~ Re'membering' Lauri.

e Bak,er

Wi"h fhe foss ot ,architect Laur,i,e Bo'ker 'fhi,s

:year, Indian arc,hifedure is no doubt, leeling ,the vO'id ,created ,by his absence. A,chifedure+Des;gl1 has collated a I'ew image.s ,oF thIs down-fo-earth personality, who witfl' bis s,hnpl'i'cify a,nd humane approach, gave a new d.imension to, Indian architecture.

Laurie Baker-

the unseen side, .. ,.

'LBlIe L!lurie .llIaker

Benny Kuriakose

~lsn 't it a shame that there are 56 many luwple who have no access to anything t!Jhicir call be called ,architecttire, We, as architects higl!!y trairl,ed professionals, are doing so ,little to meet this v€r'ljgreat :need. We must never forget that there are .20 million fanlilies who are sa.rlly deprived, let alolw have the benefit of anything called' !Z1·chitecture. Not even IX hut. Jt is to 01/1' slumw that we alkllo Ihese /if)'ltl'e!j to increase",

Lartmll~e Wilfred Bo.ker, 1986

In 1943, while Baker was waiting for the boat in Bombay, to go 'back 10 England, he met Gandlrlji, who said to him ''"You are bringing kn.owlooge and qualifications from the West, but they will be useless unless you try to understand our needs here. The greatest needsare in th e villages and for the ordinary people. [lot in places ]ike Bombay." It was lit the height of tile Quit India Movement And it was because 00£ Gandhiji that Baker returned to India.

In 1945,. Baker came Iback to India, to work tor the leprosy patients. His main job was to convert old houses into modern hospitals, Funds were limited so he worked

Baker believed that music indirectly jnflueneed his architectural thinking. He was brought up in the Western classical musical tradition, his father Charles Frederi.c Baker it choir master and his mother Milly Baker, IllJJ organist, He, hmv€ver, did not agree with Priederleh Von Schelling's well-known statement "architecture is frozen music". Baker likens Indian arehltecturaltraditions more to Bach's music, a favourite of his. He thought that Indian designs make vitaluse of light and shade.

"There is change during the whole d.ay:

Ine shadows change the colour Changes and [he textures change, Bach's music stoots with

My Association with Baker

I mel Baker in 1984, when I was doing my fieldwork for my final year thesis. Baker had come t,o one of the sites for his routine visit. I just walked up to him and started a discussion. The discussion, cosering various thi!lgs ~"\'ellt OJ] for some time; at the end ofwhi.ch I asked him, "Can I come and work wid] you for two or three months'?"

His reply was ~I do not ask my as ,i rants to do my work When I take only fifteen minutes to draw at plan, why should I waste an asslstant's time to do a dtraft'? [ am not sure if r can make you allY payment, because then I will have to add

1. Sid.e eleva~i'm of the CeD,ae for Deve,!o,pmcml Studies (CDS). Trivandnrmj 2. Entrance of th.e TIliruwla church; 3. Entrance perch of CDS, Tri."aodrum.

4. Internal court or LOYD-Ill CoUege Women's hostel, Trlvandmm: 5. Exterio'r element at Ihe Tirlruvala, church; 6, .. Corridor Iltfhe Loyola Womell;s hostel.

with laterite, 'thatch, bamboo and other low cost materials that were entirely alien to his erstwhile training in the Birmingham School of f\rcll.itectme.

In this predicament, he found met the engineezsand architects were of little help, and his answers la)f in the indigenous buildings of mud with thatch and bamboo, and sticks and 'Stones. Principles of construction are universal. and applicable everywhere, but Baker ... vorking with. these baste materials had to start to understand their behaviour from the 'bottom upwards,

a basic theme and you can elaborate on it and you cen 'encompass everymmg YOll want wi~in that theme. Wit:h. our buildings, we want housiag, we want three sleeping places, where mother and. fMhel' can sleep. boys can sleep, girls can sleep and we need a cooking place. And! we need variations of these with simple combinations" We have different materials such as mud, laterite, Slone, and bamboo: Architectnre is normally all ordered set of rules of .. "hat is goad, \vhat is funetionaland whal: is sensible and in this way mt is very like music,"

this expense to the cost of construction .. " M)' answer was that I was 110t interested iii an.y ,aymel1t and I would simply like 'H) learn from him. But fin..a1ly, he did make the' Jlla,.yment and my association went on for nine months.

I was the fourth all' fiIili luckiest person to work with him. Gerard De Cunha was the first, followed by Ramesb from Goa and Thomas from Kerala. When I joined him after finishing my course. he asked me to come to one ofthe sites. I was able. to learn just by warehlng him work. He would

:;_Iways ,<!flswerall questions and he explained! the various structural principles. in simple language.

