Detail of the project ed. 2024

st-george-ortho­­dox-church / India

Design­er	Vinu Daniel
Loca­tion	Kochi, Ker­ala, India
Nation	India
Design Team	Lead archi­tect: Vinu Daniel and team
Year	2016
Pho­to credits	All pho­tographs by Jino Sam

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

With increas­ing demand over resources, it is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of archi­tects to use mate­ri­als with very less embod­ied ener­gy. Mud as a mate­r­i­al can be expressed in its true form through var­i­ous meth­ods like earth blocks, rammed earth, wat­tle and daub and many more.

The explorato­ry spir­it com­bined with press­ing demands our designs are born; which are evolved through a series of dia­logues between the masons, archi­tects, clients and an imme­di­ate under­stand­ing of the site and the sur­round­ing. Rammed earth and com­pressed earth blocks are dom­i­nant mate­ri­als in the design process.

St. George Ortho­dox Church at Mat­tanch­ery was the first church of Chris­tians in the land of spices(Kerala, India) set in A.D.1615.Years of neg­li­gence and encroach­ment left this his­toric mon­u­ment in sham­bles. The head of the Chris­t­ian sect of Ker­ala (His Holi­ness Moran Mar Base­lious Marthoma Paulose-II )took a brave step in rebuild­ing (keep­ing the foun­da­tion intact) this monument.

Wall­mak­ers, trained by Ar. Sat­prem Mai­ni from Auroville Earth Insti­tute, Pondicher­ry explained to the client the pos­si­bil­i­ties of earth archi­tec­ture and the his­toric impor­tance of arch­es and vaults in reli­gious edi­fices. The result­ing part­ner­ship pro­duced mag­ic aimed with rein­stat­ing earth archi­tec­ture in south India, this was prime opportunity.

The con­cept of domes, vaults and arch­es rose from ear­ly sym­bols of east­ern Chris­tian­i­ty like Marthoma cross final­ly end­ing in an altar blessed by a “cross of light” a con­cept by Ar. Tadao Ando but in this case by earth bricks, by nature.

The masons received train­ing by the archi­tect him­self in build­ing with com­pressed sta­bi­lized earth block using ancient Nubian tech­nol­o­gy of arch and vault build­ing with­out exten­sive shut­ter­ing (revi­tal­ized in ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry by Ar.Hassan Fathy).

The project led to train­ing of var­i­ous stu­dents of archi­tec­ture who have come to under­stand the impor­tance of build­ing with earth to have a bet­ter future.

ENER­GY EFFECTIVENESS

Costs are too often lim­it­ed only to a mon­e­tary val­ue. Anoth­er impor­tant aspect is the envi­ron­men­tal cost, espe­cial­ly with the embod­ied ener­gy into the mate­r­i­al. The pro­duc­tion of earth-based mate­ri­als con­sumes much less ener­gy. The ini­tial embod­ied ener­gy of CSEB is about 4 times less than coun­try fired bricks. Of course the car­bon emis­sion is also about 4 time less for the CSEB, com­pared to the coun­try fired bricks.

CON­STRUC­TION TECH­NIQUES: CSEB:
Ini­tial embod­ied ener­gy (MJ/m3 of mate­ri­als) Car­bon emis­sion (Kg of CO2 /m3 of materials)
CSEB are con­sum­ing 4 times less ener­gy than coun­try fired bricks: CSEB pro­duced on site with 5 % cement = 1,112.36 MJ/m3 Coun­try fired bricks = 4,501.25 MJ/m3
CSEB are pol­lut­ing 4 times less than coun­try fired bricks:

CSEB pro­duced on site with 5 % cement = 110.11 Kg of CO2 /m3 Coun­try fired bricks = 444.12 Kg of CO2 /m3

NUBIAN TECH­NIQUE

Age old con­struc­tion tech­nique involv­ing mason­ry with earth blocks and mud mor­tar with­out shut­ter­ing to cre­ate a wide range of arch­es and domes and vaults.The was rein­tro­duced to 20th cen­tu­ry by Egypt­ian archi­tect Has­san Fathy

Chain Study Method:

Chain study method helps to sta­bi­lize the right shape of the arch before the exe­cu­tion begins. The struc­tur­al study was first for­mu­lat­ed by Anto­nio Gau­di in some of his struc­tures which engi­neers posthu­mous­ly found out.The same tech­nique is employed to achieve sta­bil­i­ty in the Arches

Explana­to­ry report of the project
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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