Everybody dreams of owning a ‘nice’ house. If that house could come with a price tag that is significantly lower than conventional buildings, who wouldn’t like to line up for a piece of the action?
Lining up is what clients are doing, for the buildings that R L Kumar of Bangalore designs, using a refreshingly new perspective that he calls ‘Vernacular architecture’. The residential buildings and offices he builds look different. Use of materials like terracotta tiles, stones, brick and woodwork that are locally available, looks great and is aesthetically pleasing, and doesn’t cost a packet. What’s more, his style actually helps rejuvenate the earth, unlike conventional materials (cement, concrete, iron reinforcement) that deplete and clog the environment with rubble and unusable waste products. Kumar is now part of a small but growing band of architects who are promoting this new ‘sustainable construction model’.
Kumar did not start out as an architect. He was a chartered accountant who got involved in an income generation project for urban slum dwellers who had migrated to the cities with skills as brick layers, masons, wood carvers, bamboo weavers and potters, but did not know how to market their skills. Kumar helped them form a handymen’s cooperative and found them job assignments at construction sites for people wanting “something different”.
The Baker effect
A meeting with Laurie Baker, the unconventional builder, in Tiruvananthapuram, changed the course of his life. He began to design houses that merge with the environment (and do not stand out like sore thumbs, thrusting their boxed anonymities into the cityscape), and are far more appropriate for Indian conditions. The clay tile floorings and roof, keep the rooms cool in summer and warm in winter, unlike industrially processed, steel-and-cement-based materials that radiate heat. The cost comes down by 30 – 40 %, the terracotta trellis windows look great and lend a welcoming look to the dwellings, and the open courtyard in the centre allows plenty of air and light without requiring electricity.
Everlasting
But will these buildings be as strong as those using concrete and steel? “Even Tipu Sultan’s palace and fort, and the Taj Mahal, have the same sand-and-rubble foundation that I use, haven’t they stood for centuries?” Kumar retorts. “When people use brick and tiles,” he adds, “it leads automatically to the regeneration of lakes, because of the de-silting. So this technique is sustainable construction, it does not deplete the earth’s resources. And you don’t need World Bank aid for using material that is abundantly available, locally.”
You save on transport costs, you provide employment for artisans who keep alive our indigenous skills and cultural designs — and you get a house that looks nice and inviting and aesthetically pleasing.
Once his designs became popular, he set up the Centre for Vernacular Architecture, which is housed in one of the buildings he designed. The building also houses the offices of Vimochana, an NGO working for women’s empowerment, Streelekha, the feminist bookshop, and the office of the Asian Women’s Human Rights Commission. With tastefully done up handloom furnishings, wooden chairs in ethnic designs, bamboo and batik handicrafts made by indigent women, the complex is a place that is a pleasure to visit. Kumar has a very busy schedule travelling around the state, overseeing building assignments in different towns, but his current pet project is an initiative to bring together students of architecture from different non-western countries for a year long interaction that would help preserve all that is beautiful in each region’s building tradition.
There are today more women than men studying architecture, Kumar points out, adding that it is no longer necessary to mindlessly copy the conventional designs of the west in the name of modernity. In fact, in the name of sustainability and environmental appropriateness, it is the west that is beginning to learn from us.
For more details, visit www.vernarch.com or email: vernarch@vsnl.net
