The materials we keep returning to, why they belong to this place, and why a building that hides nothing costs less to keep.
Every few months a client sends us a photograph of a house in Portugal or Kyoto and asks whether we can build it here. Sometimes the answer is yes. More often the honest answer is that the house they love is made of its place, and the way to get that feeling in Bengaluru is to build with what Bengaluru is made of. This is a short list of the materials we go back to, and why.
Laterite
Quarried as soft blocks east of the city and along the coast, laterite hardens in air and weathers to a deep rust. It is a load-bearing block, so a wall of it is structure and finish at once: no plaster, no paint, no repainting every five years. Our Courtyard House uses it for every external wall. Clients worry about the colour darkening in the rain. It does, and then it dries. That is what living walls do.
Sadarahalli granite
The grey granite from the quarries south of the city is the most underrated stone in India. Flamed, it is a non-slip floor for verandahs and pool edges that will outlast the building. Honed, it is a kitchen counter that does not stain. Rough-cut, it is a compound wall. We use it for thresholds, steps, sills and anywhere water meets the building, because it simply does not care.
Kota and terracotta
Inside, we lean on two floors. Kota stone, blue-grey and cool underfoot, which hides a decade of children. And handmade terracotta in the Athangudi tradition when a room wants warmth and pattern. Neither needs a polishing machine to look good, which matters in a city where maintenance staff turn over every year.
Wood, carefully
Teak is wonderful and increasingly hard to defend. We use it where it earns its keep, doors and handrails, and prefer reclaimed stock from the city's demolition yards, which is older, denser and already seasoned. For everything else there is local silver oak, good veneers and well-made plywood under a real surface.
Exposed concrete and brick
Both are honest when they are done honestly: good formwork, sharp corners, no filler. Wire-cut bricks from the kilns around Malur take mortar well and age gracefully. The rule we hold to is simple. A material should be what it looks like. Paint that pretends to be stone, tiles that pretend to be wood, and cladding that pretends to be anything at all are how buildings lose their dignity by their first repainting.
The common thread is that none of these materials need to be hidden, which means none of them need to be maintained the way a painted, tiled, laminated house does. That is the honest wall: it costs a little more on day one and almost nothing for thirty years.