Project Griha: A focus on Rural housing

Studying the past, understanding the present, and designing for the future.

India lacks 250 lakh units of rural housing. The rural area is home to 65% of the population. One in five rural dwellers lives in Kuccha houses, as poverty is concentrated there. (Source: Ministry of Rural Development, 2011).

Villagers suffer from lack of access to technical knowhow as there are no technology resource organizations to empower the people. Neither do Panchayats possess or provide the same (Source: Bhide, 2010).

At NIVASA, we focus on this lacuna through Project Griha. It is also an attempt to bring back villages as the pride of India through our design solutions.

Griha, meaning “home” is about developing customized design solutions for affordable rural housing that consider local material, environment, socio-cultural sensitivities & economic activities.  This also includes dissemination of templates to the stakeholders involved in the construction of homes viz. contractors, skilled workers and the larger community.

Project Griha is the necessary step in achieving NIVASA’s vision of enabling sustainable houses to the Below Poverty Line communities, through design templates, with an intention to fortify the local ecosystem.

Karnataka Diaries: Chikkaballapur District

As a part of Griha’s research in Chikkaballapur district, Karnataka, the young architects from our team visited remote villages across the various taluks in the district.  They noted their daily visits, impressions and learnings in their reports.

Over the next few weeks, we will post a series of entries from the diaries of these young architects: a peek into the kaleidoscope of rural India through their experiences!