Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Wonder Grass – The Year gone by ‘2010

Here we are taking the opportunity to share with you all the developments and achievements at Wonder Grass during 2010 - 2011
One of our friends rightly said, ‘sometime’s it helps to celebrate your achievements’, we thought may be it is still some time for us to exult and celebrate our achievements, but let us take a stock of what we have been able to achieve last year, where we could not walk that extra mile, where we failed to deliver to the best standards and where we might improve.

Works we completed

1. A Prototype ‘Inverted Arch’ and ‘Vaulted-dome’ under the guidance of Ar. Ashok Lal, Delhi.

2. A ‘Green-wall’ for residence of Mr. Shriram Nadathur, Koramangala Bangalore.

3. Workers Housing for AB Rolling Mills, Village Sarigam, Vaapi Gujrath – 15 units of 200 Sft built. In a span of 6 months.

4. A Beach-front Restaurant for Farhenite Resorts, Goa – 1500 Sft of restaurant (semi-open) and 2000 Sft of Green-wall as visual barrier.

5. A ‘Green-wall’ for Mr. Vikram Reddy’s residence, near White field Bangalore

6. Design and Erection of a first prototype of ‘Integrated Rural Housing Unit’ developed by Wonder Grass as an offering in Rural housing market.

7. First phase of ‘A Study of Structural Behavior of Bamboo based building components’, for National Mission for Bamboo Applications NMBA, New Delhi.

Milestones:

1. The inverted arch built at our Nagpur facility is first of its kind (in the Indian context), of a structural member 75 feet long and 10 feet in depth, built entirely in Bamboo.

2. Prototype for Integrated Housing unit, a complete unit of 375 Sq Ft with Rain-water harvesting system and Dry-Toilet, in on offer for Rs. 1,25,000/-

3. The Housing – unit is designed as a system of parts, which are fabricated in the processing-nodes, transported and erected on site in 21 days, for a house ready-to-move in for a family.

4. A complete knock-down kind of system developed for a beach-front restaurant for Farhenite-resort, a very appropriate solution for structures coming up in CRZ areas. This system allows erection and dismantling of the system with ease.

5. Workers housing units built at AB Rolling mills are a first pilot run for modular building system developed in-house, tested for delivery and execution for volumes.

Lessons Learnt


1. Worker’s Housing at AB Rolling Mills

a. System - approach makes it faster and economical to build structures on a relatively large scale.

b. The quality of structural system is good, but there is a lot of room for improvement in walling-system, the junctions where wall-meets-columns and beams.

c. Work required on resolving wall-door frame junction in neater and cleaner way.

d. Work required for refining and developing aesthetics and visual-character of the built-for.

e. Delivery on site suffers from a lack of well coordinated artisan team, trained specifically for execution and Quality finish.
2. Inverted arch for Ar. Ashok Lal, Delhi

a. It is possible to build a continuous structural component using a standard pole-size of 12 feet, with appropriate joinery, design of construction processes etc.

b. We need to build on the rapport ire of ways of joining and building structural systems using bamboo. Ours is limited to use of Nut-bolts, Fiber reinforced Plastic and Sheet-metal joints.

c. There is a need on developing a range of systems which are primarily composite in nature, which combines bamboo with timber, MS sections and engineered bamboo panels etc.
3. Green – wall for mr. Shriram Nadathur’s residence, Bangalore

a. The standardization has stopped at product level. It needs to be taken further in the building – processes using these components at project-site.

b. The ad-hock approach during execution leads to longer time-frames on site, also to a relatively bad quality of finish of a finished project.

c. A Range of standardized joinery systems needs to be developed to simplify the erection of green-wall panels on verity of site-conditions.

4. A Prototype for a ‘Integrated Rural Housing unit’ at village Peth, Nagpur.
a. Roofing system – use of Corrugated GI Sheets is not in line with the character and feel of the built-form. We need to experiment with different roofing materials to arrive at appropriate solutions.

b. Plastering methods using cement-plaster and mud-plaster needs a lot of R&D to make the walls as effective as a plastered brick-wall.

c. Windows are too small for a house, needs redesigning.

The experience of the last year will help us chart our way further. We shall share with you the roadmap for year ahead in the next blog entry.

Till then…. Enjoy..