Small homes, big ideas

Creating solutions without understanding the parameters of a problem will mean little in terms of effectiveness Thatrsquos why professionals from every field mdash doctors policymakers or architects mdash are encouraged to initiate conversations with the people and communities at the heart of their work Born of onground realities and fieldwork is Small Homes by Social Design Collaborative SDC The Delhibased interdisciplinary practice works with underrepresented Indian communities who are typically left out of planning processes and architectural services Most of their projects are open source research that is free for useThe researchbased project is a quick guide on understanding how space is utilised in compact homes Small Homes came together within two months and was released on July 13 Architect Nishtha Kashyap who interns at the Delhibased practice and helmed the project shares her observations from onground research which documented families of fourtofive members who are tightly packed into homes as small as threebyfour square meters and how they come up with ways to use every inch of available spaceThe online booklet details these using collages to highlight the focus of the layout mdash bricks used to elevate beds creating storage underneath curtains fashioned from saris as walls of temporary rooms and demarcations and shelves in every nook Another commonly seen arrangement the 22yearold shares is the adjacent Lshaped placement of beds to maximise moving spaceArchitect Swati Janu founder of SDC says ldquoWhen space is limited multifunctionality automatically seeps inrdquo Kashyap serves an apt metaphor ldquoItrsquos like a very small box which can open up into a lot of thingsrdquo Such creative use of space is seen across the city when space is inaccessible due to cost or the lack of it Think of the street vendorsrsquo mobile box shops that close in on themselves at nightJanu however warns us not to romanticise this ingenuity stating that the reason behind the project is for these solutions to be acknowledged and understood as coping strategies A lack of such understanding results in ldquocompletely missing the stories and the strategies of how people have sculpted the spaces inside their own homesrdquoKashyap elaborates ldquoFrom my experience architectural students like me come up with conventional designs that they feel will work without understanding how people are actually living mdash what is right for them according to themrdquo This might be one of the reasons why we see rehabilitated basti dwellers moving back to bastisShe continues that individuals from temporary settlements are often forced to build their own houses within a small space ldquoItrsquos a lot to learn from them because itrsquos a very different perspective altogether And thatrsquos why we decided to come up with Small Homesrdquo Thirtysevenyearold Janu mentions that the next phase of the project will be making design iterations based on grassroots research and taking it back to the communities to see what works ldquoMaking information accessible is the spirit of our workrdquo she signs offLog on to socialdesigncollaborgresearch