Evcl1'body at the site, including the masons, cooUes and. carpenters used to. call hun "Daddy" mild T also found myself calling hiull Daddy. Mrs. Baker was "Mummy" to all of us.

His Life

Daddy used to call mummy "Konl", He fir t met her 'when she was a medical; student in Faizabad in Uttm Pradesh, They were married in Pallavaram in Madras, ill August 1948. They wer supposed to. be married ill Hyderabad, but because of 11

areas were acquired by the Army, the Bakers decided. to sbift to Vagamon. up inthe 11i11S o.f the Wes~e[.I:1 Ghats, in K,erata.

Most of the buUdings designed by Daddy between 1950 and 19'700 are not documented. Some of them include Saksharata Niketa;J, an adult H~eracy centre in Lueknow, Nooe Maazil, a mental asylum in Lucknow, some buildings in the Ag.ri cui tural Institu te, Allah abad Unlversity, a church In Azbakiyapandipurfl'm, Thmill Nadu, office buildings for an NGO in Hoshangabad ami the State Musewn in LlIclrnow.

Daddy carne to Tdv<lIlldrum in the ,early 19'70s. In Kerala, the trend of~gulf houses"

bWidings designed in China. Germany, Peru and India in the middle of 8. desert, will you be <lJhlc to distinguish them'? WilJ you be able to pick. out which one is from India or Peru? But at the same time the materials are different, il\be climate i , different and ways of living are dilferent,"

"J always want to see, right at the beginning of our association together, their building site, Not 011l1y do I want to know what sort of a site it is (is the land level or sloping?) and what trees ther -8.1'e, but 1 also ask whether they desire a good view, a garden and whethe:r !.hey keep animals. I 'want to know about the water supply and (TOm which direction ~he breez and rain

1. [ole,ior view o~ LOyQla Colle.ge WOllilcn's hostel, Trivandrum; .2., Chitmal,~kha's studio oomJilIe.x,'l'riva:lu[rum. S. Remla style windows a~ Baker's 'Hamid',

riot, Daddy did not reach Hyderabad on time, During their honeymoon in Pithora" garh, a seriously ill young girl's Iiie was saved by mummy performing a minor operation on her,

What \'l3S supposed to be a one-week's holiday became II fourteen-year one. They built a house and a hospital up in the hills where the Bhotia rribals were the origmal inhabuants. In the summer, this community would shiftthelr r-esidence to Tibet. The experience Baker gained by designi..ng the ordinary buildings fn those areas probably made him realise the richness or the vernacular tradltlon. Mter India's war witb China in 1962. when many of those

was at its peak. These lavishly bumlt houses were status symbolS. But Baddy showed that there was another way of Ibuih:ling or practicing arehiteetuse, He used the same standards in building fow the rich a [or the poor. Hewoisld say, "We havete look at the acmal needs of the people of India today, 'lb meet those needs, we have to stop thinking brug and go back to the idea of 'small is beautiful' .~'

On Modern. Architecture ....

Daddy used to say, ''We should be thinking and designing as Indians for Indians in India." There is no Indian style of 'Modern Architecture'. "If you put

Come from. Alild I have to always keep 'n mind that it is they who are going to use the building and not IllS."1

Professional Relations

Daddy once said that when he came to 'Itivandrum, he was inv[telll to give a leenire in the local Engineering College. He began by talkiing about the city and its architecture. They did not invite him for year~ after. because some o€ the bllildilllgs, which he criticised, had been designed by the professors, themselves,

In the early years, the conventional architects and. engineers were dead against the cost effeotive techniques popularised by

Daddythreugh bisbuildings, I remember an incident duriag dte inauguration of a building USing cost effective teehniqu eS in 1913:6, when a Gov€rnmel1~ eagineer ~mbi1cly declared mat this building would not last for more-than a Yew'. But Daddy's buildings done .m the 19708 are stiU standing.

In 197'2, the Government ,of Kerala <:onstillrtoo an Expert Committee consisting QrD.!" IGrit S Parikh (Chaimum). Madhavan K.. Alexander K C and Laurie Baker to look into a performence approach to CQst rednetionia buirnng construction. In il'S final report, special emphasis was given to low cost housing because of the impoIT.U'!ce of housing in imjlmvIlilg the social well-being of the people. A ]arge pan of the. consttruJ.cti.on is done undGl the supervision of the

any drawings in hh: office Ot design my of the details. He thought it was wrong all his part 1:0 delegate the work to an .assistant, because ilie client nmJproachoo him for <Ii 'Baker house', :He met his clients in the drawing room othis home. The drafting was done from a table in a comerofthe bedroom.

