laurie baker

1. LAURIE BAKER
“I learn my architecture by
watching what ordinary
people do; in any case it is
always the cheapest and
simplest because ordinary
people do it.”

2. About
• Laurence Wilfred "Laurie" Baker (2 March 1917 – 1 April 2007) was a British-born
Indian architect, renowned for his initiatives in cost-effective energy-efficient
architecture and designs that maximized space, ventilation and light and maintained
an uncluttered yet striking aesthetic sensibility.
• Laurie Baker had worked in India for over fifty years. He was one of the very few
architects who had the opportunity and the stamina to work on such a remarkably
varied spectrum of projects ranging from fisherman’s villages to institutional
complexes and from low cost mud housing schemes to low cost cathedrals. Besides
this, his work includes forty churches, numerous schools, institutions and hospitals.
• In the designing of these varied projects, Laurie Baker takes half-forgotten
vernacular patterns of design and construction from the rural setting to dislocated
urban residents whose building choices are often to the unsuitable structural
concepts discarded in the West.
• In every building that Baker designs, he asserts the appropriateness of traditional
construction to local conditions, adapting existing locally available materials and
traditional methods to contemporary urban structures.

3. About
• In both his works and writings, Baker emphatically rejected the ‘international style’
that lingered so perniciously in India. The French Architect, Le Corbusier, who
designed Chandigarh, spawned a host of acolytes seeking a universally applicable
architectural technology. The result of this is seen on the post fifties buildings of
almost every city.
• Baker had never accepted the idea that the multiplicity of human needs and
aspirations can be fulfilled by a standard set of design options and materials. He
believed that individual needs stem from India’s diverse environment, the varying
cultural patterns and lifestyles: and he felt that these needs must ne met through an
architecture which is responsive, uses local materials and expresses itself in many
different forms.
• The building techniques Baker had evolved to suit specific problems of his poorer
clients in Kerala is not a formula applicable to all similar situations; and yet, from it
stems an entire ideology of architectural practice- a pattern that is revolutionary in
its simplicity and its contradiction of the accepted norms of architecture in
contemporary India. Baker’s work is an effective demonstration of his own strength,
his own interpretation of tradition, technology and lifestyle.

4. Influences
• Laurie Baker’s philosophy of architecture is inextricably bound with is experiences
of childhood and youth in England, and later, in the Phitoragarh district of Uttar
Pradesh in the Himalayas where he lived for sixteen years.
• A chance encounter with Mahatma Gandhi at the beginning of his career seems to
have made a great impact on his architecture, as Gandhi’s ideologies were to
influence him in all his work. Though, this is not the single most persuasive influence
in Baker’s life, in the course of several discourses of the Mahatma, Baker imbibed
the meaning of one of his most persistent messages-that change in post-
independent India can be brought about through education and revival of the local
crafts and cottage industries; that is, real independence can only be achieved by self
reliance and by encouraging local craftsmanship.
• The rigorous Quaker upbringing, with its emphasis on simplicity and austerity, its
rejection of all ornament and luxury as sinful self indulgence, was reinforced by the
theories of modernism that were current during his architectural training-the one
complementing the other.

5. Life
• When he was seventeen, he went on a cycling tour of Europe with friends. He was
fascinated by the unfolding vistas of nature, landscapes, cities and people. The
differences in the life-patterns of the people and the differences in the houses from
country to country left and indelible impression on his mind.
• By the time he returned from the tour he was already thinking of a career in
architecture, and soon afterwards, enrolled at the Birmingham School of
Architecture. He graduated in 1937.
• However the second world war broke out before he could complete the period of
professional apprenticeship. During the war, Baker enlisted in the Friends
Ambulance Unit and was sent to China as part of a surgical unit serving in the war
between China and Japan.
• He then went to Burma and in the midst of bitter fighting, was involved in tending
to severely wounded victims. His unit thus learnt to function under the most difficult
circumstances. Later, Baker worked with the civilian population, dealing with people
suffering from leprosy. He was sent back to England as the hardships he had endured
took their toll on their health.

6. Life
• On his way back, while waiting for a ship at Bombay, he had a chance encounter
with Mahatma Gandhi whose philosophy was to a major influence on his work.
• When in England, Baker heard of a worldwide organisation dealing with leprosy in
India. As he explains it, ‘The organisation wanted a builder-architect-engineer sort of
person, with planning and building experience and with a knowledge of leprosy and
its treatment, to convert old refugee centres into actual treatment hospitals, So it
was to this job that he came back to India in 1945.’
• Baker’s job often included renovating old buildings and transforming old asylums
into modern hospitals with the smallest possible expenditure. He worked and lived
in various parts of the country gaining valuable knowledge of a variety of simple
building styles and experience in dealing with all kinds of materials.
• At one of the leprosy hospitals in the state of Uttar Pradesh, he stayed with a family
called Chandy. His host’s sister, Elizabeth Jacob, was a doctor working in a hospital in
Hyderabad. They met and decided to get married…there was the obvious and
natural opposition from various friends and family members to such a mixed
marriage.

