House of Quiet Light.

The house was drawn around a single courtyard of black palmyra and gravel — the rest of the plan, the rooms, the long verandas, simply gather around it.

Walls are kept thick — laterite, lime-rendered. Openings are kept few, but exact. Daylight enters from a high east clerestory, slowing as it crosses the limewashed plaster, finally collecting on the kadappa stone floor where it is allowed, finally, to rest.

The brief, in the end, was a half-hour of late afternoon — and the rooms a family wanted around it.

The roof is a single sloping plane of clay tile carried on tropical-hardwood rafters; the rainwater is gathered to a stone tank on the south. The garden is planted slowly — over five seasons — and is intended to outlive the architects.