Vernacular building practices represent a form of architecture rooted in craft—shaped by generations of empirical knowledge, hands-on techniques and an intuitive understanding of the environment, rather than formal training or theoretical frameworks. These practices use indigenous materials and traditional methods to reflect a region's cultural, environmental and social character. Unlike more formal architectural styles often devised by trained professionals in 'architectural laboratories' and institutions, it evolves naturally over time, responding intuitively to the climate, geography, resources and requirements of the local population.

In Ladakh, India's highest plateau, residential architecture is shaped by its harsh climatic and topographical realities. The region’s extreme cold, intense solar radiation and arid landscape necessitate a craft-based approach that balances insulation with durability. Structures rely on locally sourced sun-dried mud bricks, rammed earth and timber, with hand-plastered walls and meticulously layered timber and compacted earth roofs engineered to withstand heavy snowfall. The spatial organisation—livestock housed on the ground floor with living spaces above—serves both environmental and practical purposes. The compact residential interiors and small, deeply recessed windows—though they limit natural light—are essential in reducing heat loss and minimising exposure to the region’s dry, biting winds. These measures, while unconventional in a broader architectural sense, are a direct response to Ladakh’s perilous terrain, reinforcing a tradition that prioritises resilience, resourcefulness and cultural continuity over conventional design norms.

Gulzar’s House sits along the banks of the Indus River in Chuchot village in Leh, nestled in a valley with views of the Thiksey Monastery and the Stok Range. Reimagining the layout of a vernacular Ladakhi residential design, Ahmedabad-based Field Architects adapt it to suit a contemporary lifestyle by eliminating obsolete spaces while preserving and reinterpreting culturally significant elements and spaces—a contemporary reading of the vernacular architecture.

Anchored around a double-volume living room on the ground floor, the Indian architects contemporise the program to include two bedrooms, a study and a common kitchen and dining space distributed across its two floors. Distinguished from the vernacular by an organisation that is linear and zoned, the plan prioritises large, interconnected interior spaces over the compact and clustered arrangements otherwise characteristic of vernacular architecture in the Ladakhi terrain.

On the first floor, facing the southeast, a multipurpose space takes the form of a shelkhang, read in the vernacular as a glass-enclosed space typically supported on intricate woodwork designed to capture heat from the sun. At Gulzar’s House, the shelkhang, in essence, features a timber architecture assembly with expansive glazing offering uninterrupted views of the valley. In this case, it evolves into a flexible yet formalised space, conducive to being converted into a bedroom, with an aesthetic that does not immediately evoke the typical vernacular.

While largely incorporating passive solar heating strategies, the pursuit of a contemporary aesthetic introduces expansive south-facing glazing (albeit with balconies), contradicting the vernacular logic of smaller openings for heat retention—perhaps a disposition of the contemporary architect, guided by a modernist temperament to champion natural light, biophilia and significant vantage points alongside thermal comfort in a sensitive region and material resourcefulness

The house employs a double-wall adobe system integrating repurposed army mattresses to ensure insulation. Internally, the walls are finished with smooth lime plaster, while externally, a pinstriped pattern in earth plaster renders an image fairly atypical of Ladakhi traditional structures but contemporaneous in a much more urbane sense. Built on a wide and robust dry stone-masonry foundation, the periphery of the building is surrounded by earth berms on all sides to minimise heat loss from the base while introducing the categorically unfamiliar concept of landscape design for the region.

Gulzar’s house flips the loose interpretation of the ubiquitous 'modern vernacular' from one that mostly employs a vernacular aesthetic with contemporary processes to one that retains the craftsmanship and practices of the vernacular with a reinterpreted program that evolves from a new style of living and an aesthetic without any distinct reference to time or style. Although formalised by a team of professional architects, the vernacular here is upheld through its practices, techniques, materiality and adaptability.

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