Residential · Reference design R-04
Prefab Farmhouses
Deep eaves over a shaded veranda along the long face, and perforated brick screens where the sun comes hardest. Prefab farmhouses are assembled on your land from precision-engineered components.
Decision Rooms
Four decisions the land makes for you
The site
Where the house sits, and which way it faces
On a plot this open there is no street to align to, so orientation is the first decision and it is the one that cannot be undone. The long veranda face wants the view and the prevailing breeze; the closed service face wants the afternoon sun and the approach track. Walk the land with the survey before either is fixed.
Orientation is drawn, not chosen on the day. The site plan sets the house against your boundaries, the track, the trees worth keeping and the direction the weather comes from, and the plan is rotated until those agree. Once the plinth is set out that is the house you have, so it is worth an afternoon.
The veranda
How deep the shaded edge runs, and along which faces
The veranda is the front of this house and the room a household will actually use. It can run one long face, wrap a corner, or return along both. Deeper is cooler and darker; shallower brings light further inside. It is drawn to your orientation rather than assumed, because the same depth does not suit every latitude in India.
Services
Where water, power and drainage come from on open land
Land far from a town rarely has a connection waiting. Borewell or tank, the position of the sump, the run to the house, the standby supply and where waste goes are decided with your engineer from your survey. None of it is assumed on our sheet, and all of it changes where the service face of the house should sit.
Second building
One building, or a separate store and staff room
Working land generally needs somewhere for a pump, a store, a caretaker and a vehicle, and it should not be attached to the house. A second small building on the same system keeps that away from the veranda and the view. Decide it early, because it changes the approach track and the service run before either is set out.
A second building can be drawn on the same system as the house — same frame, same brick, same roof — so that it belongs to it rather than sitting beside it as an outbuilding. Kept low and turned away from the veranda, it takes the pump, the store and a room for whoever looks after the land when you are not there.
Arrival across open ground
You come across open ground rather than along a street, so the house is seen whole and from a distance long before you reach it. What reads at that range is one long horizontal roof line, very shallow, with deep eaves throwing a band of shadow across everything beneath them. Height is not what makes it; length is.
Closer, the roof resolves into planes that overlap where they meet, and the entrance is under that junction rather than announced with a porch. The wall behind is a wirecut brick face, and where a side needed shade the same brick is perforated into a screen that lets air through and keeps low sun out of the rooms.
The house stands on a stone plinth that carries the floor well above the ground. On land that floods a little, dries hard and grows fast, that gap is the difference between a building that ages well and one that does not. The plinth also gives the track something to arrive at, and a step rather than a threshold.
Around the long faces
The long faces are the ones to walk. The wall is a wirecut brick face carried on a frame, and it meets the eave with a shadow gap rather than a trim. Where it becomes a screen, the same brick is perforated on the same coursing, so screen and wall read as one surface rather than as two different things.
The roof is a clay tile on shallow planes, set so the overlaps are visible from the ground, and its edge is a thin metal section that keeps the line straight over long runs. Bronze is the only bright metal on the building and it is kept to the door furniture and the reveals, where it will be touched.
The plinth is grey granite, cut and bedded dry, with the wall stopping above it across a shadow gap. Nothing about the base is rendered or patched in place. Where the ground meets it, the finish is set out last, after the walls are up, so the levels can follow the land instead of the land being cut to follow a drawing.
Behind the veranda
The veranda is the room you will use most and it is planned as a room, not as a leftover. It is deep enough for a table and chairs with a route still passing behind them, its floor runs level out of the living room, and it is covered by the same roof, so nothing about it feels added on afterwards.
Behind it the living room opens through full-height glazing that slides back, so on a good evening the two are one space and the difference between inside and outside is a change of floor. The glass is shaded by the eave above it for most of the day, which is why it can be that large.
The bedrooms take the quieter end, each with its own outlook and a brick screen where a window faces the hard afternoon. Timber is used inside — the joinery, the doors, the furniture — where it is protected and where a hand touches it. Outside it is brick, stone and metal, which is what survives an Indian year without attention.
The brick screen meets the column; the eave line runs past it
C01
The plinth, and where the ground is finished against it
The ground it stands on
What you will see under the building is the ground it was drawn for: cared-for open land with mature trees standing well back, a made track arriving at the plinth, mown grass running up to the paving, and a boundary wall low on the far edge. Nothing about the frame is empty country.
Behind that, the middle distance does the work. Orchard rows, a hedge line, planted beds along the approach, and the roofs of somewhere else far off through the trees, so the house reads as standing on land somebody owns rather than on land nobody has reached yet.
The same house sits differently on each kind of ground, and the site plan is drawn for yours rather than for a notional rectangle. What holds across all of them is the roof line, the depth of the veranda and the height of the plinth, which is why the building is recognisable wherever it lands.
The buyer’s folio
The land owner’s folio
Four chapters, in the order the land asks them: why orientation and the shaded edge come before the plan, what sits behind the veranda, how the building is made and why that suits ground far from a town, and how far this design has got.
01The land comes firstWhy orientation, approach and the shaded edge are settled before the plan is.
