Friday, April 27, 2007

Traditional Houses - The Basic Elements

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There is so much to learn about traditional houses in Kerala!

The only house I could claim to know - at least to some extent - was Lakathekkethil, my maternal grandfather's house at Thrikodithanam, Changanassery. We visited it almost every year during school vacations, and, in our minds, it was the stuff that childhood fantasies were made of -- a sprawling house set in a large estate (a Parambu) bordering paddy fields, forest groves (Kaavu) and a little stream full of little fishes called Maanattu-kanni (eyes-to-the-sky).


The house itself stood at an elevation to the road, so the gradient served as the compound-wall (Kaiyyalla). Numerous trees dotted the estate - coconut, mango, cocoa, mangosteen, guawa, bael, jambekka (bell fruit); coffee bushes stood guard to an ancestral shrine, and a little pond (kulam) on the eastern corner was a favourite venue for endless hours of wild splashing, fishing and turtle hunting.

One hears a lot about Naalukettu- four-block houses enclosing a courtyard. But I have never seen one in Changanassery - the Eastern block (Kizakkini) was always missing. In its place stood an extra- large mittam or courtyard. The layout of Lakathekkethil, and that of the family house, Elamkoottil in Tiruvalla , is in the following pattern:


Common Features:

* The house is on a raised platform, with low walls, sloping roofs and overhanging eaves. A recessed verandah (Thinna) is also a common corridor to the main rooms;
* The focus of the house is the Granary - the Nelavara, an airtight structure made of solid wood sits on a raised platform with its main door facing east. Below the Nelavara is the Patthayam - a storage space for large cooking utensils and coconuts;
* A large courtyard or Mittam at the front of the house serves not only as a common space for family functions but is also used for sun-drying spices, coconut copra, clothes, grains and fruit;
* The kitchen is always on the northern or northeastern side; next to it is a well (Kenaru) - the main source of potable water for the household;
* Family shrines and sacred groves (Kaavu) are located to the East of the house;
* Guests and visitors are received in the southern rooms. The main hall here is called the Chavadi;
* Toilets were rarely attached to the main building. Residents either relieved themselves in the open (Velikku-eranguga - literally "going outdoors") or had temporary sheds made in the Parambu for the purpose. Attached toilets with running water came in the early '60's.

Did I miss something here?
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Thursday, April 26, 2007

Mr. G. Shankar – The First Meeting at HTG

There are very few architects in Kerala who are able & willing to work on old buildings. Mr. G. Shankar is one of them. But as the protégé of the great Mr. Laurie Baker, and as the founder & Chief Architect of Habitat Technology Group, he is a very, very busy man.

Acchan & Amma finally managed to meet Mr. Shankar on 11th April 2007. As discussed over the telephone, they had gone to his office in the morning accompanied by Rajesh from Changanasseri, to chalk a plan of action.

While waiting for Mr. Shankar to return from another meeting, Rajesh had expressed his skepticism about retaining the old wooden structure -“It is better to dismantle the old stuff…I could help you find some buyers..”.

Thankfully, Mr. Shankar took an altogether different view. His logic was simple, “You have come to me because you are interested in preserving the old house, its memories and sentiments... First of all I would like Rajesh to make a precise sketch after taking measurements. I would then visit the site before the next course of action”.

What about the Nelavara – the old, airtight, wooden granary at the center of the house? The storage space below it was getting infested with rats…Would it have to be dismantled?

“Oh, that won’t be a problem…we could perhaps replace the mud floor with something less vulnerable to gnawing rats. As for the Nelavara, we could make sliding windows into it and make it an airy space. But let me see it first.”

Friday, April 20, 2007

Mr. Laurie Baker (1917-2007)

Wherever you look, you see touching tributes to this amazing human being, and to a life well lived.

Here is a collection of quotes from a man who was true to his word:

“I have my own principles, which I am unwilling to abandon. I dislike falsehood and deceit. A building should be truthful.”

"Cost-effective houses are not just for the poor, they are for everyone. The equation that a cost-effective house is a house for the poor, implying a bad looking house, can definitely be proved wrong. Isn't it the responsibility of the upper and middle classes to stop indulging in extravagance and make better looking houses instead? This entire classification is wrong."

"Designing a house and getting someone else to build it is like preparing a menu with great care and then leaving it to someone to do the cooking and then the eating. It's no fun."

"Can one call the person who makes 500 similar houses an architect? It is not difficult to make 10 to 12 different houses using the same materials. That is why such established practices have to be stopped. One can come up with different options even without cutting trees or leveling the ground. Monotonous houses can be avoided."


"No innovative artist can hope to proceed in work without having gained an understanding of the local wisdom of a place.''
"Fortunately, I've never been cursed with a white-collar mentality and I see nothing degrading or infra dig in getting my hands and clothes dirty from physical work."

