junctions and T-junctions, using tongue and groove joints and chamfered edges at the corners. It is a useful pairing: the big idea about shared space sits directly above the question of how two earth walls actually meet.

Section BB' lets the blocks fall out of line

If Section AA' is orderly, Section BB' is where the Tetris reference becomes literal. Volumes step in and out, some cantilevered, some recessed, with arched openings at the base and a tall core slicing through the middle. The conceptual version on the same sheet assigns colors to multi-purpose hall, double occupancy, single occupancy, family occupancy and core, and the result looks like a half-finished game board: irregular pieces of different sizes locked against one another, with gaps left deliberately open.

Between these sections sit course details for soil compressed blocks and interlocking soil compressed blocks, showing odd and even courses at corner and T-junctions, along with wall sections through a window. The site plan below shows two offset building masses bridged by a central element, with a marked entry and exit on opposite sides of the plot. The staggered profile in section and the offset footprint in plan come from the same logic.

Units sized like pieces, built from earth

The organization sheet breaks the building into its pieces: single occupancy units, double occupancy units and family units for four to six occupants, each drawn as a cutaway axonometric with furniture. The range is the point. A building organized around one courtyard can still hold very different households, and the drawings show units that change shape from a compact single room to multi-level family layouts with internal stairs.

The notes on the same sheet explain the material choices. Rammed earth is credited with thermal comfort, durability, low maintenance and pest and noise control. Stabilised earth blocks are chosen as 40% cheaper than their conventional counterparts, non-toxic and biodegradable. Interlocking soil cement blocks are said to add sturdiness and remove the need for plastering, and Tadelakt, a natural lime-based plaster, is used in water-exposed areas such as washrooms so the earth concept carries through even there. That last decision is telling: the material commitment reaches the rooms where most designs quietly switch to tile.

Why This Project Matters

Tetriscape makes a simple argument that a lot of housing ignores: separating private and communal programs into different blocks also separates people. By keeping habitation, a hall, a restaurant and a gym around one shared courtyard, and crossing that courtyard with trusses instead of filling it, the project turns circulation and leftover space into the building's main public room. The Tetris analogy is not just branding; it explains how units of very different sizes can stack irregularly and still read as one whole.

It also shows that an earth building does not have to be small or low. The drawings take rammed earth, compressed and interlocking blocks and lime plaster into a multi-storey scheme, and they back the idea with junction and coursing details rather than leaving material as a slogan. For anyone thinking about how earthen construction might scale to collective housing in India, Tetriscape offers a clear, well-drawn starting point.

View the Full Project

Project team

Designer: Riya Venki

Competition and award

Editor's Choice, Earth Made 2020

Location

India

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