Arulville is a house in Chennai, India designed by the Centre for Indigenous Architecture to utilize passive cooling techniques. The unplastered rammed earth walls and exposed brickwork allow air to circulate through the house, keeping interior temperatures cool even in the summer heat. Other traditional techniques like arched ceilings, cross ventilation, and coconut fiber roof insulation were employed. Over 60 trees on the property were preserved during construction. The house serves as both a family retreat and community space. Inspired by the project, the owner established the Centre for Indigenous Architecture to promote sustainable design.

1. HABITAT
CHENNAI, October 25, 2013.
Arulville
ARCHITECTS: CENTRE FOR INDIGENOUS ARCHITECTURE
To appreciate this house as it deserves to be, step inside the house at
midday in the peak of summer. Its oxide floors and the rammed mud walls
still feel cold against the skin, there is a pleasant and refreshing draft at any
spot of the house you wander to, even its exposed brick terrace. Well, this
house ‘Arulville’ is a tribute to the amazing functionality and climate-
controlling ability of indigenous architecture.
Un-plastered rammed earth walls allow the house to breathe through its
walls and keep the ambient temperature cool. Exposed brick walls with
plenty of jaali work, an abundance of cross ventilation, and arched Madras
terrace ceilings supported by re-usable concrete rafters, are some of the
time-tested indigenous building technologies used here. The house revels
in the natural colors of clay, with a few pigments added to the final clay
wash.
Meanwhile, the arched entrance porch has been constructed of exposed
bricks and terra cotta pots, while coconut fibre has been used as insulation
between the two layers of the terracotta tile roof of the un-walled
children’s play area. Use of old timber, antique pillars, filler slabs with used
terracotta pans, terracotta titles, and Cudappah stones ensure that the
house leaves a minimum carbon footprint.
Not one of the 60-plus trees on the site was cut during construction. The
trees were simply walled around and topped by cudappah seats, to
provide casual seating arrangements. Mud for the walls was excavated on-
site, and such excavated pits have been converted into lily ponds and sites
for grey water harvesting.
With its plentiful seating arrangements under trees and in the verandas
(that serve as a building skin to keep the heat away from the interiors of
the bungalow), convention room/large living area, private rooms,
courtyard, sunk amphitheatre with stone seats and water bodies, Arulville
strikes a balance between a rejuvenating getaway for families as well as a
community space for events.
Arulville’s owner Anthony Raj shaped and executed new technologies and design for the house as construction went
along, and was inspired enough along the way to establish the Centre for Indigenous Architecture. “Arulville is
nature-positive, regenerative architecture at work”, says Anthony.