VOL 27 (4)
DEC 2013
MUMBAI
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INDIAN ARCHITECT & BUILDER EXPLORE
VOL 27 (4) | DECEMBER 2013 | ` 200 | MUMBAI RNI Registration No. 46976/87, ISSN 0971-5509 INDIAN ARCHITECT AND BUILDER
EXPLORE
46 CURRENT
Chairman: Jasu Shah Printer, Publisher & Editor: Maulik Jasubhai Shah Chief Executive Officer: Hemant Shetty EDITORIAL Assistant Editors: Maanasi Hattangadi, Ruturaj Parikh Writers: Rashmi Naicker (Online), Chandrima Padmanabhan Design Team: Mansi Chikani, Prasenjit Bhowmick, Kenneth Menezes Event Management Team: Abhijeet Mirashi Subscription: Dilip Parab Production Team: V Raj Misquitta (Head), Prakash Nerkar, Arun Madye Head Office: JMPL, 210, Taj Building, 3rd Floor, Dr D N Road, Fort, Mumbai 400 001. Tel: +91-22- 4213 6400,+ 91-22-4037 3636, Fax: +91-22-4037 3635 SALES Brand Manager: Sudhanshu Nagar Email: sudhanshu_nagar@jasubhai.com MARKETING TEAM & OFFICES Sales Coordinator: Christina D’sa Email: christina_dsa@jasubhai.com Mumbai Parvez Memon 210, Taj Building, 3rd Floor, Dr D N Road, Fort, Mumbai 400 001. Tel: +91-22- 4213 6400,+ 91-22-4037 3636, Fax: +91-22-4037 3635 Email: parvez_memon@jasubhai.com Delhi: Preeti Singh / Manu Raj Singhal 803, Chiranjeev Tower, No 43, Nehru Place, New Delhi – 110 019 Tel: +91 11 2623 5332, Fax: 011 2642 7404, Email: preeti_singh@jasubhai.com, manu_singhal@jasubhai.com Gujarat: Nisha Pipaliya Mobile: +91 9099963930, Email: nisha_pipaliya@jasubhai.com Bengaluru / Hyderabad: Sudhanshu Nagar Mobile: +91 9833104834, Email: sudhanshu_nagar@jasubhai.com
Au courant updates on competitions, events/exhibitions and news.
50 PRODUCTS
Objects and details designed for architectural settings from across the globe.
54 COMMENT The Forgotten Case of Low-cost Housing
With initiatives in the low-cost sector few and feeble and things set
to worsen further if left untended, Shankar Narayan makes his
observations known by eruditely putting Low-cost Housing back into the
nation’s imagination.
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IN CONVERSATION
Kevin Low elaborates on the ideas and ideals that have shaped his practice;
his belief in the relevance of content over form and the importance of
allowing his buildings to harbour a narrative.
The Dialect of Content
64 INTERNATIONAL
The Timelessness of Simplicity
Responding to nature intrinsically by way of detailing and its ability to
weather with a natural grace rather than with embellishment, Kevin Low’s
design of three projects in differing scales showcases how he brings his ideas
into being, in practice as well.
80 ARCHITECTURE
Chennai / Coimbatore: Princebel M Mobile: +91 9444728035, +91 9823410712, Email: princebel_m@jasubhai.com
The Immeasurable
The designs of the Cuncolim Freedom Fighters’ Memorial and the Valpoi Bus
Kolkata: Sudhanshu Nagar Mobile: +91 9833104834, Email: sudhanshu_nagar@jasubhai.com
Stand & Community Hall in Goa, by Rahul Deshpande and Associates,
Pune: Parvez Memon Mobile: +91 9769758712, Email: parvez_memon@jasubhai.com
showcase a functional and symbolic representation and responsiveness to
the aspirations of the community they are built in.
Printed & Published by Maulik Jasubhai Shah on behalf of Jasubhai Media Pvt. Ltd (JMPL), 26, Maker Chamber VI, Nariman Point, Mumbai 400 021 Printed at M B Graphics, B-28 Shri Ram Industrial Estate, ZGD Ambekar Marg, Wadala, Mumbai 400031and Published from Mumbai - 3rd Floor, Taj Building, 210, Dr D N Road, Fort, Mumbai 400 001. Editor: Maulik Jasubhai Shah, 26, Maker Chamber VI, Nariman Point, Mumbai 400 021 Indian Architect & Builder: (ISSN 0971-5509), RNI No 46976/87, is a JMPL monthly publication. Reproduction in any manner, in whole or part, in English or any other language is strictly prohibited. We welcome articles, but do not accept responsibility for contributions lost in the mail.
