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  /  Focus Projects   /  Recycled municipal waste structure for Ahmedabad activity centre

Recycled municipal waste structure for Ahmedabad activity centre

Ahmedabad-based Footprints E.A.R.T.H. has designed the Manav Sadhana Activity Centre and Creche, which was to construct an NGO within the largest squatter settlement of Ahmedabad, which serves as an informal school for young children in the morning, an evening education facility for adults and is also a vocational training center and activity workshop for the manufacturing of craft-based products by women and the elderly.

Spread over 11,00 sq. m., the space includes an administrative unit, all-religion meditation unit and dormitory, apart from the school. A creche and community center were later additions, along with a gymnasium and health center. The structure was built using components that included recycled municipal waste, which reduces pollution, is cheaper and offers superior-quality building alternatives for the urban poor.

The walls, roofs, slabs, doors and windows are made with simple hand-operated tools, partially using the help of the end users. Cement-bonded fly-ash bricks and mold compressed bricks made from landfill site waste residue, stabilized soil blocks, recycled glass and plastic bottles filled with ash and waste residue were used. Vegetable crate wooden paneling was used in the inner partition walls, while cement-bonded particleboard with a clay tile cover and a light conduit pipe truss with G.I. sheets with clay tile roofs promote sustainable use of architecture.

Shredded packaging wrapper and coated paper waste are a substitute for fiber reinforced plastic (FRP) for the door paneling. Oil tin containers as blades make the ventilation louvers and cladding in the toilets. Fly ash and waste residue molded tiles with inlaid ceramic industry waste as china mosaic was applied in patches for their demonstration. Broken stone, tile residue, metal scrap, stone cutter blades, bars of broken slabs and rag-reinforced FRP panels were used in construction.