Studio Nalmé.
A Bengaluru practice working at the intersection of permaculture and earth architecture. We design ecosystems for landowners, and the architecture that earns from them: hotels, retreats, schools, cafés, learning centres. Earth, lime, stone, and the craftspeople who know how to work them. Always specific to the place. Always slow.
Tejaswini Krishna P.
Tejaswini is an architect, a potter, and someone who has never been comfortable drawing what she hasn't first made with her hands.
Her path into earth architecture began at Made in Earth, deepened through housing work with SELCO and PLENTI at Andagere Architects, and found its form at BASEhabitat — where she built alongside Nina Pawlicki, Helena Sandman, and Jan Glasmier, attended Martin Rauch's rammed-earth workshops, and completed her thesis — the Hadibadi library, mentored by Anna Heringer and shortlisted for the Architecture in Development Global Challenge.
She started Studio Nalmé as a quest — to build with consciousness toward ecology, craft, and community. When she is not designing or making, she is hiking, throwing clay, or looking for the next material that surprises her.
Hands that learnt
from masters.
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Beginning
Made in Earth, Bengaluru
The first encounter with mud as material, not metaphor. Learning by mixing, ramming, plastering.
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Housing
SELCO Foundation & PLENTI · Andagere Architects
Solar-electric housing work across Karnataka villages, learning what it means to design for the rural family at scale.
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Master's
BASEhabitat, Linz
Postgraduate work in earth and sustainable architecture under Nina Pawlicki, Helena Sandman, and Jan Glasmier.
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Workshops
Martin Rauch · Rammed Earth
Site workshops with the world's foremost rammed-earth builder, learning the discipline of pisé.
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Thesis
Hadibadi Library — mentored by Anna Heringer
A community library in mud and bamboo, shortlisted for the Architecture in Development Global Challenge.
How we see
every project.
Our practice begins by listening to the land. To the soil and the slope, the wind and the light, the water and the hands that have built here before us. We believe that what already exists in a place — its materials, its memory, its people — holds the most honest answer to what should be built.
We work with earth, lime, stone, and other materials found close to the site, alongside the craftspeople who know them best. Not because these are the sustainable choice, but because they are the most intelligent response to this climate, this land, and this moment in the history of making.
Every project is a search for the decision that is structural, beautiful, and specific to this place alone. We call it the warm idea — the one that is not only right for the site, but felt by the person who lives in it.
On Instagram, and in good company.
Most days, the studio is on a site somewhere — a wall being built, a lime being mixed, a planting being walked through. We keep notes from those days on Instagram. Below that, the conversations and lineages the practice belongs to.
The day-to-day, mostly out of focus by the time it's noticed. Hands, walls, planting, sky. A scroll, if you'd like the longer version.
Thesis with Anna Heringer.
Tejaswini's postgraduate thesis at BASEhabitat — the Hadibadi library — was mentored by Anna Heringer, and shortlisted for the Architecture in Development Global Challenge. The handprints of that mentorship are still in the way the studio reads a site.
anna-heringer.comEarth-building at BASEhabitat.
Postgraduate study in earth construction under Nina Pawlicki, Helena Sandman, and Jan Glasmier. Plus rammed-earth workshops with Martin Rauch, where the hardest lessons stayed in the hands long after the day ended.
basehabitat.orgWorkshops, hosted by institutions.
Hands-on sessions on earth, lime, and natural plasters at RV College of Architecture, Wadiyar Centre for Architecture in Mysuru, and Bangalore Creative Circus. The studio is happiest with twelve people in a room, and a wall to build by the end of it.
See past workshopsFor interviews, talks, or anything we might build together — write to [email protected].
Located
Bengaluru, Karnataka
India · 560 0xx
Working with
Earth, lime, stone, cane, reclaimed wood, bamboo, athangudi tile, natural fibre — and the craftsmen who know them.
Follow the studio.
The slow work — site visits, material experiments, hands in clay — lives on Instagram. Come walk with us.
Follow on Instagram @studio_nalme
