What is Low Cost Housing

 cost-effective energy-efficient architecture and designs that

maximized space, ventilation and light and maintained an
uncluttered yet striking aesthetic sensibility.
 use of local materials; and combined this with a design philosophy
that emphasized a responsible and prudent use of resources and
energy
 concepts such as rain-water harvesting, minimizing usage of energy-
inefficient building materials, minimizing damage to the building site
and seamlessly merging with the surroundings.

These days cement is lavishly used not only for mortars and plasters but for
reinforced concrete work. As engineers and contractors we seem to have
forgotten the load bearing properties of brick masonry walls and, very rarely do
we now see a multi-storey building without a reinforced concrete frame. These
frames obviously use up large quantities of cement and steel and very few of
them are in fact necessary. Probably about 90 per cent of our reinforced concrete
frame buildings could have used load bearing brick walls instead, and the
national stocks of cement and steel could have been conserved for jobs where
these materials are essential.
A small example

Ten years ago a university in Wales built a 'five storey hostel block using only
four-and-a-half inch brick walls throughout as load bearing walls with no
framework at all. Essex University is building no-frame brick hostel towers of
fifteen storeys! Similarly our floors between storeys are usually reinforced
concrete slabs which also eat up large stocks of cement and steel. It is
undoubtedly true that such floors are much more satisfactory than the old
wooden floors, but we seem to ignore all the many types of slab which have been
devised to use less cement and less steel. These include various types of filler
slabs and incidentally I usually make good use of burnt clay products such as
hourdis, tiles, bricks etc., for the filler elements, which take the place of heavy
dead weight concrete. Compared with the normal orthodox reinforced concrete
slabs, some of these tried and tested systems reduce the cost of the slab by
10,40 and even 50 per cent and of course save large quantities of the precious
cement and steel for more essential purposes.
Lime is very much cheaper than cement and when it is combined with sand and
surkhi we get a plaster and mortar every bit as satisfactory as cement mortar and
often with extra advantages, and yet we have allowed this plentiful inexpensive
product and technique almost to disappear from the building world altogether.
Very few people realise that the cost of establishing a cement factory is a
hundred times that of starting a similar sized lime factory, both using the same
basic material. Furthermore, there is in fact no advantage in building very huge
lime-producing factories and our building research stations have shown us that
small inexpensive production units can be established at comparatively very little
cost and spread over wide areas to simplify labour distribution and cut down
transit and delivery costs. We have already forgotten that many of our big old
irrigation and power dams, which still serve us efficiently, were built with this
lime-surkhi mortar and knew nothing about this new fangled cement. By
developing economic, simple, wide-spread lime and surkhi production units we
could solve many unemployment problems and produce fine, efficient, versatile
building materials with tremendous savings and reductions in building costs
throughout the land.

Architectural Styles

If this sort of philosophy and understanding of the sources and manufacture of

our plentiful simple basic building materials is followed through consistently and
systematically, it follows that very definite building patterns and styles are
automatically evolved. This is just what is happening in this experiment around
Trivandrum. With a strong effort to produce good honest brickwork and to
eliminate as much steel and cement as possible, a distinctive and recognizable
character to the local architecture is visible. In any case, over the centuries each
district has developed its own various devices and techniques to cope with the
particular and peculiar climatic and physical conditions of the area.

Distinctive architectural styles were not designed by some famous ancient

architect who decreed that such a style will be used in Japan and such another
style will be used in Peru and another style in the Punjab. The upturned horned
roofs of Kerala, China, Japan, etc. are the direct result of their peoples making
use in their districts of that most common, plentiful, useful material, bamboo, to
house them and protect them from natural enemies such as sun, rain,
hurricanes, and wind.
A completely different set of styles has evolved in hot, dry treeless, desert areas
as in parts of Egypt, Iran and India, In almost every district in the world these
natural styles have grown to the pa~terns we saw in the first half of this century.
Has it been wise of us tp abandon this quintessence of experience and research
- (research we may think of as a modern term, but it has been going on as long
as man himself simply because we have found out new, sophisticated and
expensive ways of using sea shells and iron ore in the past few decades?

Sacred Cow-Word

There is a saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Our current
architectural imitations are anything but flattery and certainly not sincere. What,
then, are these buildings in the Trivandrum experiment like? Are they livable? Do
the people who now use them find them practical and comfortable? What are the
snags and the faults? Can these special low-cost ideas be applied only in certain
favourable circumstances? Or can they be widely adapted all over the country?
Are the ideas only suitable for small houses or can they be applied to all types of
building?

