Powdikonam is one of the more scenic suburbs in Thiruvananthapuram, a town full of getaway greenery. Up on a little hillock here is a house that has an earthy yet fairy-tale allure, like a cross between a Kerala temple and an elegant tree house.
The coloured glass bottles embedded in the walls, the sloping tiled roofs, the Kerala-style balconies and their wooden screens that let in textured light are all plainly inspired by legendary architect Laurie Baker, whose birth centenary is being celebrated across the country this year. The resemblance goes beyond the superficial. What makes P.B. Sajan’s house a true Laurie Baker building is the philosophy behind it.
Laurence Wilfred Baker was born in 1917 to conservative Quaker parents in Birmingham. His accountant father had hoped his son would follow in his footsteps but young Laurie graduated from the Birmingham School of Architecture instead.
World War II broke out soon after and Baker spent much of it in Burma and China, serving as an ambulance driver. While on his way back from China to England, when he was forced to spend a few months in Bombay waiting for his passage, Baker happened to meet Mahatma Gandhi.
Five-mile principle
In the course of their conversation on housing for the poor, Gandhi told Baker that the ideal house should be built with materials found within a five-mile radius of the house. This dictum stayed with Baker for the rest of his life. “What clearer explanation is there of what appropriate building technology means than this advice by Gandhiji,” he wrote. Sceptical of the idea initially, he later wrote, “With 40 years of building behind me, I have come to the conclusion that he was right, literally word for word.”
Baker passed away 10 years ago, but architects who were associated with him have imbibed similar ideals.
Architect P.B. Sajan worked with Daddy, as he was fondly called by his students, for more than 20 years. He is currently Joint Director of The Centre of Science and Technology for Rural Development (Costford), an organisation co-founded by Baker, and is also Member Secretary of the Laurie Baker Centre for Habitat Studies. In building his own house, Sajan has followed Gandhiji’s and Baker’s 5-mile principle.
Most of the materials are local. The three-bedroom house stands on a foundation of random rubble masonry and a 56,000-litre sump. Its 9-inch cob walls were built using mud from the site, and plastered with a mix of mud, rice husk and lime.
Granite, coconut, bamboo
The load-bearing pillars and most of the beams are of granite, coconut and bamboo; only a few beams are of conventional concrete. Coconut, of course, is ubiquitous in Kerala but strangely, completely absent in construction today.
Sajan explains that with the advent of machine cutting, people no longer made the effort to separate the soft inner wood from the decay-resistant outer wood.
Solution
Sajan’s solution was to immerse the whole trunk in boric acid for two days. With this, the inner wood too gets treated and the resulting glossy brown pillars and beams in Sajan’s house will last 80-100 years.
The choice of boric acid was because it is the least harmful to people and the environment. “There are other chemicals to treat wood. The insects will die. You will also die,” Sajan observes mildly.
The other main construction item is bamboo, available in plenty locally.
The roof of the parking lot (which is also the floor of the sit-out just above), the walkway, the roof and beams of the first floor bedroom, the bamboo seating in the mezzanine balcony all add to the pleasant feeling of having a little bit of the outdoors inside.
The granite used in some pillars and edges was recycled from old boundary posts. Also enjoying a second life after a stint elsewhere are the beautiful teak windows.
“Most of them are 80 years old. The oldest is 185 years old,” says Sajan.
The gleaming wooden floor in the bedrooms? Recycled floor tiles. The wooden furniture? Recycled wood. The doors? Old, of course. The stairs to the second floor? Also recycled.
One exception
An exception to the 5-mile rule in the house is the Kota flooring in the open kitchen, which Sajan’s architect wife Shailaja Nair wanted.
The building is green in other ways too. The household waste, including kitchen and garden waste, goes into a biogas plant used used for cooking.
“It is not entirely sufficient for us. But earlier, we used one gas cylinder a month; now, a cylinder lasts three months,” Sajan says. Similarly, rooftop solar panels have lowered electricity bills to a mere Rs. 150 a month.
Economical house
Additionally, there is the economic benefits of going green. The 2,700 sq. ft house cost only Rs. 20.5 lakh to build in 2012. In 2013, it won an award in the national-level competition of the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO), for its design, affordability, and environment-friendliness.
Enjoying the breeze in the bedroom on the topmost floor and watching light filter through the bamboo curtains, I can vouch for how Sajan’s house epitomises Laurie Baker’s ethos. It demonstrates how sustainability, aesthetics and comfort can all be part of the same process.
The house has helped evangelise the use of sustainable, once-traditional but now non-conventional materials like bamboo. There is now a growing group of people in Thiruvananthapuram who have used these materials and methods in their own houses and so become environmentalists, according to Sajan. Daddy would have been pleased.