"l see nothing w~oog or unethical about an architect taking pari: in the construction of a bulldlng, You would think 1] silly if Picasso was only allowed to specify and give ,vorking drawin.gs, but not be allowedto palnt..~2

He had 110 supervisors; no peons nor any aCCOiliIl~m1fS. He paid me labouress IDld the material suppliers directly, He never submitted any detailed bills to ~ny of his clients .. One of the projects Daddy did when

car back, wi~h an apology letter to the mason. III his letters; he addressedtsem as '.MicSlIiji' .

There were no working drawrngs. If any of the masons or cerpenters bad a <lou bt, he would pull out his 'pack of cards', which were made up of the reverse side of wedding invitations and opened up used eneelopes. He ssetehed upside down so that the mason eould see the design <1$ it developed.'Wh.en clients used to pester him to finish their houses on deadlines, at times, he would be upset and say "Why can't they give me some more time to think differendy?"

There is a. beilef tha~ il' an architect supervises the construction himself, he would be able to do onlya small .i1l11mbe~ of buildings. With all these constraints and

Public Works Depmtment and similar public agencies. Although many concrete suggestions regarding cost reduction in coastruorton were submitted, nome of these recommendations wereimplemented TDY any ohfuese departments, aMlJoull.b the political leadership under the then Clue[ Minister Achtltha Menon was very favourable jor such changes. Most of Iherecommendation~ made by tbe committee were based on the technlques aad methods, which Baker followed in his bllildings.

Arcbitectural Set Up

Daddy had 110 assistants, nor draftsmen.

None olthe people who learnt from him did

twas working ~9ith him was the lAS Colony for about 16 IASofficern. 'The fuI.al bi:ll was settled at a per sq It cost. A lot of interesting arguments. used ~Q hal"p'en, On one occasion, an owner argued 'Illat ~l1e area of the opening should be taken inte cons.idel"atioll,m the case or double heights, because ol1ly a floor is avoided. WlIDile another owner argu eel that in hi~ house, the plinth area of the middle row of tberooms should I10t be taken into account, because you shouldadd only the cost of the roof and! the floor of the middle row.

Daddy visited most ofthe sites everyday.

One day he was .angry with one of the masons, but after going home, he sent dle

an unconventional way of woikm.g,. Daddy bad designed and constructed, to and around Trivandrum alone, more than one tho~sa:lldbuUd.itl!gs by 19'85. This is in addition tiD the large number of buildings he has designed outside the sta.tte. There are two "dvantage~ of an architect going to the ~i~e. First, he does not have to make Ilny detailed drawings, thus saving quite a lot of time. StWondly. he can see !tbe building being constructed and can make run.,. changes according to the Clients' needs.

Work Methodology

Daddy had not done many projects using mud as a building material. The most

pfO!Ui!1(!l1[ and the largest was the deaf and dumb school near Tirunelveli, usjng stabilisedmad blocks .. He used TIO say, "Mild is the material, if we want to solve the problem of our 20 million Of 30 million familsss.Jt is a material.which is available locaUy and does not cost much, and, it is low energy eonsumiag, We are never gol rig to build 'these houses with steel and concrete. If we areg0ing to have houses for everybody, then mud is the answer,"

He would an:S~lIer the many eriticlsms on mud ollildings. "n ]s not that ill want everybody in mnd, but] 'would like to see that everybody is in a h01,S5e of their own. Most of the buildings we see in our villages are more than 70·8:0 years old:'

In ~lte 1.9705, there were hardly any examples of sloping rools or arches or fllllis or ex[posoo wor'k ali bunt-in furniture, all oi which were very much a part of our tradinonal architecture. Daddy was responsible for brimgiog these elements into the archlteetural scene of Kerela, In the llat roofed reinforced cement Concrete buildings, which were ~I]ilt ill the name o~ modernity, y,olJcol!lld hardly see the roof; while in the traditional Kerala arcblteeture, the roof was the 'most prominent element.

"We have an incredibly beautiful country with manyindigenous styles of architecture. No other cQuntry has this range of beauty and interest that we have, The most important thing is 'that we do not

or materials, here

Although D>addy came to Kerala in the early 1960s, hl s way of building and tile various techniques he developed "me popularised only aJler 1985, wirh tile establishment >of Costford, Cosford was set lip !l5 an NGO, with former C~iei' Mini.s~er Achutlla Menon as chairman and T R Chandradutt as the director. ill [oined eastford ill 198.5;.

