April Ends The Campus Accelerates

Monthly Campus Dispatch ·

startup ecoāshrām by build3 · April 2026

The campus is no longer becoming.

It is being.

April began with foundations and ended with rooflines. Somewhere between those two points, something shifted - not just in the structures rising from the Konkan earth, but in the nature of the campus itself.

The pace found a new gear.

The clarity sharpened.

And the community forming around this land began to feel, for the first time, genuinely close.

Four weeks of real, unglamorous, necessary work. Here is all of it.

The Builds: Cluster by Cluster

Venue Cluster - From Steel Columns to Concrete Floors

April opened with the Venue Cluster crossing a significant threshold. Foundation work for cottages 6, 7, and 8 was completed, with retaining wall work initiated shortly after. Cottages 1, 2, and 3 moved into the plinth phase - fabrication materials arrived on site in three full loads, and steel columns began rising from what had been bare earth just weeks before.

By mid-April, plinth-level fabrication was complete for cottages 1, 2, and 3. The retaining wall for cottages 6, 7, and 8 was raised to plinth level, and French drainage was installed — unglamorous work, but essential when the monsoon arrives.

Venue Cluster is advancing on all fronts simultaneously.

April’s final week brought another milestone:

Plinth level completion - Began with cottages 1, 2, 3 and the community building of Venue cluster - all builds now have a floor that’s concreted with MEP sleeves installed.

Fabrication for cottages 4 and 5 is completed, kadappa work in progress, and cottages 6, 7 and 8 awaits fabrication completion before it can complete the plinth phase by first week of May.

The Venue Cluster is advancing on all fronts simultaneously.

Overlook Cluster — The First Rooflines

This is the cluster that defined April.

Wooden pillars were installed for four cottages in the second week. By the third week, roof rafters were up on three of them - the first rooflines of ecoāshrām, visible above the forest canopy.

That changes something.

Not just on the ground, but in the minds of everyone who has been part of this journey. The campus is no longer just a construction site.

April’s final week extended those rafters across six cottages - wooden frames rising in clean lines against the treeline, a geometry of intention against the organic complexity of the forest.

And then something new: the initial wattle has been added to one of the walls.

The daub begins next week. After months of preparation and material sampling, it is time to put hands in mud. Volunteers will work directly alongside the artisans as this ancient technique meets the walls of ecoāshrām for the first time.

Alongside this, the communal building’s plinth phase is in active progress, with laterite stone being laid with the same patient rhythm that has defined this cluster throughout.

Edge Cluster — Foundations Complete, Designs Arrived

The Edge Cluster reached a foundation milestone on 18th April: all pen footings installed, micro-concrete poured, for all 12 cottages.

Throughout, Rico and Yannick with the team navigated the terrain with care, making only the minimal tree removals necessary. Every tree kept is a tree the community will one day sit beneath.

Then, on 27th April, something the Edge Cluster had been waiting for finally arrived: the final designs for both the communal building and the farm building.

To see them is to understand what this cluster will become. A central communal hub at its heart — a gathering and activity space with a multi-use pavilion and shared deck — ringed by twelve residential units across three typologies, nestled into the landscape as though they were always meant to be there. Trees are kept. Pathways follow the natural gradient. The design holds the land’s geometry rather than imposing upon it.

The fabrication quotation is being finalised. The Edge Cluster is ready for its next phase.

Community Kitchen & Dining One Integrated Platform

The Community Kitchen and Dining area became one of the most visually striking presences on campus during April. Laterite stone plinth walls rose throughout the month - warm red and textured, deeply rooted in the Konkan landscape.

April’s final week brought a structural milestone: the plinth levels of the kitchen and dining barn have now been joined - a single continuous platform from which both spaces will rise as one integrated structure.

Space frames for the roofing have been delivered on site. By early May, the walls and eventual roofline will already be visible in the imagination of anyone standing there.

When this space opens, it will be the first place residents walk into. It deserves every bit of the care going into it.

Yogashala

Ready and Waiting

All bamboo on site is treated, washed, dried, and stored - a neat row of ready material on a new dedicated platform, protected and organised. The temporary shed has been removed and the bridge entrance to the campus is now fully open.

Re-designing is underway with fresh quotations under review. Monsoon-proofing the bamboo storage is on the action list - protecting months of careful preparation from the rains that are coming.

Site Infrastructure

Water Systems:

The Foundation Everything Rests On

Water independence before the monsoon is not a preference. It is the precondition for everything else on this campus.

The upland cistern has reached its walls. Concrete has been poured, the structure is curing, and plastering is next - followed by the top covering that will seal it and make it functional.

Once that happens, the nursery can begin. The food forest follows. The living systems of the campus unlock.

The lowland cistern is following close behind. Interior shuttering is done; exterior welding is underway before the wall RCC can proceed. The sequencing here matters - these are not parallel tracks but a carefully orchestrated progression where each step enables the next.

