Pod for Happiness in Maharashtra

At the edge of Baramati in Maharashtra, the small village of Hignigada nurtures a space to inculcate the values of community and childhood, The Pod for Happiness.

Designed by Craft Narrative, led by architects Yatindra Patil and Vijay Kharade, the project began with a simple request from the village head to design a play area for schoolchildren. What emerged, however, is much more than a play space. Completed in November 2024, the 15 sq.m. intervention on a 4,110 sq.m. school site has become a shared cultural and social hub for the entire village.

Designed Around the Banyan Tree

The starting point was the school’s banyan tree, a natural landmark at the center of the playground. For generations, villagers had walked, rested, and gathered beneath its shade. Rather than imposing a new, alien structure, the architects shaped the Pod as an arc that surrounds the banyan tree, inviting new activities around its presence. Its porous design links the two sides of the playground, functioning as a bridge, a play element, and a gathering platform all at once.

Children now climb up one end, cross a raised walkway, and slide down the other, with views stretching across the school grounds and toward the village temple. In its most basic gesture, the Pod celebrates the banyan tree as both shelter and stage, making it a living centerpiece rather than a backdrop.

A Play Space That Teaches

During school hours, the Pod extends the classroom outdoors. Under the shade of the banyan, a circular seating area built with bricks and repurposed terrazzo tiles becomes a hub for painting, clay modeling, and storytelling. Small carved pockets invite children to sit and read in semi-private nooks. The structure is deliberately scaled for exploration, walls to climb, recesses to hide in, swings to play on, and slides to glide down.

It is both playful and pedagogical. Teachers use the Pod as a flexible learning environment where smaller groups can gather in an informal setting, giving the classroom a spatial counterpoint for an unconventional learning method to encourage curiosity and creativity.

The Pod also expands its role as a playground by doubling as a cultural platform. Students rehearse dances and music here, treating the arc as a stage. On breaks, it morphs into a landscape for games, hide-and-seek in its cave-like niches, climbing up tapered edges, or inventing new ways of engaging with its playful geometry!

Once the school hours end, the Pod is claimed by the wider community. Villagers gather under the katta, a shaded seating area beneath the banyan reminiscent of traditional platforms where conversations, debates, and friendships thrive. A small library shelf adds quiet value, encouraging both children and adults to browse books at leisure.

For cultural events, the Pod becomes an amphitheater, seating people along its curve and in the playground beyond. As the school ground is the largest open gathering space in the village, the Pod naturally accommodates celebrations and festivals, amplifying its role as a collective asset.

A Sustainable Gesture

The architects built the Pod using ferrocement, a low-cost technique that allows thin, lightweight yet durable construction. Its red oxide plaster finish resonates with the earthy palette of rural Maharashtra, grounding it visually in the local landscape. Sustainability was integral to its making, waste and leftover reinforcement rods were reused in crafting the railings, demonstrating how modest resources can be turned into meaningful architecture.

The design’s sustainability, however, extends beyond material use. By preserving the playground’s openness, working around the banyan tree, and creating multifunctional layers of use, the Pod ensures its longevity as a community space with minimal intervention.

The banyan tree, beyond being an ecological anchor, holds spiritual weight in rural life. Each year, the village women gather for Vat Purnima, a ritual celebrating marital bonds by worshipping the banyan tree.

The Pod now offers a dignified and meaningful setting for this tradition, embedding the ritual into a newly defined architectural and social space. In doing so, it bridges sacred and everyday life, giving cultural continuity a contemporary yet respectful form.

Architecture of Small Footprints

Despite its modest size, the Pod for Happiness embodies the possibility of doing more with less. With just 15 sq.m. of built area, it has transformed how both schoolchildren and villagers engage with the school grounds. It serves as a play structure, outdoor classroom, stage, community library, amphitheater, and ritual platform.

Perhaps the Pod’s greatest success lies in how naturally it has been adopted. Children play as though it had always been there. Villagers gather under its shade as if the katta had always framed their evenings. Rituals and festivals find in it a natural backdrop. In this seamless acceptance, the Pod proves that architecture can belong instantly when it respects the rhythms of place, people, and nature.

The Pod for Happiness, in the words of its creators, is less a structure and more a gesture, an arc of joy embracing a banyan tree, giving form to play, community, and culture in equal measure. It is proof that architecture need not be monumental to be transformative. Sometimes, it is the smallest insertions that ripple out to reshape collective life.

Project Details:
Location: Baramati, Maharashtra, India
Site Area: 4,110 sq.m. | Built Area: 15 sq.m.
Completion of project: November 2024
Principal Architects: Yatindra Patil, Vijay Kharade
Team: Bharat Yadav, Manasi, Yatindra Patil, Vijay Kharade
Structural Consultant: Sonal N
Photography: Studio f/8