The New Indian Express ·
Down to Earth High in the Hills
The first thing you notice at Terra Poetica is not that it is made of mud. It is that you could easily forget it is. Tucked into Gunehar village, a 10-minute drive from Bir, Himachal Pradesh’s paragliding hub, the house looks nothing like the unfinished huts or rustic cob structures that the phrase “mud house” conjures. It has soaring windows, sculptural furniture, books spilling across rooms and views that seem deliberately framed rather than simply revealed. On one side, the Kangra Valley stretches out in a patchwork of villages and paddy fields; on the other, mountains rise into the horizon. Water canals run along both sides of the house, their steady murmur becoming an unlikely soundtrack.
Saumya Kulshreshtha, who imagined and built Terra Poetica feels her relationship with mud was not always intuitive. Born and brought up in Delhi, she once dismissed the idea of living in an clay house. That thought changed after she reached Gunehar in 2021. Kulshreshtha initially ran rented homestays there. Three years later, she was certain she had found something more lasting: a place where she belonged and could be herself. A poet and singer, Kulshreshtha began to build a home that felt like an extension of those identities.
Terra Poetica’s name comes from that intersection of earth and art. “For the mud, we settled on terra, terrestrial, terracotta. Because I’m heavily invested in poetry, poetica became the logical second word,” she says.
Inside, the house feels less constructed than composed. The furniture seems to rise organically from the floor and walls. The kitchen is open to the air, while giant windows invite the valley inside rather than sealing it behind glass. There are more than 2,000 books scattered across the main hall. Rooms are named Khayal (thought), Saaz (melody) and Gehna (jewel), each carrying a story.
And then there is the mud itself. The house has 18-inch-thick earthen walls, built using the rammed-earth technique. During the day, the walls absorb heat slowly and release it gradually at night, helping maintain relatively stable indoor temperatures.
For Saumya, mud is more than practical material. “When anything happens, almost everything will turn back into mud, going back to the earth. That was the idea when I decided to build this place,” she says.
The harder part was not imagining the house, but finding someone who could translate her imagination into reality. That person turned out to be Frank Schlichtmann, a German-born, self-taught architect who has spent more than two decades in Himachal Pradesh. His brief was both philosophical and architectural: to prove that building using the earth did not mean reproducing the visual language of a traditional hut. “I intentionally do not build hobbit houses,” he says. The material of her house is earth, and the architecture is expansive; Terra Poetica is rooted in an old building tradition, although without looking backwards.
“The case for using mud, lime, stone and natural ventilation is therefore not nostalgic; it is scientific” Frank explains.
Perhaps the most revealing thing about the house is what happens when you stop looking at it as an architectural statement and simply spend time there.
Hardik Agarwal, a frequent visitor, understands the appeal. “When I stay here, I do not even go outside to explore. This place in itself feels like a representation of what I come to Himachal for,” he says.
It is easy to understand why. Terra Poetica does not ask you to choose between comfort and nature, or between contemporary design and ancient materials. It quietly suggests that the two were never meant to be opposites.