A very unique experience during our time in India was a visit to General Pillai’s house. General Pillai holds two high honors. He held a position in the highest ranks of the Indian army and he is married to a most beautiful woman named Jane. Together they told us stories of Laurie Baker, who constructed a mother-in-law “cottage” for them next to Pillai’s family home.
Jane told one of the funniest stories; a short story about an acronym Laurie Baker used: SHMG. In a final plan of a summer home he’d spent countless hours redesigning for them, he included these initials after the title of the project. With each iteration, Jane had kept insisting on “smaller, smaller.” She and Pillai wondered what this acronym meant, and upon being asked Laurie Baker responded, “So help me god”.
The house designed by Laurie Baker on their family plot was one of Laurie’s earliest works and begins to develop his style in its walls. Two unique features were the curved wall of the bathroom in a master bedroom and the placement of the house to avoid cutting down any of the site’s trees. The latter was a request of Pillai’s mother and this practice of not removing any trees from a site continued in Baker’s later work and still today in many of COSTFORD’s constructions. Another interesting tidbit about this house was the placement of brick jallis in such a way that Pillai’s mother could still oversee the goings about in the main house, where she’d raised her children.
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| Sajan entering Baker Cottage |
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| Entryway from Courtyard |
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| First iteration of Pillai Summer House |
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| Dedication to General and Jane from Baker's wife |
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