96 CAMPAIGN : Architectural Education
A School Without Walls
In this edition, Prof Neelkanth Chhaya questions the idea and role of an
institution in an increasingly multidisciplinary design world and outlines
his thoughts on a desired model for an architecture school and the values
associated to the same.
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BOOK REVIEW
spaces inspired by nature
Through his book ‘spaces inspired by nature’, Shirish Beri highlights
the need to bring man in closer communion with nature in order to further
his understanding of design and space.
EXPLORE
102 TRIBUTE
Remembering Bawa
Celebrating the spirit of Geoffrey Bawa, David Robson takes us on an
insightful journey through the years of Bawa’s illustrious career in shaping
the architecture and the way of life of Sri Lanka.
Printed & Published by Maulik Jasubhai Shah on behalf of Jasubhai Media Pvt. Ltd (JMPL), 26, Maker Chamber VI, Nariman Point, Mumbai 400 021. Printed at M.B.Graphics, B-28, Shri Ram Industrial Estate, ZG.D.Ambekar Marg, Wadala, Mumbai 400031and Published from Mumbai - 3rd Floor, Taj Building, 210, Dr D N Road, Fort, Mumbai 400 001. Editor: Maulik Jasubhai Shah, 26, Maker Chamber VI, Nariman Point, Mumbai 400 021. Indian Architect & Builder: (ISSN 0971-5509), RNI No 46976/87, is a JMPL monthly publication. Reproduction in any manner, in whole or part, in English or any other language is strictly prohibited. We welcome articles, but do not accept responsibility for contributions lost in the mail.
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Category Type Deadline
: : :
International Open to all January 14, 2014
Date Venue
: :
December 27-29, 2013 Chennai Trade Centre, Chennai
eVolo Magazine invites architects, students, engineers, designers, and artists from around the globe to take part in the eVolo 2014 Skyscraper Competition. Established in 2006, the annual Skyscraper Competition is one of the world’s most prestigious awards for high-rise architecture. It recognises outstanding ideas that redefine skyscraper design through the implementation of novel technologies, materials, programmes, aesthetics, and spatial organisations along with studies on globalisation, flexibility, adaptability, and the digital revolution. There are no restrictions in regards to site, programme or size. The objective is to provide maximum freedom to the participants to engage the project without constraints in the most creative way. A registration charge of US $115 is applicable.
Indian Institute of Architects (IIA) has organised a National Convention for an annual congregation of architects. The Convention is being hosted by Indian Institute of Architects’ Tamil Nadu Chapter on behalf of the national body to bring together the professionals to discuss and deliberate the various facets of architectural development, practice and education, and the future vision. About 1000 to 1500 architects from all over the country, including members, new members and soon-to-be members of IIA are expected to participate. The theme of the Convention – ‘Century of Urbanisation’, revolves around the re-negotiated role of architecture and architects in the process of urbanisation amidst the emergence of new building typologies, large scale projects, innovative technologies, complex building programmes, rural migration and the need for social housing.
For further information, log on to: www.evolo.us
For further information, log on to: www.iianatcon2013.com
361˚ Postcard Project
12th International Asian Urbanisation Conference
Category Type Deadline
: : :
International Open to all January 15, 2014
Indian Architect & Builder invites entries for the 361˚ Postcard Project from students and designers representing the architectural identity of their cities through a postcard. The competition precedes the 361˚ Conference – which this year aims at unravelling the changing identities of the cities in the time of globalisation and digitalisation. The Conference will get together architects from India and other parts of the world on one platform to discuss the issue of identity aided by their work. The five finalists will each get a complimentary entry to the Conference along with getting their entries printed in the Conference docket. The winners shall be announced at the Conference and the winning entries, will be handed out to all the delegates of the conference. For further information, log on to: www.361degrees.net.in/postcard
1st Design Award ‘Light up your idea’ Category Type Deadline
COMPETITIONS
IIA National Convention 2013
: : :
International Open to all February 28, 2014
: : Date Venue
December 28-30, 2013 Department of Geography, Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi
Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in association with The Asian Urban Research Association (AURA) has organised the 12th International Asian Urbanisation Conference to be held at the Department of Geography at Banaras Hindu University. The Conference is a part of a biennial series of conferences which is held in an attempt to bring together academics and practitioners and encourages dialogue and deliberation of experts/scholars from different disciplines and countries on the Asian Urban Dynamics, Environment and Health. The Conference mainly seeks to address a wide variety of problems in the Asian urban milieu. The themes to be covered include Rural Urban Transformations, Globalisation and the Urban Economy, Urban Transportation and Commutation, Amenities and Facilities in Urban Areas, Climatic Change and Urban Environment, Marginalisation of Local Communities in Urban Areas, and Use of Geoinformatic Tools (GIS, Remote Sensing and GPS) in urban environmental studies. For further information, log on to: www.sasnet.lu.se/sites/default/files/pdf/12ihinternational.pdf
Artists in Concrete Awards, Asia Fest 2013 - 14 Date Venue
: :
February 6-8, 2014 Hyatt Regency, Pune
Italian design brand Riva Industria Mobili SpA of Cantù, known by the trademark RIVA 1920 has announced its 1 st Design Award ‘Light up your idea’ for students, architects and designers. The competition calls for a design of a table in solid wood, using reforestation wood and secondary non-plastic materials. The competition has been classified into two classes – Under 26 and Over 26. Group participation is permitted and in that case even if only one member of the group is over 26, the category of the entire group will be counted as Over 26.
