The Living and Learning Design Center at Ajrakhpur Kutch, hosts the annual crafts festival in winter. In January 2020 it organized the LLDC Folk Festival as a celebration of the culture, craft, music, dance, and food of Kutch inviting other focus states. The state of Jammu & Kashmir was the participating guest state enabling a wonderful collaboration.
This was all held in the LLDC campus, which also houses a well-researched gallery displaying the history, work, and lives of 9 communities of Kutch.

Our role was to prepare an event master plan facilitating all needs from congregation, food, crafts stalls and musical events being the architects for the campus designed in 2016.

The toilets within the date palm grove (between the Khajuris)

The grove of date palms known as “khajoori’ locally was also the obvious site for a toilet block, hidden behind its foliage.

The toilet block was to be a structure that would be semi permanent and able to renew itself when needed satisfying the challenge of providing sanitation for about 2500 to 3000 people on a daily basis for five consecutive days.

The structure was built from mature bamboo framing, with vertical supports resting on MS shoes and supporting a light tin roof. The siding uses harvested date palm leaves from the grove as the filler to provide the screening. These leaves were slipped into a horizontal system of coir rope strands. The internal partitions were made from 1”x2” local wood sections and 8mm wood fiber cement particle boards.

The open airy cross section allows for very good ventilation and privacy at the same time. Its low cost of construction and connectivity of the drainage to the existing DEWATS system makes it an appropriate solution. Freshly harvested leaves from the grove replace the external natural screens seasonally.

This provides a perpetual source of natural screening material adding value to a space for its spartan, clean, natural, well appointed gender friendly sense.