This information is from my time in Ahmedabad, Gujerat in 2008 and 2010. 

Since that time, the Mangaldas haveli  (now known as ‘Mangaldas Ni Haveli I’) has been transformed into a Bed and Breakfast and its internal architecture has inevitably been altered somewhat.

 

 

Among the things to miss about India in a lifetime of not being there are the ways in which space is constructed to deliver cool in the country’s intense heat. 

 

Among these is the jaali (net) like that of the Sidi Sayyed Mosque in Ahmedabad, made of sandstone in 1573/74 during the last years of the Moslem sultanate.

 

 

The mosque from the back. Photo from the web

 

 

The jaali is a primary element of cooling architecture. It dates from late Mughal times and is found in Islamic architecture outside the subcontinent also.

It is an external lattice screen whose cross section usually shows a larger opening on the outside and a smaller opening on the inside.

As the wind passes through the jaali, it creates a difference in pressure between the interior and exterior of the building, and cools the air as it is compressed and released into the building.

The walls of sandstone also absorb heat in sunlight and release it slowly at night.

 

 

 

The mosque from the back with a Tree of Life jaali.  Photo from the net

 

 

The haveli is a residential architecture designed to cool : a gorgeously embellished built environment still extant in northern India and Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh.

 

Haveli, derived from an Arabic word, is the Hindi, Urdu and Gujerati term for a private residence built around an internal courtyard. 

 

Gujarat’s Vaishnava Hindu sect also use the word for those of their temples built around a courtyard, dedicated to Lord Krishna, and gorgeously decorated with carvings. These cannot be photographed.

 

 

When you are at the Sidi Sayyed Mosque, you are on the west side of the city, separated by the Sabarmati River from the much newer east city.

 

To get here, you have walked past the house of Mangaldas Girdhardas, built in the 1920s.  It belongs to a textile family, who converted the house to a heritage hotel a few decades ago.

 

 

 

The front of the House of MG, now a heritage hotel. Photo from the net

 

 

A grandson of Mangaldas Girdhardas has also restored a haveli in the heart of the old city. The hotel provided me with an extremely informative 80 minute taped guide through the old city.  This haveli was one stop.  

 

Turning left again past the mosque, you walk into the heart of the old city past the Badhra Fort built in 1411 by the city’s founder, Ahmed Shah I in the new capital of the Moslem sultanate of Gujarat.

 

 

Bastion of the Badhra Fort, Ahmedabad

 

 

At the base of the fort is the temple of the protectress of the city, Badr Kali (which cannot be photographed): a mark of the re-imposition of Hindu rule when the Mughals surrendered here in 1758. 

 

In front of the fort and temple is a grand plaza, the site of markets, rituals, and festivities.  It leads into the heart of the east of Ahmedabad – the old city – through a gateway with a triple arch.

 

 

 

The plaza in front of the Badhra Fort, Ahmedabad looking towards the Triple Gate

 

 

 

You walk through the Triple Gate, also built by Ahmed Shah I (starting in 1411), with its ornate carving. The gate formed the midpoint of his city:  on the west, the Bhadra fort and on the east the Jama Masjid (mosque).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Decorated bird houses are perched above you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Down narrow streets and across quiet residential courtyards.

 

 

 

 

To a narrow street lined with havelis; a dark street under deep overhanging eaves.

 

 

 

 

The Mangaldas haveli is one of several havelis on both sides of the street in a formerly tight-knit neighbourhood with their own gateways.  These havelis are now in various states of (dis)repair.

 

 

 

 

Photo above from the website of the Mangaldas haveli

 

Front of the Mangaldas haveli

 

 

The building, to my understanding, is made of wood.  Its exterior facade and much of the interior is covered with worked wood. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This haveli is 300 years old.  It has four stories: the ground floor, a first and second floor and a flat, accessible roof. The house is rectangular.

 

There is a narrow staircase up one wall.

 

The front of the house has tall, narrow windows covered with iron grills on the ground floor.  On the second and third floor the window openings have half or full iron grilles and shutters of decorated wood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of two front doors.  One door was kept closed.

Front door of the house

 

 

Inside, on the ground floor is a courtyard which is 0pen through four stories to the sky.

 

This courtyard and its funnel act as an air conditioner at the heart of the house.  It cools the air through a chimney effect while bringing in daylight and daytime breezes.

 

The interior of the house has three kinds of spaces: the open internal courtyard above which rises as a decorated funnel to the roof. 

At the back of the ground floor is a room narrower than the courtyard.  I do not recall if there were such rooms on the 2nd and 3rd floors.

A corridor runs around the open space on all sides of the funnel over the courtyard on the 2nd and 3rd floors.  A narrow stairwell clings to one wall and climbs up.  On the flat roof deck, there is a large rectangular space around the opening  above the courtyard.

 

 

The front door on the left top leads into the courtyard

The courtyard with a view to its rear

 

Looking down at the courtyard from the corridor on the 2nd floor

 

 

 

Looking up at the skylight which covers the central open courtyard space

 

 

 

There is natural light from the windows on the front of the house.  Light from the skylight above the courtyard also filters through the house.

I have no memory of  light entering the house from anywhere else. The  flat roof is open, of course, to the sky.

 

On the second floor, the widest part of corridor is sectioned into rooms.  Each room has a door opening onto an edge of the corridor overlooking the courtyard.

 

 

 

Looking across the courtyard space on the second floor where the corridor has been partitioned into rooms

 

 

 

When you step out of one of these rooms, you are looking down onto the central courtyard or up to the skylight.

 

On the second floor there was a store selling embellished clothing on one side of the rectangle.  My memory is of no natural light.  Electric light, fans and mirrors only.

 

 

 

 

 

A second room on the second floor offered gifts.  This room was on the front of the building and had its own window light.

 

 

 

 

On the third floor, the corridor is not sectioned and light enters from the windows at the front of the house. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tables seen on the third floor against the front windows of the house

 

Cafeteria on the third floor

 

 

On the roof is a cafeteria the length of the front corridor and against the front windows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Woodwork, carved and painted decorates every room in cool or earth colours.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On  each level, mirrors strategically placed expand the light from windows on the front of the haveli and from the skylight.

 

 

 

 

On the ground floor, a highly-polished metal screen with apertures in a modified lotus design separates the narrow stairwell from the rest of the house. 

Depending on the light, sometimes the screen shifts from gold to silver. 

 

 

 

 

 

The entire house is tiled.  Cool tiles.

 

 

 

Also on the ground floor in a corner, is access to a sunken well, now closed off.

 

 

 

 

The use of terracotta pots to cool the water in them and the environment around them is very ancient. 

Water seeps through the tiny pores of terracotta. As the water evaporates, it draws latent heat from the pot and the surrounding air.  This lowers the temperature of both.

 

 

Vintage Gujerati pots

Softening green against white plaster on the ground floor.

 

 

 

 Lakshmi is present here.

 

 

Lakshmi in plaster on the ground floor

 

 

Ganesha is present also.

 

 

Ganesha in carved stone on the ground floor

 

 

 

A world unto itself .

 

 

 

The front of the Mangaldas haveli in a photo taken from its website

 

 

One can imagine, with shifting light, the patterns glancing off the wood and the mirrors and the tilework, the light filtering from the opening above the internal courtyard, the few plants inside the house, and the richly coloured patterns worn by the women of the house,

not to speak of the gold glinting from their nostrils, ears, wrists, fingers and foreheads and glinting off the brass and copperware utensils in ordinary domestic use…

one can imagine how sensational and longed-for an environment this was and is during all seasons and especially in the intense heat of the subcontinent.