Vernacular spaces

Written By Anindita Dasgupta

The main feature of our farm is the farm-house fully following vernacular architecture. Our house built in 2019, is a fully functional residence in the farm having two bedrooms with built-in beds, storage, writing tables, two fully equipped bathrooms, one open kitchen, one living/dining space and plenty of semi open space within the house. Lot can be discussed about it as it is aesthetically designed and built by a Kalabhavan pass-out of repute. The building structure is of talkandi, woods from locally available Tal trees, walls are made of mud bricks, binding is done by mix of hay with some other locally available natural materials. Roof is three layered on a structural support of talkandi again, layers are of at the bottom Hogla, a strong grass, then a tin, shielding from rain completely, finally layeer being of khapra, the local mud tiles. All doors windows are made of Arjun, Shal or Tal wood.

The magic of the vernacular home is the natural conditioning of air inside, making artificial cooling completely unnecessary. The other thing to mention about protection against local issues like termite, reptiles and rodents. Will talk about it with some pros cons and choice alternatives later.

Anindita Dasgupta

Founder of Heal Thy Earth, a Natural Integrated Farm

Anindita Dasgupta has spent the majority of her career in the consulting industry advising a breadth of clients from India and abroad on technology and process management. In 2018, Anindita set up a 5-acre natural integrated farm in Birbhum in rural Bengal with the intent of exposing locals to good agricultural and eco-friendly livelihood generation practices.

Through her endeavour, Anindita seeks to promote the conservative practices and lifestyles of indigenous farmers, and reduce their reliance on unsustainable means of food production and livelihood generation. Instead, drawing from her exposure to contemporary corporate discourses on sustainability, she attempts to empower farmers to embrace their traditional slow-but-steady cultivation practices and regain confidence in spontaneous, regenerative farming based lifestyles that have been used by indigenous communities to sustain themselves for centuries.

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Low technology rain water harvesting