Architect Vinu Daniel doesn’t work from an office. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s conviction that the ideal house should be made with material sourced within a five-mile radius, the founder of award-winning practice Wallmakers instead works wherever his next project happens to be. In the past, this has taken him to southern India, where he built a mountain-shaped home from local construction debris; Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, where he made a pavilion with tires collected from waste facilities around the city; and the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where he carved a subterranean home into a rock face that had support beams made from 4,000 discarded plastic bottles. It is an approach that not only marks Daniel out as a pioneer of sustainable architecture but also demonstrates that you don’t need to compromise on creating elegant and innovative buildings in the process.

VAISHNAVI NAYEL TALAWADEKAR: How did you come to architecture?

VINU DANIEL: I actually had plans of becoming a musician, but my parents quickly put a stop to that. When I moved to India [from Dubai, where he grew up] to study architecture, I realized I was a poor fit. Nobody smiled. Nobody asked or answered questions. I was disillusioned with the pedagogy and there came a point where I just wanted to escape. It was a chance encounter with the late Laurie Baker, the great Gandhi of architecture, that inspired me to stay. He challenged me to consider myself a disciple of the site and answered my questions [about whether we should be building at all]. Above all, he taught me to always smile.

VNT: Where is Wallmakers based?