Already the experiment has in fact covered a very wide range of buildings and
shows no signs of being in any way limited either to a special district or to a
narrow range of building types. It is being used on houses for almost all strata of
society. There are a number of very low-cost houses. There is a small family
house which has cost anything from Rs 1,200 to Rs 3,000, and the price includes
sanitation, minimal electrical facilities, and a kitchen. Obviously such buildings
are of necessity small and 'basic'. Some are a compact group of minimum living
spaces under a minimum roof area.
That is to say, there are very few internal doors, but the arrangement of space
allows for privacy between different areas where different living functions are
performed so that differing occupations in the house do not intrude on each
other. The architect believes that for the greater part of the year extra private
living space is added to such very small houses if a small courtyard or 'anganam'
is designed in the centre of the building. It can be seen very easily how useful
this extra living area is. It is used for drying fish or vegetables. It is used for all
sorts of occupations such as basket weaving or net making. It is an excellent and
safe place where children can be left to play without getting into mischief in other
people's property.
In many of the houses built-in furniture has been provided by building up to seat
height the granite 'basement', and these are used as seats, beds and tables at
no extra cost. Then come a number of: buildings for lower middle class people.
Accountants, clerks, secretaries, small manufacturers and so on have incomes
that are not small. But all of it gets used up on rent, food, clothes and school
fees. Even in their forties, most of this stratum have not managed to save up
more than a few thousand rupees and even that is intended for marrying
daughters. They do realise, however, that the money they have to spend on rent
over a period of six or seven years could have been enough to build them a
seven or eight thousand rupees house - if such a thing could be done! The
Trivandrum experiment is showing them that it can be done. Surely their need for
housing is a tremendous one and they are really needy. Various bodies,
institutions, governments and religious bodies take up building programmes for
the poor and the needy, but rarely if ever is anything done to help this very large
middle class section of out society which earns and spends carefully but is
unable to save up provision for that 'evil' or rainy day.
A typical house for this group is one built on the edge of one of Trivandrum's
fashionable colonies. The owner is a professor who teaches in a local private
college. His wife also teaches in a high school and they have three school-age
daughters. By agreeing to stick to 'necessities only' in their new house, and to
avoid all unnecessary fancy finishes or any form of 'facade', they now live in a
two storey house which contains a small entrance porch, a long living-dining
room, a small kitchen with a store attached, and an 'office' where private tuition
can be given or exam papers marked. The couple have a bedroom with its own
bathroom and three small doorless rooms for the children opening from a
common. dressing-cum-homework study room and they too have their own small
bathroom. All this cost them a hard-earned Rs. 8,000. There are no frills in the
house (for the children to spoil). It has bare brick walls inside and out and plaster
has only been used in areas like the bathroom and kitchen. There are very few
windows, which have simple wooden shutters, but there is plenty of light and air
provided by brick jali walls. The floors and roof are of reinforced concrete filler
slab which is cool, waterproof and permanent and cost no more than the ordinary
Mangalore-tile roof. The house has stood up well to the passing of three
monsoons and the family is growing up in its own house, which is now paid for,
and debt free.
When we were children, Science had been made our Sacred Cow. We could get
away with the most outrageous statements simply by prefacing them with the
words, 'it is scientifically proved that ' In the building world, our current Sacred
Cow-word is 'Modern.' Any building labelled 'modern,' however ugly or mistaken,
is accepted. But whose are our so-called modern Indian styles? Alas, they are
mainly poor imitations of other countries' efforts to use present day materials and
techniques. How wonderful it will be when our architects and engineers combine
the lessons learned from our own traditional building styles with the honest
undisguised use of our regionally plentiful inexpensive materials.' We will be
seeing no more plaster imitations of that double joist projection of Japanese post-
and-beam construction! The up-side-down arches of Brazil will cease to blindly
copied allover our country and the brutal, reinforced concrete blocks of Europe
will no longer cost us unnecessary and wasteful use of precious, limited supplies
of steel and cement. Once again India will proudly show to the world not poor
pointless copies of others' styles but her own unmistakable Indian Modern
Architecture.

I have been very fascinated with the whole process of development in the
country since a considerable period before Independence when I first came to
India on my way to China in 1940 where I had been involved in leprosy work. In
1944 I discovered that there was an international organization looking for an
architect, engineer or builder to come to India because they had ninety-odd
homes or asylums for leprosy patients, which had to he converted into something
modern and new. I took on this job. Although I had passed my examinations
several years before this, because of the War, I had not had the opportunity to
practice very much as an architect. And here I was a starry-eyed, young
associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects, with the whole of India to go
at!

