“We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed,” observes travel writer and essayist Pico Iyer in his essay Why We Travel. And if travel is, in part, a collaborative act of making, Tiny Farm Fort — a cosy 200-square-metre homestay perched atop a hill overlooking the Ganges — exemplifies just that.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, siblings Ansh and Raghav Kumar swapped their bustling city life for a remote Sal-forest ridge. Think sprawling mountains from all sides, not-taken roads, and chirps from a Himalayan whistling thrush. “We may have been close to nature, but we had stopped engaging with it,” reflects Raghav, who, at the time, was three years into working with a German architectural firm.
Siblings Raghav (seated left) and Ansh Kumar (standing right), founders, Tiny Farm Lab.
Raghav and Ansh — whose expertise lies in creating sculptural objects and immersive art installations — run Tiny Farm Lab, an interdisciplinary design studio. Together, they coalesce art, science, technology, nature, and indigenous wisdom — in Iyer’s words, bringing what little they can — to offer an alternate way of living in a remote Indian village.
A short trek away from Phoolchatti in Rishikesh, the Tiny Farm Fort sits on sturdy stone masonry. They built it entirely using locally sourced earth, straw, stone, and reclaimed materials. The siblings drew inspiration from architects such as Yasmin Lari and Anna Herringer who advocate for building with earth. Books including The Hand-Sculpted House acted as their guide to cob-cottage building. They consciously sourced most materials from within 150 metres of the site, using cob — a mixture of clay, sand, soil, straw, and water — to construct the home, and salvaged windows and slate table tops from old, abandoned houses nearby.
(L-R) Nature’s curves extend into every corner of the fort, hand-sculpted in cob; Stone arches frame light and passage in fractal patterns; Straw, clay, and timber become furnishing and shelter alike.
Its stone arched entrance gives way to other arches, emphasising repetition of a single element in different shapes, forms, and sizes. The composition of the house imitates the fractals found in the natural world. There is logic in repetition. From the mushroom-like network on walls made with mycelium and elephant sculptures inspired by elephants stealing straw from the site to the ‘Love Window’ which acts as a cosy nook, everything inside the house follows nature’s curves. The siblings also replaced their original plan of a flat sloping roof with a reciprocal one. This leaves a canopy in the centre of the living room, and allows plenty of natural light to stream in. “We wanted the house to look like it grew from nature; like it has always belonged there,” Raghav explains.
But this organic presence is not just felt in the design details. Tiny Farm Fort is entirely hand-sculpted by more than 90 volunteers from across 18 countries, including Albania, Brazil, Greece, Italy, and the United States. Oftentimes, we’re afraid of the ways in which tourism can endanger the environment. But every once in a while, there’s a silver lining, particularly, when people from around the world bring together life and resources. Together, the volunteers stomped and danced on a tarpaulin sheet covered with the mixture of cob, and chopped wheat and rice straw to form a dough, which was then used as the building material. They also carried thousands of stones by hand to bolster the walls of the house.
Elephant sculptures and mycelium networks blur the boundary between art and architecture.
“Travel spins us round in two ways at once: It shows us the sights and values and issues that we might ordinarily ignore; but it also, and more deeply, shows us all the parts of ourselves that might otherwise grow rusty,” Iyer writes in his essay. The volunteers’ lived experiences and feelings shape each part of Tiny Farm Labs. They swapped stories about their lives, recipes from their cultures, and various genres of music they could dance to — inevitably discovering things about each other, and themselves, that they otherwise seldom would have cause to.
Over the three years that it took to build Tiny Farm Fort, the home has witnessed many additions from travellers across the world — some who stayed for a week, and others for a month. Across the house, you’ll spot sculptures with vulvas. Women from different nationalities created these sculptures as means to reclaim their sexuality and demonstrate their agency. Similarly, every other structure is a collaborative effort, started by one individual with a vision and then transformed into something entirely different.
“People think they’re transforming mud into a house,” Raghav says. “But maybe it is the house transforming you from within.” After all, we’re ready to be transformed, when we’re most deeply absorbed. Winter solstices, Christmases with strangers, friends coming out as non-binary — Tiny Farm Fort has seen it all. For Ansh and Raghav, it was important to offer a space where people could find ways to connect with their intuitive selves.
Today, Tiny Farm Fort is testament to how travel is intrinsically linked to community, care for the environment, and discovery of the self.
Words by Yashvi Shah.
