KERALA TOUR

MADE BY:AFIFA NUZHATHAMZAH ALI

MOHD. SHAHIDNOOREEN FATIMA

B. ARCH. III YR

LAURIE BAKER• Laurie Baker is one of the very few architects who has had the opportunity and the

stamina to work on such a remarkably varied spectrum of projects ranging from fishermen’s villages to institutional complexes and from low-cost mud housing schemes to low cost cathedrals.

• Throughout his practice, he became well known for designing and building low cost, high quality, beautiful homes, with a great portion of his work suited to or built for lower-middle to lower class clients.

• His buildings tend to emphasize prolific masonry construction, instilling privacy and evoking history with brick jaliwalls, a perforated brick screen which invites a natural air flow to cool the buildings' interior, in addition to creating intricate patterns of light and shadow.

• Another significant Baker feature is irregular, pyramid-like structures on roofs, with one side left open and tilting into the wind.

• Baker's designs invariably have traditional Indian sloping roofs and terracotta Mangalore tile shingling with gables and vents allowing rising hot air to escape.

• Curved walls enter Baker's architectural vocabulary as a means to enclose more volume at lower material cost than straight walls, and for Laurie, "building [became] more fun with the circle.

Door frames cost a lot of money and are often not actually necessary.

This picture shows how planks can be screwed together by strap iron hinges to form a door, and this carried by 'hold-fasts' built into the wall, thus eliminating the outer door frame altogether.

If burnt-brick is available, and if a nine-inch thick wall is required, then twenty-five per cent of the total number of bricks, and of the cost of the wall, can be saved by using a 'rat-trap' bond. It is simple to build, looks well, has better insulation properties and is as strong as the ordinary solid nine-inch thick brick wall.

Bricks are often slightly irregular in length. So even if we can get a smooth 'fair face' on one side of a wall, the other side will be lumpy and irregular. Therefore, many builders say we must plaster the wall. But plaster is costly (it accounts for up to ten per cent of the total cost of a building).

The sketch and the plan show how the mortar can fill over the sunken end of the brick to produce a special fair face on the second side of the wall. Plaster is not required and a pleasing pattern has been made. Besides it has no painting and maintenance costs.

THE HAMLETLAURIE BAKER’S RESIDENCE

• The Hamlet', Laurie Baker's home in Thiruvananthapuram, built on a steeply sloping and rocky hillside that hardly had any vegetation when Baker started constructing it , is now a visual delight.

Architectural features:• STEPS DIRECTLY CUT IN ROCK• THE WALL IS DECORATED FROM BROKEN POTTERY, PENS, GLASS• A CALLING BELL FOR VISITORS TO ANNOUNCE THEIR PRESENCE• USE OF NATURAL LIGHT• NEVER CUT TREES INSTEAD ADAPTED HIS DESIGN ACCORDINGLY• COURTYARD HAS MANY GARDENS AND PONDS• PITCHED ROOF MADE OF MANGLORE TILES• GABLES FOR PROPER AIR CIRCULATION AND VENTILATION• SIMPLE AND COST EFFECTIVE WINDOWS• GRILL MADE OF BITS AND PIECES• CONICAL STRUCTURE USED.• LOUVERED WINDOW • STAINED GLASS EFFECT• WATER TANK FOR STORING RAIN HARVESTED WATER

PLAN & SECTION

ARCH

JALI WALL

STAINED GLASS EFFECT

KERALA WINDOW

THE WALL IS DECORATED FROM BROKEN POTTERY, PENS, GLASS

JEW TOWN STREET

HISTORY• After the arrival of the Portugese and the capture of Cranganore by them, the

jews, who settle down there,and in the immediate neighbourhood experienced a second dispersion in their history in Malabar.Their colony was burnt by Portugese.They came over to Cochin and the Raja of Cochin,extended them a kind welcome,and granted them a site for building houses and a place of worship.

• This free gift of land enabled therm to build this town, according to their traditional custom.The houses were built contiguously, so that, they may all together form as it were one house with many compartments. The idea underlying it is, the oneness of the community.

FEATURES • The houses are fashioned more or less on the dutch style, and are large and well

ventilated ones and are almost similar in their outward appearence.• The projections in the walls of the house are the outlets to let out water from

upstairs when washed.• Residential buildings resemble Kerala type in external appearance.• Ground floor is used as shops and first floor has the rooms.• Frontage along the sides are continuous with adjoining buildings.

JEW TOWN STREET

Jew town streetGround floor used as shops and warehouses.

Large windowsSloped roofs

ROOF DETAILS

PARADESI SYNAGOGUE• The Paradesi Synagogue is the

oldest active synagogue in the Commonwealth of Nations, located in Kochi, Kerala, in South India.

• It was built in 1568 by the Malabar Yehudan people or Cochin Jewish community.

• Paradesi word is applied to the synagogue because it was historically used by "White Jews", a mixture of Jews from Cranganore, the Middle East, and European exiles.

• The synagogue is located in the quarter of Old Cochin known as Jew Town, and is the only one of the seven synagogues in the area still in use.

• The complex has four buildings.

PLAN OF PARADESI SYNAGOGUE

White and blue china tiles

The pulpit

Interior of the synagogue

DOOR DETAILS

LOYOLA CHAPEL AND AUDITORIUM

• The Loyala complex contains a high school and post-graduate complex, both sharing a common chapel and an auditorium.

• In at attempt to construct both the auditorium and the chapel within the budget for only one building Baker realized that the cost of placing one large hall above the other would be far too expensive.

• He proposed instead to put them side by side, and decided that the biggest cost-reducing factor would be to avoid the use of steel and reinforced concrete, and to use load-bearing walls with a timber roof frame carrying an asbestos sheet roof.

• In order to increase the lateral strength of the high brick wall, without the introduction of any steel or concrete, Baker devised a wide cavity double-wall with cross-bracing brick.

LAURIE BAKER'S CENTRE FOR DEVELOPMENT STUDIES (CDS), TRIVANDRUM

• The campus for the research institute, Centre for Development Studies, is located in a residential area on the northern outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram.

• The 10 acre campus stretching across a heavily wooded site houses the Library, Computer centre, Auditorium, hostels, guesthouses and residential units for the staff.

• The design is a response to the sloping contoured site and seems to grow out of it.

• There is hardly a straight line with each structure curling in waves, semicircles and arcs.

• Baker pays careful attention to the contours on the site and also the location of trees.

• Often, when trees are obstructing the building, Baker simply moulds his walls around the trees so as not to disturb it.

• There are little courtyards in between buildings, often acting as an extension of the building itself and also pools of water which help in microclimatic control through evaporative cooling.

FILLER SLAB WITH MANGLORE TILES

SITE PLAN

HOUSING

BOYS’ HOSTEL