From afar, you could almost miss Kadangotu House near Kannur. Its terracotta roofs peek through coconut palms and jackfruit trees, with paddy fields stretching beyond the thick green foliage.
Walk inside, and one of the first things you notice is the air. A breeze from the neighbouring fields moves through the rooms, even when Kerala’s humidity climbs above 80 percent.
That feeling of openness was built into the house from the beginning.
Sisters Renu Krishnadas and Rekha Utham wanted to build on a 70-cent ancestral plot in a village about an hour and a half from Kannur city. Renu has lived in Dubai for the past 40 years and works in finance, while Rekha works in Bahrain.
When they returned to this piece of family land to build a home together, they wanted to hold on to what already made the place feel like theirs: its trees, red earth, heavy monsoon rain and the breeze moving in from the paddy fields.
Architect Amrutha Kishor, chief architect at Elemental, began from that idea. Instead of designing a house first and then finding ways to cool it, she looked at how the site itself could do some of that work.
The result was a home with laterite walls, clay roofs, high ceilings and carefully positioned openings, all designed to help it stay comfortable with far less dependence on air conditioning.
Kadangotu House sits quietly amid coconut palms, jackfruit trees and paddy fields near Kannur, Kerala.
Renu was among the first to wonder whether that would actually work.
A 21-day stay at the completed house gave her the answer.
Before the rooms came the wind
For Amrutha, the starting point was simple: understand the climate before drawing the floor plan.
“We are specialists in climate-responsive design,” she says. “With any project we do, we make it a point to ensure that it responds to the environment. We don’t create spaces that automatically get heated up, so that we then need to spend electricity cooling them.”
That meant first figuring out “where the wind is coming from”, because, she says, “only then will the cross-ventilation system work”.
Stand inside Kadangotu House, and the logic becomes easier to understand. Breeze from the adjacent paddy fields enters through lower openings and travels through the rooms. As the air inside gets warmer, it rises towards the high ceilings and escapes through taller windows.
Architects call this the stack effect. For the people living there, it simply means the air keeps moving instead of getting trapped indoors.
High ceilings allow warm air to rise and escape, creating a natural cooling effect inside the house.
That natural circulation became one of the most important parts of the house. It also asked the family to trust design choices that did not always look convincing at first.
‘This is not going to last’
The jali (perforated lattice) walls were one such choice.
Namita, Rekha’s daughter, remembers seeing the openings in the kitchen and immediately wondering how practical they would be. “We were like, ‘In two weeks, someone will break this down. This is not going to last.’”
Amrutha had placed them there for a reason. “The jali blocks are made out of clay and positioned on the northern side of the kitchen, where most of the airflow enters.”
Once the family began spending time in the house, the openings started making sense in a way drawings could not quite convey.
“All that has really helped with cross-ventilation throughout the house,” Namita says.
Renu had a different concern. She knew how hot Kerala summers could feel and wondered whether high ceilings and airflow would really be enough. “I was the first person to say that summers in Kerala are very hot.”
Then she stayed in the house for more than three weeks.
Perforated clay jali walls in the kitchen help draw airflow through the interiors while adding a traditional Kerala touch.
“I stayed for 21 days, and I never once switched on an AC,” Renu says. “I did not feel the need for an AC at all. Even today, fans are good enough.”
The moving air helps, but it is only one part of what keeps the interiors comfortable. The walls and roof have been designed to work with it.
The cooling starts in the walls
The house is built with locally sourced laterite, a material Amrutha describes as having “very low thermal transmission”.
That simply means that the day’s heat does not rush straight through the walls into the rooms. The laterite absorbs heat and releases it more gradually as temperatures fall. It can also absorb moisture from the air, which is useful in a region where humidity often crosses 80 percent.
For Amrutha, choosing laterite also meant returning to a material that once had a much stronger presence in Kerala’s built landscape. “Exposed laterite was common back in the day, but now it’s not very common in buildings. We’ve tried to maintain that.”
The roof responds to the same climate from above.
Two layers of Mangalore clay tiles sit over the rooms, separated by a coir sheet and an air gap. Together, they slow the movement of heat from the roof into the interiors.
