Hyderabad: Home is where the heart is, but if you have to go by these students’ designs, it is also where various elements of nature are combined. We’re talking about the designs that city boy Tanmoy Naidu developed along with his classmates. These designs, Bio-Active Haven, also won them the first prize at the Biomimicry Challenge 2014 — For Living.
Tanmoy, a student of the Siddaganga Institute Of Technology, Karnataka, took part in the national level competition along with his classmates, Nitin and Adarsh.
Tanmoy says, “Our brief was to design a home that was environment-friendly. So we looked to nature for inspiration for the three levels of the 3,500 sft villa that we had designed.”
For the underground level, the team took inspiration from termites, the ground floor was inspired by caves and the above-ground floor was inspired by the weaver bird’s nest.
Tanmoy explains, “Termite hills have to maintain the temperature and have excellent air tunnels. So we used limestone to build the underground level. For the level on ground, since caves have always been a natural shelter, we used stone.”
He adds, “For the above ground floor, a cantilever, the inspiration was the weaver bird’s nest, so we used bamboo.” To hold the cantilever in place, instead of using iron or steel, the boys used synthetic spider web. “This is 10 times stronger than iron, so safety is not an issue,” he says.
