High up in the deodar forests just short of Gangotri, the world's first Snow Leopard Conservation Centre has been steadily rising from the earth.
For the main building, supervised by our sister studio HAP, the masonry has reached the timber roof ring beam. The masonry draws from a nuanced palette of locally sourced granite in four natural tonalities, among which the distinctive wave-textured Dashi stone from rural Uttarkashi stands out. Its subtle striations resonate with the geological rhythms of the Himalayan terrain, allowing the walls to read less as imposed objects and more as quiet extensions of the landscape itself. Laid in lime mortar rather than cement, these walls are engineered to breathe, flex, and endure.
The walls are also heaters! A series of Micro-Trombe units is an integral part of the load-bearing stone walls. Designed to capture the morning sun, warm up the air in the cavity behind it, and release the warmth into the building's interior. Seismic resilience design is a must. Movement joints separate the 2.5-storey and 1.5-storey building volumes, allowing each mass to move independently during an earthquake, because each segment can do its own 'rattle and shake'.
Two smaller buildings of SLCC are two distinct personalities. The Forest Department facility adopts a muted stone palette that complements its administrative functions. At the same time, the Deodar Café draws on a vibrant spectrum of granite, projecting a warmer, more social character within the deodar-boulder terrain. This visual identity was refined through 1:1 on-site mock-ups, where masons worked out stone assembly and timber tie-band placement before a single permanent course was laid. The SLCC stone walls are shaped by a dedicated crew of masons including Ashish, Sony, Raqib, Pehel, Kamal, Dinesh, and Indra Bahadur. Note that 1/3 of this team is from Nepal!
As the stone is grounded, what comes next reaches toward the sky. A lightweight covering in Voronoi geometry is on its way to shelter it all. The roof is next.
