June-July 2015
domus 41 June-July 2015
Volume 04 / Issue 08 R200
Author
Authors Siddharth Menon Architect Pallavi Latkar Architect and environmental planner Shruti Barve Architect and assistant professor
Vinit Waghe Civil engineer Ajay Shah Designer
041
Tejaswini Niranjana Cultural theorist
LA CITTÀ DELL’ UOMO
Contributors Suprio Bhattacharjee
Kaiwan Mehta
24
Editorial The life of design
Ferruccio Izzo
26
Confetti Historical cities and European schools
Siddharth Menon
30
It’s not about the mud
Pallavi Latkar Shruti Barve Nishith Dharaiya Vinit Waghe
38
Conserving diversity
Silvana Annicchiarico
48
The dystopian epic of household appliances
Ajay Shah Kaiwan Mehta
54
Maria Luisa Frisa
58
Tejaswini Niranjana
62
Musicophilia in Mumbai
Suprio Bhattacharjee
70
iStudio Architecture
Projects The choice to breathe free, to live with the elements
Kaiwan Mehta
82
Architecture Discipline
New memories, new histories
92
Herzog & de Meuron
Miu Miu Aoyama, Tokyo
Marc Dubois
INDIA
Title
Talking design
Rubberband
Keeping it together The blouse as architecture for the body Contemporary museum for architecture in India
Photographers Nacása & Partners Malavika Jadhav Vihan Shah Andrea Martiradonna Shruti Barve Anuj Rao Piet Ysebie Christian Richters Frederik Vercruysse Filip Dujardin Marc De Blieck Hemangi Kadu
June-July 2015
Design
Talking design
Nishith Dharaiya Department of Life Sciences, HNG University, Patan (Gujarat)
INDIA
CONTENTS 23
100
Rassegna Office
107
Feedback Marc Dubois’ Ghent
Volume 04 / Issue 08 R200
041
LA CITTÀ DELL’ UOMO
LA CITTÀ DELL’ UOMO
041 June-July 2015
Cover: The central installation at the India Pavilion at Hannover Messe 2015, an artistic assemblage of info graphics and interactive installations that display information about the core sectors of the Indian economy, was the Trojan Lion. The Lion stands for strength, courage, tenacity and wisdom — values that are as Indian today as they have ever been. By adding a sense of forward movement and using manufacturing elements as graphic texture, this Make in India icon was born.
Sketch of the Brick House by iStudio Architecture which highlights the seamlessly fluid, organic nature of the design.
domus 40 May 2015
22 EDITORIAL
MAKING / KNOWING
Kaiwan Mehta
From design a condition of work and life emerges, a condition of humanity that delights in objects and materials, produced and reproduced within sites, studios and times. Time is the crucial motif of design, and especially architecture. Planners and architects, and designers, work with stories that tie up characters (forms), plots (site/programme features), climaxes (features of built volumes or objects in the landscape) and contexts (the landscape/use that needs to be re-stitched). To tie up objects, terrains, landscapes and material features into a storyline is the essential job of the designer – to build up relationships between objects; it is not to dominate through geometry or fake recreations of natural systems, but to draw out on dreams, and reproduce material realities through human capacities to imagine, and expand imagination, shape it through craft and technique. Stories let the ambiguities and anxieties of the personal, home in the landscape of the universal; the outcrops of the personal settle within the primeval states of being through narratives of architecture, time, and space. How do we shape the stuff of objects and architecture? From nature to myths, human civilisations have constantly produced a manmade (human-made) world. Nature exists, but our understanding of nature is a product of human thought and vision (ideological). Myths are vehicles through which humans travel the complex realities of the earth and its environment, galaxies and cosmic projections. Early image-making activities emerge from this struggle with nature and the myths. In the arbitrary behaviour of nature, one constantly tries to find an inherent structure of time or an ordering principle of form; and the process as well as its outcome are imagined as scientific. On the other hand, myths occupy the narrative world of imagination, fantasies, and poetic licences. Myths work on the science of human mental thought-processes and social structures; yet they occupy the necessary space of wonder, mystery, as well as awe. The question of how best can the real world of experience be represented is important for both – nature, as well as myths. Architecture, and one could say nearly all of human material culture, exists