Home For The Homeless
These homes are planned to accommodate 15 children and 5 foster parents. This project was built using a rare technology pioneered by Ray Meeker of Golden Bridge Pottery, which consists of baking a mud house insitu, after constructing it. A fired house or a fire-established mud house is in principle a mud house built with mud bricks and mud mortar that is cooked after building as a whole to achieve the strength of brick. The interior space of the structure is stuffed with further mud bricks or other ceramic products such as tiles, and fired as if it were a kiln.
Typically kiln walls absorb about 40% of the heat generated. In this technology, the house is the kiln, and the ‘heat loss’ is directed towards firing the house and stabilising it from water damage. The fuel cost is largely accountable to the products inside. The strength of brick in principle would be achieved for the piece of mud. Further, the cement in the mortar mix would become unnecessary.
This technology involves almost only labour, with very little spent of ‘purchased’ materials. Thus the money spent remains in the local economy and it enriches it. The house becomes a producer of sustainable building materials instead of being a consumer. The house takes 3 – 4 days to burn.
Anupama Kundoo
Pondicherry, India
