Experiencing the Material Earth Aakash Karnavat III Yr karnavat27@gmail.com
In the world of concrete creations, a medium like mud is hardly taken seriously as a construction material.We talk about how we have stopped using mud, but many rural households contextual to our country are still building with mud. It is just that the government building housing schemes promote reinforced cement concrete for the poor & the middle class has set off a notion that concrete is the only proper and satisfactory material to be used. Well to enquire my concerns, I attended a 30 day, 4 part long training programme in Auroville Earth Institute, Tamil Nadu. The workshops were CSEB PRODUCTION, CSEB MASONRY, CSEB DESIGN & exploring Earth & Bamboo as a material. We were in a group of 4 to explore all possibilities of the material exploration. We were guided by the co founder of Auroville Earth Institute, T. Ayyapaan who taught us on site working and the founder Satprem Maine who was teaching us theory as well as the calculation included in it. For CSEB PRODUCTION, we started off with learning the scientific properties, sustainability and environmental friendliness of earth as a material. Going ahead, we learnt about identifying soils, stabilizing soil, quality control, making
special blocks and optimizing production. For CSEB MASONRY, we had to test the mortar quality, bonds for various types of walls, casting beams, lintel, plinth beam, building compound column, building a CSEB wall and a stabilized earth plaster. With this we were introduced to the building basics of arches, vaults and domes where we built free spaning vaults, a great hands-on experience. For CSEB DESIGN, we started with the very basics of bond pattern exercises with the mud blocks we produced, later we started designing on auto cad with some pre set rules to design (basic principles + structural components + foundation calculations).We did case studies of Vikas Community of Auroville, The Al Medy Mosque of Riyadh & the Natraja Temple of Tamil Nadu to understand the beauty of earth. The founder Satprem Maine was kind enough to accompany us to the Natraja Temple followed by a vegan dinner in the evening. Thanks to T Ayyapaan and his masons who offered us lemon juice & cut watermelon every now and then between our workshop hours. Mud buildings are environment friendly and natural, but are now being replaced by concrete. Getting to experience mud as a
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material in depth, I think we should have a collective conscience about the material and not leave it to government to set or lay down a notion to the people to roll upon.