As pan of the activities, it was decided to do three experimental houses in a remote place of'Thekkumkara in Triclmf Distract. Baker designed these houses. Thankapl'an's was with mud blocks, Kesnava.JJ"s was with stone" quarried from the same oompound and Prakashan's wag, with

1, Side elevation '0.[ (he L·QYo!ll.. CoUegel;Vomen's llos:tel, Tr-ivarnd.fuDl; 2. Sl!:etch ~y L<1ilIfie Dnker' sh.owing: [ini¥ef:sity College's Mala}'a.lam depaiFlmenl,.

On the avail.!lbility of mud to build city houses he would say "Is cement available ill the city~ .Are bricks available in the city? You have so bring them. from: outside, Then why not mud?"

"Beauty is all relatedto truth, A stone should look like astone <llld a brick 'should look like a brick. If we usematerials making use of their natural characteristics, the results ITom the use. of timber, bricks, mad or stone itself is, beaueful,"

Daddy never gave any special eonsideration to the from elevation. As far as he "vas concerned, all the elevations we~e important. He ;a]ways used to ask "Is it neeessary?" He believed! mat beauty is not something, which is applied alterwards.

destroy this, we do not take away from it and we do not foul it up" We should follow on Uris ~adition of creating beeutiful buildings in India,"

Daddy was passlonateJy involved in the campaign against the dernolition of bistoric buildings ill the dty ofThlvaJ!;drum and elsewhere, "The Kerala baditio'l1al architecture is our own. We are not trying to conserve it. Once we loose thls. we will never be able to recreate them. IDa.m not saymg that we should not have new buildings, but dermitely not at the cost of the demolition of'these beautiful buildings. I do not see any relation between the 5,0 called modern buildings and the ordinary life of an individual in Kerala or the climate

burnt bricks. \JVhen the construction reached almost the roof level, a two-day eamp, on cost reduction techniques was organised in II paddy fLeld, ill It thatched shedl. ill the Thekkumkara vi.Hage.

Daddy carne to TtichuJ" 10 lead the rweday camp. We had booked bim an aircondldoned room, [he best in the state govemmciltguesth,Ouse. Once he entered the room, !lliJ,e !lillt thlng, be did was to switch off theair-conditioner and open the windows.

Thill was in February 19.86.. For almost two days; Daddy t-a1keda~out Vi'lIiCIl1;S techniques for cost reduction, in building eonstructiou, About 3.5 engineers and arcbitects participated in that camp. Many of them later became the leading lights in

popularlslng these various techrulilues and concepts, such as Shankar of Habi.tat ThchIilOlogy Group, fayagopal ofInspiration and PadI!~akUimar of Iaurle Baker Building Centre: in Delhi,

Till then, Daddy was a orne-man army.

The famous alilist and painter, Devan, 'was the only othe~ person to do exposed brickwoik and filler slab. Bllt far him, cost reduction was not the main eriteria.

Relevance of 1iIaker

Now there are many architects and engillieel"Swlm follo\'II ill Daddy's foo,tsleps. A concept. mid te~hnology. which was there only in and around 'Irivandrum in the 1970s, has now spread to all parts of India and even abroad.

The relevance of mese cOIwepts and

techniques has ineeeased manifold. Today, without giving any due consideration to the energy crisis: and various other related issues, we continue to design bulldings with glass facades that let in allkinds of Ileal. Then we become obsessed with airconditioners to mol the inside. Baker showed thar there was analternate w.ay of designing and building, without employing any contractors. He gave respectability to craftsmen. 91I.d showed us Indians what is Indian in oorarehitecture,

If the present generation ofarohltects and engineers can answer the questions raised by Daddy, then there: will be a positive shUt in the case of OUT cOIlite!IDJPOra~ architecture. We will be .a~,le ~o give a humane touch to the kind Qfbuilding5 that are being pntu p an over IndUs? ~

Benny KUll'iakose lell.rll! li!is basIc arcllitedurallessOils jron! Laurie Baker: Hrt worked for projects all cosl-efJaclip(J te dmiq lies v.n Kerala. ami beca1lle lhe desi!rller for the plibUc blt!ldings in Daksili11.acli,ilra, Chroma:i:.

The ,gliot£s used ill Or.~ !UTticle am from Ihe nO!eS Be/my Kuriak.os~ kep.lwliile .Im w(Jr:kcd anclle(l;med :wi!ll; .Laurie B.aJier ill Kertila. from 1984 101985 11,1111 later, l1i1lile attending tl~e mar~y reclli.res and 'Workshops lIe gave,

Refere~ces

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