A New Arrival:

Tractor and Earth-Mover on Site

April’s final week brought a significant addition to the campus. The ecoāshrām Kubota tractor and its trailer arrived - and with it, attachments that will change the pace and scale of earth-moving work.

With this equipment now on site, the lowland pond and water bund works can begin - a significant chapter in the campus’s permaculture water story, to be led by Yannick.

Rico’s vision and Yannick’s on-ground execution for how water moves through, is held by, and gives back to this land is about to find its most expressive form yet.

Water Planters

Gray water planters have been marked and initiated around the Overlook Cluster, soon to be completed and replicated across all builds on campus.

These raised planters will hold plants that utilise naturally filtered gray water, adding to the living and regenerative systems that are integral to ecoāshrām’s permaculture design.

The Land Speaks:

Two Moments Worth Noting

A wildfire at the forest boundary.

Mid-April, a fire spread across the boundaries of the ‘Bird’ near the forest edge. The team responded quickly and it was contained before reaching the campus. It asked a question worth holding:

*Are we paying close enough attention?* Ecological awareness here is not a checklist. It is a way of being present to the land - reading the season, knowing the conditions, acting without hesitation.

A rehearsal for the monsoon.

In April’s final week, heavy winds, summer rain, and hailstones came through together. The workshop took minor damage - timber displaced, covers blown.

No structural harm to any of the main clusters. The team had it fixed the next morning. More than anything, it was a useful signal: a month before the real monsoon arrives, the land showed exactly what to pay attention to.

The Goa Planning Circle: Aligning on the Vision

On 15th April, the team ecoāshrām gathered in Goa - not for a project review, but to ask the harder questions.

What are we actually building here?

What does Phase 2 look like?

What does every person connected to ecoāshrām need to understand before they arrive on this land?

The conversation kept returning to ecological literacy - not as a concept, but as a lived practice.

Phase 1 now has a clear deadline: all structures complete before the monsoon. Every build decision, every material choice, every timeline is being held against that reality.

Phase 2 will not just be about more structures. It will be about a community that genuinely understands the land it is on - its water cycles, its soil, its boundaries, its needs.

The planning circle sharpened the plan and, more importantly, sharpened the shared sense of purpose behind it.

Be Part of This [Join the Founding Circle →]

People, Transitions, and Arrivals

A new expertise joins the build.

Keyur Sarda, owner of Kesarjan Building Centre, Ahmedabad, joined the team for the superstructure phase. His work sits at the intersection of natural materials and construction craft - mud, lime mortar, upcycled materials, C&D waste.

His artisan Mubarak has already developed wall samples on site. Keyur is leading the plastering work above the wattle and daub across both the Venue and Overlook Clusters. Having someone of his depth at exactly this stage is what this build deserves.

Rico hands over to Yannick.

Rico — who held the site together through the thick of construction, solving problems daily and building relationships with the land and the team - has handed over to Yannick and said his farewells until next season. A handover like this is never just about tasks. It is about passing on the lived understanding of a place: where the land is soft and where it is rocky, which relationships need tending, what the site looks like at 6am when everything is still. Rico built that knowledge carefully. Yannick receives it with the same seriousness.

The campus is drawing people in.

Telamon from the Edge City project walked the site on 9th April. Karthik and Joseph from Rapchai, Bangalore, visited on 17th April, exploring possible collaborations. Akash joined for a walkthrough to explore film-related programme possibilities.

Walking someone through a build in progress is a different conversation than any presentation. The questions become real.

The scale becomes tangible. Every visitor carries something of this place back with them.

Onboarding - from document to ground.

Members of Team build3 are welcomed for campus visits - as part of their onboarding.

Actual time on the land, walking the clusters, understanding the work, and beginning to ask the right question: What can I offer here?*

The ecoāshrām approach to this is grounded in Seva - finding the small but essential contributions that don’t require a title but make the place function, and offering those with consistency. It is through Seva that people begin to understand what it means to live in genuine relationship with a land.

Looking Ahead: One Push Before the Rain

The monsoon arrives in Sindhudurg around June. That gives the team roughly five weeks to close Phase 1 - roofs sealed, cisterns complete, walls weather-ready, nursery started, landscaping and pond works underway.

It is achievable. The clarity from the planning circle holds. The material flow is consistent. The equipment is on the ground. The team has found its rhythm.

May will bring the first closed roofs, the first sealed cistern, the first sounds of water being held in the land it has always belonged to. Phase 2 is already being dreamed.

The best contribution anyone can make right now is helping this phase close well - with care, with intention, and with the ecological awareness that every choice on this land carries both a consequence and a possibility.

The rafters are up. The roofline is emerging. The community is arriving.

-team ecoāshrām

Join us - [Apply to Volunteer at startup ecoāshrām →]

STARTUP ECOĀSHRĀM ·

MONTHLY CAMPUS DISPATCH BY BUILD3 · APRIL 2026