16 THE OWNER BUILDER � 190 August/September 2015 � © www.theownerbuilder.com.au

Hand-sculpted homesA naturally built kitchen for a children’s home in India

Natural buildingsAs a response, natural building

techniques are having a quiet revival across rural India. Enterprising communities and businesses are now starting to emulate and often re-create the almost obsolete natural building industry using local materials and waste products. This endeavour is proving successful in creating climate-relevant and responsive buildings while also providing enterprising initiatives for local labour and building industries.

Our group was able to learn from and exchange information with a range of projects from small farms to contractor building companies to co-operative

communities, all using natural building techniques and designs.

One such local company, Thannal Hand Sculpted Homes in Tiruvannamalai in central Tamil Nadu, was founded by natural builder and architect Biju Bhaskar with his wife Sindhu Bhaskar in 2011. Noting that a quarter, to a third, of the world’s population still live in homes made from earth, including a large proportion of traditional Indian homes made from hand sculpted mud bricks, Biju and Sindhu aim to imitate this tradition but bring it into the 21st century.

Biju and team have begun building for private clients and members of the community in need, creating awareness of the benefi ts of natural building by doing small low-rise earth friendly shelters.

Our group was privileged to go on a tour of three of these shelters

In March 2015, a group of natural building enthusiasts from Australia visited communities across Tamil Nadu, the most south-eastern state of India, with the intention of exploring and learning from a broad range of alternative building practices.

The Indian construction industry is one of the country’s largest employers and producers of materials (mostly cement, brick and steel). It is responsible for the major input of energy resulting in the largest share of CO2 emissions (22%) into the atmosphere.

In line with the current push globally towards more carbon-neutral dwellings and assessing relative embodied energy consumption in the building sector, India has also begun looking at its building patterns and exploring alternatives for low-cost, low carbon intensive homes.

BY RACHEL GOLDLUSTPHOTOS BY KELVIN DALY

A note on natural building‘A natural building involves a range

of building systems and materials

that place major emphasis on

sustainability. Ways of achieving

sustainability through natural

building focus on durability and

the use of minimally-processed,

plentiful or renewable resources, as

well as those which, while recycled

or salvaged, produce healthy living

environments and maintain indoor

air quality. Natural building tends

to rely on human labour, more

than technology. It depends on

local ecology, geology and climate;

on the character of the particular

building site, and on the needs and

personalities of the builders and

users.’

– Michael G. Smith, The Case for

Natural Building

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18 THE OWNER BUILDER � 190 August/September 2015 � © www.theownerbuilder.com.au

around Tiruvannamalai with Dheeraj Annapureddy, one of Thannal’s newest architect/builders. Dheeraj showed us the range of buildings designed and built by Thannal including wattle and daub, mud brick and bamboo thatch pole structures.

Collaborative design

The most impressive of these is located at a children’s home – a roughly 30m2 kidney-shaped post and beam cob, bamboo and timber building intended to become the new and improved ‘Ammas kitchen.’

The Children’s Home, named thus by its Scandinavian benefactors (representing the desire of the children to have a home and not the stigma of living in an orphanage), is located just outside the city of Tiruvannamalai and houses 36 girls in conventional low slung cement buildings, as most modern Indian dwellings are made.

Thannal, in partnership with the members of the Children’s Home, put a call out to the children for input on the design of their replacement kitchen. The design that is currently close to being fi nished was the product of this collaboration (including input from the Ammas – the term for the women who do most of the domestic and farm work on rural and urban properties – who will be doing the cooking).

The size of the structure was pre-planned with the walls ranging from 2.75m to 4.4m in height, adapting to the size of the bamboo available. The walls are independent of the roof, with a base of

600mm of cob on a foundation of granite stones tapering to 450mm at the top.

The roof rests on the double bamboo posts to give additional support, with teak wood beams used as the building plans to incorporate a living roof, layered as follows:• teak wood beams and bamboo rafters• thin bamboo layer• thin layer of lime and straw (to fi ll the

gaps in the bamboo layer)• packing cardboard for padding• EPDM synthetic rubber sheet• packing cardboard for padding• red soil layer• button rose plants and local grass.

The building is impressive not only for its unusual design, height and curved features, but its use of multiple resources and techniques, which represents the adaptability of the company to respond to local knowledge and use materials sourced in their immediate environment.