So I set off on my travels around India to see all these buildings that I had to
convert, and to my horror, I discovered they were miles away from anywhere,
and most of the materials with which these buildings were built were totally
unknown to me. I had brought my textbooks along and thought I knew
everything, for after all, I was an associate of the Royal Institute of British
Architects! But here I was confronted with new materials like laterite, and
construction techniques like Madras terracing. I found very primitive materials
being used everywhere! I had a difficult first year, just trying to find out how to go
about things and what to do. I found the answers slowly and steadily and
strangely enough, not from my own profession but from the people themselves
and from the ordinary craftsmen.

Mud all the way

The thing that hit me in the eye, right from the beginning, was that an enormous
amount of use was made of mud! I knew a little about mud, but not very much.
The first thing I discovered was that mud is one thing in one place and a different
thing in another. It is used for different purposes and is used in different ways!
There are different techniques of sticking it together and making it into a wall or
whatever. This varied considerably, even sometimes in a matter of a few miles,
from one district to another. I began to move around to find out how it had lasted
so well, because many of these buildings that I saw were as much as or more
than a hundred years old. How was this possible with a climate like India's with
its intense heat, cold and the sery ;gong monsoon periods'? I discovered there
were many materials that were mixed with mid; very rarely was it pure mud
straight eat of the ground. It was mixed with grass. .straw, leaves and bhusa
(chaff) I also found Ia very wide range of liquids being used with mud to make it
stick together to prevent cracks. I had quite alarming experiences at times (and
will continue to have them), throughout the forty-five years that I have been
practicing here! I saw that these additional materials were changing as well.
Nothing was static about this whole business of using simple materials. I was
very impressed with the mud-work in a particular district that I used to travel
through regularly. and as usual I tried to find out why it was so good. There were
no cracks although the buildings were very old New ones were also being
constructed in the same manner and all of them were very well kept. But these
people would not tell me what it was they were mixing with the mannal to make it
strong and stable. I thought it was some sort of professional jealousy. They didn't
want me to find out the tricks of their trade!

But after several years of persistence. I discovered that pig urine was being
mixed. This hesitancy in telling me about it was just sheer embarrassment! But
why pig's and why not cow’ s urine? We got hold of pig's urine and on testing it
in laboratories found that the urea content is very much higher than in any other
form of urine including cows' and goats' and human beings’ urine. Urea is a
binder and this is why they used it to make sure that the mud available (which
was of a slightly sandy sort) held together very well and it performed all the
functions that were required.

Empirical basis

I belong to the generation which didn't know what high technology was. Even
reinforced concrete was in its infancy when I was a student and if anything new
was being done in the area we would go about 200-300 miles to see it because it
was such a remarkable affair! The other thing I found about mud was that it's
used for all sorts of things —walls, floors, foundations and even for roofing even
doors, wall plastering Over cane and bamboo and mat material. It was used
extensively as a fire retardant. Though the CBRI has worked for the last twenty
years on fire retardants for thatch, in actual fact, this was already in use by
people using mud. In Africa and in several other areas, apparently they build their
round mud walls for their murals and before putting on the conical wood or
bamboo or grass or whatever form of roof, they pile grass stalks and leaves
inside and around and set it on fire and produce a mild form of ceramic building.

In the Plywood Institute in Bangalore extensive research has been carried out on
compressed hardboards, sheets and coconut palm. The latter has some sort of
substance in it, presumably a sort of resin that is released at a particular
temperature, and by chopping it and hot-pressing it at a particular temperature, it
produces a shiny golden green substance —hardboard — which is water-
resistant, fire-resistant and acid-resistant. But of course, after the manner of our
research institutes, they are not there to promote its use, or to make use of it. It is
handed over to an entrepreneur who makes a little bit of it, sells it at about three
times the cost of marine ply —no takers —and, of course, he has the right to it
over a certain number of years. And there it lies, unused, not available for any
one else. So there are other factors in this whole business of evolution, of
growing, of developing our old original basic materials that sometimes pose
problems that prevent our using them.

Before we came along with our high technologies and our science, people over
thousands of years were doing what we are now pleased to call research and
development. Anywhere you go in India, any village, any rural area (and
remember, there is still over 80 per cent of the population in rural areas and their
needs are 80 per cent of the needs of the nation), there is this, `rural' design that
is steadily going on, and this research is not something that was thought out
suddenly. They did not have research institutes. It was a system of trial and error
—an empirical form of development. People have used what is actually
underneath them and around them: the earth, the things that they can pull out of
the earth and so on. They used simple materials to protect themselves from the
rain, sun, animals, insects and other human beings. They had very primitive
forms of transport, and there was never any thought of importing materials, all of
which has resulted in this very distinctive architecture. I insist on calling these
'rural indigenous designs' for building. I think they're very fine examples of pure
architecture because they use materials honestly and straightforwardly in an
enormous variety of ways, and find solutions to all the problems we human
beings have, living in a somewhat hostile world.