7. Life
• They decided to wait. Elizabeth continued working in the same mission in
Hyderabad, and Baker continued to travel from one leprosy hospital to another-
carrying out architectural improvements and sometimes building anew to
accommodate the equipment and the new systems of treatment that were being
introduced with the mission doctors.
• He and Elizabeth would see each other whenever their work permitted. They found
that they were beginning to disagree with some of the mission’s ideologies. They
continued to work devotedly for the cause to which both were, by now, firmly
committed. However their dissatisfaction with the mission grew and eventually, they
left their jobs in 1948. They were married soon afterwards.
• While on a trekking at the foothills of Kumaon the Bakers decided to settle down in
Pithoragarh in the Himalayas. ‘After walking and climbing miles from anywhere we
stopped to rest and recover and relax in a place a dew miles above Pithoragarh.
Immediately people having no access to medical facilities discovers Kuni (Elizabeth)
was a doctor. They gave us accommodation and immediately we were in business
and set up our first little hospital in a disused tea shop.

8. Life
• The Bakers remained in Pithoragarh for the next sixteen years. It was here, while
living in poor and adverse climatic conditions and in uncompromising hill terrain,
that Laurie Baker came to understand the value of vernacular building.
• Baker’s architectural practise in the Himalayas was anything but conventional. His
education at the Birmingham School of Architecture and the skills acquired during
his professional apprenticeship in England became decidedly insignificant.
• Baker built schools, hospitals and community buildings, all of which ran on a self
supporting basis.
• Bakers left Pithoragarh in the year 1963 and moved to a similar hill area in central
Kerala. They settled in a remote village, Vakamon, inhabited by tribal people and
Tamil migrants, and continued to work in much the same way as they had in
Pithoragarh.
• Several years later, while on a holiday at Trivandrum, they got involved with
Leprosy work and just stayed on.

9. Works-Hamlet
• The site was an awkward trapezium of stone and bushes with a level difference
adding up to nearly 15 meters sloping towards Nalanchira road in Trivandrum.
• On the half-an-acre of land purchased from the bishop, Laurie chose a spot, on
the apex end from where the long line of hills was easily and widely visible. The
Bakers started with a single room made of wood and thatch.
• The whole complex seems to have been constructed as a single clustered
development of built environment equally suitable for living, for working or even
for roaming about purposelessly.
• The entrance on the road side is made of cast iron bars with interesting ethnic
patterns on it. The serpentine stairway, made of random rubble, a bit recessed
from the land throughout its flight reminds of the pathway to a Hindu temple
placed on the hill top and carved into the stones.
• The whole pathway is a glimpse of the “baker’s grammar”. The topmost contour
has the main building where the architect resides.

10. Works-Hamlet
• A lowly, welcoming abode with a variety of built environments: from a semi-
closed verandah to open terraces, from a water-body to the living area peeping
towards the terrace, has by now, developed into a five-storey building block,
which is completely unpredictable from outside.
• “But now at an age of 90, it does not seem too wise for me to have a house in
which we have to climb so much to get to the kitchen, or to the library…” Laurie
comments.
• The murals made out of stone, waste ceramics or bottles, the numerous collages
and impressive paintings and sketches and cartoons and each small architectural
detail (including the “call bells”) made by Laurie himself speak of the grand saga
of an architect who, apart from being a noted technologist is also a passionate
artist.

20. Works-Indian Coffee House
• One of the prominent landmarks in the Thampanoor area of Trivandrum, where
both the railway station as well as the bus terminal are located, is the Indian
Coffee House designed by Laurie Baker.
• This building, courtesy of its unusual design has become one of the most
recognisable structures in Trivandrum.
• The entire building is conceived as a continuous spiral ramp, with a central
circular service core and with dining spaces provided on the outer side.
• The form of the building is thus unconventional & bears Baker’s trademark jaalis
to let in light & ventilation.
• The building is well proportioned, a cylindrical brick-red spiral continuing for a
couple of floors and then terminating in a smaller cylindrical volume on top,
giving a very unsymmetrical balance to the whole structure.