Reify Artisans and Projects Pvt Ltd along with knowledge partner Rachana Sansad and Academy of Architecture, Mumbai have organised Artists in Concrete Awards, Asia Fest 2013 -14, a three day festival. The festival aims at providing an overview on current trends in the construction, architecture, interiors, landscape architecture and urban planning. Eminent architects such as Juhani Pallasmaa, Gunther Vogt, Ken Yeang, Sameep Padora, Kapil Gupta and more are expected to speak at the event. The registration for the event is open.
For further information, log on to: www.riva1920.it
For further information, log on to: www.aica.in
Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
EVENTS
eVolo 2014 Skyscraper Competition
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Curry Stone Design Prize Announced Winners for 2013
Foundation Stone for Kolkata Museum of Modern Art (KMOMA) Laid on November 14, 2013
The Curry Stone Foundation announced the winners of their prestigious design prize in a ceremony on November 7, 2013 in San Francisco. The design prize formulated in 2008 by Clifford Curry and Delight Stone to address and honour socially responsible and humanitarian designs, celebrates influential work of practitioners who have helped their societies take a leap with critical design ideas to bring about a change.
The first stone to build a new art landmark – Kolkata Museum of Modern Art, in the green pastures of Rajarhat, over the relics of colonial Calcutta was laid by the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on November 14, 2013. KMOMA, designed by Herzog & de Meuron is expected to be ready in three years time. It will be the first building in India to be designed by the famed architects from Basel, Switzerland. The G+9 structure, 48.75m high will come up on a 10 acre land gifted by the state government in Rajarghat area close to the Ecotourism Park. Apart from the main museum containing 44 galleries, art restoration, education, research facilities, photographic facilities, offices and theatre it will have a ‘Cultural City’ containing a plaza, an amphitheatre for 1,500 people, artists’ studios, a 500 seat auditorium, art education facilities, and 14,330sqft retail space where textiles, books and artefacts will be sold.
The 2013 Curry Stone Design Prize was awarded to Hunnarshala, which is a foundation in Bhuj, India promoting artisan knowledge to create a resilient society; Proximity Designs from Yangon, Myanmar who designs income-boosting solutions for rural Myanmar and Studio TAMassociati/Emergency from Venice/Milan in Italy which brings dignity through design to war-torn regions. The Curry Stone Foundation awards $120,000 per year which is equally distributed among the winners.
Frank Lloyd Wright Building from 1939 Finally Built A house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1939, as a part of ‘Usonian Homes’ has just been realised, almost 74 years after it was designed and 54 years after the architect’s death. The single storey structure was intended to be a part of the 60 ‘Usonian Homes’ – family residence that is free from ornamentation, intended to represent a national style whilst remaining affordable for the average family. The house, that was supposed to be a professor’s home in 1939, was built this year using blueprints left by Wright, and will serve as Sharp Family Tourism and Education Centre with a gallery and visitor centre, presenting both permanent and temporary exhibitions of Wright’s life and work, on the Florida Southern College campus – home to most of the structures by the architect. On the occasion of the centre`s opening, Anne Kerr, the College`s President said, “It is a singular privilege to be stewards of this paramount piece of American architectural heritage, Frank Lloyd Wright is not only a part of Florida Southern’s history, but also a part of America’s great history, and the Sharp Family Tourism and Education Centre is a wonderful tribute to his legacy on our campus and his impact around the world.” The building is made up of nearly 2,000 handcrafted concrete blocks, timber roof canopies and window frames, around 6000 coloured glass blocks that function as stained glass windows, and reproduction of built-in furniture that was designed by Wright specifically for his Usonian Homes.
