philosophy

ANANGPUR  BUILDING  CENTRE

The Anangpur Building Centre is an entrepreneur Building Centre initiated in 1991 by

Prof. Anil Laul, an architect by profession, who has been involved with pioneering work
in the field of Appropriate Technologies for three decades. The Centre has been the
forerunner of the Building Centre movement in India. The issues it addresses are right
from the Brick as a basic element in building and its appropriateness to high-end
technology structures such as Space Frames and Geodesics. Unfortunately, apart from
high technology surfacing materials that have emerged over the years, the basic
performance criterion required of a walling material remains unexplored. An analytical
approach plus a re-examination of requirements of an appropriate walling material has
resulted in surface-engineered walling blocks (impermeable diaphragm with lean back-
up), which have been successfully used by Anangpur Building Centre in several
projects. The most recent developmental breakthrough are Interlocking Blocks for
earthquake resistant structures which have elicited tremendous response from
architects and engineers and about which information has been widely published. The
blocks, an amalgam of traditional wisdom with present day technologies, were primarily
designed for the earthquake-affected region of Gujarat, India. Interlocking Blocks were
listed as one of the six best products for the year 2001 by the Design Sense Museum,
London and nominated as 'Stockholm Partners' for the year 2002 for 'Earthquake
Resistant Housing'. The simplification of complex jointing systems for space frames and
geodesic domes are among the centre's high-tech developments. The Centre has also
developed structural systems and building systems such as A-frames, Cube-on-vertex,
Funicular shells that are earthquake resistant and yet costeffective. All the technologies
developed at this Centre are based on the Integration of the Architect, Engineer, Artist
and the Artisan. Anangpur Building Centre has ventured further, working on issues
related to Appropriate Human Settlement Design, keeping in mind the fact that nearly
50% of the GNP of a country goes into building materials in one form or another. The
building industry is the largest consumer of resources whether it is materials, capital or
energy and is second only to agriculture in providing employment for the maximum
number of people. Today, the largest single factor responsible for environmental
degradation is the unsustainable Human Settlements and therefore, it is issues related
to Human Settlement Design that require our most urgent attention and concerted
action.

Technologies and developments at Anangpur Building Centre are not patented,

ensuring accessibility to all. For speedy dissemination, all the developments have been
documented and placed on the Centre's website, . This site is a resource base for
several students in India and abroad and organizations working on Sustainable Human
Settlement issues. This website is also recognized as the 'Best Educational Website' by
Studyweb. The seriousness with which this website is being examined can be gauged
by the fact that Prof. Anil Laul was invited for the 'Man and City Conference' in Naples
hosted by His Holiness the Pope. He was also invited to the 'Sustainable Building
Conference 2001' at Maastricht as the Asian resource person. In both cases, the
organizers contacted Prof. Laul after having accessed the resource material on the
website.

Amongst others, Prof. Anil Laul has authored a document titled 'Sustainable City
Strategies for Developing Countries' which is a significant contribution in the field of
Sustainable Human Settlement Designs. This is a consequence of lessons learnt from
Jaunapur Slum Resettlement Scheme. It is also a part of Local Agenda 21 for the
South-east Asia Pacific region, published by ICLEI and now a part of the Local Agenda
for the Asian region, published by CSIR, Johannesburg
(www.sustainablesettlement.co.za).