Jag Niwas was built in three years on a rock in Lake Pichola, and the water meets its walls on every side, so it seems to float. Its shell is Makrana marble, which reads cool and grey-veined in daylight. It is not warm ivory.

This system works from that one view: pale stone above a hard waterline, Pichola blue as the only saturated colour, brass kept to a hairline. Arches are cusped, panels framed, inlay small and symmetric. Nothing glows, and nothing is softened.