During the 2010 rainy season, a 3 feet portion of my house compound wall broke. (The wall was built using stone blocks, red sand and plastered on top with cement, in 1970 period i.e. approx. 40 years back, by my grandfather.) We hired a local mason and requested to rebuild the damaged portion, in the same way, reusing the stone blocks so that it looks even with the rest of the wall. The mason, along with a helper, took 4 days to place the uneven stone blocks, fill the gaps in between carefully, with smaller sized stones and plaster it. In another 2 years, an even larger portion of the compound wall too fell during the rainy season. The wall was about 40 ft in length. Once again, called the same mason and requested him to rebuild the damaged wall using the fallen down stone blocks. He said, it would take weeks to rebuild with same stone blocks and labourers with him are all aged people who cannot carry such blocks. He said, demolishing the entire wall quickly using a JCB and rebuilding using hallow block bricks would only take 2-3 days, cost much less and look even across. We agreed and rebuilt the entire eastern side of our house compound wall using hallow block bricks.

12 years later, i.e. in 2022-2023, I glanced on an article through Medium or Linkedin, explaining modern scientific management and referring to Frank Bunker Gilbreth’s Bricklaying Ergonomics. I was quickly able recollect what our mason said while we were rebuilding the damaged wall and corelate this with how evenly sized and lesser weight hallow block bricks helped build the wall quicker, without compromising the purpose of the compound wall.

A few months later in 2023, when I had to shift my house, one of the many aspects, I had to decide the house, was based on the furniture we had with us and one of the decision point was the size of bedroom, kitchen & living room. Every house we saw had different room dimensions, making it difficult to make a decision faster. Post shifting to the new house, we had another difficulty. The window curtains and velcro based mosquito nets we had used in the previous house was not fitting here. I was then recollecting Gilbreth’s Bricklaying Ergonomics and a thought striked!

How Might We Create Standards in Home Construction?

• What if real estate builders and regulators like RERA came up with standard room dimensions? Something similar to T-shirt sizes.
  For example,
  • S-Small (Kids Bedroom) – 10’ x 10’
  • M-Medium/Regular – 12’ x 14’
  • L-Large (Master Bedroom) – 14’ x 16’
    • Wardrobes could be mass produced, keeping in mind the room dimensions, which in turn could be cost effective and easy for the buyer to decide, while buying a house.
• What if builders and carpenters came up with standard door dimensions? Doors with defined standard dimensions can be mass produced and hence will be cost effective. When a need arises to replace, we can just tell the door size and buy one, which can also be fixed much quicker than custom made ones.
  For example,
  • S-Small (Bathroom door)
  • M-Medium/Regular (Bedroom door)
  • L-Large (Main entrance door)
• What if builders and carpenters came up with standard window dimensions? Same like doors, windows with defined standard dimensions could be mass produced.
• There can be various combinations of room dimensions, based on where the room door faces, where the windows are, where the wardrobes are and to which side the bathroom is built. However, based on experience a standard room will fit a wardrobe for 2 people, a king sized bed with space for side tables on either side, some space for a study table and some space to walk around.
• The size of bedroom and kitchen could be standardised and the size of living room could be adjusted as per the left over available space.

If I were to build an apartment complex for the middle class, how would I design?

• I ll build a 3 bedroom+study+kitchen+living room(hall)+utility+foyer. Why___
• Walking track___
• Social balcony at each floor___
• Having a study room, with a proper study table and chair lets us focus, concentrate and ultimately improves learner outcome. What if every house is built with a study room?
• Having guests at home and socialising, improves ones happiness. What if every house has a guest room?

If I were to build a studio apartments for the lower income people, how would I design?

• Foyer___
• Utility___
• Study___
• I would use simple and easy to maintain objects.
• Stairs – ideal width & inclination?
  • *Will update my thoughts

I have observed that, in villages, lands are sold with price per acre, whereas in cities lands are sold with price per sqft or price per ground (40ft*60ft=2400sqft.) What if all housing plots formed as 40*60ft sizes so that it is even and construction can be planned accordingly.

“The most important, and indeed the truly unique, contribution of management in the 20th century was the fifty-fold increase in the productivity of the manual worker in manufacturing.”—Peter Drucker

PS: Another example I could think of is my Diwali dress stitching. When I was young, it was a tradition to buy / stitch a new dress. Like us almost a maximum percentage of people stitched new dresses during Diwali. we had to buy the cloth a month in advance, visit the tailor shop, take measurements and then wait for weeks to get the newly stitched dress, to be worn on Diwali. Fast forwarding, I have never stitched a dress for more than a decade and buy readymade ones, which comes marked with sizes like S, M, L, XL, XXL…etc for T-shirts and shirt sizes like 36, 38, 40…etc, specific to India. I visited a garment factory in Tirupur, from where lots of garments are bulk manufactured and exported to many countries and saw how cloths in hundreds are laser cut and sent to tailoring sections, which speeds up the mass production process.

*Will refine this post with some more thoughts