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LAURIE BAKER -The ‘Hassan Fathy of India’.

Laurie baker

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LAURIE BAKER

-The ‘Hassan Fathy of India’.

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Laurie Baker worked in India for more than 60 years and on a varied spectrum of projects ranging from fishermen’s villages to institutional complexes. His architecture was based on respecting the local climate and environment.

He alone has built over a thousand houses in Trivandrum. Besides this, his work includes around 50 churches, numerous schools, institutions and hospitals.

He remained a lone protagonist, experimenting singly and quietly in a distant corner of country and providing information on the causes and results of his numerous architectural interventions.

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• Architecture is an organic, evolving form; traditional patterns are collective experience of many generations.

• Living architecture thrives on appropriate assimilation and adaptation.

• Economize on material and provide quality homes through better trained and better organized artisans.

Design Principles

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Design Philosophy

He drew creative sustenance from environment, absorbing vernacular patterns of construction & individual styles of living.

He asserted the appropriateness of traditional construction to local conditions, adapting existing locally available materials and traditional methods to contemporary urban structures.

Architecture cannot be transplanted without doing violence to those very needs which it is attempting to meet.Rejecting ‘International Style’, he firmly believed that the needs must be met through an architecture which is responsive.

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My feeling as an architect is that you are not after all trying to put up a monument which will be

remarked as a ‘Laurie Baker Building’ but Mohan Singh’s house where he can live happily with his

family.- Laurie Baker

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Major Works

Mitraniketan, Vellanad (1970) House for K. N. Raj, Kumarapuram (1970) House for Dr. P. K. Panikar, Kumarapuram (1974) House of Lt. Gen. S. Pillai, Jawahar Nagar, Trivandrum (1971) Loyala Chapel and auditorium, Sreekarayam (1971) St. John’s Cathedral, Tiruvella (1973-74) Nalanda State Institute of Languages, Nandankode Trivandrum

(1973) Chitralekha film Studio, Aakulam, Trivandrum (1974-76) Corpus Christi School, Kottayam (1972) Fishermen’s village, Poonthura, Trivandrum (1974-75) Tourist Centre, Ponmudi (1980) Experimental Houses, New Delhi (1980)

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Building: ResidentialClient: The Director

of the Centre for

Development Studies,

Dr. P. K. Panikar.

Project cost: Rs.25,000.Location: Kumarapuram,

Trivandrum, Kerala

Year: 1974

House of P. K. Panikar

The exaggerated roundness of the House

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Plan of the House

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The site was prepared with a plinth of random rubble masonry enclosed by a dry stone retaining wall in the rear.

Approaching on a steep decent from the upper road, the visitor enters the living area located centrally in the curving mass and opening into a deep veranda overlooking the hill.

The dining and kitchen form one end to the curve, the bedrooms and study the other.

Baker used the old fashioned fish tile roof laid on wooden rafters.

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Corpus Christi School, Kottayam, 1972

Building: InstitutionalLocation: Kottayam, KeralaYear: 1972

Entrance and The Administrative Block

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Plan Corpus Christi School

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Expression: Consistent with the cost effective economics and policies of development.Here, at the Corpus Christi School, the nature of a child’s experience in learning and play is reflected in a plan that itself suggests a playful inquiry.

The straight line and excessive rectilinearity may not directly offend a child’s sensibility but baker feels the meandering wall, the circle and square as counterpoint, make for a more desirable and inhabitable landscape.

Where rooms do not have the formal labels of classroom, assembly hall or office , the student feels less intimidated and is left free to roam, the meet others like himself, and discover places suitable for learning and play.

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The site along a gentle hill is graded into a series of related plateaus.

The upper contours, serviceable from the road, contain the formal functions of kitchen and services in a rectangular courtyard building the dining hall breaking free from the composition.

On the lower ground the rooms twist, turn and triangulate into varying position and sizes offering choices of formal classrooms as well as intimate study dens, large halls and smaller nooks.

The playfulness of walls, however, reveal a delicately work flexibility.

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Fishermen’s Village, Poonthura, Trivandrum, 1974-75

The materials, the exposed brickwork and structure, and the unique innovation here is the openness of design and the way individual units offset each other.

The cyclonic wind meets no resistance and is allowed to pass trough the house by the continuous lattice work I the exposed walls.

The low sloped roofs and courts serve as wind catchers , and the open walls function to dispel it.

The long row of conventional housing is replaced by an staggering, so that the fronting courts get a view of sea and catches the breeze.

Since a good part of fisherman's life is spent out doors, the house and court function admirably providing sleeping lofts within and adequate space outside for mendering nets and cleaning and drying fish.