The students of B. Arch, 2019 Batch went to Wardha in Maharashtra for Related Study Programme (RSP) from November 29 to December 24, 2021.
To experience a simple life and live with the community the students stayed at Bapu Kutir and had organic food. The RSP begun with a visit at the Gram Sewa Mandal where students started analysing the existing structures and interacted with the community to understand their needs. By interacting with the locals and understanding the community’s needs proposals were given for respective site’s development.
Students decided to re-construct a gaushala into a community space for the farmers and an abandoned house into a dormitory. Some walls of the gaushala were demolished and the floor was cleared. Later a ‘jaali’ wall was constructed, the corroded columns were polished and the floor was levelled. Parallelly the abandoned house was fully demolished, a basic plan for the dormitory was decided, on the existing plinth new walls were constructed up to sill level using fly ash bricks and mud mortar and an arch was also built. Locally available raw materials were used. Bamboos were also brought for the dormitory’s roof construction which were treated on site.
Students participated in the entire construction process from making mortar mixture to laying DPC, creating formwork for the arch and constructing ‘jaali’ walls.
A bamboo workshop was held at Wondergrass in Nagpur, to understand the diverse usage of bamboo as a material and its joineries. Every week students visited a nearby village to study the vernacular architecture and their construction system.
