Let's welcome Satprem Maini - Auroville

The building site in the rain

Sonam Wangchuk

18. september 2008

Hi!

Last night I returned late from the airport. It was a drama receiving Satprem Maini the French architect and earth expert as there was a road block bandha close to the airport. Satprem had taken three flights and a long taxi ride today to reach here from Auroville in Tamil Nadu India to this Nepali Terai district.

Satprem is a pioneer in earth architecture and heads Auroville Earth Institute in South India. It was here that Nirmal ji the technician from BASE and I had taken a two week course in CSEB in April this year, before buying a block making machine and using the technology here in Nepal. So in that sense he is our Guru ji.

After that Nirmal ji and I designed the present CSEB School building using principles of earthquake safety and climate responsive features, as also the norms of the Ministry of Education, Government of Nepal.

Challenges of nature and culture

At the construction site, today was a day of challenges -- challenges of nature and culture.

It rained heavily, disrupting work and after the rain the ground was very slippery with people slipping every which way like nobody's business. Old ladies, young men, little girls with earth on their head were all slipping left right and centre even our Guru ji(Shshshsh!).

A muddy Guru ji

Then the challenges of culture!

Yesterday I had shared the excitement of window frames going up. Well today we learnt that what can go up can come down also. We discovered a bit too late that the carpenters who supplied us these window frames had been overly generous giving us frames some of which were 2 cm bigger than the specification. It turned out that we had each trusted another in a chain to have checked these sizes. So the windows had to go for resizing.

Then there was the clash of culture in the concept of accuracy. It was interesting to see our miserly Western expert demanding accuracy in millimetres; for him two millimetres off would induce the biggest frown while our generous Nepali masons would easily give or take two centimetres with the broadest smile. Of course we told them that such generosity is not at all welcome in building an earthquake safe school. Besides, some of the masons seemed new to the profession also. We decided we must correct all deviations before we go above the window level.

So it was a slow day with only two courses of blocks and several windows down. But nonetheless a day full of learning and... sli_p_ping!.

Today's tip

From today I will try and share with you one interesting feature of this building in detail each day. If you can stand it and if get the time that is. So today, talking of millimetre accuracy let me tell you that in this technique the blocks are so exactly the same size - 24 cm in length and width (meaning 240 mm, no more no less) and the surface is so smooth that you do not really need any plaster (or even paint work). That saves a lot of money for the owner but also demands some accuracy and workmanship from the mason. In conventional fired brick masonry the mason's can make whatever mess with the ever so inaccurately sized bricks and then a thick, wasteful and expensive plaster hides it all.

Good night!