Punjabi Vernacular Architecture

Forts. Mosques. Gurdwaras. Temples. Palaces. Havelis.

The buildings that survive in history. But they were never the buildings most Punjabis actually lived in.

Across Punjab, generations of people built houses around their climate, occupations, families, communities, and available materials. Courtyards became the centre of the home. Thick walls protected rooms from the summer heat. Verandahs created shade. Rooftops became sleeping areas on warm nights. A baithak allowed visitors to be welcomed without entering private family spaces.
There was no single architect behind these ideas. They developed gradually, through generations of people learning what worked.

WHAT IS VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE?

Vernacular architecture is a broad term used for buildings shaped by local traditions, materials, climate, and everyday needs rather than by one formal architectural style.

A royal palace can usually be linked to a ruler, architect, dynasty, or period.

An ordinary village house rarely can.

Instead, its design develops over time. A building method works, so another family uses it. A particular wall keeps rooms cooler, so builders repeat it. A courtyard gives a household enough light while maintaining privacy, so the layout becomes common. Craftsmen pass their knowledge to the next generation.

The architecture slowly becomes part of the place itself - this is important in Punjab because the region did not have one universal type of house.
A farmer’s home in a village was different from a merchant’s urban residence. Houses in Potohar could differ from those in Malwa. Wealth, available land, occupation, local building materials, religion, and the density of a town all influenced construction.

Instead of one Punjabi house, Punjab developed a collection of related building traditions.

What connected many of them was the way they responded to Punjab itself.

BUILDING FOR PUNJAB

Punjab’s climate could be difficult; summers were intensely hot, winters could become cold an d monsoon rains brought another set of problems. Buildings therefore had to cope with large changes in temperature throughout the year.

The answer was not one invention.

It was the entire house.

Traditional buildings often used thick masonry walls made from locally available brick and lime. Some surviving havelis contain walls between approximately 18 and 27 inches thick, constructed using small Nanakshahi bricks with lime and surkhi mortar - powdered burnt brick used within traditional mortar.

These walls acted as more than structural support.

Thick masonry absorbs heat slowly.

A thin modern wall can allow outdoor heat to affect the room relatively quickly. A much thicker masonry wall takes longer to heat through. By the time more of that heat begins reaching the interior, the temperature outside may already be falling. The same thermal mass could help during colder weather by reducing sudden changes in indoor temperature.

To someone walking past, it was simply a thick brick wall.

To the people living behind it, it was part of the cooling and heating system.

THE AANGAN - THE CENTRE OF THE HOME

Perhaps the most recognisable feature of the traditional Punjabi house was the aangan - the courtyard.

Rather than placing every room against an outside wall, rooms could be arranged around an open central space.

The courtyard allowed sunlight into surrounding rooms. It created ventilation in otherwise tightly packed buildings. It offered somewhere to cook, wash, work, talk, eat, dry clothes, celebrate, or simply sit outside while remaining within the privacy of the household.

There were several different layouts. Some were full courtyard houses. Others had courtyard-like terraces on upper levels, while houses built on particularly small plots sometimes had no courtyard at all.

The aangan was therefore not empty space in the middle of the house.

It was part of the house.

In many ways, it functioned as another room - except its ceiling was the sky.

HOW THE COURTYARD COOLED THE HOUSE

The courtyard also had an environmental purpose.

During the day, surrounding walls and verandahs created areas of shade. Rooms opening onto the courtyard could receive light without requiring large windows directly exposed to the street or sun. Air could also move through the house.

Warm air naturally rises. Open courtyards and openings positioned at different heights allowed hotter air to move upward while cooler air could enter other parts of the building. This circulation helped reduce the stagnant heat that develops inside closed rooms.

At night, the courtyard and roof lost heat to the cooler sky. Families could then move through different parts of the property depending on the temperature.

THE VERANDAH

Between the courtyard and the room was another important space - the beramdah, or verandah. Its function was to shade the outer walls from direct sunlight, reducing their heat absorption and ultimately how warm the inside of the house got. In the wintertime, it functioned as an open yet covered space.

JALIS, JHAROKAS AND WINDOWS

Traditional Punjabi architecture also controlled how much of the outside world entered the house. A large uncovered window brings light into a room - but it can also bring intense sunlight, heat, glare, and a direct view from the street.

Builders developed alternatives.

Jalis - perforated screens made from materials such as wood, brick, or stone, could allow air and filtered light to pass through while restricting direct views.

Jharokas - projecting windows or balconies, created shade and allowed occupants to look outward while remaining partially protected from the street.

Wooden shutters could be opened when ventilation was needed and closed when greater protection from heat, cold, or privacy was required.

THE HOUSE AND PRIVACY

Climate explains only part of Punjabi domestic architecture.

The other major influence was family and social life.