Stone

The use of stone was also staggering. The methods of splitting a stone, breaking
it up for use.... I don't find it very much now, but in several areas in the country, I
found these huge granite boulders. Usually there were women and children who
would just sit hammering away, making a row of holes all the way across a slab.
Then they would hammer in dry wooden pegs. At the CBRI, a stone block has
been developed to use up all the waste stone. Two or three lumps in the mould,
fill it in with concrete all the way around, and you have a nice hardboard block
with more or less waste material apart from the cement and the concrete that you
put around the stone. This sort of system is still used and was used by our
ancestors in different parts of the country in similar forms, laying two planks of
wood alongside, filling the space between with stone and ramming it with mud
which has some additive or some form of reinforcement. In the Himalaya there is
a beautiful slaty sort of stone. Either it was used in dry form without any mortar,
or with a mud mortar. In an earthquake zone in the Himalaya the whole system of
building was with dry stone and mud —very thin mud in between the stone
allowed the slaty stones to move one over the other. I saw no collapses of
buildings at all due to the earthquakes. When the whole area started to be
developed with a capital 'D', concrete and cement came into the district and
these stones were neatly cemented together. This resulted in a lot of cracking
and damage during the earthquakes. So inspite of our cleverness in getting
higher and higher with our technology we weren't solving the actual basic
problem of the district.

The challenge of shelter

We have between 20-30 million families who have next to nothing to live under,
no form of shelter at all. We have another 50-70 million families living in
conditions that are very deprived —so-called huts or houses which are unlikely to
last very long. The questions which arise are: Why don't they use all these simple
techniques? Why don't they use the mud? The number of architects, engineers,
or contractors who build and design buildings in the country are altogether less
than one per cent of the number of buildings that go up in the country. Who's
doing all the rest of them? Multiply a number like 20,000 houses by the amount
of money that you think could build the lowest possible cost house, and
immediately you have vast astronomical figures that the government obviously
has not got or is not prepared to use to meet the housing needs of the people.
Can any form of technology that has been devised yet provide a shelter of say
150 or 200 sq feet for a family to live in? Are we just going to let ordinary people
go 'mucking around with mud', in their own way doing what they can? (And of
course they're losing these skills more and more). Do we, as a profession have
any sense of responsibility towards them?

What is an architect? Is he just there to design this 0.1 per cent of the buildings,
these high-rise buildings? I'm not suggesting that there is no place for high-rise
buildings and dams and five-star hotels which cost a lot of money. The fact
remains that they are a very small percentage of the actual houses or building
needs of the country. We can go looking for high technologies as much as we
can, but meanwhile, we have to get these 20 million families under some sort of
reasonable shelter. Do we know how to do it? I've just come here from Madras,
where NASA, the architectural students association of India was having its
annual convention, the theme of which was 'Shelter for the Homeless'. A very
large number of students were crying out: "We don't know what to do!" "We've
not been taught to cope with this sort of a problem! It is there; we are aware of it.
It is true we hoped to do this, that or the other. We hoped to win competitions and
we hoped to have big buildings, but we will feel very uncomfortable if we don't do
anything about the shelter problem." Now, this is from young people whom we
normally think of as being irresponsible towards civic and social responsibilities.
But there they were repeatedly saying: "You are not giving us the education that
we need. You take us to a slum, it's the same slum everytime. They (the slum
dwellers) are tired of us going there and every time asking, 'How much money do
you have? How many children? What about water?' We make these surveys and
then we do nothing about them!" So I think it's not just futile to talk of mud and
pig's urine and thatch, etc. I think it's still relevant as long as we have these
terrible discrepancies from one end of the scale to the other. I think we are
irresponsible, even criminally irresponsible if we do nothing about it.

