Today, we have started to build the roof over our compost toilet. We have done more than half of the 3 coats of plasters on all walls – internal and external – that we built with Adobe bricks.

Madras Terrace, a roof technique, was perfected by the British and spread all over South India – hence the name. It uses Palmyra tree’s rafters as support for a carpet of 2 layers of burnt bricks bound with lime : sand mortar.

Sohn Saldanha has been a part of the house building and compost toilet building from start to end. She has been capturing beautiful photographs and I wanted to share a few of them she captured while the Madras Terrace is being built.