The magic of mud houses
In India, around 65 million of the country's 118 million homes are made of mud. A visionary architect in Tamil Nadu is renowned for crafting mud houses. These buildings provide excellent insulation and their construction is cost-effective and has a low carbon footprint.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 A traditional Indian construction combined with modern design.
00:06 Here in Madurai in southern Tamil Nadu, the architect Karthikeyan has been building sustainable
00:13 houses with mud bricks for 15 years.
00:19 "When you build a mud house, mud is the main material.
00:24 Mud bricks are made of nothing but mud and 8% stabilizer.
00:28 In the past we used to use natural stabilizers, but due to decline in resources, we now add
00:34 a bit of lime and cement, but 92% is mud."
00:42 The mixture is then compressed into bricks with a machine.
00:46 The advantage of this process is that instead of drying at high temperatures in an oven,
00:52 they can dry naturally over a period of several weeks.
00:56 This reduces the carbon emissions of the manufacturing process.
01:01 In India, more than half of the population's homes are made of mud.
01:06 But these have generally been mainly lower-income households.
01:10 Now however, the middle classes are rediscovering the benefits of mud as a building material,
01:16 not least because it's so sustainable, and also because mud houses have excellent insulation
01:22 properties.
01:23 "During the summer, the insides of the houses stay cool.
01:29 Then during winter, they are nice and warm.
01:32 That's the advantage of a mud house."
01:36 A further advantage is that the costs of building a mud house are comparatively low.
01:40 It's a natural and abundant raw material.
01:43 And thanks to the good indoor-climated mud houses, electricity costs can be up to two-thirds
01:48 lower.
01:49 So it's a traditional building practice that helps conserve resources.
01:52 (whooshing)