People fled from the crowded bazaar area to the outskirts of the city in large numbers
seeking fresh air, open spaces and a cleaner environment. The administration now
needed to look more closely at city planning to manage this exodus.
Approximately 1000 acres were allocated towards this effort and drawings were
sought for new layouts-including Malleswaram, Basavangudi and Fraser Town, to be
built. They were laid out in grids, with narrow lanes known as ‘conservancy lanes’
running behind them since modern sewage systems and undergroundstorm-water
drains had not yet appeared.
The drainage of the Bazaar and the Cantonment in the late 1800s depended on a large
open sewer that passed through a tunnel in the Halasur Tank, before emptying out on
the outskirts of the Cantonment where (much to Florence Nightingale’s distress) it
was ‘applied to cultivation’. Sewage disposal was still in its infancy and flush tanks
and commodes were a distant dream. The system was therefore, quite literally, in the
hands of the jemadar, the night-soil worker who cleaned out the ‘thunder boxes’
every day. But despite municipal bye-laws that insisted on daily conservancy, privy
pits in Bangalore were not cleared out frequently enough. The epidemic would now
push the municipal administration towards putting a formal sanitation system in place.
In 1899, the Mysore government diverted Rs. 27, 15, 221 for sanitation work across
the state. The schemes, under Plague Commissioner V.P. Madhava Rao (not yet
Diwan at this point), included establishing sanitation departments, widening narrow
streets and constructing sanitation and drainage facilities. But despite these efforts, the
plague would revisit the city yet again.
History of sewage systems in Bangalore: Plague outbreak in 1889 forced the town
administration authorities to provide wider roads, open drains and sewage carrier
lines. Localities such as Basavanagudi and Malleswaram were provided with
conservancy roads and a good network of drains. The system for the conveyance of
domestic and industrial waste was established in Bangalore in early thirties, which
was initially confined to the densely populated old parts of the city. Following
completion of the Thippagondanahalli reservoir in 1940’s, the extension accelerated.
The old city and 60% of the former Civil and Military area had been sewered by
1960’s, and about 60,000 connections had been made to the sewers. Then followed
the major sewerage development under the first three phases of the Cauvery project
(CWSS), extending from the mid-1970’s to late 1990’s.
Coverage of Sewerage in Bangalore: The sewerage system in Bangalore has been
guided by the nature of the topography formed by natural ridges and valleys and
sewers were laid along natural channels to save on pumping costs. The sewerage
system covers about 229 km2 and is made up of four principal drainage areas (major
valleys) which drain to three wastewater treatment plants. Sewage flows from three of
five minor valleys are intended to be treated at two of these treatment plants. The
existing sewage system is given in Figure 8.1 and Figure 8.2 shows the drainage
zones together with the major sewer system (sewers of 450mm diameter and above).
Debris House / Wallmakers
Considering the local nuances and the economic constraints, the
materials were responsibly chosen; the walls rose out from the earth
that was dug out within the site, the debris from the earlier
building is turned to a curvilinear wall that forms the central
courtyard and becomes the central focus of the house which is called
the Debris Wall and is also the advent of a new technology.
Recycled wood is used to create the furniture
The windows protected with meter boxes from a local scrapyard
create a mural on the rammed earth wall
Coconut shells used as fillers in the concrete roof give a
contemporary touch to the structure. The latter half of the house
incorporates Ferrocement shell roofs
DEBRIS WALL:
Using meshed (22 gauge chicken mesh )casing reinforced with 6mm bars at 2 feet
intervals vertically and horizontally, lump sized Debris added with 10% gravel and
5% cement and 5%manufactured sand with water was slightly tamped in 2cm layers
to form the set of walls defining the entrance.
INITIAL EMBODIED ENERGY:
Debris walls consume 5 times less energy than a fired brick wall:
Embodied energy of Debris wall = 850 MJ/m3
Country fired brick Wall = 4,501.25 MJ/m3
CARBON FOOTPRINT
Rammed earth walls are polluting 4 times less than country fired brick walls:
Carbon footprint of Rammed earth wall cement = 110.11 Kg of CO2 /m3
Country fired brick wall = 444.12 Kg of CO2 /m3
FERROCEMENT SHELLS:
Roof is made of precast ferrocement shells lifted and placed in
position manually. These wafer-like structures are steel reinforced
arched shells with effective thickness of 1.5cm and they take equal
load of respective R.C.C slabs. They effectively reduce the overall
cement consumption by 40% and steel consumption by 30%.These replace
the R.C.C Slab in roofing as they are as strong as 1200 kg/m2
The Bengaluru lies on 934m above sea level The climate here is
tropical. The summers are much rainier than the winters in Bengaluru.
This climate is considered to be Aw according to the Köppen-Geiger
climate classification. The temperature here averages 23.6 °C | 74.5
°F. In a year, the rainfall is 831 mm | 32.7 inch.
The driest month is January, with 1 mm | 0.0 inch of rain. The
greatest amount of precipitation occurs in September, with an average
of 182 mm | 7.2 inch.
April is the warmest month of the year. The temperature in April
averages 27.1 °C | 80.8 °F. The lowest average temperatures in the
year occur in December, when it is around 20.7 °C | 69.3 °F.
