In the uncertainty called life, one decision can wrap you in steel. And you don’t even have to go far to make the choice.

Come December and the country’s first prototype of a steel house will begin to take shape in Rajarhat, down the city’s eastern fringe.

It will have steel walls and steel columns. In fact, the entire building will be of steel, except the foundation and the floor. The glass windows will complete the picture: a delicate touch in a mien of steel.

“We have not done something like this before,” says Hem Mishra, president, engineering, Bengal Shrachi, the joint sector company assigned the job of building the prototype.

The push for a steel house came from Living Steel, a movement spearheaded by some of the world’s top steel companies like Mittal Steel, Tata Steel and Blue Scope of Australia to promote use of steel in construction.

British architect Stuart Piercy, whose firm Piercy Conner won a global competition, has come up with the design for the five-storey structure that will have eight apartments, between 1,200 and 1,500 square feet each.

Living Steel pegs the construction cost at 200 euros a square metre or Rs 1,115 per square foot. But the calculation is based on European conditions and is an initial estimate.

Mishra says the prototype will be more expensive than a concrete building of similar proportions.

But is a steel house a wise move in a country like India where the Celsius soars into the forties in summer?

No sweat, say the developers. The insulators between the two steel sheets that make up the wall will act as a shield and prevent overheating.

One argument in favour of a steel house is that a good part of the structure can be pre-fabricated in factories and fitted at the construction site. The advantages are several. One, the individual sets that are later assembled at the site where the building is coming up measure exactly the same as skilled workmen have shaped them in a factory’s controlled environment.

As the next stage just involves putting them in the right place on the structural frame, locally available semi-skilled labourers can do the job. Which means, paying less.

Another plus, the developers claim, is practically zero maintenance.

And last, as Piercy says, the building will be lighter than one of concrete.

“Our concept was all about lightness ? a very gentle building. Steel, obviously, lends itself perfectly to that concept. With other construction materials, you inevitably end up with a fairly heavy building. The lightness of steel, the fact that we can manipulate it and make it permeable: there really is no other material that can give you that option,” he says.

“The other thing, of course, with steel is that we actually can build it. With steel, you can make the parts, bring them to the site and just assemble the building instead of constructing it.”

The building needn’t be painted as developers can choose from a range of colour-coated steel sheets. Blue Scope, which is setting up a manufacturing unit in India with Tata Steel, specialises in such sheets.

Shrachi is hoping to complete the project by the middle of next year. Though a steel house should ideally take less time to build than a concrete one, it may not be so with this prototype. As Mishra puts it, there will be a “lot of learning” for them.

As there will be only eight units, the developers may not market them. Instead, they could be sold on invitation. The target segment is professional couples with small families from the upper income bracket.

The ground floor will have an enclosed parking space, which can accommodate at least eight cars; a community hall, a reception/guard room and a mechanical and electrical plant room.

Each apartment will have a living room, dining room, master bedroom, children’s bedroom, guest room, kitchen, two bathrooms and two balconies.

So what does the future hold for steel houses?

It’s too early to say if they’ll be mass-produced soon, says Pradip Chopra of the PS Group of developers and a big shot in the country’s real estate sector.

Steel, he says, is increasingly being used in commercial buildings abroad, and the trend has to catch on here. “The biggest plus is that the experiment is taking place in Calcutta itself.”