Analysis Of The Roofs

3.3.1 - The Roof
Roofs have always been a very different story for me. I have always loved to travel, cycling and walking all over the country of my birth and in the many different countries of Europe, just looking at roofs. Roofs are like hats. Like a hat or a turban– has its own personality of the builder. And every place had its own way of covering its buildings and they always seemed to me to be just right for that particular place and its inhabitants. Laurie Baker
The overall form of a building plays an important and decisive role in defining its nature. For a place like Kerala, where excessive rains occur, the drama of the roof is an interesting feature, in addition to climatic factors, how Baker uses this form to added advantages within and outside the building is to be understood through this analysis. One of the most important design elements in his buildings is the roof that acts as an element for protecting, powerful and governing the aesthetic be it any period or anyplace. Baker believed; the roof with its shape, texture and proportion to be the strongest visual factor. We can see diverse forms of roofs in his projects and the visual experimentation is even more enriched in the later works.

The Lantern

The motif of a triangular porch at one end of block is a recurrent one in his works, which also appears at residence for Vasanst Gowarikar, SACON Coimbatore and Farm Information Bureau, Trivandrum. There is this remarkable concern in his work for an in- between which connects in gradual manner the outside to inside which is exemplified by the use of concave-convex walls even at Jilla Panchayat Kollam (fig. 3.49). Here the light source which is a triangular courtyard illuminates the surfaces and creates an in-between zone which acts as a thick band in the visual perception from inside to outside (fig.