Viable alternatives to wonderful brick

As regards alternative building materials in the country, we do have those

alternatives in practice. We have mud and it's used in a hundred different ways
over the country. Those are the alternatives. We think mud is primitive. We want
reinforced concrete or something prefabricated or prestressed or whatever it is.
And we're continually working for substitutes, not alternatives. All these materials
had something in common. They were all almost totally energy-free, other than
the human energy of picking them up, mixing them, cutting and chopping them,
etc. Can there be anything more important than this understanding of energy? I
think brick is one of the most wonderful building materials that has ever been
invented. There are very good reasons that a brick is a brick —its size, its
shape... it's the amount of mud you can pick up, the amount of mud you can pat
into a little square, the amount of material you can catch in your hand when you
arc working up on that wall and the workers throw up a brick to you. You can just
catch it like a cricket ball! You can hold it in this, hand while you put your mortar
on the wall that you're already building and then put it in place. You can't do that
with a concrete block or a hollow block or any of the other blocks that we have
devised. You have got to put your trough down. You've got to get down, lift the
thing up, get it on, and put it into position especially when you're working at a
height —in the second storey or the third storey. The block is a very difficult thing
to use, but a brick? No! And you can use it for foundations, for walls, for roofs. I
think the only thing I have not used a brick for is the door and I'm determined to
do it before I die! I'll have. to find a client who is ready to let me do a brick door
for him!

I have to think twice when I have to build a house —an ordinary 2,000 ft for
middle class/upper middle class persons, because I'm responsible for the death
of four large trees! In Kerala, all bricks are burnt by wood; we don't get coal. It's
too far away and transport is too difficult, so I have had to lay off wood. What are
my alternatives to things that bricks normally do? One of them is stone, another
of them is mud. The biggest problem that I have in using mud is not with the mud
itself, (I have done two-storeyed buildings with quite heavy roof structures and so
on, and intermediate floor structures with mud) but it is the client: "We don't want
mud", or "Mud? You mean to say I should build my house with mud?"; "But you
do understand, don't you, that in my position...." This is the usual reaction of so
many of our clients and we just give in and say, "Yes, all right, if you don't want
mud, we'll have brick." We don't tell a client that he is going to destroy four full-
grown trees to have his bricks. Are we using our knowledge and our position and
our professional status to suggest these things and even insist on them with a
private client, and these private clients are probably only 0.01 per cent of the
population? But the government? Do we do anything about trying to persuade
the government about the use of mud? I'm not saying that mud is the the only
possibility, but it is there. We have done an enormous amount of research in the
last ten years and even our organizations are pushing the use of mud. But the
prejudice against mud is there. Any client that I suggest mud to —"Well, it's a very
nice idea Mr. Baker, very romantic, but no, I think we'll stick to something more
solid!" and the thing is brushed aside.

So should we architects assert ourselves some more and do we know anything

about the material? The really pertinent thing is: of all the members of the various
institutes of architects, how many of us actually have the knowledge? If anybody
came to us and said he wants to build a big house or a school OF whatever it is
in mud, would we be able to do it? Woqld we take on the job? I'm often told that
I'm trying to take people back to the middle ages or even worse, but I think mud
is still relevant. The usual question that is asked of me is, "It's all very well for this
rural India that you are so romantically inclined about, but what about Delhi,
Bombay, Bangalore?" I think it's still relevant there. I'm repeatedly asked, "You
don't have mud on the spot in the middle of Bombay or Delhi, etc." But then
neither do you have cement or steel on the spot. And that is another thing that all
these traditional materials have in common. Not only are they energy-free, but
they are also transport-free, or virtually so. They are dug out, prepared,
manufactured, added or subtracted to on the spot, meaning a matter of a few
kilometres over which you could carry them, either head-loaded or by bullock
cart. This is one of the very big inputs into the whole of our building materials
system these days —transportation.

We shouldn't forget our cultural heritage in architecture. We should not abandon

the use of traditional materials. It's wonderful stuff. A lot of it does look decrepit; it
gets worse and worse. But, on the other hand, you have got the answers to
practically every problem of shelter we have in the country, in this indigenous
architecture.

Most people have very differing ideas about what an architect is. The dictionaries
say that an architect is one who practises architecture and architecture is the art
and science of building! After I qualified as an architect I worked in two or three
well known architects' offices but it was deadly dull work. I was relieved when
World War II broke out and I was posted, after a time, to China, of all places.
After a few years there in medical work I tried to return to England via India but I
had to wait for a boat for three months. Everyone was telling me to quit India,
which was very foolish because if anyone tells me to quit, I stay.

Looking back I realise that my architectural education was very different from
that which is given to the architectural students here. My school of architecture
was allied to the school of art and shared the same building. We rubbed
shoulders with painters, sculptors, potters, fabric designers, stained glass
window makers. Not only did we rub shoulders but in the evenings we budding
architects had to take art courses. I did pottery, ceramics, stone carving and so
on. Our engineering professors came to us from time to time and did what they
had to and went away again. But here in Trivandrum the college of architecture is
a branch of the engineering college, and as far as I know they have no
connection with the college of art. I preferred my way and I have never run a
proper architect's office. I have close to my bed a small, old drawing board—the
same one I had in school. I broke my T square quite a long time ago and never
bought another. I have an old brass pair of compasses which belonged to my
older brother and it was passed on to me when I first went to school. So I don't
look the part at all!

