The Chandigarh Legislative Assembly building, one of the buildings in the city’s administrative hub designed by French architect Le Corbusier.- Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

“Architecture should be ethical and show empathy toward the human condition,” said Bijoy Jain, whose firm Studio Mumbai received the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture from L’Institut Francais D’Architecture in 2009. The Indian modernist—known for blurring the boundaries between indoors and outdoors, and creating oases of peace from local stone and wood—studied in the U.S. and worked on the Getty Center in Los Angeles. He established his practice in 1996, building a compound that houses dozens of the craftsmen he employs near his own handsome but humble residence in the countryside of Alibag, not far from central Mumbai.

Mr. Jain’s home was recently part of “Where Architects Live,” an installation at the global design fair Salone del Mobile in Milan that re-created the residences of world-renowned talents including Zaha Hadid, Daniel Liebeskind and Shigeru Ban. Mr. Jain said he sees his live-work complex as a laboratory for new ideas and a standard-bearer for old traditions. “There’s a lineage of carpentry and masonry, building with high skill and great efficiency that’s specific to India, and I am transferring that ideology to projects around the world,” said the globe-trotting architect, 49, who is working on projects in Switzerland, Spain and Japan and will teach a semester at Yale this fall. Mr. Jain spoke to us about sustainable design, how he’d blow $20,000 and the most beautiful restaurant in the world.

As a child I was obsessed with: water. I grew up in Juhu, on the coast near Mumbai. I was on the Indian national swim team and swam the English Channel when I was 18. One day, I would like to design a public swimming pool like the old Lido public baths in 1920s Europe.

A formative design experience was: the yearly road trips my family and I took for two months during summer holidays. I was exposed to such diverse architecture, from Le Corbusier’s modern buildings in Chandigarh to ancient complexes built of granite like the Rameshwaram Temple that was scaled so a ceremonial procession of elephants could walk through it.

In India, furniture is: very foreign. A large part of the country still inhabits the floor. The most common piece of furniture we have is the charpai, a four-legged bed made of wood with a woven net or rope mesh. It’s for sitting in during the day and sleeping on at night.

Sustainable design is: a given. In India, a lot of people’s homes are self-built and that’s an ingrained tradition. My projects are driven by location—what materials and building techniques are available locally and what people are familiar with. For me, it’s pure economics and it’s easier to do.

My dream design project is: a school for young children. The school I went to was beautifully designed, without divisions for classrooms, and that influenced my work. There’s a freshness to designing for children—they have fewer preconceived ideas of what a building and landscape could possibly be. It allows you to be free, but not in an irresponsible way.

The most perfectly designed object is: a pencil. It’s light, efficiently designed and very effective. I am fascinated with it as a tool for communication. In some ways, it’s an extension of your mind and your body.