Excerpt: The Stack House by Design Work Group is a multigenerational residence that reimagines luxury through climate-sensitive design. Conceived as four stacked concrete volumes around a central courtyard, the design maximizes light, ventilation, and family interaction across vertical levels. With textured façades and sculptural staircases, it blends bold architectural form with intimate, connected living spaces in a dense urban site.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] The owner, an industrialist, spent his early life in a village and, until recently, lived in a modest apartment. With this new home, his vision was to create an opulent residence that also offered comfortable outdoor seating areas, particularly adjacent to the first-floor living space. As a design practice, our goal was to craft a contemporary home that responds sensitively to the local climate. The real challenge lay in harmonising these two aspirations—creating a luxurious environment that still feels like a warm, welcoming home rather than a hotel.
The Stack House is a multigenerational family residence located in Surat, Gujarat, built on a 378 m² plot. Surrounded by four-storey residential buildings and with a road on its western edge, the house rises vertically across four levels, thoughtfully organised to serve the needs of three generations living together. The ground floor accommodates parking, utility services, and a maid’s room. The first floor functions as the primary living level, featuring the main living area, kitchen and dining space, an outdoor veranda, and the parents’ bedroom with an adjacent caretaker’s room for ease of support. The second floor houses three bedrooms along with access to a private terrace, while the third floor includes an additional bedroom, a home theatre, and a large open terrace. The topmost level offers a small gathering room that opens out onto another terrace, creating a space for leisure and informal family interaction under the open sky.
The idea was to stack four boxes on top of one another to form a composition resembling a sculptural stack of concrete blocks. As this is a four-storey house with limited opportunities for natural light—surrounded on three sides and open only to the west—the core design challenge was to bring daylight into the interior while protecting the house from the harsh southern and western exposures. To address this, the stacked volumes were carefully manipulated to carve out space for skylights and to create a central courtyard that runs through the height of the house. At the top of this courtyard, a wind tower enhances passive ventilation. The front façade, facing west, is kept largely solid or shielded with movable screens to control sunlight, heat, and privacy, while maintaining the monolithic presence of the structure.
The central courtyard serves not only as a source of natural light and ventilation but also as a vital social spine that fosters connection among the three generations living on separate floors. As it rises through the house, the courtyard transforms in character on each level, creating a series of dynamic, interconnected spaces that allow visual and spatial interaction between floors. Uniquely, the house features four distinct staircases, each with its own identity. The courtyard accommodates two of them: one is a linear, straight-flight staircase connecting the first and second floors; the other is a sculptural helical staircase that contrasts sharply in form, rising gracefully from the second to the third floor. Together, they animate the vertical core of the house and enrich the spatial experience.
To maintain the visual solidity of the stacked boxes, the primary building material used is cast in situ concrete with a wooden-textured finish. This texture creates a striking play of light and shadow, especially as the main approach is from the south and the primary façade faces west. During the day, sunlight accentuates the grain and depth of the surface, while at night, grazing lights dramatise the texture, adding richness and movement to the architecture. What began as a constraint—the closed west side—was transformed into an opportunity to celebrate a bold, blank concrete façade. Light and shadow animate the surface throughout the day, turning it into a living, expressive element of the design. The stacked boxes are carefully detailed at their junctions to preserve the identity of each volume, reinforcing the idea of a composed stack of distinct, yet unified, forms.
The Stack House blends sculptural form with functional living, offering a contemporary, climate-responsive home for three generations. Stacked concrete boxes, a central courtyard, and varied staircases foster both spatial drama and family connection. What began as a constrained urban site became an opportunity to create a bold, textured residence that balances luxury with warmth and light.
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