BuildingCommunity ProjectsDemonstration SitesEducation Centres

Creating a Bamboo and Mud Yurt at the Art of Living Permaculture Centre, Bangalore, India

We wanted to create a natural building out of bamboo and mud on our site in Bangalore, India, as this project involved learning experiences too. However, our professional colleague who was to help us with building this structure couldn’t make it owing to personal preoccupations.

Thus began our experimentation in coming up with a plan to build a bamboo and mud teaching centre. We came up with a simple Mongolian yurt design. We drew pictures and made notes about its proposed structure. A yurt is a nomadic structure used by Mongolians for over 1000 years. They are now being built as permanent structures in Mongolia and other countries, due to its simplicity in design, and as they are inexpensive and fast to build with natural materials that are usually readily available.

We cut bamboo from the site, collected clay, straw and cow dung and cut the tall grass nearby and then began our construction. These materials cost us nothing — we didn’t buy them, but gathered them from around the site!

Slowly but steadily we began with the circular structure, then used thin bamboo splits to create the wall. Then we mixed clay and dung and took strands of straw and dipped them in the clay/dung mix and pasted in the holes created in the bamboo wall. We worked on creating windows and everyone’s imagination resulted in nine different shapes of windows! The roof was created using bamboo before being covered with grass thatch.

We painted the building with a water-proofing compound and put the color of mud on it. Someone came up with the idea of drawing rural Indian murals on the walls and so murals came next. Someone else suggested to cover inner walls with old bed sheets and so we went ahead and did that also! Now the yurt is strong, and looks good from inside and outside! More than anything else, it cost us nothing, except our manpower and imagination!

I venture to think that permaculture fires up creativity within us when we’re practicing its principles.

Should you like to visit the site when in Bangalore, India, you may write to vdharmraj (at) ramaavenkatesh.com and we will be happy to show you around. You may also wish to participate in this project in some way.

4 Comments

  1. Fantastic! I am currently building a semi-permanent roundhouse to live in within NZ. I have used milled timber but your use of natural round wood is inspiring. Perhaps I will try this next time – when I have perfected the rest of the design. And I’m encouraged by your use of wattle and daub style earth walls. I have used old soft plastic sign material for an exterior wall. I will next create an interior wall with hay bales for insulation (it gets cold in the South Island of NZ) and then try an earth plaster on the inside face, following in your fashion. And you’ve inspired me to decorate with art work. Thank you very much for the video. Robbie

  2. Dear sir,
    Yurts and domes are thousands of year designs and have reached a specialisation wherein you can’t add anything.
    Dome house or jhupas are rajasthan main houses and people live in them.
    What you have created is the worst I have ever seen in my life.
    Before building a round house or dome or a yurt, first learn how can u build it with perfection.
    You may not like my comment but the fact is this is an insult to human kind perfection in making domes and yurts.
    Best regards…
    Mahendra

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Articles

Back to top button