within the blurs in between science and myths, nature and the man-made. It is primarily the structure of design – to make meaning in human life, and reproduce as much as reinterpret the experiences and imaginations of realities and human existence. At times, the natural is shaped into man-made frameworks, while at other times, the man-made produces through poetic imagination and story-telling sciences the structure and cosmos of the natural. We imagine the limits of science and myth are fairly defined and clear, but at all times we actually have to carefully draw out the myths within science, and the science of wonder and imagination within myths. As objects within human culture, especially architecture, actualise and realise these human anxieties within material constructions and the ideas of form and texture – the man-made is constantly producing a world of myth as well as reality. The crossroads and confluences are necessary for human civilisation to shape and further its ideas of knowledge and human production; but the differences are equally important to know. Architecture and design are sites
of rich confluences and it is necessary to celebrate these as much as it is necessary to remember the individual structures and roles of each – myths and sciences, realities and fantasies, as they shape our culture and bolus of experiences. This issue builds an encounter with the shape and functioning of visual culture in human history and society; and it does this employing the ‘image’ itself. The photos by Karl Blossfeldt featured here were imagined to be specimens for educational purpose – teaching students of arts and craft to understand the form and geometry ‘inherent’ in nature. Today, they are testimonials to the thinking of modern human societies. The photographic technique employed to render natural forms as geometric structures is telling of how the relationship between the natural and the man-made, or form and ornamental rendering are structured within a broader civilisational discourse of our understanding of reality and the projection of an imagined reality. These images also hint towards the techniques designers and architects developed around the 18th and 19th century of designing through projection drawings, where a certain flattening of form or neutralising structure is inherent to the formats of representation and drawings for construction. On another note, the photos by Jyoti Bhatt produce the world of humans as they render it natural to environment and their understanding of everyday life and experience. At one point, these images can be read as documentary, or misunderstood as ethnographic, but these images focus surely beyond the systems of data collection and classificatory analysis. The images of Bhatt focus on the idea of human labour and human intervention in the everyday world. Artistic production, as ritual or for decorative purposes, is a way in which humans transition their intervention into the natural world. These socio-cultural activities such as painting and decorating built forms, animals, and human beings is a way in which the man-made redraws, or maybe even freshly produces the natural world. The production of images on walls, or hide and skin, is a translation of the experiential space into collective and shared space of everyday life; in the process the natural is stylised, but yet again in the process a new-natural is invented and introduced into human civilisation. In these issues, one concern remains Time – how do we read time in the act of photo- or image-making? Blossfeldt renders Time null and void in his technique, making the images appear universal and beyond or even free from Time. But in their flatness, and manufacture/ production of details through enlargement and other techniques, there is the phantasmagorical reading/interpretation of life in the modern world too. Bhatt’s photos are reminders of ‘time past, and time present’ – they are in themselves living within a specific time. We often make the mistake of reading images such as the photos of Bhatt as also capturing a ‘timeless tradition’ – as if the images have now captured that which is anyway beyond or again, free of time – also unchanged, or neverchanging. However, as Bhatt points out, it is work in the way K G Subramanyan defines as ‘living traditions’ – the fact that human cultures process and make their traditions at all time continuously – maybe changing them, maybe even renewing them.