Built by sisters Renu Krishnadas and Rekha Utham on ancestral land, Kadangotu House brings together family memories, climate-responsive design and Kerala’s traditions.
Then there is the steep pitch. When Kerala’s heavy monsoon rain arrives, the slope allows water to run off quickly.
Each feature has a specific job, but the comfort of the house comes from how they work together: the openings keep air moving, the walls slow down heat, and the roof protects the rooms from both sun and rain.
The family’s decision to work with the site rather than against it also shaped something more personal. It determined what would happen to the trees.
The trees changed the floor plan
A large tree stood where part of the house might otherwise have come up.
Clearing it would have made the footprint easier to plan. Amrutha instead designed the rooms around it, leaving its roots and the soil beneath undisturbed.
For Renu and Rekha, that decision carried memories that went beyond the architecture.
The land had come to Renu through her mother, Vishalakshi, who had inherited it through her own maternal side. Namita describes the family pattern in one line: “The matrilineal line in Kerala goes from woman to woman.”
After Vishalakshi died in 2020, Renu and Rekha decided to build there together.
“My sister and I were both working. Then we said, ‘Let’s not involve our husbands financially, so they won’t have much say in it. Let us use only our money, pocket money or whatever money we have, to build it.’ That’s how we started, like a women’s power move,” Renu says.
Locally sourced laterite walls help slow heat transfer while blending the house into its lush surroundings.
That sense of ownership also shaped what the sisters were determined to preserve during construction. The trees were a big part of that.
“Every one of those trees was planted by my grandmother,” Namita recalls.
So when the contractor suggested felling some of them, the family pushed back.
The property also includes a grove connected to the family’s history and to Theyyam, a ritual performance tradition of north Kerala. Its cultural significance gave them another reason to retain the landscape rather than clear it for a cleaner construction site.
That thinking carried through the rest of the build. Local labour was hired, materials were sourced nearby, and as much of the existing tree cover as possible was preserved.
By the time Kadangotu House was completed in December 2024, the new structure had found its place within a landscape the family already knew well.
Its completion also brought people back to that land.
When the new house brought people back
The family marked the completion of Kadangotu House with a Theyyam performance linked to a longstanding family tradition.
They expected a relatively intimate gathering. But word spread through the village, and more people began arriving than they had planned for, and the gathering eventually had to be moved to the larger family house next door.
Namita remembers one detail that captured how unexpectedly large the occasion had become: an ice cream van simply turned up and began selling to the crowd.
The moment stayed with her because it showed that the property still belonged to a wider web of family, neighbours and memories.
Instead of cutting down an existing tree, architect Amrutha Kishor designed the house around it, preserving the family’s cherished landscape.
The family tries to return each September for a gathering associated with the grove, where, as Namita says, “everyone has to perform something”.
It is the same land their grandmother once brought them to as children. Now, there is a new house waiting there when they return.
A home the grandchildren can return to
For Renu, the house also means sharing this piece of family land with her sister. From the beginning, she and Rekha chose to build one home together.
“It amazes people that two sisters can have one house together,” Renu says.
For the sisters, comfort came from designing the house around the weather they actually live with: the heat, humidity, rain and breeze, rather than depending on machines to fix those problems later.
Amrutha remains practical about what that means. The house has provisions for air conditioning if the family ever needs it. “We always add provisions and plug points in case they’re required in the future. The aim is for people to be able to manage even without air conditioning. It shouldn’t be unlivable without it.”
She says designing this way did not require a substantially different construction budget. “These are just the results of good, mindful design decisions.”
A home shaped by memory, Kadangotu House preserves the trees, breeze and ancestral landscape that have been part of the family for generations.
For another homeowner, those decisions may begin with very ordinary questions: Which way does the wind move? Where does the harshest heat enter? Which trees can stay? Which local materials already suit the climate?
For Renu, the success of Kadangotu House will eventually be measured in a different way.
She wants the generations after her to keep returning to this land, just as she and her sister did.
“I want the grandchildren to come here and feel something,” she says. “Even if they don’t know what it is.”
