Every house begins at the front door. This one doesn’t.
At the Alarine Earth Home in Kerala, India, we walk beneath a canopy of solar panels and arrive directly in the open living space. There is no conventional entrance hall and no clear moment when the garden ends and the house begins.
Designed by Zarine Jamshedji Architects, the home was kept low so it would not block the rice field from the neighbors living behind it. A roof planted with vetiver grass continues the landscape, while a column-free covered patio keeps the field completely open to view.
Behind its earthy walls is a fast, industrialized construction system completed with a handcrafted finish made from discarded laterite paste. An old pump-house base became garden seating, and an existing ditch was expanded into a reservoir for collecting water.
This is a home shaped not by one dramatic sustainable feature, but by a series of practical choices involving sunlight, water, reused materials, animals, neighbors, and the landscape itself.
Architecture: Zarine Jamshedji Architects
Design: Ar.Zarine Hoshang Jamshedji, Ar.Abhishek Suthan, Surya Narayanan
Structural Concept: Cornelis Alan Beuke
Supervision: Zarine Hoshang Jamshedji, Cornelis Alan Beuke, Navin Limbani
Draft Management Coordination: Surya Narayanan, Sarah Janet Augustin
Team: Zarine Jamshedji, Cornelis Alan Beuke, Abhishek Suthan, Suryanarayan, Sarah Agustin, Ratheesh Balan, Anu Joseph.
Location: Kochi, India
Year: 2023
Area: 380 sqm
Photography: Shyam Sreeshylam, Shiv Kumar
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