To me probably the most interesting part of designing a building is dealing with

the clients—, getting to know them, how they live and work and finding out what
sort of a building they dream of. It is exciting to put on to paper what you think is
in their heads, and then to go on altering or adding or deleting until you think you
have put down what they want. We were taught very firmly and consistently that
the client should always be our prime consideration and, indeed, our inspiration.
'You will be putting up their building not yours,' we were often told. An equally
interesting and absorbing part of practicing architecture is translating your two-
dimensional drawings into three-dimensional buildings. I have to be on the site to
enjoy this transition from drawings to buildings. Not to be involved in building
would be, to me, as foolish as buying a camera and film, viewing and clicking the
trigger, getting a negative done, but not getting the print.
From a practical point of view also, while I clamber about on the scaffolding, I
suddenly realise that I will get a much better view, or more breeze, if I move the
window or make it bigger. And so on. I like to make the most of the colour and
texture of materials, rather than to plaster everything over and then paint on
colours. To do this I have to work with the masons and other workers to show
them how I want them to use materials;—not necessarily the same way in each
building. So, to me, involvement in the construction work is a must and far more
important than desk work.

Another aspect was drummed into us as students: we were told we were the only
ones who had a complete overall view and understanding of our building—as a
unified product. 'You are not just doing a plan or an elevation, you even know
how you hope to see your clients in their building after it is up and finished.' Our
professor likened us to the conductor of an orchestra. He has the full score and
he knows the musical item being performed. Each instrument player only has the
music he is to play and the conductor controls his playing. Most famous
conductors can even take over almost any instrument and show how they want it
to sound at a particular time and place in the performance. Likewise the engineer
may have perfect knowledge of his bit of the design—and his specialized
knowledge may be essential—but he knows nothing of the client's needs and
desires, or of the total effect the whole completed building will have on its
surroundings and on all who pass by. Similarly, with the plumber and sanitary
man, the electrician, the paving expert, but overall, controlling and using to good
effect all these, is the architect—the conductor.

Finally, in my day it was rubbed into us that the architect should have and show
good manners and his architecture should be similarly good mannered! Very
occasionally we are invited to design an isolated monumental building, all on its
own in the middle of a park or campus with its own special surroundings. But 99
out of every 100 buildings we do will be in a row, or a block, or a nagar. The
other buildings may be new, or indifferent, or good, or commonplace but we have
to take our place among them and we must not show bad manners by competing
or showing off, or by being defiant.
Again we were told, and how true it is, that a painter or sculptor will produce his
masterpiece and it will be bought by someone and put in a room or a gallery—but
only those who desire to, will go and see it. But our artistry is there before all who
pass along that road and they have little option but to look at what we have done.
So we architects have to ask ourselves—is the building we have created going to
stick out like a sore thumb? Or will it give joy and pleasure? Will it add to our
culture? There's an old saying: manners maketh the man. I think they also make
good architecture

I personally think it is stupid and two-faced to suggest that a rural family needs
less and inferior accommodation than an urban family. As far as codes and
regulations are concerned I believe these are created to help enforce structural
stability and to remove the hazards which can be caused by fire, bad sanitation,
cyclones, earthquakes, heavy rain and floods and soon. Either your building is a
fire hazard or it is not whether you are rural or urban. Health hazards from
pollution or bad sanitation, etc are hazards wherever they are.

Accomodation, that is living spaces, are also, I believe, the same. For example
the kitchen must have light and air, the fire place should be energy efficient and
not waste fuel or create smoke which can blow all through the house. A rural
family, mother, father, one or two children, may be a grandparent and so on all
need different spaces in which to sleep. These may not be three or four rooms,
but partitions or divisions can create privacy even in one single room.
Construction techniques and materials need to be good, energy saving, strong,
water proof and so on. In all these varying matters of planning and design I see
no difference between urban or rural needs. People sometimes say, "But you
can't use mud walls in a city; there is no mud available anyway." They apparently
think that bricks, stone and concrete are found or manufactured in cities.
However, there are considerable differences between the living styles and
patterns and the occupations of families in towns and villages. Obviously, it is
easier, indeed often necessary, to keep birds and animals when living in rural
areas while it is not possible to keep them in towns.
In towns, most employed people got out to work in shops, offices, markets,
factories, etc. So they rarely need space in their homes for occupations; whereas
in villages and rural areas there are far more home industries: —basket and net
making, food drying and preparation for both home consumption and for sale.
There are dozens of space taking occupations, bee keeping for honey,
mulberries and worms for silk rearing, spinning, dying and weaving for fabrics
and so on and all these occupations are very often "cottage industries". So, to
me, the very big and obvious difference between urban and rural housing is that,
the rural house calls for far more space and amenities than the urban house....

