Sustainable designers Raghav Kumar and Aishwarya Lakhani enjoy being grammatically correct — both in the usual sense and in architecture. Their newest project, Kalga Banaras, a retail store for silk sarees, in Varanasi, is living proof of this.

Every arch here is a metaphor for transformation; every corner a comma, making you pause before you embrace what comes next. And the hero material, cob — “a mixture of mud, sand, straw, water, and love,” as Raghav explains — is something like an ellipsis, filled with limitless possibility.

As sustainable architecture projects take off in various scopes and sizes across India, we train our gaze on the ones that won our hearts. And we pose a simple question to the architects: does this material have a future, and can India leverage it?

1. Cob

There’s a certain architectural dexterity evident in the 1,300 square foot showroom, Kalga Banaras. But Raghav and Aishwarya shy away from taking credit. They say it’s the material that deserves the praise. Their love for cob is reconceived in the walls that employ the age-old wattle and daub technique, where bamboo strips are woven together and the gaps are filled with this material.

There’s a sustainable flourish that punctuates every corner here. Think of the showroom as a living and breathing archive, not just of Varanasi’s heirloom collection of sarees but also of tiny reminders that mud can be beautiful too.

About the material: Having worked with cob previously, Raghav has learnt how to coax the most out of it. It’s beautiful in the way it is formed. One stomps on it, then proceeds to roll it such that it gets its polished curves. Then, plastering is done with mud, lime, and cow dung to preserve the earthy texture.

© The Better India