Aabhas – A Sense Of Home: Reimagining Home And Dignity For India’s Migrant Workers | Architecture Thesis On Housing

Site Context

The selected site serves as a staging ground for possibilities, offering three distinct labour camp typologies—linear, compact, and spread-out. Each type presents its own set of spatial and social challenges, enabling the exploration of cluster formations, density variations, and organizational strategies across the site.

The design experiments with both ground-level and G+1 structures, interconnected through pathways that function as social corridors, shaded with plantations to enhance comfort and encourage interaction.

The programme extends beyond the provision of basic shelter. While housing forms the core, the design aspires to create a living, breathing environment that fosters community, culture, and a sense of identity. Essential amenities such as community kitchens, crèches, medical facilities, and sanitation blocks cater to everyday needs, while shared courtyards and gathering spaces become platforms for social exchange and collective experience.

Religious and cultural diversity is embraced through inclusive spatial design—a corner for evening aarti, a courtyard for Eid celebrations, or a shaded platform for festivals—ensuring that individuals from diverse regions and faiths can find belonging and connection within shared communal spaces.

Design Process

The design approach is rooted in temporality and adaptability, responding to the transient lives of migrant workers. Every decision stems from user needs, emphasizing scalability, economy, ease of assembly, and self-construction.

A 1.2 m × 1.2 m modular grid derived from panel sizes ensures flexibility and efficiency. Seven panel types form the building blocks, connected through dry plate-and-bolt joineries simple enough for workers to assemble or dismantle themselves, reinforcing the idea of self-built prototypes.

Material choices—bison board, PUF panels, bamboo louvers, and steel frames—balance affordability, durability, and thermal comfort.

Spatial planning revolves around verandahs, terraces, and courtyards that act as thresholds for interaction—where children play, women dry papads, and families share meals. The clusters balance private and semi-private spaces, fostering both solitude and community.

The design framework adapts to diverse climates using simple thumb rules: orientation for ventilation, shaded verandahs, raised plinths for drainage, and compact clusters for warmth. Pathways use repurposed construction waste, while mobile FRP bio-digesters handle sanitation. Deployable water tanks and rainwater harvesting ensure flexible, efficient resource use.

Final Outcome

The outcome is a universal, modular system that can adapt to any site, scale, or climate—a framework of flexibility, sustainability, and dignity.

Each module is multifunctional: the same frame can serve as a sleeping unit, kitchen, store, or crèche through simple rearrangements. Courtyards evolve with time and occasion—hosting play and meals by day and turning into open-air theaters or festive chaupals by night.

Together, the site forms an ecosystem designed to uplift a community where workers not only find shelter but also identity, participation, and belonging.

The architectural language is one of modularity, adaptability, and humanity. The 1.2 m × 1.2 m grid gives rhythm and order; the panel-and-bolt system offers agency and ease; and materials bring lightness and resilience. The in-between spaces—verandahs, courtyards, and terraces—create architecture of interaction, echoing the warmth of village life.

Conclusion: This project is an answer—not of sympathy, but of responsibility. An architectural response that treats labor housing not as an afterthought but as an ecosystem of life and potential.

[This Academic Project has been published with text and images submitted by the student]