brick vaulted ‘haven pavilion’ forms intimate cowshed nestled into kerala’s hillside

earthscape studio draws on local brickwork and construction

Earthscape Studio wedges a vaulted cowshed into a bowl-shaped contour in the Indian countryside. Engulfed in the dense foliage of banana trees and overlooking a valley, the Haven Pavilion responds to the site’s natural landscape and Kerala’s climate, integrating into its environment. The architects utilize locally available materials, including casuarinas trees, bamboo, and three layers of ‘sithu kal’ brick, to sustainably complete the construction and top the animal shelter in an experimental timbrel vault structure. Its sweeping form creates an ‘eternal experience’ inside, while following the natural landform, leaving it untouched and camouflaging within.

undulating vaults camouflage  into the site’s contours

Without harming any of the natural environment, the Haven Pavilion sits on a sloping hillside site with a level difference of about 1m to 4m that continues down to a deep valley. Positioned flat on the land, the team at Earthscape Studio has located four anchor points for the vault at different levels, creating four different catenary arches at varying heights inside. The timbrel vault, spanning 6.6m wide and 3m high, derives from Kumar Doss’s catenary-based vault structures and is proposed by the architects to shape the cowshed sustainably and economically. Further, the technique draws on the Kangaroo physics engine, considering site surface and distributing loads to create maximum elasticity and a durable, stable compression structure.

Taking the local climate into consideration, Earthscape Studio has integrated openings in the structure to direct the area’s heavy wind flow and persistent rainfall downwards. A small drain also runs through the cowshed which further helps to aid waste water disposal in a natural direction towards the valley.

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project info:

name: Haven The Eternal Experience Pavilion

architecture: Earthscape Studio

lead architect: Petchimuthu Kennedy
team: Petchimuthu Kennedy, Rigesh Niganth, Jeffril J Kumar, Shivani Saran S K

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