| Warm Worm 2007-04-14, 8:25 pm |
| "But in Delhi, I was introduced to architecture that was totally
faceless. You did not need to know who the client
was. It was as if you were building for anybody. It was architecture
without values. It was a quagmire of corruption, pretensions and ego.
It was a different platform altogether."
"He used to say, 'I never build for classes of people, HIG [high
income group], MIG, LIG, tribals [tribal people], fishermen and so on.
But I will build only for a Matthew, a Bhaskaran, a Muneer, or a
Sankaran.' Baker never built for unknown people. He built for people
with names and faces. He believed that every person had a name, a face
and a personality."
An architect who truly inspires me. Perhaps the first. Thank you.
Richard MacIntyre
---
On Apr 11, 5:24 am, "fredericknoronha" <fredericknoro...@gmail.com>
posted:
NEW DELHI (AP) -- Laurie Baker, a British-born architect who spent
> more than 60 years in India building homes that were ecologically
> sound and affordable for the poor, has died. He was 90.
>
> Baker, who died April 1, used local, mostly inexpensive materials to
> construct quality buildings all over India in what became known as the
> Laurie Baker style. His technique allowed natural movement of air to
> cool interiors in the sweltering southern state of Kerala, Baker's
> home for decades.
>
> Baker and several other architects founded the Center Of Science and
> Technology For Rural Development, which continues to provide quality
> housing for poor families.
>
> "For him low-cost did not mean low quality. It was all about using
> sustainable materials properly," said Sajan P.B., an architect who
> worked with Baker for more than 17 years.
>
> The last designs Baker worked on were two slum rehabilitation projects
> that will provide over 1,000 homes to poor people in Trivandrum, the
> capital of Kerala.
>
> Laurence Wilfred Baker was born March 2, 1917, in Birmingham, England,
> where he trained as an architect. A Quaker and conscientious objector
> in World War II, he worked with a medical team in China and Burma.
>
> A chance encounter with Mohandas K. Gandhi on his way back home to
> England led Baker to promise the Indian leader he would return to
> India after the war and work with the poor in rural areas.
>
> Baker used local, mostly inexpensive, materials to construct quality
> buildings all over India in what became known as the Laurie Baker
> style. His techniques, including the use of perforated screens made
> with locally manufactured bricks, allowed natural movement of air to
> cool interiors in the sweltering southern state of Kerala, Baker's
> home for decades.
>
> He and several other architects founded the Center of Science and
> Technology for Rural Development, which continues to provide quality
> housing for poor families.
>
> "For him, low cost did not mean low quality. It was all about using
> sustainable materials properly," said Sajan P.B., an architect who
> worked with Baker for more than 17 years.
>
> The last designs Baker worked on were two slum rehabilitation projects
> that will provide more than 1,000 homes to poor people in Trivandrum,
> the capital of Kerala.
>
> A chance encounter with Mohandas K. Gandhi on his way back home to
> England led Baker to promise the Indian leader he would return to
> India after the war and work with the poor in rural areas.
>
> Baker's work with the mission took him all over the country and
> encouraged him to use the most easily available and cost-friendly
> local materials for construction, Sajan said.
>
> Baker received the United Nations Habitat Award in 1992 and the
> International Union of Architects' Award in 1993.
>
> Perhaps more than for his architecture, people loved him for his
> wonderful qualities as a human being. By G. Shankar
>
> S. GOPAKUMAR
> ...
> I WAS a student just out of school in Kerala when I first met Laurie
> Baker. A friend had invited me over to visit the site where, he said,
> a foreigner was building a house for his family. There I saw this
> fair-skinned man engaged in a heated argument with his client, my
> friend's father, a mathematics professor.
>
> Among other things, the professor wanted a cylindrical shape for his
> home, to get the benefit of maximum space, and six bedrooms, one each
> for his five sons and the other for himself and his wife. The argument
> was about the bedrooms.
>
> I still remember Baker asking the professor, "Look, Mr. Namboodiri,
> you have five sons, all of them brilliant students. They will all
> start flying very soon and will go away. Finally, an old man and an
> old woman will be all alone in this house. Are you sure that you still
> want six bedrooms?"
>
> The professor was adamant. He said, "Yes, I do want six bedrooms. As long=
as my sons are with me, they
> should have their own rooms."
> ... Several years later, I visited the house that Baker had built for my =
friend's family. The professor was
> long gone. The children had all flown away. Their mother, now quite old, =
was alone in that three-storied house.
> There were cobwebs in every nook and corner, on the roof and on the spira=
l staircase. Clearly, nobody climbed
> upstairs any longer.
>
> I told her that I had first met Baker on that very site, years earlier, w=
hen he had been warning her husband about
> the futility of building a bedroom for each of their five sons. The old w=
oman clasped my hand and cried for a
> while.
