Grounded

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Grounded

Architects and Developers. We sell earthy luxury homes in Goa, rooted in sound architectural & susta

At Grounded, we are an award-winning team of architects turned property developers. Guided by sustainable practices, we build in harmony with nature and strive for architectural excellence. Our new projects Navovado and Terrace Houses are now available for sale. For Inquiries, email us at [email protected]

For more information, please refer to our website, www.buildgrounded.com

Our first project, Nivim is an award winning residence in Goa. Nivim is the first green certified residential building in Goa and was published in the Wall Street Journal in 08/07/13. http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013/08/08/a-house-in-harmony-with-nature/tab/slideshow/ /1

21/09/2026

The same brick, laid by the same hands, creates three completely different walls at Woodbine II. A course sits over a running bond, giving the wall a tight, heavy, grounded quality. Above it, the wall opens into a jaali, with bricks set at an angle and staggered to allow light and air to pass through while keeping the view filtered. With no cladding or plaster to hide behind, every course has to be checked for level and line. In the late-morning sun, with the light falling behind the jaali, the entire wall begins to glow.

Huge respect to the masons laying this, course by course, with such precision and patience.

More from Woodbine II soon.

02/09/2026

this and no internet 💕

21/08/2026

Yellow IPS used in the House with Three Pavilions, including the floors, bathroom walls, bed plinths, and window seats. The material continues into the bathroom, forming a curved shower wall with no visible joints, creating a continuous, tactile surface across the house.

14/08/2026

When a house is over 100 years old, you don’t get a clean, empty slate to draw afresh. You work with fragments, traces, and clues. Sometimes you’re guessing, sometimes you know what you’re looking at, and sometimes you only understand it once a wall is opened up.

Behind the plaster, we found the original arch: laterite, hand-cut, and still doing its job after decades of monsoons. That one stays.

Elsewhere, we found old lintels where openings had been closed over time. It makes you wonder, what did that opening serve a hundred years ago?

The lintels above the existing doors and windows were another story. New RCC lintels go in before anything above them is disturbed. Every opening is a load path we’ve temporarily interrupted.

Restoration isn’t gentle.
It’s just careful.

31/07/2026

At Crescent House, we chose to respect the context that came with the site. Preserving existing boulders, a mature Silver Oak tree, and the natural contours of the land. From carefully placed foundations to hand-laid stone and terracotta brick, every step of the construction responded to what was already there.

The home is anchored by two true brick vaults, built without shuttering using a centuries-old craft that is slowly disappearing. Beyond creating beautiful spaces, this technique reduces cement use and celebrates the skill of the craftspeople who continue to keep this tradition alive.

For us, construction isn't just about making buildings, rather it is about preserving landscapes, sustaining craft, and creating architecture that belongs to its place.

24/07/2026

The rammed earth walls at the House for Creatives were built using a carefully proportioned mix of locally sourced earth, sand, cement, and hydrated lime. The earth was sieved, mixed with the stabilisers and sand, and moistened to the required consistency.

Waterproof plywood shuttering, braced with timber supports, was assembled and coated with used engine oil for easy removal. The earth mix was placed in approximately 5-inch layers and compacted to around 3 inches using wood-tipped pneumatic rammers. The formwork was extended in stages as the wall rose, with oxide pigments added to selected batches to create layered colour variations.

After casting, the shuttering was removed, jack-screw holes were filled with the same earth mix, and the surface was lightly hammered and finished. The walls were then water-cured three times a day for 10–15 days, followed by the application of a water-based sealer.

The resulting 400 mm thick rammed earth walls reveal the natural layers and colour variations of the material, rising from a foundation of rubble soling, brickwork, and a concrete starter block.

Photographs 06, 07 taken by

17/07/2026

You asked us some thoughtful questions about the craft and materiality behind these vaults, and we are answering them in this reel.

At both Crescent House and Baobab House, the roof is formed by structural single-brick-layer vaults, built without shuttering by skilled artisans from Rohtak, Haryana, where this remarkable construction tradition continues to thrive.

Built by an amazing team and in collaboration with another amazing group

Have more questions? Leave them in the comments or send us a DM, we would love to answer them.

10/07/2026

Craft and materiality shape the architecture. In both Crescent House and Baobab House, the roof is formed by structural, Single-Brick-Layer Vaults, constructed without shuttering by artisans from Rohtak, Haryana, where this building construction method continues to thrive.

Each vault was completed in a 5 day-continuous build, with bricks laid one by one using string lines for alignment. Once the first course was set and checked, the construction proceeded with little to no interruptions until the entire vault was complete. In the case of Crescent House, their gently curved profile echoes the surrounding hills, allowing the house to sit quietly within the landscape rather than imposing upon it.

03/07/2026

We are honored to be featured in the .anthology Awards 2026 Readers' Prize. House of Creatives is a contemporary rammed-earth home for a creative couple and their teenage son who wished to live close to the earth, without air-conditioning, growing their own food and sharing one open, porous space for living, working, dance, music and the restoration of vintage motorcycles.

Earth is too often dismissed as cheap or unreliable in the tropics. Against that, we spent over two years in research of soil-mix trials, test walls, a soil laboratory, and on-site training of local teams new to the technique, to achieve a precise, durable, smooth-finished wall able to withstand Goa's intense monsoon.

Photography credits -

Give some love and support! You can cast a vote here -
👉 readersprize.design-anthology.com/e/UWASJEIN/

29/05/2026

We called it Crescent House, because the plan curves, the facade curves, and so does your eye when you look at it.

The site had a boulder field, a 50-year-old tree, and a hill behind it. We kept all three.
The house wraps around them. Not the other way around.

Red brick laid without plaster. A jali of protruding courses for ventilation and shadow play. Concrete that bows in and out. Large glass panels that frame the Nandi Hills on one side, and a courtyard of retained boulders on the other.

Inside: lime-washed walls, dark stone floors, wood, and light that moves through the house like a slow clock.

This is what we mean by grounded.

Address

Aldona
403508

Website

http://www.buildgrounded.com/

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