House of Solid Stone

Architecture in Rajasthan is synonymous with sandstone as a building material. Unfortunately, over the last few decades, the material has been reduced to a 'cladding' medium and its potential as a robust and sustainable structural element has been barely explored. In India, unlike more industrialized societies where the hand-made is often an unaffordable luxury, the economics of the hand-made is still comparable with mechanised methods. The residence in Jaipur presented us with an opportunity to explore and evolve a method of building that has been native to traditional buildings for centuries. The brief laid out was simple: the primary material used for construction should be stone. This challenge made us dive deep into the art of 'making' with stone and the first sketches were the confluence of traditional knowledge reinforced with cutting-edge engineering The site read more like an archaeological excavation than an active construction site, where the lines between the 'found' and the 'made' were continuously blurred. Quarry: Hard sandstone (Jodhpur stone) is quarried 45 mins away from the site. Upon requesting, the quarry foreman reverted to the age-old 'splitting' stone technique, using traditional stone masonry tools instead of the high-yield gang saw extraction, which is machine intensive and eliminates the natural stone grain texture. Splitting the stone mobilizes the human touch, limits the processing, and retains the natural Earth imprint of the stone. Craft + Engineering: Stonemasons from the surrounding villages have worked stone with their hands for generations. The accumulated knowledge of the past along with the theory of modern engineering created an interesting and often contradictory overlap of intelligence that was most often resolved by the Head Stonemason, including identifying the optimal size of stone that could be carried and laid by 2 masons with minimal mechanical assistance (unlike brick, there is no Standard stone size). The purview of Craft, often limited to embellishment, artifice, and object, was expanded to the building scale. Easily consumable symbology is supplanted by the primal and essential deployment of material resource and craft in a space that is both Ancient and Contemporary. Project Cost: Prior to finalizing this construction method, and owing to a limited budget, a detailed comparison between the 'All Stone' method, 'Reinforced Stone', and 'Conventional' R.C.C. frame Structure was prepared. Accounting the proximity of the material source and skilled stonemasons, reducing the number of agencies on site, it was concluded that a building in stone was in reality cheaper than the conventional alternative. Time and cost were reduced due to the method of quarrying, which also gave the project a balance between natural (Earth imprint) and smooth handmade finishes. Prolonged life cycle and recyclability of a stone structure: By focusing on a single building material that requires negligible processing between the quarry and its final application on site, and has a low embodied energy; the usage of other higher impact materials has been reduced or eliminated from the project, which ensures the sustenance of the structure for a long time.