Manavsadhna activity centre is indeed an epitome of integrated architectural design which attempts to resolve several perennial problems of the developing world. The activity centre is built entirely with the recycled waste material from domestic centre. Firstly, by recycling waste it addresses the issue of environmental pollution as such waste otherwise simply gets thrown away at dump fill sites. Secondly, by converting the waste into building product it creates employment opportunity for the urban poor and thereby economic empowerment. Thirdly, the products locally developed are cheaper and better than the conventional alternatives thereby making buildings affordable.
As activity centre it functions truly for the poorest community of the city. It is located in one of the largest slums of the city (inhabiting over hundred thousand people) and gets used as informal school for young children, afternoon it provides vocational training to the youth and in the evening it turns into community centre with health facilities, recreational and religious activities, and festivities. Even medical camps are held here for the settlement. The centre has been built with the involvement of local unskilled and semi skilled persons and its construction techniques and detailing has been done keeping such mode of production in mind. The building components developed through waste recycling have been tested for their performance and have measured superior to conventional practices.
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These have also been applied integrally such that construction engineering, functional needs as well as aesthetics emerge as mutually complimentary. Waste such as Flyash, dump fill site residue, plastic bottles, glass bottles, crate wood, re bars, packaging wrappers, oiltin containers etc. have been recycled as building material. The building has proven extremely cost effective and has become open catalogue for different walling, roofing, flooring and panelling options.Building also uses least artificial energy for its environmental comfort. Community has begun to emulate these in their homes and so have several other structures as well as organisations. For example crèche for young children and activity centre for women are getting added within neighbourhood with similar concepts.
Thus it has been an effective role model to prove that cost is not a constraint but is rather a creative challenge and as such there is more creative opportunity in generating architecture for the have-nots. Contextually appropriate architecture, truly evolving from the needs and resources of its people and place. The campus design has won over seven international as well as national award for its aesthetics (design), Creative use of construction material (Engineering) as well as Environmental concerns (sustainability). Nearly 27.4 million tonnes of waste is produced daily in the urban centers of India.
Cities like Ahmedabad alone produce 2750 metric tonnes. Unfortunately nothing really gets processed of the same. This waste is simply dumped openly in the landfill sites, which uses enormous volumes of fossil fuel, creating an altered, polluted, unsafe and unhealthy landscape. An activity centre at Rama Pir Tekra, Wadaj in Ahmedabad has been one small attempt in the direction of recycling municipal/domestic waste into building materials. The activity centre is located amidst the largest squatter settlement of Ahmedabad, and was created under the initiative of the social NGO, Manav Sadhna. The multi-purpose activity centre serves as an informal school for young children, provides evening education for adults and serves as a training centre and activity workshop for the manufacturing of craft based products by women and elderly. The campus also includes a dormitory, an administrative unit and an all-religion meditation unit.
The campus is built using components prepared through recycling municipal/domestic waste. This process simultaneously addresses environmental concerns, economic issues and affordable housing; As municipal waste from the domestic sector is used for producing building components, it helps to reduce waste as pollution. Through value addition processes of recycling the waste, it provides a means of economic activity for the poor as well as a sense of empowerment. Finally as the recycled building components are cheaper and of higher quality than the conventional materials, they provide affordable and superior quality building alternatives for the urban poor. Non-polluting environment, economic empowerment and affordable built forms are the three key dimensions of this initiative.
The project is an outcome of over three years of empirical research at the Vastu Shilpa Foundation for Studies and Research in Environmental Design, with the goal of converting municipal waste from the domestic sector into building components. First hand experiments and onsite explorations have led to the development of innovative building components that use waste, simple hand- operated tools and local resources and know-how. The project also demonstrates that building can become an economic activity, empowering the poor. It shows potential of becoming a cottage industry for economic self-reliance and possibilities to improve the quality of their homes using the affordable alternative building components. The campus is built as a live demonstration for the application of recycled waste as affordable, aesthetically pleasing and efficient building components. The products developed for this project, which incorporate municipal/domestic waste and are prepared with simple hand operated tools, are demonstrated in the walls, roofs/slabs, doors and windows. There are six types of materials and techniques used in the making of the walls. These include: cement bonded flyash bricks, mould-compressed bricks made from landfill site waste residue, stabilized soil blocks, recycled glass bottles, recycled plastic bottles filled with ash and waste residue, and vegetable crate wood paneling in the inner partition walls. Similarly the floor and roof slabs as applied in the activity centre include: filler slab with glass bottles, plastic bottles and bricks, stone slab, cement bonded particle board with clay tile cover, as well as light conduit pipe truss with G.I. sheet with clay tile roof. The door panelling uses shredded packaging wrapper and coated paper waste as reinforcement substitute for fibre reinforced plastic (FRP). Vegetable crate wood as a frame and oil tin container as blades make the ventilation louvers in the toilets.
A paneled door using vegetable crate wood and oil tin containers for the frame and cladding respectively is also provided in the administrative block office toilet. Flyash and waste residue moulded tiles with inlaid ceramic industry waste as china mosaic (applied during tile moulding itself) is also applied in patches for their demonstration. All of these products are developed and produced first hand. The products thus produced have been lab tested for their engineered performance and they prove to be economical, environmentally friendly, participatory and aesthetically pleasing solutions and express alternatives to contemporary practices.
Fuente: http://www.worldarchitecture.org/ & Yatin Pandya
Fotografías: Yatin Pandya
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