Ujas ઉજાસ Request a site walk
The central courtyard of a house at Ujas at first light: a neem tree, a water channel and a brick jaali in a lime-plaster wall.

Twelve courtyard houses in Shela, Ahmedabad, planned around the path of the sun.

Scroll to move the day forward, or skip ahead

06:58 21 March · sun 3° E

First light reaches the top of the far wall.

Ujas is twelve houses on a 2.1 acre plot. Every house is built around one open court with a neem or peepal tree, a stone water channel and a brick jaali on its west wall. Rooms face the court, not the street.

Houses
12, in four types
Built area
380 to 520 m²
From
₹6.8 Cr
Possession
March 2028

The west wall of every court carries a brick jaali, 2.4 m tall.

From about three in the afternoon it stops the direct sun and lets through a pattern instead. This wall is lit by the real sun for the site on 21 March. Keep scrolling and it moves on to sunset.

14:30sun 54° WSW

Sun study

The whole site as a white model, lit by the sun as it will be in Shela on that day. Pick a date and drag the time. Click a house to see it on its own. The shade figures are measured on the model, not written in.

16:12 sun 18° WSW 64% of the courts in shade

8 of 12 houses available. Reserved houses are the darker ones. Click any house on the model.

Four house types

    The internal lane at early morning: brick and lime walls, deep-set windows and teak doors.
    07:10 The lane. Walls are 450 mm thick and the windows sit deep in them, so the low morning sun lights the reveal and not the room.
    A bedroom with a single beam of morning light falling across a low bed.
    07:35 One high window in each bedroom, placed for a single beam of east light.
    A shaded living room with teak pivot doors folded open to the courtyard and its tree.
    09:20 The living room. Four teak pivot doors fold back and the room and the court become one floor of Kota stone.
    Afternoon sun through a brick jaali, throwing a lattice of light across a stone floor and a teak bench.
    15:50 The same jaali from inside the study.
    A sunken stepwell court with stone steps on three sides descending into still water.
    12:40 The stepwell court at the centre of the site, shared by all twelve houses. Steps on three sides, 2.8 m down to the water.
    A flat roof terrace at golden hour in January, with kites far away in the hazy sky.
    17:30 14 January. Every roof is flat and walkable, which in Ahmedabad matters one day a year more than all the others.
    The same courtyard in heavy monsoon rain, the stone floor wet and reflective.

    July

    The court floor falls 1 in 80 toward the channel. Rain runs along it into an underground tank under the verandah that holds 60,000 litres, enough to water the tree and the garden through to March.

    Six materials, and where they come from

    Brick, lime plaster, teak, brass, neem leaves and a terracotta tile laid on a slab of Kota stone.
    1. Kota stoneFloors and the water channel. Quarried at Ramganj Mandi, Rajasthan, honed, never polished.
    2. Handmade brickWalls and jaalis, fired near Sanand, 40 km west of the site.
    3. Lime plasterThree coats, hand trowelled, left to crack a little.
    4. TeakDoors and shutters, reclaimed from old houses in the walled city.
    5. BrassHandles and hinges, cast in Moradabad, unlacquered so they darken.
    6. TerracottaRoof tiles laid over the slab to keep the rooms below cool.

    Shela, on the western edge of Ahmedabad

    The plot sits just outside the ring road, between farmland and the city's newest roads. Close enough to drive into the city for dinner, far enough out that the plot still has its old neem trees.

    Sardar Patel Ring Road
    4 min
    SG Highway at Prahlad Nagar
    18 min
    IIM Ahmedabad
    32 min
    Airport
    45 min
    Manek Chowk, old city
    50 min

    Drive times are estimates from the gate on a weekday at 10:00.

    A teak gate half open in a dark brick wall at night, lamplight spilling out.

    Walk the site

    Site walks run on Saturdays at 07:00 and 17:30, when the courts are at their best. They take about an hour and start at the gate.

    Which walk