Brick By Brick

In the 1960s in Kerala, near the southern tip of India, ‘the people’s architect’ Laurie Baker, started something like a revolution with low-cost ecological construction that didn’t use concrete

- Guillaume Delacroix

In Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala, in the heart of a small valley lies a cottage. Shaded by buildings that were erected around it over a period of time, the abode, shrunk by its urban environment, attracts attention with its tribal-hut-like appearance. The bricks of its facades outline undulations pierced with regular holes. They almost pass, from a distance, for greenery, bamboo, or coconut tree leaves. By the only visible window, a nonagenarian beckons us closer. The old lady says that she has lived here for half a century and assures us it feels like a charm: “I bless the person who has built this still-new house. I never had to maintain it, while my neighbours, housed in their concrete towers, complain every year of coatings and paintings [required] after the rainy season.” The person in question is the late architect Lawrence Wilfred Baker, better known as Laurie Baker, and this house was his first construction when he put his bags down in this corner of India’s southern half, at the beginning of the 1960s. This was built on the order of the local archbishop, who helped this Birmingham-born architect establish himself there by proposing another site, in the Benedict Nagar area, for his agency and residence. The place is sloping, bristling with abundant tropical greenery, where coconut trees and banana trees fight for every square metre. Today, it houses COSTFORD (the Centre of Science and Technology for Rural Development), an association that oversees the ideas of the master architect, who passed away in 2007 at the age of 90.

BRICK AND CONTOURS