Learning in space and Time: The concept model school

09.12.25

6 min read

By Shonan Purie Trehan

The Taj Mahal employed 20,000 artisans, Rashtrapati Bhavan drew 23,000 stone workers, and temple complexes like Madurai sustained sculptural guilds for centuries. Indian architecture has long been the catalyst for craft economies. Artisans and their craft lived on through the patronage that valued their skill and recognized the irreplaceable intelligence embedded in their handwork. 

As architecture is professionalised and construction industrialised, this historic relationship fractured. The building industry today is shaped by catalogues, specifications, digital standardisation, and supply chains designed for speed rather than meaning. Craft once central to architectural production has been relegated to embellishment, nostalgia, or luxury.

In the 1980’s the government gave skilled stone carvers employment by asking them to break stones for roads.

Craft as Method, Not Surface

In the current construction economy, architects often inherit a predetermined palette of industrially produced materials. Market logic dictates availability, convenience, and replication.

But architecture is not neutral and architects cannot be bystanders.

Each design decision has economic, cultural, and ecological consequences. If we continue to rely solely on manufactured finishes, we reinforce an extractive supply chain and diminish the living knowledge systems that enrich our built environment.

Craft does not simply add texture or ornament; it redefines the means of making. It slows down construction, demands skill, creates local employment, and repositions the architect not as a selector of products but as a collaborator, facilitator, and catalyst.

To integrate craft into the architecture of a home is to embed meaning at every scale, from the brick to the window, from the floor to the ceiling. It is to anchor architecture back into the realities of labour, time, knowledge, and community.

This manifesto is an argument for reclaiming craft as architecture, and for viewing the home, particularly the high-value home as a site where patronage can be reimagined as socio-cultural responsibility.

The 100,000 Brick House: Craft as Base-Build

At LAB, the 100,000 Brick House became a test case for what it means to integrate craft not as decoration, but as structure, surface, and storytelling. Instead of relying on manufactured materials, the project became an ecosystem of craft collaborations, each one embedded in the base build.  Across four years, the project supported at least seven distinct artisan communities : brick masons, stone inlayers, cement-tile makers, ceramic glaze artists, stained-glass makers, timber craftsmen, and mural painters.

Craft #1 Handmade Brick, Ludhiana/ Delhi

The sculptural brick envelope of the house was constructed using bricks handmade in Ludhiana. Middle-aged brick masons – many second or third-generation, executed the meticulously prepared drawings. The brick skin itself became a site of extraordinary skill transmission

Craft #2 Hand poured Cement Tiles, Bikaner

The entire cement-tile floor was poured by hand in Bikaner, using metal moulds, molesto and intricate stencils; each tile was individually cast. Variations in pigment, pour sequence, and stencil configurations produced a family of tile typologies, a modular narrative spread across rooms. Approximately xxx  tiles were poured by hand for this project. A 3rd generation craft enterprise was supported for xxx months.

Craft #3 Stained Glass, Mumbai

In Bombay, Cyrus and Jaishree crafted stained glass panels over two years. Their studio collected old glass, hand-cut patterns at 1:1 scale, soldered each joint, and assembled compositions that filtered light into colour. These were not decorative inserts but chromatic thresholds that changed the quality of space throughout the day. The time embedded in each panel – the labour, the slowness became part of the architecture’s atmosphere. Approximately xxx sq ft of stained glass was created for this project.

Craft #4 Stone Inlay, Agra

Stone inlayers from Agra  trained in techniques that trace back to Mughal workshops, created a series of intricate floor inlay panels that were integrated into the cement tile floors. Over xx inlay motifs were created. Each motif required hand-cut stone, fitting, polishing, and setting, often taking several days per piece. This work, spanning nearly three years, sustained a family of inlayers and their apprentices.

Craft #5 Timber Work

Bespoke timber detailing windows and doors, was executed by teams of carpenters whose craftsmanship allowed for precision joints, hand-planed surfaces, and complex geometries.

Craft #6 Mural Painting – Hand-Painted Walls & Ceilings

Hand-painted ceiling murals and wall frescoes replaced digital wallpapers, bringing back a representational craft that once defined domestic architecture across India.

Craft #7 Ceramic Glaze Tiles, Studio Ceramists

Specially glazed ceramic tiles were produced in small batches through traditional firing cycles, supporting studio-based ceramists rather than mass manufacturers.

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While peering into our laptops outside the workshop, a group of us heard 50 women sing a folk song on ‘sakhis’ (‘friends’) inside. I asked myself what had motivated these same women to come to learn and practice crocheting; training that was part of our intervention to enable women’s participation in India’s workforce.

The compensation for the work performed under the intervention was set at current Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) rates. We saw that, on average, overall productivity climbed steadily. We also saw a rise in output that passed quality checks. These were the crochet products they would get paid for on a weekly basis. One of our participants went from making 63 paid products in the first week to 108 in the last. Women, in general, were getting better at making the crochet products as they did more of it. We can only claim this conclusively once we wrap up this year-long intervention that will engage  500 women in Rajasthan’s Neemrana and can dig deeper into the data.

Craft as Socio-Economic Infrastructure

When craft becomes integral to architecture, the house becomes a platform for livelihoods. In the 100,000 Brick House:

  • Multiple craft clusters were employed simultaneously.
  • Skills were revived  from stained glass soldering to traditional stone inlay.
  • Young artisans were trained within their own communities.
  • Work was distributed locally rather than outsourced to factories.

If every high-value home supported even five craft communities, the cumulative impact would be transformative. Architecture could become a decentralised engine of cultural and economic sustainability  not through charity, but through procurement, collaboration, and design intent.

Repositioning the Architect: From Specifier to Culture Curator

Architects hold an unusual lever: the ability to decide where the money goes, how value is created, and whom construction benefits. As architects, we are catalysts within society. The choices we make — materials, processes, collaborators — shape more than buildings. They shape economies, communities, and cultural legacies.

We must take a stand on how we build, not only what we build

This raises an important proposition for the industry:

What if every high-value home allocated a minimum of 5–7% of its construction budget to craft?

Architecture becomes not just a consumer of resources but a generator of socio-economic ecosystems. Each project can be the preserver of design intelligence honed over generations.