Traditional houses often separated the public world of the street from the private world of the household gradually.

You did not necessarily step through the front door and immediately enter the family’s main living space.

One example was the baithak.

Positioned towards the more public part of many houses, the baithak provided a room where guests and visitors could be received. This allowed hospitality without requiring every visitor to move deeper into the family home. Larger havelis could take this separation much further, with different courtyards and rooms serving different members of the household or different levels of privacy.

BETWEEN THE HOUSE AND THE STREET

Traditional architecture also created spaces that belonged partly to the household and partly to the neighbourhood.

A tarra was a raised platform projecting outside a house. Residents could sit there and interact with neighbours or people passing through the street without formally inviting them into the home.

It created a small transition between public and private life.

THE PUNJABI HAVELI

The haveli was not the ordinary Punjabi house.

Havelis were generally large residences belonging to wealthy families, officials, merchants, landowners, or other members of the elite. They could contain multiple storeys, elaborate facades, several courtyards, carved doors, decorative jharokas, reception areas, private family sections, storage spaces, terraces, and sometimes basements.

Their size, however, makes them useful for understanding traditions that also appeared in more modest houses. Smaller residences could reproduce parts of the same logic on a reduced scale - especially the inward-facing courtyard and separation between the street and private household space.

The difference was often one of scale and wealth rather than a completely unrelated way of living.

A wealthy family could build several courtyards.

A smaller household might have one.

Another might have only a tiny lightwell or upper terrace.

The architectural principle adapted to the money and land available.

THE MATERIALS OF THE PUNJABI HOME

Traditional builders generally worked with what could be sourced locally.

Brick became one of Punjab’s defining building materials, particularly across the plains.

Historic buildings used different forms of fired brick, including the thin Nanakshahi bricks strongly associated with eighteenth and nineteenth-century construction in parts of Punjab.

Lime mortar bound masonry together.

Surkhi - finely crushed burnt brick, could be mixed into lime mortar.

Wood was used for doors, beams, ceilings, shutters, balconies, screens, and decorative work.

In rural areas, katcha construction could also rely heavily on earth and mud.

The distinction between katcha and pucca became part of the architectural vocabulary of the region. A katcha structure generally used less permanently fired or processed materials such as mud and earth, while pucca construction relied more heavily on durable fired brick, stone, lime, and later cement.

Neither category represented one fixed house type.

A property could contain elements of both, and houses changed as families gained money, expanded, repaired walls, or replaced older materials.

That constant alteration is one reason ordinary vernacular buildings can be difficult to date.

VILLAGE PUNJAB

The needs of a rural Punjabi household were also different from those of an urban one.

The home could be tied directly to agriculture - space might be required for storing grain, tools, fodder, fuel, carts, and other equipment. Animals could form part of the domestic compound. Outdoor areas accommodated work that would never take place inside the house of an urban merchant.

Courtyards therefore had economic uses as well as social ones.

The house was connected to the working life of the family.

A village compound could contain sleeping spaces, cooking areas, animal shelters, storage, and working areas within or around the same property.

URBAN PUNJAB

Inside older cities, the problem reversed.

Land was restricted.

Neighbourhoods became dense.

Houses shared walls and narrow lanes could leave little room for large exposed windows. The architecture turned inward.

This helps explain the importance of the courtyard in cities such as Lahore.

Traditional urban houses adapted to irregular and often very small sites. The internal courtyard provided light and ventilation without requiring the house to open completely towards a crowded street. Buildings could also grow vertically - additional rooms, terraces, and upper storeys provided living space above a restricted ground-floor footprint.

Balconies and projecting windows allowed the inhabitants of the house to interact with the street without surrendering privacy entirely.

The result was a completely different architectural response from the open rural compound - yet both belonged to Punjab.

THE DECLINE OF VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE

During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the traditional Punjabi house gradually became less common.

There was no single cause.

Population increased. Cities expanded. Land became more valuable. Families changed. Concrete and cement construction became widespread. Modern plumbing, electrical systems, kitchens, cars, air-conditioning, and different expectations of privacy altered what people wanted from a house.

The courtyard could be viewed as land that could instead hold another room.

The verandah could be enclosed.

Traditional timber windows were replaced with glass or aluminium.

Mud walls were rebuilt in brick or concrete.

Several households might divide one historic haveli between them.

In other cases, older houses were simply demolished.

PUNJAB’S FORGOTTEN ARCHITECTURE

Emperors built forts.

Rulers built palaces.

Patrons built mosques, temples, and gurdwaras.

Their names entered history with the buildings.

The mason laying thick brick walls, the carpenter carving the jali, the family extending another room around its courtyard, were silently forgotten.

Yet together, they built most of Punjab.

To the homes built without monuments, or names - but with generations of knowledge held within their walls.
In lasting memory – TrishSaab