Wonder Grass – The Year gone by ‘2010

Here we are taking the opportunity to share with you all the developments and achievements at Wonder Grass during 2010 - 2011
One of our friends rightly said, ‘sometime’s it helps to celebrate your achievements’, we thought may be it is still some time for us to exult and celebrate our achievements, but let us take a stock of what we have been able to achieve last year, where we could not walk that extra mile, where we failed to deliver to the best standards and where we might improve.

Works we completed

1. A Prototype ‘Inverted Arch’ and ‘Vaulted-dome’ under the guidance of Ar. Ashok Lal, Delhi.

2. A ‘Green-wall’ for residence of Mr. Shriram Nadathur, Koramangala Bangalore.

3. Workers Housing for AB Rolling Mills, Village Sarigam, Vaapi Gujrath – 15 units of 200 Sft built. In a span of 6 months.

4. A Beach-front Restaurant for Farhenite Resorts, Goa – 1500 Sft of restaurant (semi-open) and 2000 Sft of Green-wall as visual barrier.

5. A ‘Green-wall’ for Mr. Vikram Reddy’s residence, near White field Bangalore

6. Design and Erection of a first prototype of ‘Integrated Rural Housing Unit’ developed by Wonder Grass as an offering in Rural housing market.

7. First phase of ‘A Study of Structural Behavior of Bamboo based building components’, for National Mission for Bamboo Applications NMBA, New Delhi.

Milestones:

1. The inverted arch built at our Nagpur facility is first of its kind (in the Indian context), of a structural member 75 feet long and 10 feet in depth, built entirely in Bamboo.

2. Prototype for Integrated Housing unit, a complete unit of 375 Sq Ft with Rain-water harvesting system and Dry-Toilet, in on offer for Rs. 1,25,000/-

3. The Housing – unit is designed as a system of parts, which are fabricated in the processing-nodes, transported and erected on site in 21 days, for a house ready-to-move in for a family.

4. A complete knock-down kind of system developed for a beach-front restaurant for Farhenite-resort, a very appropriate solution for structures coming up in CRZ areas. This system allows erection and dismantling of the system with ease.

5. Workers housing units built at AB Rolling mills are a first pilot run for modular building system developed in-house, tested for delivery and execution for volumes.

Lessons Learnt


1. Worker’s Housing at AB Rolling Mills

a. System - approach makes it faster and economical to build structures on a relatively large scale.

b. The quality of structural system is good, but there is a lot of room for improvement in walling-system, the junctions where wall-meets-columns and beams.

c. Work required on resolving wall-door frame junction in neater and cleaner way.

d. Work required for refining and developing aesthetics and visual-character of the built-for.

e. Delivery on site suffers from a lack of well coordinated artisan team, trained specifically for execution and Quality finish.
2. Inverted arch for Ar. Ashok Lal, Delhi

a. It is possible to build a continuous structural component using a standard pole-size of 12 feet, with appropriate joinery, design of construction processes etc.

b. We need to build on the rapport ire of ways of joining and building structural systems using bamboo. Ours is limited to use of Nut-bolts, Fiber reinforced Plastic and Sheet-metal joints.

c. There is a need on developing a range of systems which are primarily composite in nature, which combines bamboo with timber, MS sections and engineered bamboo panels etc.
3. Green – wall for mr. Shriram Nadathur’s residence, Bangalore

a. The standardization has stopped at product level. It needs to be taken further in the building – processes using these components at project-site.

b. The ad-hock approach during execution leads to longer time-frames on site, also to a relatively bad quality of finish of a finished project.

c. A Range of standardized joinery systems needs to be developed to simplify the erection of green-wall panels on verity of site-conditions.

4. A Prototype for a ‘Integrated Rural Housing unit’ at village Peth, Nagpur.
a. Roofing system – use of Corrugated GI Sheets is not in line with the character and feel of the built-form. We need to experiment with different roofing materials to arrive at appropriate solutions.

b. Plastering methods using cement-plaster and mud-plaster needs a lot of R&D to make the walls as effective as a plastered brick-wall.

c. Windows are too small for a house, needs redesigning.

The experience of the last year will help us chart our way further. We shall share with you the roadmap for year ahead in the next blog entry.

Till then…. Enjoy..

Beach - Front restaurant at Goa

Work at the Farhenite resorts, Goa is coming along well. This is a project where we can showcase bamboo in a more contemporary form than the way it has been used to build beach-shacks in Goa. We are ercting a Bamboo green-wall, a Kitchen and a Dining area.

The Bamboo-wall is almost complete as can be seen in images above. The sloping terrain added to the verity of wall, and created nice stepped-pattern.

Kitchen with a backdrop of palm-trees sits appropriately in the landscape.

The structure s designed and built such that it can be dismantled, stacked every season depending on requirement.

A complete Housing Unit - Typology for Rural areas

Bamboo House is almost complete now, thanks to a proposed visit by a client from Mumbai, that we decided to make it a deadline to complete the house in its totality, along with basic landscape, and other aspects too.

It is to the credit of Ar. Bela, who has recetly joined Wonder Grass team to work as part of Design team, Sandip and Vasanta (artisan at Peth) to complete the house in time for the client visit.