Bauhaus Opens Its Dorms to Paying Guests
NEWS
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The Dessau campus of Bauhaus has decided to open up former dormitories for paying guests to stay in. The building that was designed by architect Walter Gropius in 1919 and which took up occupation by the design students of the school in 1925, will be open for the visitors of the museum at the Dessau campus of the Bauhaus. They can now spend the night in the dormitories of the former design school where once masters like Josef Albers, Marcel Breuer, Walter Peterhans stayed. The 24sqm studio flats available for accommodation are starkly decorated and minimally furnished. The guests are expected to use the communal bathrooms and showers like the residents in the 1920s. Barring one single room that has been accurately reconstructed with the original furnishings, others have been adorned with the works by their previous occupants. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
Restoration Hope for Jain Relics in Murshidabad Due to lack of any government response, Murshidabad Heritage Development Society has decided to create a fund to fuel the restoration of the Jain architectural monuments in Murshidabad. Many of them are around one and a half century old and display a rare fusion of Jain and Bengal’s architectural styles. The project, submitted to the Ministry of Tourism three years back, involved an investment of `150 crore. “There is a huge scope of developing tourism in Murshidabad and Jain monuments and architecture can be the jewels in the crown. There are numerous temples, ‘havelis’, ‘kothis’ and other monuments depicting Jain architecture in places like Azimganj, Jiaganj and Lalbagh,” said Sandip Nowlakha, Secretary of the Murshidabad Heritage Development Society. According to the Murshidabad Heritage Development Society`s records, there were around 10 billionaire families within one mile radius of Azimganj and Jiaganj whose combined wealth was more than the entire British aristocracy. Such wealth prompted them to set up temples, monuments and palaces. “There are several such palaces and temples which are integral parts of Bengal’s heritage tourism. We are trying to create awareness among the Jain families to start renovating them,” Mr Sandip Nowlakha added.
Vadodara Chapter of Institute of Indian Interior Designers (IIID) Celebrated World Architecture Day with ‘Architecture beyond Borders ’ The Vadodara chapter of Institute of Indian Interior Designers (IIID) celebrated World Architecture Day with presentations by a delegation of Korean architects and an architecture critic in the city. The eight-member Korean delegation was visiting the city on the occasion of 60 years of Indo-Korean Friendship. The presentation titled ‘Architecture beyond Borders’ was part of the Knowledge Series Initiative of IIID, Vadodara that the Korean architects made at the Federation of Gujarat Industries’ business centre. The delegation was led by architect Chang Hyun Kim, who was so influenced by modern Indian architecture that in 2005 he started his practice in India – AA Studio Consulting. Architects Chan-Gyun Kim, Chanjung Kim, Hyung Hyeo Kwon, Sook-Hee Jun gave presentations on public buildings. City’s eminent architect Karan Grover, who is the president of IIID, Vadodara, acknowledged and encouraged the initiatives between Indian architects and those from other countries.
products
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Giving bamboo its due, Abhijeet Kumar designs a comfortable chair, knitting together the flexibility and strength of two different materials, which can easily settle into the contemporary ‘mix and match’ homes of today.
BLACK AND WHITE CHAIR Text: Archa Desai Images: courtesy Abhijeet Kumar
A
ware of the abundant availability of bamboo in parts of India; Abhijeet Kumar, a consultant designer based out of Ahmedabad and Pune, attempts to change the stereotypical way of looking at bamboo. The designer harnessed its longevity and strength to produce furniture that befits today`s homes. The lean and clean-cut chair has been derived from the ‘dendrocalamus strictus’ species – a solid bamboo that grows in parts of India that have low water content in the soil. The solid density of the bamboo gives it more strength and allows it to be manipulated and modulated like wood. The bamboo, spindle-turned on the lathe gets a new definition with the sculpted volume, which dissociates it from its generic perception. Covered in a water-based stainer, the indigenous material gets an understated presence. The chair, easily stackable, displays weaving techniques that connect the members. The ropes, woven from the wastage pooled in from a T-shirt manufacturing factory, are knitted beautifully to curve and give an ergonomically comfortable seat, emulating the comfort of any upholstered furniture. The well-crafted and thoughtful design was conceived by the designer for International Network of Bamboo And Rattan (INBAR), which is an intergovernmental organisation that was set up to improve the livelihoods of the producers and users of bamboo and rattan.
