Organic Trivandrum

The auditorium hall with a small pond infront at LBC

Today we started with two lectures at Laurie Baker Center, followed by a tour of LBC itself. The first lecture was by Ar. R D Padmakumar on Laurie Baker’s design approaches for sustainable lifestyle. When it comes to sustainability, consumption and ecological footprint become one of the major concerns. Mr. Padmakumar gave us an idea about material, energy and water conservation techniques like adaptive reuse, permeable paving, choosing building materials with less carbon footprint and more interim economy flow and many more. One of Baker’s approaches was to ask of each building component if it is necessary at all. Then, only if it is necessary, choosing the most economical one with minimum carbon footprint was the next step. These kinds of thoughtful choices, if applied on an individual level can prove to be the crucial steps towards a sustainable future, which are exactly what are needed in this world right now. The second lecture was by Mr. Kasturi Rangan, who provided us an idea about how the public governance in India and Kerala works. After the lecture we had a very delicious lunch at LBC and toured the area.

The beautiful courtyard in LBC's guesthouse

The interesting roof structure of LBC's guesthouse, made up of filler slabs

The premise had a beautiful building made up of bamboo and mud, where all the reinforcements needed was provided by bamboo. Bamboo has very less carbon footprint and is a renewable source as it typically takes only 6 years to attain its maximum height. The building also had beautifully textured bamboo mats used as finishing material for doors. The interiors were beautiful as well, because of the exposed bamboo structures. Oh how beautiful are the buildings which don’t hide what they are made up of!

The unique bamboo house in LBC, hidden behind the woods

The inside of the bamboo house, with interesting write-ups in the walls

Me and my roommate Tuna relishing in this unique, rigid jhulaa

Handmade papers were also being produced at LBC; two women showed us the entire process of paper-making while we were there. They mix all the papers and cloths to make a pulp and then spread out the pulp to make a thin sheet which is then dried afterwards and cut in appropriate sizes to make the paper.

The ladies demonstrating to us, the process of making handmade paper sheets from newspapers, used copies/books and worn-out cloth pieces

Our day ended with an adventurous auto-ride in a city with roads and streets with organic, unrestricted and more aware movements!