Mahindra Ecole Centrale College of Engineering, Hyderabad, recently  organised ‘Niketh: A traditional housing challenge’, inviting entries focused on preserving the wisdom of traditional construction practices, viewing them through lens of science, engineering and technique.

From a total of 45 entries, 20 were shortlisted to present their models in the final round.

Dr Yajulu Medury, Director, Mahindra Ecole Centrale, said: “We at Mahindra Ecole Centrale are trying to build awareness about the sustainability of the traditional ways. Our ancient culture has witnessed many unique and surprisingly modern housing models. With Niketh, we are trying to get the students to capture the best from all existing ways to come up with ecologically viable models”

The main focus of MEC’s Niketh was on three areas to judge the winning entries: Identifying the traditional Indian housing typology, Understanding the Science, Engineering and Construction Techniques and Building a scaled prototype of the original house.

The event began with the “I am that Change” video from Mahindra École Centrale. The event was chaired by Prof. Bishnu P Pal, Dean Academics; Prof. Arya Kumar Bhattacharya, Dean R & D; Dr. Prabhakar Singh, Coordinator Civil Engineering; Dr. Ramachandra Prasad, IIIT-H; & Guest of Honour Prashant Lingam, Co-Founder of Bamboo House India.

Dr. P. Venkata Dilip Kumar presented the vision and mission of Niketh and co-chair Prafulla Kalapatapu compered the event and officially welcomed the participants for Niketh’18.

In Phase 1 of MEC’s Niketh, a two-page article was submitted for the identified/chosen housing typology. The article explained the reasons for choosing a particular housing technique(typology, region, period of construction, materials, etc.).

It also sought to share the entrant’s understanding with factual figures or references added. An expert panel of 3 evaluated the emailed article. All final teams were invited to build a scaled prototype, which was showcased at Mahindra Ecole Centrale.

The winning team was of Gnanaprakash & Manoj Kumar from SRIT, Anantapur for their “Mud House” received a cash award of Rs. 15,000.

The two runner up teams of Rajat.T & Rajat .S from Nirma University for House of Jalwali, Satvik and Kishore from MEC for Bamboo house received a cash reward of Rs. 10,000 each.

Certificate of excellence and participation were given to all finalists.