The other two photoessays by Y D Pitkar and Hemangi Kadu bring forth for us the way human creativity reproduces the physical, natural, and man-made world constantly through architecture and design. The mythic and human, the real and phantasmagorical are enacted through sculpture and architecture; form is textured not just through carving material surfaces and manipulation of light and shadows – but form is textured through story-telling and visual repertoires. The geometry of form is only a super-structure that contains the stuff of life in the details of patterns, scenes from popular epics, and sharply sculpted human bodies interacting with the world of philosophy (looking in the mirror, erotic, and so on) or the human (looking in the mirror, erotic, and so on). In the feature on two proposed projects by architect Sen Kapadia – one of India’s most thoughtful and intense architects – the thinking is around the question of form and place-making. Place is a notion of an environ that allows for human activities to take place in amicable and productive ways, producing a kind of sociality, and not just production as work-output. The discussions on geometry and form, monumentality and the difference between space and place are important, not as timeless arguments, but precisely as contextualised arguments within different time-frames. The idea of architecture is time-bound itself. Its nature is different for different historical locations; but then, how does a studio, an architect, locate his values and ideas within different epoch and changing values? The two projects share a common ground – a concern towards place-making, but their approaches speak of new imaginations of geometry and form, yet the design ethos, the primary concern remains in continuation. This exercise is extremely important in our times, when values and primary ideas change so fast that a single life-span may witness two or even three paradigmatic shifts in professional and subject development. The concern with changing times and changing buildings continues with three projects in this issue – all of which deal with reworking of older buildings towards a newer use. As said before, every conservation project, every building that undergoes adaptive reuse is always a new building in a new ethos. It is indeed important to shape well the transition or preservation, but the value of conservation itself is a contemporary value. Design, once again here, struggles between science and myths – the science of history, the science of construction and architectural materiality, the science of decay, as well as the myth of time and past, the myth of unchanging values, the myth of design and aesthetic taste. These struggles are important as they should essentially help us rise above the cliched and stereotypical arguments, the safe and chewed (pre-digested) discussions around some of the issues that this edition of Domus India brings forth. To recognise certain nuances, read many layers from the cluster at hand, to challenge set notions, is the essential task of a magazine, clarifying critically the shape and going-ons in the profession. km
PROJECTS
domus 41 June-July 2015
82 PROJECTS
domus 41 June-July 2015
PROJECTS 83
Architecture Discipline NEW MEMORIES, NEW HISTORIES At Hannover Messe 2015, India showcased its technological advancements, manufacturing and investment opportunities to the world with its Pavilion designed to highlight India’s capabilities. It once again draws attention to the relationship of the ‘idea of India’ and the ‘shape of India’, a question that comes up every time a national pavilion or exhibition, or a state-building is designed Text Kaiwan Mehta Photos Architecture Discipline
If one looks at the history of architecture, one will realise how temporary pavilions, especially closer to the twentieth-century, have marked some of the turning points in architecture’s history – take for example the Crystal Palace or Barcelona Pavilion. Thousands of pavilions maybe get erected and deconstructed trade-fair after trade-fair to house promotions and exhibitions, sales pitches and innovations. Often it is the dressing of an industrial modular framework that shapes a pavilion’s look and feel. The historic pavilions are those that changed the course of architectural structuring – of form and space, of engineering and materiality. With the architectural structuring that these pavilions proposed, they announced or predicted a larger cultural change, where life and human imagination would no longer be restricted to existing ideas, but was pushing for newer thoughts and newer politics. The India Pavilion at Hannover Messe comes at a crucial time in India’s cultural and political history – since we are living in times when political and economic
equations are drastically changing across the globe, and in India itself we have seen tables turn as never before, and not just once, but many times in the past one year. At such a time what is the ‘idea of India’ that we present, not only internationally but also to ourselves. Many exhibitions and many projects have struggled with this – the ‘idea of India’ – and Sunil Khilnani’s landmark book by the same title beautifully lays the ground for some of these questions. What is much debated today within development proposals as well as design platforms is the ‘shape of India’ – the objects and environments that we design and produce in India; but these platforms discuss less the ‘idea of India’. The ‘shape of India’ is something one saw very importantly with the very first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, but with the ‘shape of India’ what was also integrally woven in was the ‘idea of India’ – these were the early post-Independence debates that struggled with questions of identity, an ‘Indian identity’. Architects,
engineers, writers, cultural entrepreneurs, played an important role in finding the relationship between ‘idea’ and ‘shape’. Today, we as designers, and professional cultural-producers within this country, have to look with fresh eyes and ask the important question what is the relationship of ‘idea of India’ and ‘shape of India’ – a design question that comes up every time a national pavilion or exhibition, or a state-building is designed; but actually this is a much broader design question in itself. The India Pavilion at Hannover Messe is a crisp design promoting a certain vision of boldness and confidence within a national psyche. Its very contemporary use of graphics, sharp message-design, non-geometric arrangements within a geometric floor-plan all indicate a nation set to change itself and the world. The visual-graphic arrangement/design of the pavilion is the key element here. As more projects of this nature shape up in the coming future, we will be able to further debate where and how India is shaped in design proposals in contemporary times and cultures.
