“Visionary clients are rare, yet in 2004 I met one: Shri Rama Shankar Singh. While designing a series of institutional buildings for his ITM campus in Gwalior, we often imagined a place where art and architecture would fuse—more than a gallery, a living commune in which creativity seeped into daily life. In 2007 that idea took form as Eila (Sanskrit for “Earth”), a retreat in Naggar valley overlooking the snow-clad Dhauladhar range. Singh curated every artwork, mural and façade jaali; our studio shaped the site plan, structure and biomorphic shell. He was both patron and mentor, urging me to question each line until it resonated with landscape, history and spirit.”-Manish Gulati, Principal Architect.
Eila does not impose on its hillside; it mirrors it. Lightweight steel tubes and thin concrete folds grow into pod-like cottages that stretch like fingers across the slope, giving each room a 360-degree valley view. Skylights and windows act as eyes, linking Nicholas Roerich–inspired murals inside to the mountain vistas outside. The master plan itself appears as a mural in the café, underscoring art’s total integration.
Visitors enter at road level through the Gate of Confluence, a pavilion whose stone inscriptions recall the Mauryan era. Beneath its folded roof sit a reception lounge and the Kitaabkhana (library), both warmed by patterned jaali light and pendant lamps fashioned from round adda-embroidery frames. From this threshold a stepped path descends past an open-air amphitheatre and performance deck—doubling as a yoga stage—to a heated infinity pool that seems to pour into the valley, inviting reflection rather than conclusion.
Each cottage, named for a different Himachali region, carries unique interior art yet shares the same structural DNA, ensuring unity within variety. Built largely from local materials, Eila is a quiet echo of the ridgelines around it and an ever-evolving canvas for sculpture, painting and performance—an environment where positive energy, culture and nature merge to lift the human spirit.
