Indian architect Anupama Kundoo has been experimenting with how we build our homes for over a decade and a half and has been making great strides in low-cost and low-tech housing. Her designs have won a number of awards and could well represent the optimal housing style for many in developing nations.
Kundoo’s most famous design throughout her career is arguably the Wall House, originally built in 2012 and recently recreated half a world away from its original home by relatively unskilled laborers. Kundoo’s whole philosophy has been to bring down the costs and required skills for building homes.
Rather than look to local resources for inspiration however, Kundoo has helped drive the use of ferrocement, which is simple to manufacture and incredibly versatile. It has also proven far more resilient to adverse weather conditions and to disasters like earthquakes than traditional wood and masonry.
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However it’s how the material is put together that has seen Kundoo’s designs capture so many people’s imaginations. By building hollow, five-sided, cuboid blocks with the material, Kundoo’s Full Fill homes can be created by simply stacking these blocks on top of one another, as reported by Curbed.
The blocks can even be easily dyed to create colorful homes that allow for some measure of a personal touch to their construction as well.
Kundoo believes that with a little more refinement, her prototype home could be built in less than six days. It is being demonstrated at several exhibitions and shows throughout the world this year, alongside a design for a public toilet that can be constructed in less than 24 hours.
As well as using these designs to help improve the lives of people around the world who lack permanent shelter or adequate protection from the elements, Kundoo hopes that showing people how to construct these simplistic buildings will also help foster skill sets that can help them better themselves in the future.