When I have to plan for rural people, I find I have to balance out what I can do
while providing space for family living AND for cattle, birds and occupations but
only having the same limited amount of money as I have for an urban family.
Fortunately, a lot of this provision for work and animals usually only requires a
good roof, while walls may not be necessary, and not so much costly finish
required for floors. So I find that while planning the rural cottage of 250 square
feet, I have to try and get my living quarters into 150 square feet but I can give at
least as much space, or even more, for occupations and livestock, because
flooring, windows and doors are not required.

I am showing three plans here. The first one has the usual family living needs:
—a "sit out" or verandah, three sleeping spaces, a kitchen and a latrine—but it
also has a rear covered area where animals or poultry or a loom, etc can be
housed. The second plan also provides an absolute minimum of living space,
because I believe that the rural compound is used more, and is more vital and
necessary than the house itself; so I provide a compound wall all round a small
plot. It gives privacy and security. Animals need not stray away.

Various space taking occupations can be safely spread out, and so on and as
and when money and materials are available —lean-to sheds, or roofs, or whole
rooms can be constructed against the perimeter wall leaving a courtyard space in
the middle, open to the sky. It also, incidentally, leaves room for a biogas plant
system to use all the wastes of the family and animals. Strangely enough,
although rather more bricks (or stones etc) are used, roofing and flooring is less
and so cost-wise there is little difference between these two plans. The third plan
is what we have called a "Core House" That is the essentials are provided first—:
an energy efficient cooking place, a latrine and bathing place, some built-in
furniture like a diwan and a table, and two separate sleeping spaces (which of
course are used as 'living room' by day). The core house is deliberately high so
that the owners can add on whatever they like all round the house, with the core
protecting the adjoining additions. There can be more living rooms, or there can
be more working or animal verandahs, according to the needs and occupations
of the family.

Before closing this article I want to make an appeal to all concerned to try and
be realistic about rural housing. Materials are not automatically cheaper and if
there are things like cement, steel, glass, etc they are much more costly. The
rural person is not just hanging around idly and able to devote his time to building
a house for himself. The urban wage earner may have working hours from 8 till 5
etc; but the rural work hours can be far longer and intense and, when important
seasons like sowing, planning, weeding, harvesting, etc are over, there are all
sorts of maintenance jobs to be done in the little time between seasons. His
basic needs are greater than the urban person who has a water connection
nearby, can buy gas for cooking, has electricity available, markets and jobs close
by. The rural person may have to go miles for water or in search of fuel. There
are no 'mains' or 'drains' to take away his wastes. Very often he has no proper
access, neither for bringing materials for building or for occupations, nor for
transporting goods to markets and places where he can trade the fruits of his
occupations. We are far too inclined to romanticise his whole existence and
forget his life of constant struggle.

In the end, it means that we cannot sincerely and effectively plan rural housing
from a city office desk. We have to go to the villages and plan for their real
needs.

Distinctive architectural styles were not designed by some famous ancient

architect who decreed that a certain style will be used in Japan and a certain
other style will be used in Peru and yet another style in Punjab. The upturned,
horned roofs of buildings as found in Kerala, China and Japan arc the direct
result of the people of those places making use of the most common, plentiful,
useful material: bamboo— to house and protect them from natural enemies such
as sun, rain, hurricanes and wind. A completely different set of styles has
evolved in hot, dry, treeless, desert areas, as in parts of Egypt, Iran and India; in
almost every district in the world these natural styles have grown to the patterns
that could be seen in the first half of this century.
Our 'backward' ancestors had learned how to live with and cope with the
problems of climate. They had teamed that a pitched or a sloping roof lessened
the effects of all these hazards. They knew the movements of air currents and
placed their wall openings almost at ground level. They knew that hot air rises
and allowed it to travel upwards from the low eaves to the openings at the ends
of the high ridge. They understood and applied principles of insulation; their
roofing materials formed hollow cellular protective layers and their storage
spaces provided insulation from the midday sun. They had understood that wall
surfaces can absorb and retain just as much heat as a roof surface, so they kept
these walls as small in area as possible and never left them unprotected. They
knew that eye-strain from working out in the sun could be alleviated by rest in an
area where glare was eliminated and they used smooth, hard, light-coloured
surfaces sparingly and left the natural materials—wood, laterite, brick, stone—
exposed. Their practical knowledge of the properties of these differing building
materials was amazing. They knew, for instance, how to design their timber and
wood work to avoid warping, twisting and cracking.

