A Farmhouse Near Thiruporur

The family owned working farmland outside the city and wanted a weekend retreat on it, but were wary of building something that would look imported: a glass-and-concrete weekend house sitting awkwardly next to the fields and the people who worked them. It needed to belong there, not just sit there.

We kept the house low and let a wide verandah wrap three sides of it, and left the local brick exposed rather than plastering over it, closer in character to the farm's existing outbuildings than to a holiday home. The farmhands walk up to the verandah without hesitating the way they might at a fancier house, which was really the whole point.