Above: the Lion stands for strength, courage, tenacity and wisdom – values that are as Indian today as they have ever been. By adding a sense of forward movement and using manufacturing elements as graphic texture, the Make in India icon was born
FROM THE ARCHITECTS’ PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The design uses contrast between two principles from Indian design resources – memory and history – drawing from the idioms of culture but at the same time, reinterpreting it to create new symbols for contemporary India. The elements used to create the experiential spaces in the pavilion were qualities borrowed from Indian material memory. The pavilion’s design evoked India’s rich legacy of arts and craftsmanship through the use of tactile qualities from indigenous materials such as wood, textile and metal.
The floor was given the feel of Ikat through a patterned carpet, while the ceiling conjured traditional weaves through its texture, also reminding us of the Indian weavers and their age-old techniques. The symbols were chosen on the basis of their inherent quality that acted as a resource for the design technology to truly represent the grass roots and the advancements of the nation. The pavilion’s geometry was rooted in Navgriha and Vaastu principles, representing India’s profound tradition of peaceful progress. This was juxtaposed with the Chakra or the flower, which seamlessly translated into the
This page: views of the pavilion. The pavilion positioned the nation between our immediate and extended environments expressing the diversity and depth of Indian culture through symbolism that is a part of the ‘Indian Identity’ which was translated and re-scaled to form new design tectonics for contemporary India
84 PROJECTS
domus 41 June-July 2015
layout, creating intimate spaces scaled to optimize the exhibition experience and visual information. The principles of Vaastu that govern the physical were layered within the Chakra, which is the energy centre of the non-physical. There was a play of form and material, where the formal qualities of the known form were conserved and translated through contemporary material and process, like the backdrop of the exhibition spaces, which was a wall constructed to recreate the formal qualities of a jaali through new materials and construction techniques. Each of these idioms and materials were selected and used contrastingly within the pavilion to enhance the spatial as well as the tactile experience of the viewer. Materials like brass and wood had been incorporated into the design by adding elements of ornament and detail, forming the final layer of the design. Wood had been used in its basic form to create wood slat walls, monogrammed with the ‘Make in India’ icon, making way for new memories and histories. The design centred around contrast, the contrast between the materials – earthiness of wood and the threadwork versus glass and steel, technology for the futures against the skills of the craftsman, the design of the ground versus the dynamics of the sky. The floor and the roof, both, used authentic Indian patterns consolidated with contemporary forms translated from the chakra, which was also a contrast in material quality. The viewer experienced these nuances of history and memory at each level of inspection, from the larger planning level to each detail within the pavilion. The design searched for contemporary forms of expression that cannot be divorced from technical innovation: this is perhaps the most characteristic trait of our
domus 41 June-July 2015
PROJECTS 85
