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The article is from a personal gist, as to me, India is my first Design Studio. As an architect and urban planner, living is like breathing between a place of the past and a place of the future, and I have always found India to be a deeply layered canvas. The famous cities like Jaipur, Hampi, and Fatehpur Sikri have the spotlight, but I crave the quieter and humble places where architecture breathes, unpretentiously and poetically. Those places that don’t scream for attention but whisper stories of craftsmanship, resilience, and cultural memory. This is a personal note on underrated architectural destinations in India, places that hold design significance like others.
Shekhawati, Rajasthan: An Open Gallery of Forgotten Frescoes: The Indian Details
When I went for the first time to the havelis of Shekhawati, I stumbled upon how such a place could be forgotten. The town is in the arid area of northeastern Rajasthan. This region encompasses towns like Mandawa, Nawalgarh, and Fatehpur, and is home to hundreds of painted havelis built between the 18th and early 20th century by Marwaris. Apart from the scale or ornamentation of the havelis, the architectural fusion of Rajput, Mughal, and colonial design is appreciable. The frescos are an encyclopedia, depicting everything from Ramayana to the first train. The architecture here is storytelling, rooted in identity and inspiring. Apart from its artistic legacy, Shekhawati has slipped off the tourism and conservation radar. As a professional, I see potential not just for restoration, but also for community-integrated tourism and educational hubs.
Gokarna, Karnataka: Vernacular Coastal Architecture and Sacred Landscape
Gokarna sits beside Goa, where the built form is embodied as a measurable response to the coastal climate and ritual movement. The Mahabaleshwar temple complex has an axis towards the sea, and the town’s architecture is characterised by laterite walls, mangalore tile roofs, and deep verandahs, which sit with monsoon gracefully. And I do remember staying in a homestay where the timber columns had been reclaimed from an old house; the host spoke something of recycling memory, a phrase that has become a touchstone for my practice. The town is a beautiful demonstration of how spiritual procession routes, alley widths, and roof forms micro-infrastructure, serving as cooling corridors, wind channels, and social connective tissues, remind planners that cultural rituals often encode environmental intelligence.
Chanderi, Madhya Pradesh: The loom-shaped town
This town came to my attention through textile exploration. There was a period when I was exploring the handloom clusters and then found Chanderi, whose morphology is derived from the craft itself. The narrow lanes around the Jama Masjid and Koshak Mahal are not accidental; they are calibrated thresholds where looms, dyeworks, and houses exchange daylight. In Chanderi, the roofs of the house collect rainwater not just as utility but as inputs for dyeing vats, then verandahs act as social loomsides, and gateways act as micro-markets. Observing weavers sitting on low platforms, wrapping threads in courtyard light, taught me that livelihood can also be defined as a durable urban form. Being a planner, Chanderi is a model where economic policy serves the craft.
Ziro Valley, Arunachal Pradesh: Apatani Cultural Landscape – Living Planning Systems
Ziro is an ecological manifesto disguised as a valley. The Apatani people shaped a settlement pattern such that rich-fish systems, stilted bamboo houses, sacred groves, and communal rules (the bulyan) cohere into a landscape (UNESCO, Apatani Cultural Landscape, tentative listing). I have observed irrigation channels doubling as biodiversity corridors, homesteads to conserve native trees, and customary land tenure allocating wetlands for collective uses. The Apatani model reframes density, settlements are compact, ecosystems are protected, and local production gives an integrated blueprint for low-carbon living that the contemporary planners are struggling to emulate. The lesson is practical that social governance can be as potent as a code or concrete in architecture.
Bhuj and Kutch, Gujarat: Reconstruction as a craft-led generation
I have been to Bhuj quite a few times, and what I have encountered was not just the engineered repair but the cultural repair. Organisations such as Hunnarshala work with local masons and artisans to rebuild earth-based technologies, seismic detailing, and craft revival, turning recovery into a livelihood strategy (Hunnarshala Foundation, The Better India, 2016). The bhunga, circular, mud-plastered dwellings with thatched roofs, were reinterpreted with some improved foundational core and the beams, preserving vernacular logic while maintaining safety. Bhuj taught us that resilience cannot be decreed from above; it should be cultivated through participatory techniques, which can link craft, building, and cultural materials.
Anegundi, Karnataka: Boulder-land with various narratives and community stewardship
Hampi attracts visitors globally, while Anegundi attracts the attentive. I discovered the rule of thumb in architecture while exploring Anegundi, which features corbelled granaries, low-slung houses nestled between boulders, and an emergent civic, ecological, and craft-led generation. Women’s cooperatives have catalysed basketry and mat-weaving enterprises, which integrated conservation with the livelihood, protecting heritage that does not become extractive tourism (INTACH Anegundi Initiatives). Anegundi made me re-evaluate heritage practice; when conservation is encouraged in the locality of small economies and skills, it becomes generative, not just prohibitive. The village’s interventions are small, iterative, and locally manageable, which offers a template for rural regeneration that respects materials and needs.
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Learning from these Hidden Gems
These destinations have rewired my briefs and also taught me to prototype courtyards, test passive cooling strategies, and also made me insist on the local joinery details rather than imported ones. From Shekhawati’s civic facades to Zrio’s rich-fish geometry, the key takeaways are;
- Design is also a social technology where buildings are the interface for livelihood, rituals and economy.
- Material is memory; it can be local stone, bamboo, or lime. These are repositories of craft and climate adaptation.
- Institutions are designed to shape rules and spaces as plans do.
If you are a student, a planner, or an architect beginning your practice, leave the glossy monographs on your desk and walk out to these destinations. Sit in the temple courtyard at dusk or ask a potter why their kiln shifts a metre downhill every season. These conversations teach more than anything or your drawings. These underrated places are no less important because they are small; they are essential because they embody design that is humane, contextual, and durable.