>
> Later, I went on to study architecture. In college, we were exposed to a =
range of architectural styles. We were
> taught an excess of them really, Buddhist, English, Victorian, Edwardian,=
Byzantine, Columbian, you name it.
> But we were never taught how to make a small house, within five cents of =
land, for five adults, and with only
> Rs.50,000. This is the Indian reality. Instead, we were taught how to bui=
ld buildings in unlimited time, with
> unlimited budgets.
>
> But, fortunately, by then, "Baker buildings" were happening all around us=
.. The shape of those buildings used to
> fascinate us. It was from then on that I started taking note of Baker pro=
fessionally, as an architect. The
> prestigious low-cost complex of the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) =
in Thiruvananthapuram had already
> been built by Baker and became a rallying point for many of us students a=
nd architects.
>
> During vacations, we used to frequent all the Baker buildings, to observe=
his art at close quarters. It was not just
> the miraculous range of new building materials used by him that fascinate=
d us. The rare beauty of the interiors,
> the spaces that he created where light and air flowed freely, all of it w=
as a new experience for us.
>
> After graduating, I went to Delhi. There, I had a peep into the other sid=
e of architecture. Baker took a number of
> factors into consideration before he decided the architecture of a buildi=
ng - the site, the climate, the client, the
> children and many such
> criteria.
> But in Delhi, I was introduced to architecture that was totally faceless.=
You did not need to know who the client
> was. It was as if you were building for anybody. It was architecture with=
out values. It was a quagmire of
> corruption, pretensions and ego. It was a different platform altogether.
>
> A view of the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, which B=
aker designed. He had a deep,
> genuine concern for nature and trees.
>
> He used to say, "I never build for classes of people, HIG [high income gr=
oup], MIG, LIG, tribals [tribal people],
> fishermen and so on. But I will build only for a Matthew, a Bhaskaran, a =
Muneer, or a Sankaran." Baker never
> built for unknown people. He built for people with names and faces. He be=
lieved that every person had a name, a
> face and a personality.
>
> ...He would go to a building site with a bunch of pegs and a
> bundle of strings in his pocket and would make the measurements
> himself, using his feet. He never worked from drawings. He used to go
> to the site and discover things. At the site, he would say, suddenly,
> "Why don't we put the window here so that it will open out on to that
> particular view."
>
> Laurels and awards hung lightly on him. At several places in north India,=
in New Delhi, in Ahmedabad, I have
> seen people revering Baker. But not in Kerala, where he made his home. He=
was never invited to teach
> students. He was ignored by the architects' bodies. Some even "pooh-pooh=
ed" him as a "brick-layer". His
> greatest wish, to be an Indian citizen, was granted late, only in 1988. H=
e was subsequently awarded the
> Padma Shri. The British government honoured him with the Order of the Bri=
tish Empire.
> But for Baker, becoming an Indian citizen was his only true achievement.
>
> Baker came East from England as a volunteer architect... building hospita=
ls, schools, libraries, ashrams and
> homes. He... arrived in Kerala 35 years ago and immediately struck a chor=
d with ordinary people, soon after he
> began, demonstrating that homes could be built for even Rs.3,000.
>
> But he was not merely a builder of low-cost homes. He had the amazing abi=
lity to organise space. He used to
> create space like a magician for his clients to drink in, to meditate in,=
to think in. He had a lot of concern for
> beauty. He taught us how beautiful a brick could be and to look closely a=
t its colour and texture; that no two
> bricks are the same and that together they create a wonderful mosaic; abo=
ut the ruggedness of stone; and so
> on. He was the first one to call our attention to natural building materi=
als and to the importance of using a variety
> of indigenous styles of architecture... He was against ostentation or fa=
=E7adism in architecture. He disliked
> falsehood and deceit.
>
> S. GOPAKUMAR
>
> ...Baker influenced a generation of architectural engineers, who are now =
trying to further his vision in their own
> different ways. He taught us the need to relate to our clients; about tru=
thfulness in architecture; the importance
> of cost-effective, energy-efficient building materials; about cutting cor=
ners; and of making truthful choices.
> He taught us to say no to cement, to the cutting down of trees and to ex=
pensive materials. He told us not to
> squander money, materials or energy; never to design buildings by sitting=
in isolation at a desk in an office;
> and to trust and learn from the "inherited ability" of local people to bu=
ild effectively and well for themselves with
> limited resources.
>
> Most of those who came there [To his funeral] were people whom Baker woul=
d have recognised immediately and
> people who lived in homes that Baker had built for them. Once Baker built=
a home for anyone, he became theirs,
> their family friend, a person who knew all about them.
>
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