1a-He Lived and Worked Alone

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J14THE TIMES OF INDIA, BOMBAY, 03 APR 2007

Gautam Bhatia

Twenty years ago, LaurieBaker received a call from

the Queen's office in Londonto inquire whether he wouldaccept the OBE if it were to beconferred on him. At the time,after a long awaited and frus-trated bid for Indian citizen-ship, Baker replied that hewould be grateful if Bucking-ham Palace could help him be-come an Indian citizen in-stead. The shor t telephone ex-change was typical of a manwho spoke little; but when hedid, it was his own mind.

In a profession where ar-chitects perpetually seek in-ternational recognition andprofessional awards, Bakerlived and worked alone, andentirely without recognitionor reward. In his adoptedhome state of Kerala, he builtover two thousand houses, be-sides a number of institutes,fishing villages, mission build-ings, schools and cathedrals.With a body of work that ri-

vals any contemporary Indi-an or foreign practice, no one— least of all the mini stry of external affairs — could everdoubt his status as an Eng-land-born native son of India.Baker eventually received hisIndian citizenship, and withthe threat of an OBE loominglarge, the Government of In-dia also hastily dumped a Pad-ma Shri on him.

Baker's most impressiveachievement has doubtlesslybeen his ability to constructsuitable buildings at low costand so direct bureaucrats and

politicians to the growingneeds of the poor.

Over the course of a thou-sand-odd buildings, he clear-ly demonstrated this concernwith unwavering confidenceand firmness. The source forall his professional work al-ways remained his own par-ticular brand of Quaker hu-manism, which, more thanany single structure, is hismost significant legacy to ar-chitecture.

Baker always maintained

The B r ic k M a s t e rO f K e r a la

T ur n ing Po in t : w h i le w a i tmgthree months in Bombay for a boat back toEngland in 1944, became influenced byGandhi. Returned to india for good after abrief spell at home. In 1948, married DrElizabeth Jacob and lived in Pithoragarh tillmid-60s. Moved to Kerala thereafter

Work: Pioneered low-cost nature-

friendly housing in India. Known as the'brick master of Kerala' for offering housingsolutions to the roofless millions. Someprominent Baker buildings: Centre forDevelopment Studies, Ulloor,Thiruvananthapuram; Chitralekha StudioComplex, Thiruvananthapuram

Awards: Order of the British Empire,Padma Shri, Great Masters Architectof the Year, UNO Habitats Award & UNRoll of Honour

that India's greatest architec-tural teacher was neither LeCorbusier nor Sir Edwin Lu-

tyens, but Mahatma Gandhi.Gandhiji spoke consistently,and with common sense aboutthe building needs of ourcountry, said Baker, referringto the Mahatma's statementthat the ideal house in Indiawill be built from materialsfound within a five-mile radiusof the house.

Such a lesson on appropri-ate technology Laurie Bakerput into practice in virtuallyall the buildings he built in In-dia. Rejecting values alien tothe place, wasteful buildingpractices and self-seeking

ethics of the architectural pro-fession, Baker devised his ownarchitecture and his ownmorally satisfying way of practising it. His singular am-bition of a better building athalf the cost made him elimi-nate useless members of theconventional architecturalteam just the way he elimi-nated unnecessary materialfrom a building. Throughoutthe course of his 70-year prac-tice, he stuck unfailingly to hisideals.

Though there is little doubtabout the relevance of hiswork to Indian architecture,

it is a strange irony of the pro-fession that a truly identifi-able Indian architectureshould be created by an Eng-lishman.

Moreover, it is surprisingthat so little is known about aman who has single-handedlyinnovated low-cost construc-tion techniques in th is coun-try, questioned and radicallyaltered the nature of conven-tional building technology andarchitectural practice and,above all, one who has builtand written so prodigiously.But a large-scale recognition

of his work by the governmentcould hardly be expected.Working within wasteful time-frames and budgets, and witha set of antiquated norms,Baker's iconoclastic systemof practice, if put to wide-spread use, would have threat-ened the very system thatrecognised it.

I was fortunate to have ex-perienced something of the in-tegrity of Baker's life in thetwo years I spent recording hiswork. Over many meetings in

the verandah of his home, andthe numerous visits to hissites, watching him commu-nicate wi th the Malayalee ma-sons with vigorous gestures,I came to realise that Baker'sarchitecture was not merelyan expression of buildingneeds, but something more—something that recognized or-dinary people's aspirations fora better life.

His buildings were an hon-est and direct response to theidea that originality meant go-ing back to origins, to an un-derstanding of a common wayof living, to a life without style.But always one with the nat-ural surroundings.

Even the journey to Bak-er's house through the city isa symbolic return to the ori-gins, a transformation to an-other architectural age; ittakes the visitor from thedenser concrete centre of T h i r u v a n a n t h a p u r a m ,through the freshness andshade of the suburbs, to therelatively unspoilt outskirts

of Nalanchira. The house isnot visible from the road andthe walk up towards it is oneof slow discovery — an en-trance gate, a steeper gradi-ent along a workshop to a free-standing door, a curved pathalong the guest house and thefinal flight of steps to themain house. The house itself,open but benign, is orientedtowards the countryside —away from the city — and soit renews its links to its Ker-ala ancestry The visitor hard-ly ever notices the extent of the constructions, for the

house has been effectivelyfragmented to follow the con-tours, so that rooms rise withthe land. Bits of the house,portico, study, bedroom, din-ing and kitchen, all come to-gether under the dense foliageof tropical trees and shrubs,blending quietly into the back-ground.

(Gautam Bhatia is a Delhi-based architect. He

has written a biography of   Laurie Baker)

He lived and worked alone,without rewards

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April-07dp habitat HR50

Appropriate Architectural Practice