A four-storey home in Ahmedabad, India, built for six family members on a tight urban plot, draws on centuries-old neighbourhood design to stay cool, private and adaptable — and it has caught the eye of the architecture press.

Dezeen featured LJ House on 6 August 2026, spotlighting the 585-square-metre residence designed by two local practices, Studio Saransh and Iksoi Studio. The home was also named among Dezeen's top five houses of January 2026, giving it a second turn in the spotlight this year. (Dezeen, 6 August 2026; Dezeen, 1 February 2026)

The family's brief asked for a layout that could adapt as their needs changed — a practical concern for a multi-generational household sharing 585 square metres across four floors. The architects looked to Ahmedabad's traditional pols for answers. Pols are gated clusters of wooden residences, built for generations with climate and community in mind: narrow lanes, shared walls, cross-ventilation and shaded courtyards. Studio Saransh associate partner Mansi Mistry discussed the design thinking with Dezeen, framing the house as a contemporary reading of those spatial principles rather than a stylistic copy. (Dezeen, 6 August 2026)

On the ground floor, the living room, dining area and kitchen interconnect and open onto peripheral courtyards. A high boundary wall wraps the ground floor, screening the home from the street and cutting noise — a direct echo of the pol's introverted street edge.

At the centre of the house sits a sculptural staircase that organises movement between floors. Each flight is discontinuous, meaning it does not run in a single unbroken line; instead, each segment opens directly onto a shared living space. That pattern mirrors the circulation of traditional pol houses, where stairs land in communal rooms rather than enclosed corridors. Above the stairwell, an asymmetrical heart-shaped void channels daylight deep into the plan.

The exterior is finished in earthy plaster with selective stone detailing, and the curved roofs were shaped with two practical aims: reducing structural load and minimising the flat surfaces where dust gathers in Ahmedabad's dry, dusty climate. Both moves are functional rather than decorative, though the visual effect is striking.

Studio Saransh has form with this kind of work. The practice's MS House, also in Ahmedabad, is a Brutalist home whose design is shaped by nature, profiled by The Plan in November 2025 and ArchDaily in July 2025. Its HS House, another compact family residence in central Ahmedabad, shares walls with the houses next door — a condition that pol-derived design is well suited to answer. (The Plan, 28 November 2025; ArchDaily, 14 July 2025; Archello)

What makes LJ House stand out is not any single detail but the way the architects folded a kit of climate-tested, socially tested moves — courtyards, broken stair flights, a protective street wall, dust-shedding roofs — into a single contemporary home for one family. The pol is not a museum piece in Ahmedabad; it is a living tradition. LJ House treats it that way.