Hand-made homes

A visionary in the field of traditional building methods, the late R.L. Kumar was working on housing for the poor in slums when he met Laurie Baker. Inspired by Baker’s contribution towards local architecture, Kumar, not a trained architect himself, set up the Centre for Vernacular Architecture (CVA) in Bangalore, “a co-operative of building craft persons” with architectural practices that promote “the use of locally available material, traditional building techniques, culturally and climatically relevant building design”.

“He didn’t study architecture formally, and I think that’s why he was able to approach it very differently,” says Chennai-based Goutam Seetharaman, who is both a trustee as well as a principal architect of the Centre. “When we study architecture we look at a lot of Western building technologies. And in India, our focus is limited to temples and large heritage structures. We do not study how our people have been building homes; using local material like mud, stones and thatch.”