Industrial Housing in India: The Wall as an Industrial Craft, The Flyash 'Stack-crete'

The building industry in the developing countries, today, is confused between technological developments and the vernacular. The values imbibed in tradition, and colonial hegemony in India have had deep impacts in the psychological perception of the vernacular. Unfortunately, in today’s circumstances, where in population explosion and rapid urbanisation have resulted in severe housing shortages and demands, the advantages which can be borrowed from the technological advancements in the developed countries cannot be ignored. The meaning of ‘traditional’ itself is mistaken today, where the construction practice is no longer vernacular, but utilizing manpower at large on site to produce buildings is being termed as ‘traditional’. The cultural values associated with what has been termed as ‘traditional’ building methods are so deeply rooted that, even though all the stake holders are aware that the ‘traditional’ building methods are no longer viable solutions for present day demands, it is still continued at large, due to lack of much research on what values technology could add to the building methods for housing. Though it must be mentioned that the scene is not the same for commercial projects, where technology is slowly catching up. This trend, is weighing heavily on the housing industry. Therefore the need of the hour is to come up ideas, systems, strategies of utilizing the potentials of what technology can offer to benefit in supplying quicker, better quality housing. This is absolutely essential from the point of not only housing demands, but also there is a deep declined in the percentage of skilled labour available for making good quality ‘traditional’ craftsmanship. So it is better to channelise the ‘unskilled’ labour into a more productive chain of work, to develop new crafts- ‘industrial’ crafts. This report documents a brief investigation of the present housing scenario in India, the existing construction alternatives, what possibilities industrialization can offer, case studies on a few systems to help arrive at a good system to be developed, and finally ends with a development of a product which can be used to address the housing needs in India, with further research. Parallely a study of fly-ash is presented, the under-utilization of which is seen as the second problem in this research work. So the product/ system proposed and developed is one utilizing a good percentage of flyash as its main ingredient. The Flyash ‘Stack-crete’ as I would call it, is a prefinished load bearing wall element, which can be stacked up to make up a load bearing facade, for a low rise. The report culminates with a discussion on a mockup, the potentials of the product and possible constraints. It should be mentioned here, that, industrialization offers several possibilities as noted in the report. Product and system development is one way of addressing it, and is definitely an important step in the whole process. So the flyash based prefabricated product proposed is one of the ways of addressing the housing needs in India in a sustainable way. I shall by no means make a claim that it is the best way of solving the housing problems, but can conclude that it is a viable option under Indian circustances to address the housing needs with further research.facade masterBuilding TechnologyArchitectur