Kunjur chowki Mane - Hasta Shilpa

The Kunjur Chowki Mane was constructed Kerala architectural style which was based on the Sixteen century treatise ‘Manushyalaya Chandrika’ - A book about the Vastu Construction of domestic architecture. This domestic architecture is followed in the state of Kerala even now. This house belonged to the Shivalli Brahmins. The vernacular of this house is very revealing of the style of architecture that was followed back then.

Photographed by @pittonaggak

The structure gives a feeling of warmth as you enter it. As you enter the this beauty, you expect to be on the inside and as you walk on you see an open space , which gives you a feeling of outside but actually you're inside. It lets daylight in. The courtyard in the house is mostly centralized in such a style of architecture. The design of the house is Nalukettu (nalu four. kettu-wings) wings of different widths in a descending order.

The house did not have a lot of rooms. The guide told us there were about seven couples that lived in this house and everytime there was a pregnant woman, they would have to stay in a separate room for those women. And during this time the usual staircase which gave access to the first floor was closed and so there was another way to get access to the first floor . The women would give birth in this room and stay in that room for six months post delivery.
The room for women for when they were pregnant

Below is a photograph of @pittonaggak , to show the context of where the windows were placed in the house. As you can clearly they are placed really low.

Why you ask ? Well I didn't get an explanation for this one. But what my friend had to say was , since the windows that were placed really down was only in that one room right outside the delivery room , it could be cause there would be a lot of children in the house and also since they would sit on the floor and take care of the newborn infant. Just these little thoughtful aspects intrigued me about this house. Gives such a homely feeling.

Traditional wall motif that resembles banana leaf pattern.

Oil massage vessel
Once every six months , the family would have an oil massage session of some sort. And this is how the vessel looked like.

Moving on to the first floor, there is a huge hall where the family members would sleep. They would all sleep together in a row. There was no concept of a room of every single couple. Traditional South Indian back in the day always had a huge hall where all the family members would sleep.

The window has a little shutter , it was for the birds to come inside the house.

Trellis of window designed for purpose with folding bed.

Corner room above the kitchen on the upper floor which was used as a store room for
easily perishable items and protecting them constantly by the smoking it from kitchen right below it.

The traditional kitchen

The birds would come sit behind the paintings

The art of traditional domestic architecture in South India is definitely perishing which is sad to see. But it's great that I got to witness such a beauty and would definitely encourage every person reading this to go visit this place , cause it's a masterpiece. With all these architectural beauties slowly dying off , we need to try and salvage the remains.

Thank you so much for reading this far. Stay tuned for more posts !🤍