Tributes from the Web:

The Frontline – TRIBUTE - "Master Mason" - G. SHANKAR

Mother Jones: The Brick Master of Kerala

Uma's Blog (A great compilation!): Indian Writing - Farewell, Laurie Baker

Frontline - ARCHITECTURE - Laurie Baker's creative journey
An article adapted from from Laurie Baker by Atul Deulgaonkar (Akshar Prakashan, Mumbai) as translated from the Marathi by Joginder Singh and Shrinivas Warkhandkar.

Indian Express - Laurie Baker, for whom home was extension of land, dies at 90 - RAJEEV PI

Letters to FRONTLINE - Baker's Legacy

Technorati Profile

Saturday, April 14, 2007

The Last Tenants


15th August 2006

A caterer from Tamil Nadu was using the house. Appachi had asked him to vacate and he had agreed to do so by Onam (Aug-Sep).

The house was in shambles. It was being used a base for storage and manufacture of all the stuff required for the catering business. Sacks of flour lined the walls; two wet grinders stood in main hall for processing vast quantities of batter to make Vadas, Dosas and Idlis. A couple autos waited under a sheet of torn, blue plastic, awaiting delivery trips to assorted hotels & eateries. There was a clothesline in almost every room, and yet another one outside. Jerry cans full of inflammable cooking oil had been stored atop the wooden rafters.

The front portion of the house had been sublet to a person who hung tattered pieces of cloth on the doorway for curtains and partitions. The roof-tiles were broken in many places; water seepage had warped some of the beams and weakened some walls...

To our untrained, sentimental eyes all the damage seemed peripheral. “Remove the uneven overhanging tiles in the rear, replace the damaged ones and the house should be OK.”

Rajesh was more circumspect – “We cannot start work until the dampness has dried from the walls…the front portion (above the meter-box) is precarious- if somebody were to step on that corner, the whole roof would collapse…”

So the first imperative was to minimize further damage and decay. Work would have to start as soon as the tenants vacated; broken tiles would have to be replaced, damaged beams too would have to go.

Rajesh suggested some changes that would cost “around Rs. 50,000”. But we were wary of ad-hoc, ‘band-aid’ solutions. Who could help us in making repairs and renovations that would endure?

R-ji suggested that we approach Mr. Shankar. “He is a very busy man these days… but if you could get him to visit this place once, we would get the right way forward”

Some pics:















The section below the tiled room - the Thattumpuram





Friday, April 13, 2007

How do we start? Where do we begin?

My own recollections of the house are shrouded in a fog of childhood memories; sticky bits from summer vacations in Kerala. I vaguely recollect somebody handing me a Plav-ila spoon while playing the courtyard; of tossing pebbles into the kitchen well; of clambering atop the wooden staircase in pursuit of bigger siblings.

It had been ages since I stepped into the house, so during a visit to Trivandrum in July-Aug 2006, Acchan sketched a layout plan. On 15th August 2006, we traveled to Puzhavaadu, to take a look at the house, first hand.

We first went to Acchan’s nephew, Mr. Gopalakrishnan aka “Rajappan”. His was a pretty house designed in the “Baker Style” by Mr. G. Shankar, located quite close to Govindaniketan. Despite being rather busy (his daughter was getting married in a few days), R-ji had arranged for one of his contacts, Rajesh, to accompany us to the house.

As we walked through the drizzle to Govindaniketan, it was quite clear that R-ji was genuinely concerned about the old house. “Ithu unnu sherikku nannaaki edutthaal nallabhangi-aarikkum!” (If it were repaired properly, it would be a beautiful house!).

The Story So Far

Many houses and temples in Kerala count their age in centuries. Govindaniketan is not in that league – it’s a toddler in comparison, just over 70 years old. When it was built sometime in 1930, it was one of the prominent buildings in Puzhavaad, Changanassery. A large tiled house located in the vicinity of the Kottaram (the Palace) and the Kaavil-Ambalam (Sacred-Grove Temple).

The house was a gift from my great-grandfather to his young daughter, Bhavanikutty Amma. In keeping with the times, he had chosen to engrave an inscription in English, on one of the wooden rafters atop the house – “GOVINDA NIKETAN, April 1930”.

A few years earlier, Bhavanikutty Amma had got married to Vasudeva Pillai, a Tehsildar (senior court official) based at Cherthala in Alappuzha district of Kerala. The couple raised three sons - Kumar, Radhakrishnan, Padmanabh & a daughter, Rajam.

Each of the sons carried the initials “V.G” - one of the many naming conventions in India where the given name is preceded by the father’s given name and the house-name. “V” stood for Vasudevapillai and the “G” was, of course, Govindaniketan.

As each of the children got married and moved on in life, Govindaniketan was rented out to a series of tenants, the last of whom was a Tamil caterer who apparently used the house a manufacturing base, as well as a lodge. By the time the caterer finally returned the house, it was in a pretty bad shape.

Now the BIG question is –-- How do we go about repairing the house?