‘Build a Natural Home’ is an initiative by Thannal to build a mud home as per present day needs. We believe shelter for any human can be made in an affordable budget through Natural Buildings, without causing much damage to the nature.
Using Indigenous techniques of construction will reduce the dependency on manufactured materials as it requires preferably local materials. Such project initiates revival of good mud homes in a region currently just dominated by cement houses or mud buildings adulterated with cement. It will also make building a good mud home a reality for common people. For your dream to build one for yourself, we could help in the following ways.
Step 1:
Attend any of our Natural Building Workshop so that you will
- Feel a mud home before you decide to build one.
- Train yourself, family and friends so that you could build together.
- Let your mason learn so that he/she could build one for you and others.
- Support Thannal, experience mud and spread the good mud home
Case 1.
We are not a construction group, we are an awareness group.
After workshop, if Thannal taking up your project.
We do only two or three projects in a year. We will be choosing projects based on the values associated with it, which will portray mud homes truly eco-friendly. These projects will be done in ‘Gift Culture’ or ‘Barter System’, where humble contributions to our Natural Building School in form of books, tools or food grains (for our kitchen) will be accepted in exchange for our services. You can also sponsor salary to our artisans for a month, which will be a huge help for our experimentation.
These projects will create learning opportunities for everyone who wants to see how and why traditional methods are practical in present scenario of material shortage and excessive construction costs.
We will be designing the house, with stage wise site visits by Founders & Thannalates during the construction. Volunteers who have undergone basic training through our workshop can also be made available to help with the construction. For example, Farmer’s Home in Attappadi and Seed Bank in Dindigul.
Terms & Conditions:
- Thannal undertake only two projects a year which are value based.
- We only do non-commercial projects, in suburbs or villages, not in urban areas.
- We prefer to serve people who are doing their first home (in need of a shelter), not weekend homes or farm houses.
- We can also take up restoration of old mud houses.
- As there is no contractor involved in our projects right now, owner himself or someone else appointed by owner has to take care about labour management, material procurement etc. We can be part of the project like a designer but not a contractor.
- Volunteers, who are trained through our workshop, can be made available as per need.
Case 2: Owner’s Build
If Thannal cannot take up your project, due to our engagements in other means of spreading awareness, like workshops, working on books or publications or we have already taken up two projects, then we can help you by giving training for an Owner’s Build through workshops.
We promote Owner’s Build as we believe in not building more, but make more natural builders. Such homes built by owners, their family, friends and few workers, always cherish a memorable connection with the people residing in it.
We invite you to be a part of shelter building process being friends with nature.
What is an Owner’s Build?
- Owner will train himself or someone he appoints in all the skills required for making a home, so that he can judge and do all the quality tests (after attending our workshop) while in different stages of the project.
- Building Design as per their own requirements has to be arranged by the owner himself (may get it designed from any designer) but he must ensure all the design requirements specific to mud construction is duly noted and incorporated.
- Owner himself take the responsibilities of all building process including arranging workers, ensuring that the workers are skilled enough for the job and all feasible local materials required for the construction.
- He/she will be also working, with the help of his family and friends.
- He/she will also do Planning for construction and to avoid any expenses due to delays on site.
We love to support anyone who has already attended either one of the two (I. Natural Building 2 days + any of other natural plasters workshop/ II. 10 days Natural building workshop), could expect the following from us
- Recommendation on building process, material availability, cost reduction factors by connecting you with natural builders those who have already associated with Thannal.
- Providing you with learning materials/ references to books, videos, journals and other documentations
- We can help you find volunteers from our selective groups of workshop.
- In return we expect you to document and share building process, material details and costing with us to help others.
Read an article about an Owner’s Build by one of our participants of workshop in the following link: https://bit.ly/2HHBeSE
So, to start building a good mud home, attend one of our upcoming workshop.
Kindly check our Upcoming Projects to know more about the values we seek from a project. Write to us only if you feel your project has comparable essence.