A farmhouse fails when it is a city house dropped onto a field. The tell is a shallow eave, a wall that meets the ground flat, and no shaded outdoor room, because none of those was designed for a place with no neighbour to shelter behind. Every one of those three is answered before this plan is drawn.
Height is not what makes it read from a distance. Length is.
Land is the product here, not floor area. The building is spread along its length so that no room turns its back on the ground and so that the veranda can run the whole way, rather than stacked to save a footprint. What that spends is ground, and on land that is the one thing you are not short of.
A farmhouse fails when it is a city house dropped onto a field.
IN SHORT — Spread long, lifted on a plinth, with a deep shaded edge turned to the land.
02Behind the verandaThe shaded edge, the living room behind it, and how the plan is sorted for a house with no neighbours.
A house on open land needs a back as much as a front. The kitchen, the utility, the store and the plant take one face, away from the veranda and reachable from the track, so a delivery or a repair never crosses the part of the house the family is sitting in. That sorting is the plan.
The veranda is planned as a room, not as a leftover.
Nobody is next door, so the building has to look after itself. The screens shade without shutters to close, the plinth keeps splash and growth off the wall, the eaves keep rain off the openings, and the finishes are chosen to weather rather than to be maintained. A house you visit at weekends cannot depend on being watched.
A house you visit at weekends cannot depend on being watched.
IN SHORT — A deep veranda in front, a living room that opens onto it, and a service face turned to the track.
03How it is made, and how it reaches your landBrick, stone, clay and metal, delivered as material and put up where conventional building is difficult.
What arrives is material. Frame members, brick, tile, glazing units, the stone and the fixings, strapped and numbered to the order of work. Nothing habitable is ever brought in whole. Granite goes down on your land before anything else, the frame is stood on it, the envelope closes around that, and the veranda comes out of the same roof.
On remote land a building that arrives as measured components finishes better than one mixed on site.
The group’s record puts sixty to ninety days on site; a quotation qualifies that against access, weather and the ground before anything is agreed. On land far from a town the figure that matters more is how much of that work needs a skilled trade standing on the plot, and the assembly sequence answers it rather than a promise.
We do not claim this house could only be built this way.
IN SHORT — Brick, clay, stone and metal, delivered as material and put together dry on land where conventional work is difficult.
04What is settled, and what is notHow far this design has been taken, and exactly what has not been drawn for it yet.
This design is being drawn for the current set. What is settled is what you have read: the long shaded edge, the brick screen, the plinth, the material family and the way the building is put together. What is not settled is the dimensioned drawing set, and this page does not pretend otherwise anywhere on it.
Publishing a number nobody has drawn is the fastest way to lose a reader who checks.
That is why you will find no floor area, no room count and no sheet list here. Publishing a number nobody has drawn would be the easiest thing on this page and the fastest way to lose a reader who checks. When the set is issued, this page is rewritten around it and the figures appear with the drawings standing behind them.
Not one performance value — structural, fire, heat, sound, energy — is put forward here as ours. A published standard, where one applies, is pointed to rather than paraphrased into a promise. Prices are not published on this site: a house on land is quoted against the land it goes on. The warranty and the programme figure are the group’s own record.
The questions that decide a build on land are access, water, orientation and phasing.
Today this search returns manufacturer home pages and broad prefab solution pages, which answer a farmhouse buyer only by accident. The questions that actually decide a build on land are access, water, orientation, the service building and phasing. Those are on this page, and they are answered before anything is sold to you.
IN SHORT — The form and the method are settled; the dimensioned set is not, and this page says so.
Questions to close before you break ground
Can you build on land with a poor approach road?
Usually, and it is checked before anything is manufactured. We need a route a flat-bed can get down, level ground for stacking, and space to work all round the plinth. Where the final stretch is bad, loads are broken smaller. Nothing habitable travels, so there is no single indivisible object to get through.
What must be ready on the land before work starts?
A topographic survey, the boundary, a decision on where the house sits and which way it faces, and a plan for water, power and drainage agreed with your engineer. The plinth and foundations follow your ground rather than a standard detail. Approvals are coordinated with your own consultant, on your side of the table.
Is this a permanent house or a weekend structure?
Permanent. A framed building with a wirecut brick face, a clay tile roof and a cut stone plinth — the material families permanent construction uses. It is put together dry from parts made to size, and that is a method rather than a category, so it does not make the house temporary.
Who manufactures it, and who puts it up on my land?
The group manufactures the components; its crew assembles the building on your land, working to the sequence. You will find both phone numbers and the postal address on the contact page. The project figure covers the whole of what the group builds rather than farmhouses alone, and it is worded that way for that reason.
Can I build it in phases?
Yes, and on land that is generally the sensible order. The house first, the second building when the land tells you what it needs, external works last. What has to be decided at the start is the track, the service run and where the second building will stand, because those are set out with the first plinth and are hard to move later.
How is a farmhouse like this priced?
Against the land it stands on; no figure is published on this site. What shifts it most is not the building but access for a flat-bed, the levels, how far water and power must be brought, and how much track and external work you ask for. A survey lets us price it against your ground.