Laurie Baker: - The Hassan Fathy of India'

LAURIE BAKER
-The ‘Hassan Fathy of India’.

Laurie Baker worked in India for more than 60 years and
on a varied spectrum of projects ranging from fishermen’s
villages to institutional complexes. His architecture was based
on respecting the local climate and environment.
He alone has built over a thousand houses in Trivandrum.

Besides this, his work includes around 50 churches, numerous
schools, institutions and hospitals.
He remained a lone protagonist, experimenting singly and

quietly in a distant corner of country and providing
information on the causes and results of his numerous
architectural interventions.
Design Principles
• Architecture is an organic, evolving form;

traditional patterns are collective experience
of many generations.
• Living architecture thrives on appropriate

assimilation and adaptation.
• Economize on material and provide quality

homes through better trained and better
organized artisans.
Design Philosophy
He drew creative sustenance from environment, absorbing
vernacular patterns of construction & individual styles of living.
He asserted the appropriateness of traditional construction to

local conditions, adapting existing locally available materials
and traditional methods to contemporary urban structures.
Architecture cannot be transplanted without doing violence

to those very needs which it is attempting to meet.
Rejecting ‘International Style’, he firmly believed that the needs
must be met through an architecture which is responsive.
My feeling as an architect is that you are not after all trying to
put up a monument which will be remarked as a ‘Laurie Baker
Building’ but Mohan Singh’s house where he can live happily
with his family.
- Laurie Baker
Major Works
 Mitraniketan, Vellanad (1970)

 House for K. N. Raj, Kumarapuram (1970)
 House for Dr. P. K. Panikar, Kumarapuram
 (1974)
 House of Lt. Gen. S. Pillai, Jawahar Nagar, Trivandrum (1971)
 Loyala Chapel and auditorium, Sreekarayam (1971)
 St. John’s Cathedral, Tiruvella (1973-74)
 Nalanda State Institute of Languages, Nandankode Trivandrum
(1973)
 Chitralekha film Studio, Aakulam, Trivandrum (1974-76)
 Corpus Christi School, Kottayam (1972)
 Fishermen’s village, Poonthura, Trivandrum (1974-75)
 Tourist Centre, Ponmudi (1980)
 Experimental Houses, New Delhi (1980)
House of P. K. Panikar
Building: Residential
Client: The Director of
the Centre for
Development
Studies, Dr. P. K.
Panikar.
Project cost: Rs.25,000.
Location: Kumarapuram,
Trivandrum,
Kerala
Year: 1974
The exaggerated roundness of
the House
Plan of the House
 The site was prepared with a plinth
of random rubble masonry enclosed
by a dry stone retaining wall in the
rear.
 Approaching on a steep decent
from the upper road, the visitor
enters the living area located
centrally in the curving mass and
opening into a deep veranda
overlooking the hill. Baker used the old fashioned
 The dining and kitchen form one fish tile roof laid on
end to the curve, the bedrooms and wooden rafters.
study the other.
Corpus Christi School, Kottayam, 1972
Building: Institutional
Location: Kottayam, Kerala
Year: 1972
Entrance and The Administrative Block

Plan Corpus Christi School
 Expression: Consistent with the cost effective economics and
policies of development.
Here, at the Corpus Christi School, the nature of a child’s
experience in learning and play is reflected in a plan that
itself suggests a playful inquiry.
 The straight line and excessive rectilinearity may not directly
offend a child’s sensibility but baker feels the meandering wall,
the circle and square as counterpoint, make for a more
desirable and inhabitable landscape.
 Where rooms do not have the formal labels of classroom,
assembly hall or office , the student feels less intimidated and
is left free to roam, the meet others like himself, and discover
places suitable for learning and play.
 The site along a gentle hill is graded
into a series of related plateaus.
 The upper contours, serviceable from
the road, contain the formal functions
of kitchen and services in a rectangular
courtyard building the dining hall
breaking free from the composition.
 On the lower ground the rooms twist,
turn and triangulate into varying
position and sizes offering choices of
formal classrooms as well as intimate
study dens, large halls and smaller
nooks.
 The playfulness of walls, however,
reveal a delicately work flexibility.
Fishermen’s Village, Poonthura, Trivandrum, 1974-75
 The materials, the exposed brickwork and structure, and the

unique innovation here is the openness of design and the way
individual units offset each other.
 The cyclonic wind meets no resistance and is allowed to pass
trough the house by the continuous lattice work I the exposed
walls.
 The low sloped roofs and courts serve as wind catchers , and the
open walls function to dispel it.
 The long row of conventional housing is replaced by an
staggering, so that the fronting courts get a view of sea and
catches the breeze.
 Since a good part of fisherman's life is spent out doors, the
house and court function admirably providing sleeping lofts
within and adequate space outside for mendering nets and
cleaning and drying fish.

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LAURIE BAKER

-The ‘Hassan Fathy of India’.

He alone has built over a thousand houses in Trivandrum.

He remained a lone protagonist, experimenting singly and

• Architecture is an organic, evolving form;

• Living architecture thrives on appropriate

• Economize on material and provide quality

He asserted the appropriateness of traditional construction to

Architecture cannot be transplanted without doing violence

 Mitraniketan, Vellanad (1970)

Entrance and The Administrative Block

 The materials, the exposed brickwork and structure, and the

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