Taking eco-friendly and green architecture to the next level, Wallmakers has created a bungalow in Kerala out of construction debris and waste material.
Biju Matthew had good-naturedly permitted his neighbours to dump their construction debris on his vacant plot, with the understanding that they would clear it once their homes were complete. “But you know how it is,” says Vinu Daniel, award-winning architect and founder of Wallmakers. “When Matthew came to me, there was a huge mound of debris on his plot, located in the Housing Board Colony in Pathanamthitta Town. Even the Public Works Department had refused to clear it, since it was not biodegradable. So we had a problem on our hands. I asked myself what was the use of calling ourselves ‘eco-friendly’ architects, if we couldn’t deal with this.”
Putting all the construction waste on the site to use, Daniel constructed a debris wall. With the raw material at hand, discarded though it may have been, the only resources needed were time and manual labour.
Daniel learnt how to make mud buildings at Auroville Earth Institute at Puducherry. This kind of construction uses only a fraction of the energy required for firebricks. “For four years, Matthew was not able to find an architect who would deliver what he wanted, till he saw a programme on television in which I was featured; that’s how he contacted me.”
The plot was just about 7 cents (approx. 284 sq. mt.) in size, sloping and raised 5 ft. above the road-level. There were homes in close proximity on both sides and a huge retaining wall at the rear. Digging out just enough earth to accommodate the car, the rest of the house is built into the levels above.
“The retaining wall at the back ensured that there was going to be no light coming in from there,” says Daniel. “Have you seen how people push and shove at a railway station during peak hours?” he asks, seemingly irrelevantly. “I decided to make my walls ‘wiggle’ in the same way, to extract 3 bedrooms and a courtyard out of this 13 mt. wide plot.”
Starting from the porch, this undulating wall passes through the house. To retain the feeling of continuity, the walls are floating and a piece of the sky is visible through the handkerchief-sized courtyard (all of 6 ft. x 3 ft.). Purchased from a scrapyard, discarded electricity meter boxes have been integrated into the aesthetic. Iron rods at the windows have old meter boxes welded onto them, creating a surprisingly sophisticated abstract scatter.
Within, the multi-functional furniture in plywood and mild steel has been designed by Daniel, with the dining table capable of being pulled down whenever required. Other furniture has been made from recycled wood, deriving its form from boxes to store Matthew’s books, since he is a school teacher. A traditional urli, ubiquitous to Kerala, functions as a wash basin.
“I didn’t want to add to global warming by using cement. Daniel used coconut shells in the roof in a filler slab method, and ferro-cement to reduce the use of cement and iron bars,” says Matthew. The coconut shells double as light fixtures and are connected to plastic bottles holding LED lights. “There is no paint, the natural colour of mud can be seen. I may add a couple of fans, although there’s enough air circulation,” Matthew concludes.
