Learning from Rajasthan

John Hill (JH): In the Building of the Week feature last year, you described how the building serves numerous small villages near Nokha, Rajasthan. I'm just wondering if you could describe the area — paint a picture, if you will — to give readers an idea of how this small building fits into its larger context.
Sanjay Puri (SP): Essentially, all of this lies in the desert and is surrounded by desert. In close proximity there are these small villages; some of them are as small as having 20 houses, and some of them are as large as having 200 houses. The area as a whole comprises 144 villages, but they’re all scattered within the desert landscape. You drive for a while and only see desert on both sides — sparse landscape, very sparse. There are only few trees that grow in that climate. And then you'll come across a bunch of houses and maybe a small temple. Go farther and, again, you see the desert all around you, and then, again, you'll see a village. That's the kind of space it is within.

When we got this project, actually the clients wanted a memorial for their father who had passed away a year earlier. They had already earmarked the position, where his last rights were performed. They already had something in mind, of trying to build a small enclosure around it and having a small room to tell a little bit of his life’s story with photographs and some of his collectibles. We told them, instead of doing this inclusive building, which only your family will probably look at, why don’t you do something for the village and all the villages around? And so they agreed and we made this spiral building around this space; we put a statue there and built the building around it. So it has a small museum and it has this children's library, which is the first digital library in a radius of 20 kilometers. It is really giving those children the access to any kind of information that they need. And this library is being used by four to five hundred children every day.

JH: Wow, that’s great.

SP: In addition, there are villages who go there just to look at the building, to walk on the roof because they've never seen a garden. Like I said, this is a desert climate, so water is very scarce. There are maybe 20 large villas in the entire precinct of 144 villages who can afford to store water in tanks and then water and grow grass. But otherwise, most of these villagers have not even experienced grass on their feet. It's really sad when you think about it because they're just used to the desert. Here we calculated the amount of rainfall during the course of a year (it's very few days because of the desert climate) and based on that, we determined the size of the tank required: a 90,000-liter capacity.

We built that, and the earth that was excavated for it actually creates the earth berm around the building on the south, east, and the west. Everything we excavated got used within the site; no mud came into our site or went out of it. The tank now supplies water throughout the year, not just for the gardening, but also for the toilets and the other utilities. When it is 40 degrees outside, children are running up and down this grassy hill because they have not experienced that in their life. It is really a joy to go back and see how the building is being used.

JH: You had also mentioned in the Building of the Week feature that the sandstone for the screens and other elements were fabricated in the vicinity.
SP: It is very sustainable. We used completely local labor. No material came from beyond three or four kilometers. The sandstone was sourced from the region itself. The earth was excavated and used on the site itself. The water is self-sufficient, so there's no water supply coming from outside at all is simply rainwater being harvested, reused, recycled, reused again. The last time I visited was in the middle of summer, when it was 42 degrees outside. All these children were studying in the library, and I realized after five minutes, believe it or not, that there was no AC on. We provided AC, but the building is cool because it's got a roof garden on top, it’s sheltered on the sides by an earth berm, it's got stone screens — multiple layers of reducing heat.

JH: Is it common in India or in Rajasthan to have private individuals or families providing community uses in their buildings?
SP: That's very limited, actually. Just a few families who have that sense of belonging to their villages do a little something, but generally it's in the form of a school or a small hospital. Within this extended family, they have actually built a small hospital. Now, for the same clients, we are also building a school for the village girls who have no access to a good education system; that is under construction. They were already doing some work, and that's why, when we told them that if you do this it's good for the whole community, they accepted it quite fast. That was a plus point.

JH: I saw on your website a house in Nokha, near the Nokha Village Community Centre, though the house is in a more traditional style. Is this the same client?
SP: That house was actually for another client. In fact, I was doing that house and the family approached me saying, “If you're already coming out here for this house, will you do this tiny project for us?”

JH: If they knew what you were doing with that house, how receptive were they to the form of the building you designed for them?
SP: Actually, it was quite unexpected for them when they first looked at it. But when I explained everything, then they kind of agreed to it. It was not like a long, drawn-out battle or argument or anything. They said, yeah, this looks interesting and is something that people will want to come and see. So they were open to it.

JH: Can you describe how you developed the form? What was your design process?
SP: We started with a square and thought, how can you build around this building and make it into like a courtyard? But a courtyard limits the numbers of people who can collect there based upon its size. And the client gave us a very strict mandate: please do not exceed nine or ten thousand square feet, because our budget is according to that. We realized, okay, this courtyard building is only going to hold about 150 people at the maximum, but what happens when four or five hundred people come? There is no space for people to gather here. So we opened up the building on one side, the northern side, because from the north you always get indirect sunlight. The building is shielded on the east, west, and south, and it opens to the north.

Rather than doing everything square — because these people have been seeing the square compositions all their life — as a complete deviation from that, we get this whole circular sweep, which kind of conveys the sand dunes in the desert, which can actually be seen in the distance. It is derived from the fluid movement of sand in the sand dunes, but then we looked at it from the climate point of view and said, “How can we shield this?” It was all simultaneous decisions: we realized we had to make a water tank of a certain size, we are going to get so much earth, so we created the solar earth berm and a terrace garden, which allows every part of the building to be used. So you get a terrace garden of 9,000 square feet, you have a library space and a museum space, and you have an open auditorium that is three times the size of the building and is also used like for all festivities, for multiple cultural events. So it's really become like the focal point of this whole area.

JH: In the Building of the Week feature, you wrote that the way the building serves people who truly need these spaces makes it a more meaningful project compared to others in your office. Does this mean you are now pursuing similar projects in your office? And, if so, how do you go about doing that? How do you find clients who want to do projects like this one?
SP: Yes, this one helped a lot. People have seen how much good one tiny building can do. There is this old temple sitting on top of a hill, which is 200 years old and it's got no facilities. We were asked if we would develop it, so we are now doing this and we are making a girl’s school that is going to provide free education. That is a way of giving back to the community. And we are also looking at is as giving back to the community, so we are not charging anything, this is all pro bono. It's because the projects are so exciting. Imagine reviving a 200-year-old temple sitting on top of a hill! We are doing that, the girl’s school, and now somebody's talking to us about doing a much larger school, like a university there. 

This project has also led to a lot of inquiries from the rest of India — will we do a community center here, will we do community center there? We are talking to multiple people right now.

JH: Who would your clients be for those projects?
SP: Government is very difficult to deal with, so these are all individuals: their trusts and charity foundations. We are already building another community center, in a different city for a different client. It is located in Maharashtra, in a different part of India, in Western India.

JH: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume the other community center will have a similar approach, but because it's in a different area, it will look different and will have different materials.
SP: Yeah, it's totally different. There, we are using earth bricks, stabilized earth made from the soil of that site itself. Even the bricks are not coming from outside the site. And we are doing a bamboo roof. We are hardly using any steel at all, zero concrete.

JH: Is it under construction now? When will it be done?
SP: It's under construction, so probably six months more.

JH: I look forward to seeing how that turns out.