Construction

Employing local tradesmen, using a traditional hand press that has been upgraded for making mud bricks and often getting help from the children, the building emulates certain aspects

of traditional Indian architecture and incorporates newer elements of modern cob building design. The result is an impressive building which provides both an educational opportunity and a clever, responsive, practical and conscious natural building.

It had taken just under three months for the kitchen walls to be erected, to two storeys at some points, with the bamboo supports installed and protected from decay from local mites by soaking in a borax and boric acid solution. We were told about the unique design elements and materials and how the project had been largely a process of experimentation and opportunism.

Off-cut marble lintels had been used over the window boxes for stability and a car windscreen was used on the major curved wall. The fl ooring is going to be a combination of terracotta tiles and local granite stones (with a rough fi nish).

Test patches of render had been recently applied to the rough unfi nished cob walls, testing the durability and response of different fi nishes to the prevailing hot, dry and monsoonal weather patterns. The fi nal plaster will have to withstand serious weather extremes across heat, humidity and torrential rain and for this they have looked to traditional local plaster additives rather than settling for cement.

The test patches of plasters adapted for the cob walls use a mix of local soil, straw, cow dung and maida (a form of wheat fl our). Various test patches have different versions of the same recipe,

Above left: Test patches of plaster trial durability and response to local conditions.Above right: Laundry station incorporated existing rocks. Water fl ows to nearby gardens.

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experimenting with casein, linseed oil, cactus juice and lime. After the test patches dry for two days, they make fi ner mixes of the most responsive plaster and apply a second coat and let dry. The ones with the least amount of cracks will then be used for the fi nal plaster.

As in many communities that still use and practice natural building techniques, the fi nish plaster (or fl oor in some cases) is often re-done yearly or seasonally as part of the cycle of regular maintenance. The idea of having a building that does not require upkeep is a fairly foreign concept. As the trend towards brick and concrete houses replaces traditionally built structures, the practice of regular maintenance is increasingly lost.

Rock laundry

Our visit to the Children’s Home was completed by a tour around the property, with a simple yet effective project capturing our attention. Using the existing contours of a rocky site, the laundry and washing station was erected to make the best use of the rocks for washing laundry. It was designed for the water to fl ow into channels, watering nearby permaplot gardens. Convincing the children and Ammas to always use natural detergents is the next problem but simple designs like this show how a fusion of old and new technology can often be the simplest and most benefi cial for developing communities such as these.

The Ammas were present to guide us around during our visit and were excited about their new kitchen, feeling pleased

that their contribution to the practical designs of the building were incorporated so it could be effi cient and functional for their needs.

Community benefi ts

'Ammas Kitchen' is a testament to the development of Thannal’s vision, skills and integration in the area around Tiruvannamalai with a range of visitors, tradesmen and volunteers coming over the three month project to see the structure and learn through doing what building with earth can look like, and cost, in modern India. Thannal hopes to participate in more co-operative building projects in the area, which will demonstrate to the community the benefi ts and relative simplicity in building low embodied energy natural homes.

Showing that you can use local materials and off-cuts in a safe and resilient building with smarter design principles not only creates better homes but provides opportunities for the community and outsiders to engage with responsive natural building products and techniques.

Our group learnt a great deal from the tour with Thannal; seeing a large-scale experimental cob structure during its construction was an inspiration for many embarking on their own projects back in Australia. It was also good for exchanging information and gaining much needed personal experience tips.

We learnt that the use of certain materials and techniques is wholly

climate and environmentally responsive and each build has its own challenges but through the ever-growing natural building community across the world there are a lot more support, information and exchange opportunities available for those of us looking to build with and use natural and local materials. �

The Earthship Australia Natural Building Tour Program is looking to expand for 2016 so please check throughout the year for more information on upcoming tours and opportunities, or if you have suggestions for other natural building sites please get in contact.www.earthshipaustralia.org.au

� Thannal Hand Sculpted Homes

A small natural building awareness group based in a village in Tiruvannamalai, South India, promoting the building of natural homes and experimenting with low embodied energy materials and low tech appropriate technologies.

www.thannal.com

� Earthship Australia

A not-for-profi t association providing an open-communication platform driving the adoption of self-suffi cient off the grid housing across Australia based on renowned architect Michael Reynolds ideas.

www.earthshipaustralia.org.au

Links & resources

Above: Now the walls are erected, the planned living roof is next to be constructed.Right: Dheeraj and the mud brick machine.Far right: Bamboo is used extensively – both structurally and as scaffolding.