Podagees: Stackable Eco-Circular Pods for the Elderly in India

Hey all!

Welcome to my Make It Home submission, Podagees. I had a lot of fun designing this project and I'm really excited to walk you through it. To make everything easier to understand, I've broken the process into three main parts:

1. Brainstorming and design,
2. Creating the digital model in Tinkercad,
3. and Building the physical prototype.

Each of these steps helped shape my final idea: a cost-effective, eco-conscious, and culturally sensitive housing design for the elderly population in lower-developed countries.

Let's get into it!

Part 1: Brainstorming & Design

1. Personal Laptop
2. Sketch pad
3. Pencil

Part 2: Tinkercad Digital Modeling

1. Tinkercad.com

Part 3: Physical Prototybe

1. Scrap cardboard
2. Tissue paper roll
3. Foil roll
4. Scissors
5. Glue
6. Crayons
7. Acrylic paint
8. Popsicle sticks
9. Cardstock
10. Fake moss
11. Bamboo-like fabric
12. Duct tape

Starting With a Goal

I started off knowing two things. First, I wanted my design to be eco-friendly. Second, I wanted it to support a specific group of people. After thinking about it, I realized that elderly people in many lower-developed countries are often overlooked. I knew I wanted to focus on them.

India stood out during my research. It's home to 156.7 million senior citizens, and that number is expected to reach 346 million in the next 25 years (Source). The problem is big. Cultural shifts are also affecting the elderly. India has traditionally followed a joint-family system, where older adults live with and are cared for by their children. But now, as nuclear families become more common, many elderly people are left without support.

I read similar things about China. The concept of filial piety is still strong, but like in India, modern life is changing things fast (Source). Take a look at this a graph that shows how fast the elderly population has grown in both countries (Graph Source).

Real-Life Interview

To better understand these challenges, I interviewed an elderly family in South India. One family member, bedridden and diabetic, lives in a cramped, three-room home that frequently loses power and running water. The structure is dilapidated, with exposed electrical wiring outside. The house lacks proper ventilation and has almost no access to nature. It was clear that housing in this area isn't built with elderly people in mind.

Choosing the Location

After this interview, I decided to base my project in Bandlaguda Jagir, a satellite city of Hyderabad in Telangana. It's one of the fastest-growing urban areas in India. I chose this location because it still has open lots and feels a bit less crowded than the city center. However, it still deals with serious issues like unsafe wiring and dense construction (Source).

Final Concept

I came up with a design that revolves around stackable circular pods. Why circular? Circular homes use fewer materials, are more energy efficient, and naturally encourage healthy indoor environments (Source).

Each pod is about 30 to 40 feet in diameter and includes a bedroom, a bathroom, and a small living area. Two pods are connected to a shared center pod, which has a tiny kitchen and some built-in wall beds for guests. This center pod is important because in many Indian families, relatives visit often, and there's a cultural value in multi-generational support. The center pod helps honor that tradition.

The pods are stackable, allowing us to use vertical space efficiently in crowded cities. Each floor has a mini-balcony with trees, so even if someone lives on a higher floor, they can still connect with nature. In the rainy season, the back elevator tower could collect and store water for these balcony gardens in the future.

To make the housing more sustainable, I added solar panels on the roof. In southern India, temperatures can reach 104°F, so taking advantage of sunlight is practical. There’s also a circular elevator room at the back of the building, which may be adapted in the future to collect rainwater for watering balcony plants.

Real-World Materials

In real-world construction, I imagine these structures being built with corrugated earth-based panels for the exterior. These are cost-effective, sustainable, and perform well in extreme temperatures. The texture also gives a more natural and grounded appearance. For the interior walls, I would recommend using clay plaster with a tan hue. This color reflects heat and helps regulate indoor temperature. It also adds a calm, neutral feel, which is ideal for elderly residents.

For the flooring, I would choose bamboo. It's fast-growing, durable, and widely used in eco-friendly architecture. It feels natural and smooth underfoot and gives the home a warm and cozy touch.

Altogether, these materials create a structure that’s not only environmentally responsible but also durable, functional, and comfortable for seniors.

I wasn’t super experienced with Autodesk software, so I went with Tinkercad, a tool I used when I was younger. Getting back into it was a bit of a learning curve, but it worked!

Here are the steps I took:

1. Created one pod and replicated it
2. Built the center pod with the shared kitchen and wall beds
3. Added balconies and trees to show how nature is incorporated
4. Stacked multiple pods vertically, playing with modern arrangements by slightly offsetting some pods
5. Included solar panels at the top

You can view the process above by clicking through the different pictures. Each show a different step.

Each step taught me a lot about spatial arrangement and how modular systems can be flexible and practical. When I started playing around with stacking and positioning, I realized how much more character the building had when things weren’t just in a straight line. The slight offsets made the structure feel more dynamic and modern.

For me personally, this step was most definitely the most difficult! Since I didn’t have any fancy tools, I built the physical model using pretty much whatever I could find around my house and shed 😂 including scrap cardboard, glue, scissors, tissue paper rolls, crayons, and paint. One thing I've taken away from this is that anything and everything is useful when it comes to building models like this! Anyways, let's get into the building process.

Materials Used:

1. Scrap cardboard
2. Two cardboard rolls (one from foil, one from paper towels)
3. Glue and scissors
4. Crayons and acrylic paint
5. Popsicle sticks and cardstock

Step-by-Step Build:

1. Made textured cardboard walls by peeling one layer off the cardboard
2. Quick Tip: To get the natural wood texture, peel one layer off the cardboard and color it. It works really well!
3. Colored the cardboard in muted tones to match the natural aesthetic
4. Cut rolls into rings, which became the circular pods
5. Wrapped textured cardboard around the rolls to form the exterior
6. Cut and glued circular tops and bottoms from flat cardboard
7. Built balconies using the smaller roll and added flat tops
8. Constructed the central elevator room using a larger roll and painted it brown
9. Painted each pod and added wall and roof details
10. Drilled holes for windows (had to use 6 drill bits!!) and later glued them with handmade hole-punched duct tape windows
11. Made interiors of two pod with bamboo-like fabric flooring and tan-colored walls
12. Added greenery
13. Assembled everything on a board, stacking each floor carefully to reflect the digital model

Like earlier, you can view this process by clicking through the images above.

Making this model took a lot of patience. The biggest challenge was trying to make everything stable, especially when one of the pods was cut open to show the inside. Nonetheless, even with basic supplies, I think it turned out really close to what I had imagined, if not better! Like I mentioned earlier, use everything you got!

To say the least, it's not perfect 🙂 It has a lot of flaws, but based on the supplies I had, I think it turned out great!

In comparison, looks sort of similar right?

This project was honestly one of the most fun things I’ve done in a while. I learned a lot about housing challenges for the elderly, especially in India. I believe that good design can make a huge difference, and there’s so much potential to improve living conditions with simple, scalable ideas like this one.

As visionary Buckminster Fuller once said,

"The best way to predict the future is to design it."

Technology nowadays has given us the opportunity to do so many great things. We have a responsibility to build not just for today, but for the future. And that future has to include everyone, especially those who are often left behind.

So I’ve got a little challenge for you.

Don't leave yet! 😁

Look around you. Find the first three things you see.

Okay, now combine them. Mash 'em up, twist 'em, scale 'em. Design a building out of them.

Sound crazy? Maybe. But this entire project I just showed you? It came from three things I grabbed off my desk: a pencil, a circular lip balm, and a desk plant.

Thanks for reading, and see you next time!