The Auroville Earth Institute working for Auroville, working for the world

Specialised in sustainable soil-based building techniques, the Earth Institute has become a familiar name in Auroville as a result of construction projects like the Visitors’ Centre, Vikas Community, Deepanam School and Realization Community. The Earth Institute attracts over 300 students a year who come to its campus as short-term trainees, interns and researchers. At a time when many architects are trying to characterise their buildings as “green” and “sustainable”, the Institute’s expertise is sought by organisations and private individuals around the world because of its proven ability to offer truly low-carbon building technologies, favouring soil and other locally sourced building materials that also energize local economies by providing sustainable livelihoods. To date, the Earth Institute has executed a variety of building projects and training missions in 36 countries and has received 15 national and international awards.

The story of the Earth Institute began in 1989 when HUDCO (the Housing & Urban Development Corporation, Government of India) provided a grant for the creation of a training centre for building technologies and the construction of a visitors’ centre in Auroville to showcase sustainable building technologies. Satprem Maïni, a French architect who had been working for CRAterre (the International Centre for Earth Building at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture in Grenoble, France) and who had already formed a deep appreciation for Auroville and its spiritual aims, was invited to Auroville by Suhasini Ayer and Gilles Guigan to share his years of experience in the earth-building field. “I didn’t want to be working only on short-term international projects anymore, and so I immediately agreed,” explains Satprem. The design for the Visitors’ Centre developed into an ambitious structure incorporating a series of arched elements and domes, all built with compressed stabilised earth blocks and other low-cost sustainable building technologies.

Satprem provided the needed expertise and became the director of the “Earth Unit” of the new Auroville Building Centre (AVBC). From its founding in 1989, the AVBC / Earth Unit engaged in research, construction and training to provide modern and adaptable soil-based building technologies for India and the world. Later, as the team evolved and the number of activities expanded, the name would change to Auroville Earth Institute. Today, the institute is still led by Satprem, along with co-directors T. Ayyappan, a highly skilled technician who has worked alongside Satprem since the very beginning, and Lara Davis, an MIT-trained architect and structural masonry specialist. The team has grown to over 25 members, including masons, architects, engineers, office staff, and construction workers, many of whom have been working with the Earth Institute for one or two decades.

Fostering earth building techniques

The Institute’s team finds that promoting earthen architecture is actually a task of reconnecting people with their own traditional building methods. “If the discipline of architecture can begin to study the complexity of the vernacular, then we have an infinite palate of sensitive, context-responsive and sustainable solutions to draw from,” Lara explains. India has a rich tradition of earth construction, and modern adaptations such as stabilisation and reinforcement can make it competitive with conventional building technologies.

The building technology that the Earth Institute has advocated and implemented the most is compressed stabilised earth block (CSEB). Composed of soil excavated from the construction sites and a small percentage of cement to increase the strength and resist the monsoon climate, the blocks are compressed manually and cured, resulting in an adaptable masonry building material that can be used for load-bearing walls of up to four storeys. The production of CSEB creates livelihoods for unskilled labourers and does not require firing – a cause of deforestation and pollution – or, as the materials are locally sourced, long-distance transport, which means 10 times less embodied energy and 13 times less carbon emissions than country fired brick. In combination with Robi Trunz and the Aureka team, a manual block press was developed and dubbed the Auram Press 3000, which has been marketed internationally. Operated by a small team of seven people, it can produce 850 to 1,000 CSEBs per day and has been used in projects around Auroville, in the larger India, and the world.

In order to promote stabilised earth building and the usage of arches, vaults, and domes for roofing systems, the Earth Institute developed short awareness programmes and one- and two-week courses on the production, design, and usage of CSEB; the theory and practical construction of arches, vaults, and domes; and the production of ferrocement elements (ferrocement being a low-cost building material that was first introduced to Auroville by Roger Anger). Over the past 29 years, these courses have attracted over 13,000 students, primarily from India, but also from 87 other countries.

These training courses have had the desired effect of popularising earthen construction. When asked if the students go on to build with earth, Ayyappan says, “Not all of them; some come for study purposes only. But for every ten students that come, at least one or two will go on to build with our technologies.”

Continually seeking new and improved techniques for earth construction, the Earth Institute has multiple ongoing research projects. It has led important research into the poured earth concrete technology, which also offers a low-carbon alternative to concrete construction. “I see poured earth concrete as a very promising area for research as it is less expensive and faster to implement than CSEB masonry. We are researching both slabs and beams,” says Satprem. Ayyappan also speaks to its current success, adding, “It has been adopted by other architects within Auroville. Suhasini is using it and Dorle has used it for the RE-CENTRE campus.”

