Derham Groves

Designing with Bricks, Student Workshop, College of Engineering, Trivandrum, India, 2012

Samples of Laurie Baker’s architecture:

(1) The Laurie Baker Centre, Trivandrum

Ms. Shailaja Nair talking to the first-year students about Laurie Baker and his architecture.

(2) The Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum

(3) The Indian Coffee House, Trivandrum

(4) The Hamlet (Laurie Baker’s own house), Trivandrum

(5) Loyola College, Trivandrum

(6) Buildings by some of Laurie Baker’s “disciples”

Brickmaking in Kerala

The first-year student workshop:

(1) “Playing” with bricks

(2) The College of Engineering Trivandrum wall

(Angel Varghese, Anuja J., Archana, Anna Baby, and Nisha Nelson)

(3) The elephant/butterfly wall

(Muhammed Jiyad, Hisham A.A., Amalraj P., Ahmad Thaneem Abdul Majeed, Muhammed Naseem, Sankasnath P.M., Sai Prasad C., and Suneer K.K.)

Bricklayer Joy Francis showing the students how to use a plumb bob

Joy Francis and the students using a “homemade” spirit level

Is it two elephant heads or a butterfly?

(4) The brick jali wall

(Soumya S. Warrier, Deepthi B., Anutpama Warrier, Saijith M.S., Nikitha, and Nikita Jimmington)

Ambitious!

A cement bucket made from old tyres

(5) The herringbone and stepped wall

(Parvathi P., Prasanth R., Najeeb T., and Rahul Sarovthaman)

Testing the wall’s stability. No worries!

(6) The fish wall

(Dheeraj K., Abraham Philip, Richard Lalduhsaka, Vignesh Sajeev, and Abhijath Ajay)

(7) The little house wall

(Gitanjiali V.R., Harsha Hareendran, Roshni Maria George, Athira P., Akshaya K., Aryaa, Mizna Reem, Aafreen Fathima, and Reshma Cherian

(8) The double-curved wall

(Magna George and Jisa George)

(9) Feedback session