Rebuilding Waste into Sustainable Architecture
Vinu Daniel
Architect Vinu Daniel started Wallmakers in 2007 to devote his energies towards the cause of sustainable and cost- effective architecture. Since then, it has won many accolades including being selected by ArchDaily as the only Indian practice in the list of 20 Young Practices of 2020.
Amy thinking— that the ideal house in the ideal village will be built using material that is found within a five- mile radius of the home. But in a typical urban context today, everything around us is waste, so we have to learn to build with it.
Necessity and innovation are two significant facets of my designs. In one of my projects, the location where my client wanted to construct a house was once a dumpyard. So, instead of shifting the waste to some other person’s property, I decided to build with it. That was when we first came up with the patented Debris Wall and Shuttered Debris
Wall ( SHOBRI). While all other walls of the house are built of rammed earth, with mud sourced from the site itself mixed with barely 7- 9% cement, the debris wall is built around a frame of 6 mm steel rods and plastered 22 gauge wire mesh. This supports the layers of debris poured in with intermittent watering and finished with a final layer of plaster. The wall is made up of 80% building material remains, 15% gravel, 5% cement and 5% manufactured sand. It is not just resource and cost- efficient, but also surprisingly strong and of extremely pliable form.
At Wallmakers, our aim is to build sustainable spaces that are responsive to specific site contexts and conditions in design and materiality, while maintaining a balance between innovative and utilitarian designs. We are constantly on the move, looking for ways to make construction more sustainable, as we believe that going green is no longer an option but a compulsion for 21st- century humans, where architecture is no longer a profession but has become a hazard. rchitecture is a creative space, unlike the pedagogical framework within which conventional architecture is taught. Adjusting to it was difficult, and I felt that architecture had become all about satisfying one’s ego. However, a chance meeting with legendary architect Laurie Baker in my fourth year of college played a critical role in making me fall in love with architecture. Baker explained how buildings could completely coexist with nature and help avoid waste, inspired by Gandhi’s teachings. One of the things that Gandhi had said has also influenced