This spread above: views of the display walls at the exhibition – the pavilion’s design evoked India’s rich legacy of arts and craftsmanship through the use of tactile qualities from indigenous materials such as wood, textile, and metal. This spread below: renderings of the various display walls
domus 41 June-July 2015
86 PROJECTS
domus 41 June-July 2015
PROJECTS 87
1. SECTION Scale: 1:75
1 LED wall hung from ceiling 2 Trojan Lion 3 Reception/ Display 4 Stage/ Presentation area 5 Tea lounge 6 Flower canopy 7 Kitchen 8 Service/ Storage 9 Server/ Control room
3. Pole Details
1. Flower Reflected ceiling Plan
Scale: 1:20
Scale: 1:75
Plan
1
3
34000
6500 2400
5250
4000
3600
5
6
1
14 4
3
90
13
6500
15
1
4000
2
6000
6
Layer 3 inner Ring attaches to the Pole at this level
1175
6000
FRONT ELEVATION
Layer 2 inner Ring attaches to the Pole at this level
2250
Layer 3
4000 Aisle
4000
120 100 300
Layer 2
M3
13000
3600
M2
Level of the pavilion raised to +120
2
3000 Aisle
Layer 1 inner Ring attaches to the Pole at this level
550
Layer 1
DWG. NO.2
8000
Scale: 1:75
Outer rings of all the layer suspend to the pole at this level
250
M1a
12
2. SECTION
Elevation
Level of the pavilion raised to +120
3600
M1b
5
12
2400
Pole at the center suspended from the ceiling holding all the layers
X-X'
1
Ring at the bottom of the pole
4000
2000
6380
10
2000
Ring attached to the bottom of the pole
13
14
15
36000
Level of the pavilion raised to +120 Level of the pavilion raised to +120
3. SECTION
- key plan
Scale: 1:75
SIDE ELEVATION
3600
6500
12
4
6000 1000
13000 14000
2. Trojan Lion
INDIA PAVILION AT HANNOVER MESSE 2015
7. Kitchen
2. Trojan Lion
5. Tea Lounge
8. Service/ Storage
3. Reception/ Display
6. Flower canopy
3. Reception/ Display
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
0
2M
8. Service/ Storage
4. Stage/ Presentation area
1. LED Wall hung from ceiling REAR ELEVATION
DETAIL OF CEILING
5. Tea Lounge
6. Flower canopy
13. Automation sector display
11. Gathering space
14. Smart city display
10. Conference room
13. Automation sector display
15. Space/ Defence sector dispaly 9. Server/ Control room 12. Demographic display on jaali wall 11. Gathering space 14. Smart city display 15. Space/ Defence sector dispaly 9. Server/ Control room 12. Demographic display on jaali wall
PAVILION AT HANNOVER INDIAINDIA PAVILION AT HANNOVER MESSEMESSE 2015 2015
A R CHI TAERCT URTEE CT DI SUR CIEP LDI I NE CHI S CI P L I NE
0
1. FLOOR PLAN Scale: 1:75
36000
PODS A, B AND C DEPICTING THE VISUAL-GRAPHIC ARRANGEMENT/DESIGN OF THE PAVILION
7000
14
13
Emergency Aisle with 4000mm min. clear height
3000
15
33000
1 13000
2
4
6 0
8
2
10 4
12
6
14
8
10
12
14
1 Main entry 2 Trojan Lion 3 Reception/ Display 4. Stage/ Presentation area 4 Stage/ Presentation area 5. Tea Lounge 5 Tea Lounge 6. Service Counter 6 Service counter 7. Kitchen 7 Kitchen 8. Service/ Storage 9. Server/ Control room 8 Service/ Storage 10. OďŹƒce 9 Server/ Control room 11. Gathering space 12. Demographic display on jaali 10 wall Office 13. Automation sector display 11 Gathering space 14. Smart city display 12 Demographic display on jaali wall 15. Space/ Defence sector dispaly 13 Automation sector display 14 Smart city display 15 Space/ Defence sector dispaly 1. Main entry 2. Trojan Lion 3. Reception/ Display
2 12
4
Emergency Aisle with 4000mm min. clear height
3 4000
12
6
7
8
9
10
10
2900
5
4550 6000
1500
2100
1300
