EVOLUTION OF

BUNGLAW
Anthropological approach on the Bunglaw of Tranvancore
If there is a building type that became emblematic of the
British Empire throughout the world it is the bungalow.
There are two common tales that relate its origins.
In the first version, the bungalow is essentially a house form,
a rudimentary bangla (meaning 'belonging to Bengal’) which
is a peasant shelter—a single-storeyed mud pavilion with a
curved thatched roof and verandas on all sides with large
windows to flush air in the humid climes of the Bengali
floodplains. It was adapted by the English East India
Company and exported around the empire. In doing so,
what was initially a simple, sensible climatic response
became a house-type layered with symbolism. Another line
of evolution of bungalows can be traced back to the single-
storeyed detached country house popularised in England by
British residency at Thauicaud,Thiruvananthapuram
the 19th century architect John Taylor among others
who utilised the idea of the emerging middle-class leisure
retreat to formulate his own interpretation of the
bungalow. According to Kathryn Ferry, the bungalows of
19th-century England were often second homes, a kind of
pleasurable exotic retreat modified in form and style by the
Arts and Crafts architects (a movement that originated late
in the 19th century in Britain and sought to revive
traditional handicrafts and architecture, in response to the
industrial mass production) of the time.
British residency at Kollam
The early British bungalows built outside the fort walls were
mostly British-built and had simple volumes and a clear classical-
style architectural vocabulary—an entrance driveway, a front
portico, a colonnaded veranda and large rooms arranged
towards the centre, ventilated by louvered wooden windows.
The Sri Chitralayam Art Gallery which was built out of two
bungalows in the museum complex at Nanthancode is a good
example. It consists of three buildings connected by covered
Sri Chitralayam art gallery
walkways—the first is a single-storeyed bungalow with an
entrance portico, a deep descending hipped roof, a colonnaded
veranda and three main rooms, connected to a double-storeyed
one which appears to have been a later addition. There is a third
building (presumably service quarters) behind the single-
storeyed bungalow, also connected by a walkway. Other
examples include the bungalow of the Durbar Physician at
Vazhuthacaud (now the administrative block of the Government
College for Women) and the Barton Hill Bungalow at
Thekkumoodu (now part of the Institute for Management in
Government).

Renovated British residency bunglaw of Travancore

While the bungalow underwent eager experimentation within the fort,
outside its walls, public institutions such as hospitals and schools had a
bungalow attached to them for the purpose of accommodating their
European or British staff. There were also travellers’ bungalows dotting
the main road and canal routes.They were relatively smaller, simpler and
unornamented utilitarian buildings and similar to the colonial British
bungalows in terms of appearance and spatial arrangements.
The Modern Period
By the first half of the 20th century, it was not uncommon for both native
royals, high ranking government officials and kinsfolk of the ammaveedus
to build large houses in the city and give them anglicised names. They
were permanent residences and pleasure homes of varying scales. Park view bunglaw,opposite,museum building
The Satelmond Palace at Poojappura, Lalindloch at Vellayani and Halcyon
Castle were all royal pleasure homes that were no more than exaggerated
bungalows, following the same vocabulary with the addition of more
rooms and annexe buildings. The Nair relatives of the ammaveedus also
had opulent bungalows in the city—Manderlay and Fresh Ford in
Poojappura, Dilkhush Mahal (now the Directorate General of Police), Jaya
Mansion (now the office of Trivandrum Development Authority) in
Vazhuthacaud, and Belhaven situated between Kowdiar and
Vellayambalam (now occupied by the Southern Air Command) are a few
examples.
A portion of facade of the Arumana Ammaveedu at
Perunthannai
The Hindu between 2015 to 2018, chronicled houses in
Thiruvananthapuram which were older than 50 years. Many of
the late 19th and early 20th-century houses chronicled in this
collection such as the Thoppil House at Thampanoor, Stanhurst
Bungalow at Nanthancode, Parvathy Vilas on Ambujavilasom
Road and Parvathy Mangalam at Vazhuthacaud showcase
distinctive features of the bungalow such as the portico and
large high-ceilinged rooms with louvered windows. A
remarkable shift is observed in the way the open verandas seen
in the British bungalows were avoided or later covered up, to
be reclaimed as room area with large windows, perhaps an
indicator of the notion of privacy. This caused them to look
bulkier and imposing in appearance in contrast to the visual
lightness afforded by the colonnades and balustrades on the
verandas of the British bungalows. While early British
bungalows had external wooden stairs to reach the second
storey (like Park View [Fig. 6] and the Headmasters’ Bungalow),
in many native bungalows the staircase was placed within
enclosed spaces. In some cases, new types of interior spaces
like libraries, drawing rooms and studies, uncommon to native
civilian houses prior to the 20th century, emerged
Some did away with the
traditional nadumuttam (courtyard) at the centre of
a nalukettu (a form of Kerala domestic architecture in
which rooms are arranged around a central courtyard
open to sky) that was central to the domestic native life
while others incorporated it. They were a hybrid of
the nalukettu, the bungalow and kottarams in terms of
spatial experience and scale.
In his Master’s thesis titled Construction Practices in
Traditional Dwellings of Kerala (1997), Jacob Joseph
Koduveliparambil makes an elaborate survey of
Travancore houses. He concludes that the underpinning
spatial logic of traditional Kerala dwellings, between the
14th and 20th centuries, across several communities,
from Brahmins and Nairs to even Christians and
Muslims, remained the same: that of the agrarian house
which is basically a modular spatial system of ara-
nira arrangement (ara means room which may be for
storage of grain, wealth or for sleeping and nira means
wall) and roof assemblage.They were suited to a
domestic human scale as evidenced by the small room
sizes and overall height, and were meant for the use of a
joint family.