Rain House · Headless Collective

The project

A rejuvenation home that celebrates the rain.

Rain House is built around rhythm. The rhythm of the seasons, of water, of quiet introspection. The stepped ghats of India shape the whole idea: the house unfolds as a tiered structure, cascading down the sloping site the way ghats step down to a river.

It sits on a sloping plot in Pune, and the design answers both the land and the climate. The rain is welcomed in, through stone that comes alive when it is wet, skylights that fill with the sound of droplets, and shaded verandahs that hold you while you watch it fall. Each level opens to a framed view, a catchment terrace, a sky-filled courtyard, a place to pause the way you would on a riverbank.

Through the monsoon the rain becomes a presence you live with, part of the house, part of the day.

Built like the ghats

The Western Ghats rising above the site under a monsoon sky — The Western Ghats above the site. The building takes its stepped form from here.

Section through the staircase of Rain House, the floors stepping down the sloped site — Section through the staircase. Each floor steps down the slope, the way ghats step to a river.

The wall

One wall makes the whole house private.

A continuous run of gabion stone wraps the private half of the home. From the street there is nothing to see through and nothing to climb. It draws one hard boundary around the house and holds it.

The entrance hides inside that wall. A narrow slot in the stone, dark against the rock, reached by pushing through a stand of plants. You come to the door the way you come to a cave, slowly, with the greenery closing in on either side.

The narrow, cave-like entrance set into the gabion feature wall of Rain House, half-hidden by planting

The entrance, a narrow gap in the stone, half-hidden by planting.

The house in the rain

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