With the aim of improving the housing situation of the teachers of METI, Modern Education and Training Institute, in Rudrapur, a four-part housing complex has been developed in cooperation with Shanti e.V. and Dipshika. The design of the two- and three-storey buildings in innovative earth and bamboo construction stems from Sebastian Barrett’s master’s thesis at the Natural Building Lab of the TU Berlin at the chair of Eike Roswag-Klinge. The project takes the approach of using local building materials such as earth and bamboo in an innovative way for housing construction in order to keep the ecological footprint of the project as small as possible. It also aims to increase confidence in historic building materials, which are suffering and increasingly being displaced by strong competition from supposedly more suitable, industrially produced building materials such as concrete and brick.
In January 2020, work began on the construction site and in the first construction phase – consisting of two buildings – the first building was erected under the direction of the local construction manager Montu with two teams of craftsmen. This was also an opportunity for Andrea Klinge (ZRS Architekten Ingenieure) and student Christina Jötten (TU Berlin) to support the necessary material development on site.
Due to the Corona pandemic, the ground floor of the first construction phase could not be built in adobe bricks as planned and was realised conventionally with bricks. The upper floor is a bamboo structure, which was filled with straw clay. The weather protection is provided by a bamboo cladding. ZRS supports the project in planning and material development as well as with a donation for the realisation and thus continues the cooperation with METI, Dipshikha and Shanti e.V., which started in 2005. The project/Shanti e.V. is still looking for financial supporters to realise the second construction phase.
