Laurence
W.Baker, well known as Laurie Baker, was born
in Burmingham, England on 2nd March 1917,
as the youngest child with two elder sisters
and a brother. Father - Charles Fredrick Baker,
Mother- Milly Baker.
The
British-born architect has lived and worked
in India for more than 50 years. He has taken
Indian citizenship and now resides in Thiruvananthapuram
(Trivandrum), Kerala.
His
turning point - The education
When
he was seventeen, he went on a cycling tour
of Europe with friends. Fascinated by the
unfolding vistas of nature, landscape, cities,
the different life patterns of people and
the differences in the houses from place to
place, that tour proved to be a turning point
in his life. Back from tour, he thought of
a career in architecture and soon after he
joined the Birmingham School of Architecture.
His
Inspiration - Mahatma Gandhi
Returning to England in 1944, Baker
was delayed in Bombay for three months waiting
for a steamship. Through Quaker associates,
he was introduced to Mohandas Gandhi, who
expressed concern over the state of Indian
architecture and asserted that much good could
be done in rural India by committed architects.
Baker returned to England briefly and then,
taking Gandhi’s words to heart, returned to
India to see how his skills might best serve
the communities of Uttar Pradesh in northern
India.
His
Life
Baker met and married an Indian medical doctor,
Elizabeth Jacob, and the two of them worked
for years in the Himalayas building and operating
schools and hospitals, working with lepers
and the poor.
In
1963, Baker and his wife moved to the southern
state of Kerala, Elizabeth’s homeland, establishing
themselves in the city of Trivandrum in 1970.
Working with local materials and exploring
indigenous architectural traditions, Baker’s
reputation began to grow.
His
design
In India, he is well known for designing and
building functional brick homes, with special
features utilizing natural air movement to
cool the home's interior. A significant Baker
feature is irregular, pyramid-like structures
on roofs, with one side left open and tilting
into the wind. Baker's designs invariably
have traditional Indian sloping roofs with
gables and vents allowing rising hot air to
escape.
Baker’s
Basics
Laurie Baker has been committed to not only
learning from and using traditional Indian
architectural techniques and technology, but
also building with traditional Indian materials.
Gandhi once exhorted builders to only use
materials gathered within five miles of a
construction site. And though this Gandhian
ideal is not always possible, Baker has promoted
the use of brick, lime, tile, palm thatch,
stone and local granite in place of ‘modern’
materials like steel, glass and concrete.
You
can’t get more sustainable or renewable a
resource than mud, and Baker is its champion.
Approximately 58 percent of all buildings
in India today are made of mud brick, some
as many as 50 to 100 years old. Mud is gathered
either at the construction site or very nearby,
formed into bricks and dried in the sun. It
is readily available and can be made by people
with limited initial training—all resulting
in projects that can be built at a fraction
of the cost of those using concrete and steel.
Baker is especially fond of mud’s total recycle-ability:
simply add water and reuse it.
Baker
has truly adopted his motto to “make low-costery
a habit and a way of life” by reusing everything,
from brick to glass bottles, as building materials.
“One of the things I’m noted to be crazy for
is that I use old colored bottles set in cement—they
give a nice light,” comments Baker. His own
home, made entirely of mud brick, is a model
of his recycling ethos; including timber salvaged
from an old boat jetty. Other signature elements
of his design include the use of circular
walls, which use far less brick than rectangular
walls. In addition, when he does use concrete
for a roof, he embeds chipped or broken terra
cotta roofing tiles into the mixture. These
tiles, which normally would be thrown away,
contribute to the strength of the roof, allow
less of the expensive concrete to be used,
and reduce the structural load of the building.
Baker believes in creating
dwellings that respect the earth and the homeowner
equally.
His Masterpieces
Baker playfully uses curved forms.
The living room at 'The Hamlet'. An integration
of new building and salvaged timber from traditional
buildings that were being demolished
'The
Hamlet', Laurie Baker's home in Thiruvananthapuram,
built on a steeply sloping and rocky hillside
that hardly had any vegetation when Baker
started constructing it , is now a visual
delight.
Baker's
innovative use of discarded bottless, inset
in the wall at Col. Jacob's residence in Thiruvananthapuram,
creates a stained glass effect.
The
Loyola Chapel, reflecting Baker's mastery
over light.
The
Computer centre at the Centre for Development
Studies, Thiruvananthapuram. Here Baker evolved
an innovative system of curved double walls
to save on cost and to conserve the energy
that goes into air-conditioning a building
of this scale and purpose.
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