The outcome has been truly exciting for us all. The house feels just like any other house, even though built almost entirely with bamboo, with everyone who is visiting is now talking about and notice finishes, the junction and construction quality, more than house built with bamboo.

This we believe is a good step forward, from being a bamboo house it is moving towards just being a house. Client visit helped us understand what any client will expect if this has to be viewed from a persepctive of a client who wants to 'pay' for the house.

There are areas where we need to improve upon construction system, the gaps and junctions where we still further refnement and development of construction methods. This can very well be termed as first generation house with bamboo, which will evolve as we work further.

The house is now ready for application in the market. If you need one, do let us know!!

Rural Housing Unit - Progress as on 26 Sept'2009

Rural Housing Typology as develped by Wonder Grass is nearig completion. Here are some of the recent pictures of the internal and extarnal views of the Housing unit.
As we have described in some of our earlier posts, this housing unit is being developed as an incremental system, which means that the technology should allow expansion of the housing unit in an incremental fashion.

The External face has a cement plaster and internal face has a mud plaster.

Product Development - Roofing panels

Roofing Panels - in Bamboo
We are now in the process of developing a new range of panels at our Belgaum center. Udayan,. who is also part of the new team at Wonder Grass is developing a new range of panels which cann potentially be applied for variouos applicatons in a typical urban market.

The roof-panel, we are developing may not really work as full-fledged roofing alternative due to various inherent problems, but can certainly be used in varous other small-scale applications.



Interios Panels - visual barries
We are developing a seperate range of panels which are self-standing, can be movable and are available in some standard lengths. these panels can be used for various applications in and outside the building, from offices, residences, hotels etc.

Workers Housing for AB Rolling Mills, Bhilad

AB Rolling Mills, in village Manda near Bhilad (Gujrath) while proposig to bulding living units for the industrial-workers of their unit, they chose to tread a different path and decided to build bamboo living-units in place of typical concrete block + GI Tin sheet rooms.

Wonder Grass has been working on what can at best be described as semi-permanent housing for workers, artisans and labours staying in premises of Large industrial units, construction project-sites and similar projects spread across the country and many parts of the world.

There are various design solutions available for such housing-living requirements in a European, Middle East or US markets. In Indian context, there is a need to develop products - solutions which will help provide a decent living spaces for artisans and workers. In a typical scenario, the living-units built for workers-artisans, are just a ramshackle arrangement of casuarina poles and GI Sheets. Workers stay in these conditions sometimes for 12-18 months, braving monsoon, heat and winter, with GI sheets proving an accomplice in torment under all weather-conditions.

Bamboo and composite structures can provide for this gap in the demand.

Taking our clues from the modular standardized building systems, we are developing a simple living-unit for the industrial workers, which will be cost-effective and yet give its occupant a better living conditions.

The efforts are on to design system, such that the unit can be assembled and erected on site at ease. On completion of the project, the living-unit can be dismantled and carried to another project site. The idea is that the structure can be used for about 2-3 project-cycles giving a better, while workers enjoy better living-conditions than a typical casuarina + GI sheet unit.

Wonder Grass artisan team could erect the primary structure for about 7 lining-units, each about 200 Sq Ft built-up area, in a span of 15 days while monsoon is still in full-swing. One of the sample-units is already finished.

Wonder Grass on the cusp of new beginning

Work on the first phase of the construction of large-span inverted arch is nearing completion. Simultaneously we are working on a vaulted structure which is also coming along well.

The whole process of constructing a single structural member of 80 feet span has been exciting. It has helped us develop some simple but very interesting ‘systems’ that help us construct a large structural member. Development and construction of a curved element of arch, using multiple bamboo-poles, as can be seen in the images.

Another structure that we are developing is also part of the same project. This is proposed to a vaulted roofing system which is approximately 40 feet in span. We have started putting together the ribs, which will finally support the woven-bamboo surface on the top. (image).

This has been a good start. We take this opportunity to thank our clients, specially Architects Ashok B laal, Delhi and IGH (initiatives for Green Habitats), Bangalore to have put faith in the capabilities of Wonder Grass to deliver the building system to their requirement.

The Barn Roof Vault

This is part of the first phase of the project, where we would be prototyping the primary structural element, assemble a full-scale mock-up and conduct preliminary structural tests to check how it performs under various loading conditions.

There are two different structures that we are working on, both have different design and construction requirements.

We intend to complete the construction of a mock-up of the vaulted structure towards the end of this month. The second step is to conduct basic structural tests on the full-scale mock-up of both these systems, inverted arch (80 feet clear span) and Ribbed-vault (40 feet span). Design of structural tests is going to be a ‘project’ in itself. In case of the 80 feet span inverted-arch, the dead-load of the roofing system on top (proposed ‘Galv-Al’ sheets) is negligible, but then the wind-loads will be considerable. What we are working on, is to find a way to test these systems under windy conditions.

The project has given us an opportunity to build large span structural systems using bamboo as primary building material. This has given Wonder Grass team a confidence in its abilities for providing and erecting large span built-spaces.

Deriving from these primary forms and construction-systems we can look at developing building-applications for use in urban environs. We are looking to get the first complete prototype up and test the same towards the end of month of July, learn from the tests and refine the structural system for enhanced performance.