The coloured glass bottles embedded in the walls, the sloping tiled roofs, the Kerala-style balconies and their wooden screens that let in textured light are all plainly inspired by legendary architect Laurie Baker, whose birth centenary is being celebrated across the country this year. The resemblance goes beyond the superficial. What makes P.B. Sajan’s house a true Laurie Baker building is the philosophy behind it.
Laurence Wilfred Baker was born in 1917 to conservative Quaker parents in Birmingham. His accountant father had hoped his son would follow in his footsteps but young Laurie graduated from the Birmingham School of Architecture instead.
World War II broke out soon after and Baker spent much of it in Burma and China, serving as an ambulance driver. While on his way back from China to England, when he was forced to spend a few months in Bombay waiting for his passage, Baker happened to meet Mahatma Gandhi.
Five-mile principle
In the course of their conversation on housing for the poor, Gandhi told Baker that the ideal house should be built with materials found within a five-mile radius of the house. This dictum stayed with Baker for the rest of his life. “What clearer explanation is there of what appropriate building technology means than this advice by Gandhiji,” he wrote. Sceptical of the idea initially, he later wrote, “With 40 years of building behind me, I have come to the conclusion that he was right, literally word for word.”
Baker passed away 10 years ago, but architects who were associated with him have imbibed similar ideals.
Architect P.B. Sajan worked with Daddy, as he was fondly called by his students, for more than 20 years. He is currently Joint Director of The Centre of Science and Technology for Rural Development (Costford), an organisation co-founded by Baker, and is also Member Secretary of the Laurie Baker Centre for Habitat Studies. In building his own house, Sajan has followed Gandhiji’s and Baker’s 5-mile principle.
Most of the materials are local. The three-bedroom house stands on a foundation of random rubble masonry and a 56,000-litre sump. Its 9-inch cob walls were built using mud from the site, and plastered with a mix of mud, rice husk and lime.
Granite, coconut, bamboo
The load-bearing pillars and most of the beams are of granite, coconut and bamboo; only a few beams are of conventional concrete. Coconut, of course, is ubiquitous in Kerala but strangely, completely absent in construction today.
Sajan explains that with the advent of machine cutting, people no longer made the effort to separate the soft inner wood from the decay-resistant outer wood.
Solution
Sajan’s solution was to immerse the whole trunk in boric acid for two days. With this, the inner wood too gets treated and the resulting glossy brown pillars and beams in Sajan’s house will last 80-100 years.
The choice of boric acid was because it is the least harmful to people and the environment. “There are other chemicals to treat wood. The insects will die. You will also die,” Sajan observes mildly.
The other main construction item is bamboo, available in plenty locally.
The roof of the parking lot (which is also the floor of the sit-out just above), the walkway, the roof and beams of the first floor bedroom, the bamboo seating in the mezzanine balcony all add to the pleasant feeling of having a little bit of the outdoors inside.
The granite used in some pillars and edges was recycled from old boundary posts. Also enjoying a second life after a stint elsewhere are the beautiful teak windows.
“Most of them are 80 years old. The oldest is 185 years old,” says Sajan.
The gleaming wooden floor in the bedrooms? Recycled floor tiles. The wooden furniture? Recycled wood. The doors? Old, of course. The stairs to the second floor? Also recycled.
One exception
An exception to the 5-mile rule in the house is the Kota flooring in the open kitchen, which Sajan’s architect wife Shailaja Nair wanted.
The building is green in other ways too. The household waste, including kitchen and garden waste, goes into a biogas plant used used for cooking.
“It is not entirely sufficient for us. But earlier, we used one gas cylinder a month; now, a cylinder lasts three months,” Sajan says. Similarly, rooftop solar panels have lowered electricity bills to a mere Rs. 150 a month.
Economical house
Additionally, there is the economic benefits of going green. The 2,700 sq. ft house cost only Rs. 20.5 lakh to build in 2012. In 2013, it won an award in the national-level competition of the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO), for its design, affordability, and environment-friendliness.
Enjoying the breeze in the bedroom on the topmost floor and watching light filter through the bamboo curtains, I can vouch for how Sajan’s house epitomises Laurie Baker’s ethos. It demonstrates how sustainability, aesthetics and comfort can all be part of the same process.
The house has helped evangelise the use of sustainable, once-traditional but now non-conventional materials like bamboo. There is now a growing group of people in Thiruvananthapuram who have used these materials and methods in their own houses and so become environmentalists, according to Sajan. Daddy would have been pleased.