Other research at the Earth Institute aims to improve the sustainability and usability of its current techniques. To avoid the use of sand and cement, the Earth Institute has explored quarry dust, lime, and natural binders as alternatives. Other topics have included biodegradability of CSEB, thermo-insular properties of vaults, social acceptability of earthen buildings, earth-bamboo technologies, and use of waste materials in earth mixes.

Earth construction in Auroville and abroad

Construction projects in Auroville have provided an excellent opportunity for the implementation of the Earth Institute’s technologies, including CSEB, stabilised rammed earth, and roofing systems with CSEB vaults and domes or with ferrocement channels. One of the Earth Institute’s first projects was Vikas Community, an apartment complex of four floors made with CSEB. Designed to encourage a strong community lifestyle, it had a community kitchen, sustainable energy, and water recycling and harvesting. Other projects soon followed, including Mirramukhi School (now known as Deepanam School), which incorporated stabilised rammed earth walls for the classrooms and a 10 metre span vault over the amphitheater. Individual houses were built by the Earth Institute in Utilité and Auromodèle, featuring beautiful domes and vaulted spaces. Later in 2008, it took on again a full-scale housing complex, Realization Community, which was enlivened by a semi-participatory process for the block production.

The Earth Institute has also been regularly invited by governments, international development organizations, and environmentally focused initiatives in a leading or partnering role to implement projects. This is often in the context of a “technology transfer” to train local building professionals how to use stabilised earth technologies and encourage social acceptance of earthen buildings.

After the Gujarat Earthquake of 2001, the Earth Institute was active in developing a disaster-resistant prototype and training local teams for reconstruction efforts using a system of reinforced hollow interlocking CSEB, which could be used for seismically-resistant buildings and which was approved by the Gujarat Government for reconstruction of structures up to two floors.. As a result, the Earth Institute assisted the Catholic Relief Services to build 2,698 houses over the course of a year.

This prolific work and dedication to research and teaching in the field of earth-based building techniques has earned the Earth Institute the role of representative and resource centre for Asia of the UNESCO Chair “Earthen Architecture, Constructive Cultures and Sustainable Development” in 2000. This network is headquartered at CRAterre and unites 40 members in 23 countries to promote the dissemination of scientific and technical know-how on earthen architecture at an international level. The Earth Institute publishes training manuals, construction guides, and case studies, attends many national and international conferences, and is involved in research partnerships and providing guidance to researchers and students from around the globe.

Prospects for earth construction

And yet, while interest in earthen architecture is increasing globally, the situation in Auroville is different. Despite initial enthusiasm for the use of CSEB and other earth-based building techniques in the 1990s and early 2000s, the majority of today’s buildings are once again made with conventional building materials. Many of Auroville’s architects received training from the Earth Institute – including Anita Gaur, Shama Dalvi, Tejaswini Mistri-Kapoor, Fabian Ostner, Bertrand Desalle, and Mirra Prajapati – so why has raw earth as a building material fallen into disfavour?

According to Satprem, a few isolated examples of poorly designed earthen buildings in Auroville have resulted in a negative public perception about the thermal comfort and durability of earthen buildings as a whole. Independently-run CSEB blockyards not following production guidelines has also led to poor quality CSEB being on the market. He says, “The buildings constructed by the Earth Institute are not always perfect, but they behave well and demonstrate longevity with a minimum of maintenance.” Ayyappan blames a bias against earthen housing projects in some quarters of the Auroville establishment for the shift away from CSEB. He adds, “Sharanam is probably the best example of our work.”

Sharanam Rural Development Centre is the Earth Institute’s latest project in Pondicherry, where it designed and built the one- and two-storey dormitories and a conference hall. The hall showcased poured earth concrete pier walls and has one of the largest earthen vaults in the world with a maximum span of 15 metres, a feat that required extensive stability studies and meticulous masonry work. Another recent project, the Kaza Eco-Community Centre in Spiti Valley in north India, demonstrated a beautiful synthesis of traditional rammed earth, earthquake-resistant CSEB, and passive design strategies, and was recognized with a low carbon architecture award during the 2016 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP22).

International projects continue to call Satprem, Ayyappan and Lara out into the field. The Earth Institute has been collaborating over the past years on the “Homes not Houses” project, funded by the European Union, to complete feasibility studies for earthen construction in areas affected by Sri Lanka’s civil war and to provide comprehensive training for CSEB production and construction methods for the construction of 950 CSEB houses.

Another significant portion of the Earth Institute’s legacy is the sheer number of the trainees, interns and collaborating architects who have gone on to implement their own earthen buildings and to become earthen architecture specialists. Each of these individuals have a small ripple effect that counters the rampant growth of the concrete-based construction sector.

Tirelessly researching new innovations for earthen construction and offering its technologies to Auroville’s practitioners and “humanity as a whole” through training and knowledge sharing, the Earth Institute enters its fourth decade as a leading example of Auroville’s accomplishments in research and outreach.