PROJECTS
Dr Siddapa's residence
Bangalore - Under Construction
An experimental home of a kind, to be built near Amruthahalli, Bangalore. Adobes are cost effective, environmentally friendly and very easy to use in the set paradigms of conventional construction by relacing fired bricks.
So a typical concrete framed building (with a big hat and high boots) are to have infill adobe walls. After searching for local soils, one specimen was selected for making adobes without any stabilizers whatsoever. The sun dried adobe bricks shall be tastefully plastered with mud plasters both inside and outside.
The design as such is aligned to maximize planting space, use grey water for urban agriculture, natural lighting and ventilation techniques. All achieveable at a comparable cost with the urban conventional middle classhousing about 1800 Rs/Sft (2014).
Adityas residence - farmhouse
Tirutthani - Under Construction
A lot can be achieved with a hands on, brave, risk taking young client who understands the visions of an architect. Aditya approached me seeking help to build his farmhouse - home that he would set himself up in to start practicing sustainable farming. He had just bought the land and had a limited budget of Rs 5.0 lakhs to build his home.
Aditya plugged himself into the local support system by becoming a part of the community early on. A great team was put together that was ready for the unique experience to build with vaults and domes. It took about 8 days of being on site with the workers to make them confident enough to carry on building Adobe Vaults.
With the minimum involvement, except a few drawings and a handful of sitevisits. This project is fast nearing completion to be a landlark success.
Urban Infill housing
Bangalore - 2009-2010
It gave the architect an opportunity to showcase rammed earth in a densely populated urban setting. With a few weeks of training and student workshop the team begain to comfortably build with rammed earth. We visited the project once every two weeks to oversee the slow progress.
Murali, the contractor and the owners put in a lot of hands on hours to get the rammed earth walls on the facade themselves. Building with earth , sweat equity offset costs of construction. The lack of cement plasters and paints, meant that the walls would be cost effective.
While the inital walls were great looking, the workers, concreting gang lacked the foresight of the project. A lot of stains and damages to the exposed finishes led to the mud plastering of the rammed earth walls.
Prakruthi - A private Residence
Bangalore 2009-2010
This project began with a slow start with the architect training a construction team on their first rammed earth experience. Stone masonry with ample exposed concrete help the load bearing structure to a height of 33' 0" using mere 9" thick load bearing stabilized rammed earth walls.
With no provision for fans and air conditioning, the home entirely depends on natural stack ventilation.
The rammed earth enclosure creates a year round comfortable and healthy indoor environment. Integrated rainwater harvesting, bio sand filtration and more than 640 sft of terraced urban agriculture, solar water heating reduces lifecycle costs and enables a lifestyle of environmental humility.
Home Sweet Home - A residence
Bangalore 2008-2009
Architect´s parents home built out of rammed earth. Rainwater harvesting (capacity of 20000 l off grid), Dewats System (Off Grid) , Solar water heating, Natural ventilation (Stack, No fans, No AC), Natural Lighting (Skylights). 30% of site restored with native species.
The aim was to maximize urban agriculture (suburban.. in this case). With 5 terraces and plenty of affordances for planting, the home provides for the vegetable and fruit consumption for a family of 4 year round and more.
The images show how the gardens have expanded on this small 2400 sft plot.