Kota, Rajasthan
1967, unbuilt
Thick roofs are slow to heat up, but once they do, they continue to radiate heat back into the house all through the night. A better way is to minimise the amount of incident sunlight falling on the roof surface – by a light porous membrane, like a pergola. By raising this membrane, the roof can act as a sheltered terrace.
Furthermore, the profile of the internal volumes can be adjusted so as to generate convection currents (as in the Tube and Ramkrishna houses). Units of varying categories were developed for this township, using the local sand-stone throughout: in 3-metre long slabs for the floors (spanning the width of the house), cut into rectangular blocks for the walls, and as strips for the pergolas (which were contiguous over the housing clusters).


