Vanamu

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Stories of timeless way of Building, Dwelling & Thinking.

12/03/2026

The model begins with the land itself.
Discarded MDF becomes the mould. AAC blocks from construction are crushed into a lighter concrete mix. Clay is shaped by hand to trace the site’s terrain—the gentle fall of the ground, the path of the nala.

Concrete is poured. Gravity settles it. Time cures it.

When the mould is removed and the clay washed away, the landscape slowly appears—its curves, voids, and edges cast in concrete. Finally, soils from the excavation return to the model at 1:50 scale.

The ground becomes something we can hold, turn, and read.
Not a miniature of the site, but a way of thinking with it.

27/02/2026

Architectural models are often seen as representations.
For us, they are instruments.

This model brings artisans, designers, materials, and seasons into one shared surface of decision-making.
At this scale, placement, sequence, hydrology, and construction logistics can be tested before they are fixed.

It allows water, soil, stone, and time to participate in the design process.

The model does not describe the building.
It helps shape it.

CollectiveDesign
PermacultureDesign
SystemsThinking
SustainableArchitecture
DesignAtScale

11/01/2026

Four lakhs.
Four weeks.
One shared home.

Built with soil from the site, reused materials, and people who build together and live together.
Not a temporary shed — but a place to rest, work, cook, and learn as a community.

This is what affordable housing for Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana can look like when it begins with respect.

Drawings featured by:

17/11/2025

Urban permaculture doesn’t need acres — it just needs intention.

In Devanahalli, Shaila has turned her 30×50 kitchen garden into a productive community-scale system that grows a surprising amount of daily food.

From perennial guilds of papaya, banana and passionfruit…
to annual beds of carrots, greens and chilies…
every part of her garden reflects a simple idea: design what you have, care for what you grow, and let diversity do the rest.

Visiting her space reminded us how core permaculture principles look in real life:
Obtain a yield. Integrate rather than segregate. Use and value diversity. Produce no waste.
Small, consistent actions — big outcomes.

Thank you, Shaila, for sharing your garden and showing how much is possible in a tiny urban plot. 🌱💛

11/11/2025

✨ We’re featured in IISc’s Connect Magazine! ✨

Vanamu is honoured to be featured in the 2025 issue of Connect by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) — under the story “Home is where earth is: Learning from traditional architecture.”

This piece highlights our ongoing journey of learning from soil, craft, and community — and the ways traditional knowledge continues to guide sustainable building practices today. Featured here in the photograph is our beloved Dawoodji in action during one of our Natural Plasters Workshops in the old studio.

Thank you to the Connect editorial team and Bitasta Das for sharing our story of earth and learning.

05/11/2025

In construction sites around the country, the people who build our homes sleep in sheds on the edge of the site.

We call this one a home — because it’s built for and by the makers themselves.

Stones from old projects, tiles from the village, soil from the land —
everything here carries a story of reuse and respect.

This isn’t a project about construction.
It’s about belonging.

🌿 Why call it a worker shed when it’s a home!

23/10/2025

Ever wondered what happens between a sketch and a building?

When the rain pauses site work, we turn to the tables instead.
Model-making at Vanamu is how we think — together.
Each cut, fold, and joint helps us see the design in new ways — how light moves, how spaces breathe, how water flows.

It’s a collaborative pause — working side by side, shaping ideas before they become built form.

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31/08/2025

Digging for water is digging for life. 🌱

At Vanamu, being close to a pond gave us a rare opportunity: to read the clay and sand beneath our feet, and to imagine how rainwater can be captured, stored, and lived with. As we dug, the site spoke — clay in the northeast, sandy soil in the southwest, each layer carrying traces of old ponds and past lives of the land.

Clay is paradoxical — it can trap sewage from nearby leach pits, yet it is also the very barrier that safeguards clean rainwater. By reaching the clay aquitard, we can build stone foundations that hold back contamination and create a seasonal basement: flooded in monsoon, inhabitable in summer.

This quarter-acre site receives nearly 7–8 lakh litres of rain each year. By harvesting even 4–5 lakh litres, Vanamu can sustain 15–20 residents through cycles of abundance and drought.

This is more than excavation. It is an act of designing with nature’s rhythms — making soil, water, and stone our collaborators.

”

01/07/2025

We spoke in at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Campus de la Ciutadella, Barcelona.

Our paper, “Sowing Change : Cultivating Relational Sustainabilty through Homesteading in Peri-urban Bangalore,” shared the process of designing Vanamu in Narayanpura—slow, relational, imperfect.

It’s not about the outcome we get to. It’s about staying with the work—of soil, of care, of working with material, of the process.

If you’re walking this path too, we’d love to hear what your version of “sowing change” looks like—wherever you are. 🌍

Thankful to for supporting us in this journey.

08/06/2025

"Nana, so many stones?... You got a mountain!"
Mira's tiny voice echoes in between the stones that are twice her size.

We tell her - this is home, our Vanamu, arriving in pieces.

Our land speaks in stone now - an abundant arrival marking the next chapter of our slow, steady build. Very soon these stones will become walls, thresholds, courtyard, wells - the very bones of a place meant to breathe, grow, nurture and belong.

And the little one listens, touches, climbs, watches, giggles, and learns - a practice of permaculture as a way of growing into the world - together.

05/01/2024

This is the Season of Swatches.. in the making

Experiments from our Natural Plaster workshops seeing the light finally :)

08/11/2023

VACANCY ALERT
Full Time | Bangalore | Starting immediately
- Junior Architect

Address

Vanamu, House 29, 1st Main, 1st A Cross Chikkabommasandra, GKVK Post, Yelahanka New Town
Bangalore
560065

Website

https://vanamu.org/, https://www.linkedin.com/company/vanamu/

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