Vinu Daniel, an architect from Mavelikara in Alappuzha, has been named on TIME magazine’s 2023 list of 100 emerging leaders shaping the world.
Mr. Daniel’s architectural firm Wallmakers is known for its sustainable and cost-effective architecture. It builds structures with “mud and waste as chief components.” TIME described him as one who “teaches us respect for local wisdom and material culture are key for a truly responsible attitude toward the environment and the future.”
“Whatever project you’re working on, can you reduce something about it? Can you reduce it by one bag of cement? Can you save one tree? Then you are on your own path to sustainability,” TIME quoted Mr. Daniel as saying.
Mr. Daniel was inspired by Laurie Baker, who pioneered sustainable eco-friendly green architecture in the country with brick mud and other local materials, whom he met during his college days.
He completed his B. Arch in 2005 from The College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram. He joined the Auroville Earth Institute, where he worked on the post-tsunami construction project of the United Nations Development Programme. In 2007, Mr. Daniel started Wallmakers, which according to its website was christened “thus by others, as the first project was just a compound wall.”
According to the website, Wallmakers aims at building sustainable spaces that are responsive to specific site contexts and conditions. Citing the climate crisis, the firm stresses the need to use “materials that have already become an environmental hazard in the place of fresh material.”
Wallmakers has completed several eco-friendly, often unconventional, structures and facilities in different parts of India and outside.
“The 2023 TIME100 Next: the Emerging Leaders Shaping the World” list also features two other Indians – cricketer Harmanpreet Kaur and Nandita Venkatesan, a tuberculosis survivor.
