Baker Houses: Creativity of a true artist

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Own house! The fondest dream of any person on earth. However the dream loses colour as the amount in you account vanishes as vapor. You will realize that the comfortable home that you aspiring and the savings in your account never tally each other. Laurie Baker, the British architect who made India his home came with a solution to this ongoing dilemma. Baker Houses in Kerala stood as excellent examples this creative architect where luxury and simplicity join hands for comfortable dwellings.

Baker Houses in Kerala renowned the ideas of low cost housings India. Baker moved to India by the inspiration of Mahatma Gandhi during 1940s. He settled in Kerala as more and more demands for low costing houses were rising from this part. He preserved the simplicity of the Quakers and Gandhian thought in his architecture. He also followed the principle that a house should seem to be owned by its owner and not be merely a statement made by the architect.

Baker houses tend to emphasize prolific masonry construction, instilling privacy and evoking history with brick jali walls, a perforated brick screen which utilises natural air movement to cool the home's interior and create intricate patterns of light and shadow. Baker houses offer the exceptional union of nature and home for a city dweller. Another significant Baker feature is irregular, pyramid-like structures on roofs, with one side left open and tilting into the wind. He combined traditional Indian sloping roofs and terracotta Mangalore tile shingling with gables and vents allowing rising hot air to escape.

Curved walls are unique speciality of Baker houses. These curved walls will lower the cost of building and provide more fun for the dwellers. The features like compartments for milk bottles near the doorstep, windowsills that double as bench surfaces, and a heavy emphasis on taking cues from the natural condition of the site were first introduced in Baker Houses. The shelves, sinks and looking glasses are middle size, body and eye level .

The unique design of Baker homes by the great architect came to an end on April 1, 2007 as he breathed his last. However as a result of more widespread acceptance, the "Baker Style" home is gaining popularity, much to Baker's own chagrin, since he felt that the 'style' being commoditised is merely the inevitable manifestation of the cultural and economic imperatives of the region in which he worked.