In this episode of Eco Talk, RJ Vijaya speaks with Sharanya Iyer and Girish Shettigar about children feeling the texture of the soil, and the sustainable form of home construction known as ‘cobb’.

In this conversation, Sharanya, founder and principal architect of Studio Verge, reveals that one day, when her 8-year-old son visited the site, he questioned the size of the wall, the materials used to construct the walls, and other details. “This is where the idea of a workshop came from. We thought, why can’t we get children to come to the site and experience the feel of the soil?”

Girish Shettigar is an architect who works in collaboration with Sharanya.

Speaking about cobb houses, Sharanya says that it is a traditional mud construction technique in which raw earth combined with straw and paddy husk for reinforcement stabilised with lime is used to build load-bearing walls. The benefits of such houses include reduced carbon and energy footprints of the structure.

Listen in!