Verma

Could this be brick brutalism? Brutalism means nothing hidden. Every material exposed. No apology for what it is. If that’s the definition, then yes. We just found one. Wall House. Auroville, Tamil Nadu, India. Architect: Anupama Kundoo. Built 2000. Her own home. The bricks are achakal, a pre-industrial Tamil Nadu brick 18cm x 10cm x just 2.5cm thick. Hand-shaped, fired in clay ovens from leftover farmland silt. They require far less energy to produce than factory bricks. Set in lime mortar with raked joints. The ceiling you see in image 2 is not a design gesture. Those are terracotta pots embedded upside-down into the concrete slab, increasing structural depth while replacing steel and reducing the volume of concrete needed. The vault is catenary brick. The double height volume pulls natural ventilation upward through the house by stack effect. This is not a building that looks sustainable. It is a building that proves every material choice through engineering. Anupama Kundoo recreated this house at 1:1 scale for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2012. Indian craftsmen who had never left their country flew to Venice to build it by hand. Architect: Anupama Kundoo | Auroville, India | 2000 | Photo: Alka Hingorani & Javier Callejas