Project India Pavilion, Hannover Messe 2015 Location Hannover Client Department Of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) Government of India Architect Architecture Discipline Design team Akshat Bhatt, Heena Bhargava, Sarat Nair, Chitrang Jha, Yash Khemka, Pankul Bharti. Lighting Design Lirio Lopez, Linus Lopez Site Area 1100 m2 Project Area 1380 m2 Contractors Holtmann & Co. GMBH Infographics, Signage & Art Weiden + Kennedy Delhi Other Consultants ESP Films Pvt.Ltd. Vineet Gupta, Shurjo Das, Harry Bal Site Supervision Sconce Global Raju Abraham, Roop Dayani Model maker JK Modellers Initiation of Project January 2015 Completion of project April 2015
A
8000
10. Conference room
7. Kitchen
101 101
Level of the pavilion raised to +120
3000 Aisle
34000
4. Stage/ Presentation area
1. LED Wall hung from ceiling
28000
13000
B Level of the pavilion raised to +120
13
4000 Aisle
4000
10
5000
4250
Ring attached to the bottom of the pole
Layer 3 bottom level
A R CHI T E CT UR E DI S CI P L I NE
13
1
11
Layer 3 top lvl. and layer 2 bottom lvl.
6000
14
750
15
6000
600
475 430 1500
300 300
Layer 2 top lvl. and layer 1 bottom lvl.
C
1
6
Layer 1 top level
Scale: 1:75
4000
2. Section X-X'
6
3600
Dotted Line Showing the extents of the Canopy
3000
3000
3000
36000
FLOOR PLAN A R CHI T E CT UR E DI S CI P L I NE
20000
3000
3000
4200
INDIA PAVILION HANNOVER MESSE 2015
0
2M
domus 41 June-July 2015
88 PROJECTS
civilisation and one that has the most rousing influence on the material culture of design. Each step taken towards progress is tradition, and hence, the dynamic quality set within the word itself allowed for innovation at each step. The pavilion design adapted and created new design traditions, documenting its historical precursors while understanding the essence of progress. The pavilion positioned the nation between our immediate and extended environments expressing the diversity and depth of Indian culture through symbolism that is a part of the ‘Indian Identity’ which was translated and re-scaled to form new design tectonics for contemporary India. Other installations in the pavilion included a Smart City made of glass and light, portraying the government’s integrated approach to improve the efficiency of operations across 100 chosen cities, the quality of life for citizens, and the local economy; models of India’s top satellites
and space launch vehicles; and samples of electronics conceptualised or manufactured in India. The Smart City immersive model is an inclusive view of Dholera Special Investment Region (SIR), Gujarat, portraying an integrated approach to improve the efficiency of city operations, the quality of life for citizens, and the local economy is displayed through an immersive model. The 100 Smart Cities Vision wall focuses on India’s biggest planned urbanisation in recent times and major expansion of India’s manufacturing infrastructure. Planned alongside the new industrial corridors designed to decongest India’s major cities, dedicated freight corridors with the world’s lowest logical costs of manufacturing. The focus of these smart cities is on smart governance, local economies, transportation, sustainability, recycling, water and waste management. An infrastructure model of a smart city is on display.
domus 41 June-July 2015
PROJECTS 89
This spread: the focus of the India pavilion, an artistic assemblage of info graphics and interactive installations that display information about the core sectors of the Indian economy
FRONT ELEVATION
90 PROJECTS
domus 41 June-July 2015
domus 41 June-July 2015
PROJECTS 91
This spread: renderings and models of Smart City, portraying integrated infrastructure to improve the efficiency of city operations, the quality of life for citizens, and the local economy
DETAIL OF DISPLAY WALL
SMART CITY INFRASTRUCTURE SCULPTURE
RENDERINGS OF THE SMART CITY IMMERSIVE MODEL
TOP VIEW
SIDE VIEW