21. Works-Indian Coffee House
• What one needs to appreciate is Baker’s masterful intervention in a very small
plot in the middle of a busy urban area. The solution to the design programme is
bold and unusual, yet, one which successfully integrates all the elements of the
programme and one which creates a comfortable and interesting dining
experience.
• Most of the people who see this building are automatically drawn into it due to
curiosity. On the inside, Baker has successfully solved the programmatic
requirement of providing eating spaces by creating modules of built-in table and
seating, with an individual table and its two benches placed on an individual
horizontal platform.
• Thus, on the outer side abutting the external jaali wall, there are continuous
horizontal platforms incrementally rising in height along with the slope of the
spiral.
• The material palette is again typical Baker. The walls are made of exposed
brickwork which has been painted over – white on the inner side & brick-red on
the exterior.

22. Works-Indian Coffee House
• There are no windows – jaalis serve to bring in plenty of light & ventilation,
ensuring that the interiors are nice & comfortable. The table and the seats are
built-in. The table consists of a concrete slab fixed to the wall & with a
semicircular taper on one side. This slab is resting on a small brick arch which
serves as the legs.
• The seats are again interestingly designed and accommodate 2 people
comfortably on either side. The seats of adjacent tables are abutting back to
back, but are at 2 different levels to accommodate the slope. The remarkable
thing about these built-in furnitures is that Baker has designed them so very
precisely ergonomically that they are very comfortable to use, inspite of being so
simple.
• There is a circular service core in the centre, which consists of 2 concentric
circles. The inner smaller circular core is a narrow vertical shaft open on the top,
with openings at different levels. This shaft provides ventilation to the central
areas and works on the principle of Stack effect, a very simple but effective
solution that is so typical of Baker. Around this circular core are the service areas,
especially the toilets & hand wash. The kitchen is placed on the ground floor and
has a separate service entrance.

29. Works-Fishermen’s Village
• CHALLENGES:
Severity of environment in which the tribal’s live.
Limitation of resources.
Conventional architects stayed away from these projects.
Dealing with large insular groups, with set ideas and traditions.
Dealing with cyclones.
• Design strategies:
Construction:
Exposed brickwork and structure
Sloped concrete roof
Openness in design and individual units offset each other
Continuous latticework
in the exposed walls

30. Works-Fishermen’s Village
• Dealing With Cyclones:
Low sloped roofs and courts serve as wind catchers.
Open walls function to dispel it.
Long row of housing replaced by even staggering.
Fronting courts catch the breeze and also get view of sea.
• Open Spaces
Little private rectangle of land in between houses for drying nets , kids play.
Provides sleeping lofts within and adequate space outside for mending nets and
cleaning and drying fish.

33. Architectural Style
• Designing and building low cost, high quality, beautiful homes.
• Suited to or built for lower-middle to lower class clients.
• Irregular, pyramid-like structures on roofs, with one side left open and tilting into
the wind.
• Brick jali walls, a perforated brick screen which utilises natural air movement to
cool the home’s interior and create intricate patterns of light and shadow.
• Baker’s designs invariably have traditional Indian sloping roofs and terracotta
Mangalore tile shingling with gables and vents allowing rising hot air to escape.
• Curved walls to enclose more volume at lower material cost than straight walls.
• Baker was often seen rummaging through salvage heaps looking for suitable
building materials, door and window frames.
• Baker’s architectural method is of improvisation.

34. Architectural Style
• Initial drawings have only an idealistic link to the final construction, with most of
the accommodations and design choices being made on-site by the architect
himself.
• His respect for nature led him to let the idiosyncrasies of a site inform his
architectural improvisations, rarely is a topography line marred or a tree
uprooted.
• This saves construction cost as well, since working around difficult site conditions
is much more cost-effective than clear-cutting.
• His responsiveness to never-identical site conditions quite obviously allowed for
the variation that explains his work.

35. Typical Construction Techniques
• Filler slab-Advantages:
• 20-35% Less materials
• Decorative, Economical & Reduced self-load
• Almost maintenance free
• 25-30% Cost Reduction
• Jack Arch-Advantages :
• Energy saving & Eco-Friendly compressive roofing.
• Decorative & Highly Economical
• Maintenance free
• Masonry Dome- Advantages:
• Energy saving eco-friendly compressive roof.
• Decorative & Highly Economical for larges spans.
• Maintenance free

36. Typical Construction Techniques

37. Typical Construction Techniques

38. Typical Construction Techniques

39. Awards
• In 1981, the Royal University of the Netherlands conferred an honour (the previous
recipient of this honour, in 1980, was Hassan Fathy of Egypt) upon him for
outstanding work in a Third World country.
• In 1983 he was conferred with an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire)
at Buckingham Palace.
• In 1990, the Government of India awarded him the Padma Shri for his meritorious
service in the field of architecture.
• In 1992, he was awarded the Roll of Honour by the United Nations. In 1988, he was
granted Indian citizenship.
• In 2006, He was nominated for the Pritzker Prize (considered the Nobel Prize in
Architecture).