AJ Climate Champions podcast: Vinu Daniel on transforming mud and waste into architecture

‘The idea is to propagate. I want to do airports, I want to build cities,’ says the founder of award-winning practice Wallmakers

Vinu Daniel views mud and waste as opportunities, not obstacles. He advocates an approach of ‘maximum optimism’, explaining that mud and waste enhance his designs. ‘I follow the materials; they do not follow me,’ he says.

Sourcing materials primarily from within five miles of a site, Daniel describes how mud and waste can be transformed into beautiful buildings. But this was not the case from the outset. Daniel first incorporated waste bottles into an early project because the budget ran out before the windows had been purchased. He then realised that a new aesthetic had emerged from this approach.

Daniel argues that architects need to be on site, not in the office, in order to observe their surroundings. ‘Open your eyes. Be out there!’ he advises. Architecture is not a white-collar job; it’s about going to site, he says. ‘Today architects are not able to see because we are simply oblivious to what is happening around us. This way of practice has to change,’ he insists.

Daniel’s ambition is to bring earth construction to the mainstream and he is not opposed to adding small amounts of cement to his earth mixes to increase structural strength. ‘We need to enter commercial construction. If that means using a bit more steel or cement than the purest form of mud architecture, I’m open for it,’ Daniel says.

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About Vinu Daniel

Vinu was born in the UAE, grew up in Dubai and returned to his parents’ native state of Kerala to study architecture at the College of Engineering in Trivandrum. A meeting with Trivandrum-based British architect Laurie Baker, a pioneer of climate-responsive vernacular architecture, shaped his future direction. After graduation, he went to work at the Auroville Earth Institute in Pondicherry and participated in UNDP’s post-tsunami rebuilding of Tamil Nadu. He founded his own practice, Wallmakers, in 2007.

In 2022, Wallmakers was awarded the Royal Academy’s Dorfman Prize, and in 2023, Daniel was included in Time magazine’s list of 100 future leaders. Also in 2023, he gave a TED talk, ‘The beauty of building with mud and trash,’ at TED 2023: Possibility in Vancouver. Daniel has close to 70,000 followers on Instagram.