Village planning and site utilization were equally functional and delightfully
simple. Usually there were rows (terraces) of houses all joined together with
common dividing partition walls; sometimes when anywhere from three to ten or
twelve brothers lived in such a row of houses, the front veranda was common to
all. These multi-housed rows of dwellings were usually under one big long
common roof. The row followed the contours wherever possible, and as a
consequence was sometimes curved. The row of houses was usually sited to
overlook the terraced fields below, to catch the sunshine, and to get protection
from rain, snow and cold winds from the forest or steep hillside behind. The
foundations were almost invariably built on stone straight off solid rock —a
foundation of Mother Earth herself. Very rarely did the people use earth that
could be terraced or cultivated, but they chose their building sites along rocks,
ridges or spurs of the mountains where cultivation would be impossible. Their
foundation problems were therefore nil, and the rock they quarried for building
the foundation and basement walls was split or blasted out from the same bed
rock on which they would build. I never saw any rubble being carried more than a
hundred yards and, of course, it was all carried on someone's head.
The superstructure walls were also built of the same quarried-on-the spot stone.
Sometimes it was big and square and chunky, in other places it was more like
thick slate in large sheets or slabs only a few inches thick. And of course it was
all built in mud mortar. The walls were heaped on the inside with mud, or mud
and cow-dung, or lime mortar or plaster. Sometimes the outside-Was left as it
was, or, sometimes, it too was treated with some sort of lime plaster. Doors and
windows were often of delightfully shaped and simply carved woodwork using
chir-pine or deodar, or occasionally some other local country wood such as tuni.
But this timber was always found within a few hundred yards, or at most a mile or
two, of the house being constructed.

The wood for the roofs was extravagantly lavish in size. Whole tree trunks were
used for the ridge-pole and purlins and trusses. Again, all these roofing materials
were close at hand. Occasionally a wealthier person would send a few miles for a
thinner quality of slate which could be shaped and squared, but this was their
form of showing off and was not a necessity and fortunately not often indulged in.
This whole roof construction over the wall construction, was completely adequate
to cope with the climatic extremes of heat and dryness in summer, with the
violent rain storms, and with the (heavy snow in the winter.

COSTFORD is a voluntary organization, which provides technological assistance

for rural development. It was founded in 1984 by Dr. D. R. Chandradutt, Dr. K.N.
Raj an economist and the then Chairman of the Center for Developmental
Studies, Mr. Achutha Menon, the former Chief Minister of Kerala. The idea of
COSTFORD took root when Mr. Achutha Menon showed interest in the
alternative design philosophy and building materials and techniques promoted by
Mr. Laurie Baker.
COSTFORD was registered as a non-profit voluntary organization in 1984 and
started its construction activities in 1986. The head office of COSTFORD is
situated in Thrissur. It operates form another 13 sub centers, 12 all over Kerala
and 1 in Gurgaon. COSTFORD works on government as well as private
construction work. They have carried out large rural development projects of
Central and State Government agencies. Collectively COSTFORD has been able
to realise about 20,000 buildings in Kerala.
COSTFORD attempts to use some of the construction materials such as lime,
bamboo, mud and exposed bricks and architectural elements such as the rat-trap
bond, filler slab (void former) roofing used often by Laurie Baker in his work in
Kerala. For their core activities, COSTFORD is supported by The Department of
Science and Technology, Govt. of India; the department of Rural Development
Govt. of India; the department of local Self Government, Govt. of Kerala and
Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO).
Baker has served as the Chairman of COSTFORD and played an active part in
the early years of COSTFORD. However, Laurie Baker worked by himself,
directly with his masons, carpenters and workmen and never started a
conventional personal architectural firm (with architects, draftsmen, etc) of his
own.
COSTFORD uses a variety of techniques that were pioneered by Laurie Baker,
including rat trap bond walls, filler slab roofing, brick jalli, patch-pointing, and
exposed brickwork. COSTFORD strongly believes in preservation of the
environmental resources and promotes the use of energy-efficient materials and
which minimize the use of energy-intensive materials such as cement, steel, and
glass. They use fired bricks or mud blocks stabilized with lime and rice husks for
masonry. They also experiment with renewable building materials such as
bamboo, which they use as reinforcement for the foundations with lime concrete
or for slabs where they use bamboo as an exposed form with concrete on top. [7]