The Anangpur Building Centre is an entrepreneur Building Centre initiated in 1991 by Prof. Anil Laul, an architect by profession, who has been involved with pioneering work in the field of Appropriate Technologies for three decades. The Centre has been the forerunner of the Building Centre movement in India. The issues it addresses are right from the Brick as a basic element in building and its appropriateness to high-end technology structures such as Space Frames and Geodesics. Unfortunately, apart from high technology surfacing materials that have emerged over the years, the basic performance criterion required of a walling material remains unexplored. An analytical approach plus a re-examination of requirements of an appropriate walling material has resulted in surface-engineered walling blocks (impermeable diaphragm with lean back-up), which have been successfully used by Anangpur Building Centre in several projects. The most recent developmental breakthrough are Interlocking Blocks for earthquake resistant structures which have elicited tremendous response from architects and engineers and about which information has been widely published. The blocks, an amalgam of traditional wisdom with present day technologies, were primarily designed for the earthquake-affected region of Gujarat, India. Interlocking Blocks were listed as one of the six best products for the year 2001 by the Design Sense Museum, London and nominated as 'Stockholm Partners' for the year 2002 for 'Earthquake Resistant Housing'. The simplification of complex jointing systems for space frames and geodesic domes are among the centre's high-tech developments. The Centre has also developed structural systems and building systems such as A-frames, Cube-on-vertex, Funicular shells that are earthquake resistant and yet costeffective. All the technologies developed at this Centre are based on the Integration of the Architect, Engineer, Artist and the Artisan. Anangpur Building Centre has ventured further, working on issues related to Appropriate Human Settlement Design, keeping in mind the fact that nearly 50% of the GNP of a country goes into building materials in one form or another. The building industry is the largest consumer of resources whether it is materials, capital or energy and is second only to agriculture in providing employment for the maximum number of people. Today, the largest single factor responsible for environmental degradation is the unsustainable Human Settlements and therefore, it is issues related to Human Settlement Design that require our most urgent attention and concerted action.

Technologies and developments at Anangpur Building Centre are not patented, ensuring accessibility to all. For speedy dissemination, all the developments have been documented and placed on the Centre's website, . This site is a resource base for several students in India and abroad and organizations working on Sustainable Human Settlement issues. This website is also recognized as the 'Best Educational Website' by Studyweb. The seriousness with which this website is being examined can be gauged by the fact that Prof. Anil Laul was invited for the 'Man and City Conference' in Naples hosted by His Holiness the Pope. He was also invited to the 'Sustainable Building Conference 2001' at Maastricht as the Asian resource person. In both cases, the organizers contacted Prof. Laul after having accessed the resource material on the website.

Amongst others, Prof. Anil Laul has authored a document titled 'Sustainable City Strategies for Developing Countries' which is a significant contribution in the field of Sustainable Human Settlement Designs. This is a consequence of lessons learnt from Jaunapur Slum Resettlement Scheme. It is also a part of Local Agenda 21 for the South-east Asia Pacific region, published by ICLEI and now a part of the Local Agenda for the Asian region, published by CSIR, Johannesburg (www.sustainablesettlement.co.za).