In recent years, architecture and design have begun to recuperate more than just form: they aspire to heal culture, restore memory and re-forge a relationship with the land. In a world suffused with homogenized aesthetics and carbon-heavy practices, the urgent themes of vernacular architecture, heritage conservation, adaptive reuse and ecological design have moved from niche discourses toward being essential. These are not merely stylistic tropes but strategies to root building, repair legacies, and shape resilient futures. It is within this spirit that North — the Himachal-based collective by Rahul Bhushan, comes into focus, as a place, a practice, and a living experiment.
North describes itself as a Himachal-based collective introducing new building concepts emerging from vernacular architecture and indigenous craftsmanship. It is an architecture studio, campus, a homestay, a research node, and a center for hands-on experimentation. Half of its members are interns who live on campus during their stint, contributing to site projects, research, and the workshop culture. Such a model softens the boundary between production, living, learning and making.
Set in Naggar, beneath deodar forests and overlooking the Beas river with the Dhauladhar ridges beyond, the North estate is composed with an ease that belies deep intentionality. Around 60 % of its land is maintained as open forest and orchard, with only selective built interventions absorbing themselves into the terrain. The main homestay building is composed in Kath Kuni style — layered wood and stone construction derived from Himachali tradition.
Alongside it is the Dhajji House or Dhajji Cabin is an example of adaptive reuse and creative reconstruction. It is built by repurposing reclaimed wood and stone with the Dhajji Dewari method (a timber frame infilled with masonry) to yield a carbon-negative, earthquake-resilient cabin. The cabin’s interiors, fashioned with sculpted mud walls, inbuilt furniture and minimal glazing, feel like a living museum of craft. As a guest, one may stay in the main house or the more secluded Dhajji cabin, dine in a communal kitchen, wander into open studios or the archive room, and partake in conversations with makers on site.
Apart from the homestay itself, workshops lie at the heart of North’s ethos. Twice a year the campus hosts artist residencies wherein local craftspeople and visiting creatives cohabit and co-create for 15–20 days. They facilitate craft workshops in wood carving, clay modelling, pottery, metal-beating, handloom, and more, often inviting guests to join. Heritage walks, architectural tours of village Kath Kuni houses, cooking classes of regional dishes and honey-tasting are other curated experiences organized by the collective.
Moreover, the workshops and residencies breaks down the “expert” barrier: it invites locals, students, makers and guests into dialogue, creating a distributed network of architectural conscience. In a fragile ecology such as the Himalaya, such embedded engagement is perhaps the only way to counter rapid, unthinking change.
In parallel, the studio engages in applied research, documenting old buildings like Kath Kuni, Dhajji forms, and local detailing, letting that archival work guide new interventions. Some projects involve restoration or upcycling of old Kath Kuni houses; others are adaptive reuse proposals, turning neglected structures into cultural spaces. Their verticals include architecture and design, construction, workshops, ecotourism, and a foundation for community support. And their furniture or product design leans toward nailless joinery, local wood, and modular, minimal frames.
In larger projects they step into urban design and master planning, albeit always through the lens of contextual logic — questioning roads, density, drainage, view corridors, materials, microclimate, and traditional settlement patterns. Their emphasis is not on imposing a signature style, but on surfacing latent systems: how a village sits, how water flows, how timber is harvested, how seasonal cycles may be woven into building life.
The man behind North, Rahul Bhushan is a Himachali-born architect whose trajectory led through CEPT University and a continuing devotion to his home region. His early fascination with the decaying vernacular forms in the mountains matured into a mission: to preserve, revive, reinterpret and regenerate. In interviews, he speaks often of guilt at arriving late to a site already scarred, of wanting to touch as lightly as possible, and of the dialectic between new and old.
He sees North as a living laboratory, shaped by intuitive decisions, local materials and collective authorship. He also believes that designers must be makers, not just remote planners. His vision includes a future off-grid campus with regenerative systems, and the ambition to tell Himalayan architecture’s story to a wider world. In his view, doing this work is urgent as mountain regions face intense climate stress, unregulated construction, erosion and cultural erasure. In that sense, North pas a collective, emerges as an evolving commitment, and a way of building that safeguards the present while preparing for an uncertain future.
Follow North here.
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