…if you don’t use your hands with this colors it’s not working..the powder wouldn’t brake…you can’t use gloves!!- Anupama Kundoo, Architect
If you go around any rural village in Tamil Nadu you cannot ignore the beauty, the geometrical precision and the colors of the Mandalas, drawings that the housewifes prepare in front of their doorsteps when the sun rises. Decided to know more about this amazing practice, we asked the help of the women from the village to do our own Mandala on the wall of the construction site. This was the perfect introduction for the color-tests for the the concrete surfaces and floors of our prototype. Mixing by hand the primary color-oxides that Shekar bought, with white cement powder and white marble sand, we tried to reached unexpected colors…anyway, after a while, it was clear to everyone that the palette we were looking for was there, every morning, in front of our eyes ….Proportions: 1part of oxide, 5 of white cement, 1 of marble sand.
Affordable Habitat - the blog 