NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 10 Traditional Houses — LET’S EXPLORE

The design is the central courtyard with the rooms arranged around it, over one or several storeys — a plan already used in some of the larger Harappan houses about 4,500 years ago. It answers four different problems at once, which is exactly why it lasted so long.

• Privacy. The house turns its back on the street. Rooms open inward onto the courtyard, and the outer wall carries only a doorway and a few small, high openings. Family life — including the women’s quarters — is screened from passers-by, while jāli screens and jharokhā balconies let people look out without being seen.
• Convenience. The courtyard is a room without a roof. Every space around it gets daylight and fresh air without needing windows on the outer wall, and every room opens onto the same shared space, so movement through the house is short and simple. It is also a workplace: at Chettinadu the central courtyard served for rituals and community gatherings and for sun-drying pāpads and chillies.
• Rainfall. The roofs slope inward, so all the rain that falls on the house is delivered into one controlled place instead of being thrown into the lane. The courtyard floor is sunk a step below the surrounding rooms and is laid to a gentle fall, so the water runs to an outlet and is led away — often into the household well or a storage tank. A courtyard house is a rainwater-harvesting device with people living in it.
• Cooling. This is the cleverest part, and it works round the clock:
  • By day, the courtyard’s own high walls shade most of its floor for most of the day. The air above the court, heated by the strip of sun, rises and escapes; as it leaves, it pulls cooler air out of the shaded rooms, and fresh air is drawn in through the jālis. The house ventilates itself with no fan.
  • At night, the open court radiates its heat straight to the clear night sky. The air in it cools, and because cool air is heavier it sinks and settles in the courtyard, then spills into the rooms around. The court works as a reservoir of cool air.
  • Thick walls do the rest, absorbing the day’s heat slowly and releasing it at night — which is why traditional Jodhpur houses combine ‘thick walls and balconies, jāli windows for ventilation’ and meandering streets.