LAURIE BAKER

Done by :
Girish
BAKER AT A GLANCE
• British-born Indian architect
• Laurie Baker was so different from his contemporaries. While
most of his peers were busy dishing out striking, western type,
expensive buildings he devoted his whole life to building low-
cost, affordable buildings of all kinds, making them cheap yet
comfortable and beautiful.
• Baker sought to enrich the culture in which he participated by
promoting simplicity and home-grown quality in his buildings.

CONTRIBUTION TO INDIA
• Worked as an architect for an international and interdenominational Mission dedicated
to the care of those suffering from leprosy.
• Focused on converting or replacing asylums once used to house the ostracized sufferers
of the disease – “lepers”.
• Used indigenous architecture and methods of these places as means to deal with his
once daunting problems.
ARCHITECTURAL PRINCIPLES
• Designing and building low cost, high quality, beautiful homes
• Suited to or built for lower-middle to lower class clients.
• Irregular, pyramid-like structures on roofs, with one side left open and tilting into the
wind.
• Brick jali walls, a perforated brick screen which utilises natural air movement to cool
the home’s interior and create intricate patterns of light and shadow
• Baker’s designs invariably have traditional Indian sloping roofs and terracotta
Mangalore tile shingling with gables and vents allowing rising hot air to escape.
• Curved walls to enclose more volume at lower material cost than straight walls
• Baker was often seen rummaging through salvage heaps looking for suitable building
materials, door and window frames.
• Baker’s architectural method is of improvisation.
• Initial drawings have only an idealistic link to the final construction, with most of the
accommodations and design choices being made on-site by the architect himself
• His respect for nature led him to let the idiosyncrasies of a site inform his architectural
improvisations, rarely is a topography line marred or a tree uprooted.
• This saves construction cost as well, since working around difficult site conditions is
much more cost-effective than clear-cutting
• Baker created a cooling system by placing a high, latticed, brick wall near a pond
that uses air pressure differences to draw cool air through the building
• His responsiveness to never-identical site conditions quite obviously allowed for the
variegation that permeates his work.
 LOW COST CONSTRUCTION ELEMENTS USED

Filler slab : Advantages:20-35% Less materials

Decorative, Economical & Reduced self-load Masonry Dome, Advantages:Energy saving
Jack Arch:Advantages :Energy saving &
Almost maintenance free eco-friendly compressive roof.
Eco-Friendly compressive roofing.
25-30% Cost Reduction Decorative & Highly Economical for larges
Decorative & Highly Economical
spans.
Maintenance free
Maintenance free

Masonry arches:
Traditional spanning sytem.
Highly decorative &
economical
Less energy requirement.

Funnicular shell, : Energy saving eco-friendly

compressive roof.
Decorative & Economical
Maintenance free
 THE HAMLET
• This is Baker’s home in Trivandrum.
• This is remarkable and unique house built on a
plot of land along the slope of a rocky hill, with
limited access to water
• Material used from unconventional sources
• Family eats in kitchen
• Electricity wiring is not concealed
 Architectural features:
• Steps directly cut in rock – Hence also called “RIGHT IN THE ROCKS”
• Entrance has small sitting area for guests
• The wall is decorated from broken pottery, pens, glass
• A calling bell for visitors to announce their presence
• Use of natural light
• He never cut trees instead adapted his design accordingly
• Inner courtyard – brought people closer to nature
• Arches led into a beautiful open room
• Courtyard has many gardens and ponds
• Pitched roof made of Mangalore tiles
• Baker’s fondness of arches
• Gables for proper air circulation and ventilation
• Simple yet beautiful windows
• Grill made of bits and pieces
• Conical structure used.
• Cost effective baker’s window
• Louvered window typical of baker’s type
• Stained glass effect
• Water tank for storing rain harvested water
 FISHERMEN’S VILLAGE POONTHURA
• CHALLENGES:
,TRIVANDRUM(1974-75):
• Severity of environment in which the tribal’s live.
• Limitation of resources
• Conventional architects stayed away from these projects
• Dealing with large insular groups, with set ideas and traditions.
• Dealing with cyclones
• Area of each unit : 25 sqm
 Design strategies:
• Construction:
o Exposed brickwork and structure
o Sloped concrete roof
o Openness in design and individual units offset each
other
o Continuous latticework
o in the exposed walls

• Dealing With Cyclones:

o Low sloped roofs and courts serve as wind catchers
o Open walls function to dispel it
o Long row of housing replaced by even staggering
o Fronting courts catch the breeze and also get view
of sea

• Open Spaces
o Little private rectangle of land in between houses for
drying nets , kids play,
o Provides sleeping lofts within and adequate space
outside for mending nets and cleaning and drying
fish
 INDIAN COFFEE HOUSE, TRIVANDRUM
• One of the prominent landmarks in the Thampanoor
area of Trivandrum, where both the railway station as
well as the bus terminal are located, is the Indian
Coffee House designed by Laurie Baker.
• This building, courtesy of its unusual design has
become one of the most recognisable structures in
Trivandrum.
• The entire building is conceived as a continuous spiral
ramp, with a central circular service core and with
dining spaces provided on the outer side.
• The form of the building is thus unconventional &
bears Baker’s trademark jaalis to let in light &
ventilation.
• The building is well proportioned, a cylindrical brick-
red spiral continuing for a couple of floors and then
terminating in a smaller cylindrical volume on top,
giving a very unsymmetrical balance to the whole
structure.
 Architectural features
• Most of the people who see this building are
automatically drawn into it due to curiosity.
• On the inside, Baker has successfully solved the
programmatic requirement of providing eating spaces
by creating modules of built-in table and seating, with
an individual table and its two benches placed on an
individual horizontal platform.
• Thus, on the outer side abutting the external jaali wall,
there are continuous horizontal platforms incrementally
rising in height along with the slope of the spiral.
• The material palette is again typical Baker. The walls
are made of exposed brickwork which has been
painted over – white on the inner side & brick-red on
the exterior.
• There are no windows – jaalis serve to bring in plenty of
light & ventilation, ensuring that the interiors are nice &
comfortable.
 Seating
• The table and the seats are built-in. The table consists of
a concrete slab fixed to the wall & with a semicircular
taper on one side. This slab is resting on a small brick
arch which serves as the legs.
• The seats are again interestingly designed and
accommodate 2 people comfortably on either side.
• The seats of adjacent tables are abutting back to
back, but are at 2 different levels to accommodate the
slope.
• The seats are again made in brickwork and are finished
with block-oxide on top and the backrest.
• The remarkable thing about these built-in furnitures is
that Baker has designed them so very precisely
ergonomically that they are very comfortable to use,
inspite of being so simple.
• There is a circular service core in the centre, which consists of 2
concentric circles. The inner smaller circular core is a narrow
vertical shaft open on the top, with openings at different levels.
This shaft provides ventilation to the central areas and works on
the principle of Stack effect, a very simple but effective
solution that is so typical of Baker.
• Around this circular core are the service areas, especially the
toilets & handwash.
• The kitchen is placed on the ground floor and has a separate
service entrance.

FUNCTIONAL ISSUES
• Due to the placement of the kitchen on the ground level, it
becomes difficult for the serving staff as they have to
continuously climb up and down the ramp to place the orders
& then to serve the people sitting on the upper levels. Thus,
they in fact ask the customers to occupy the lower seating first
before going up the spiral.
• Also, the slope of the ramp is a bit steep, which contributes to
a slippery slope which sometimes results in a few falls.