Designer: Abhijeet Kumar Client: INBAR (International Network of Bamboo and Rattan) Contact: Tel: +91 86986 88650 Email: write2abhijeet@gmail.com Web: www.behance.net/abhijeet Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
products
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BUTTERFLY- NOT JUST A CHAIR Transcending experience and philosophy into a concept, designer Lalit Hira designs a single utilitarian chair for everyday that performs pluralistically. Text: Archa Desai Images & Sketches: courtesy Lalit Hira
‘B
utterfly - not just a Chair’, by Mumbai-based designer Lalit Hira, is exactly what the name of the product suggests. The name justifies the changing, multifunctional nature of the chair. Lalit Hira, a 1980 design graduate from Sussex in England, used his exposure and experience in designing to design a chair that is a play of geometry to optimise the utilisation of space. The Chair is a single seamless surface that can be used in more than one ways when flipped to suit the functions as a study chair, a sofa chair or an easy chair. The mono-block design is easy to handle and maintain. The designer feels that “in many respects, the feeling one gets from sitting on the ‘Butterfly’ is similar to that one enjoys when aware of a transient quality in life but still very much in control.” A self-initiated project, the ‘Butterfly Chair’ is intended to be mass produced and made available at the most economical price. Hence, after a mild steel frame, a couple of prototypes with plywood seats and canvas, solid walnut wood seat and leather and part composite part stainless steel - displayed at the London Design Festival 2013, the designer finally decided to use plastic due to its cost-effectiveness. Lalit Hira believes that, “It does not matter if a design concept is complex or simple so long as it enhances the comfort, health, or productivity of those it is intended to serve”.
Designer: Lalit Hira Contact: 100 Kalpana Building, Plot No 338 12 th Road, Khar (W), Mumbai 400 052, India. Tel: (O) +91 (0) 22 2646 2681; (M) +91 (0) 98204 61587 Email: lalithira@gmail.com Web: www.coroflot.com/lalithira Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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Whose client is he?
The Forgotten Case of Low-cost Housing by G Shankar Narayan
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decade or more back, I had clients walking into my studio in Hyderabad wanting a ‘Laurie Baker’ house. Given that Baker was considered an architect for the poor, my clients were not in any way economically challenged – in fact they were quite well off. For them a ‘Laurie Baker’ house was one that had exposed rat trap bond walls, filler slabs and brick arches. Forgetting the extra cost and inappropriateness of these in Hyderabad, given the poor quality of local brick and masonry skills, it was the distinctive look that enticed them. The sensual trumped the practical and poor LB (pun intended) was reduced to a brand like Louise Phillipe or Van Huesen! Despite the superficiality of it, there was a visual appeal of the ‘Low-cost’ aesthetic. The material ascetism had a powerful pull and seemed Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
to say to the not so well off, albeit notionally, that ‘we are with you’. But now, even that fig leaf is gone. Houses today of the well-to-do i.e. those that can still afford to buy a plot and build an independent house, are a collage of glass, white walls and floors, atrociously expensive toilets and gypsum false ceilings. The term Low-cost Housing (LCH) has today fallen off the radar. No one talks about it – it is rarely, if ever, heard in debates and discussions. The media which has so much to say about everything else, only peripherally and seasonally covers the issue when the homeless in Delhi suffer its biting winters. This is true of the architectural press too which is smitten by photogenic architecture. Even among the architectural intelligentsia the
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dialogue has moved away from equitable housing, leave alone LCH. The focus here has shifted to ‘green’ issues. Though important, I think this is in a way putting the cart before the horse. When the rudimentary shelter needs of multitude of its citizens are far from being met, this obsessive talk about ‘greening’ of architecture in India – that too of the debatable kind – is insensitive and misplaced. If there is one agency that is expected and obliged to do its bit towards LCH, it is the government. However, these days its propaganda machine does not champion LCH any more. The ‘Makaan’ along with ‘Kapada’ has disappeared from the idealistic slogan of ‘Roti, Kapada aur Makaan’. Maybe ‘post 1991 liberalised’ Indians do not need them anymore! The government is now obsessed with ‘Roti’, what with the recently passed Food Bill. Some would demur that LCH now has a new name - ‘Affordable Housing’. On the face of it, it seems so. But a deeper look shows that Affordable Housing is a generic term and has its roots in a real estate, developer oriented vocabulary. It has nothing to do with intelligent architectural design, innovative resource conserving construction or appropriate community based planning. It is all about maximising floor space through clever tweaks of the building regulations to squeeze returns on land cost. It is also about building compact apartments in far flung suburban areas to target the middle classes who have been pushed this far for a home of their own. It is not ‘low-cost’ enough to be affordable to large sections of our homeless populations. Affordable Housing is also a clever play of words – whoever coined the term – as affordability can be at any level of economic strata. This definition by its own wording implies that the rest of the real estate market is unaffordable and only for the super rich! This is of course not far from the truth, given that simple apartments cost anything upwards of `50 lacs in our metros. In a nation of crores of shelter deprived, you would expect LCH to be a mantra, not just in the government but among the business classes too. You would also think that the economics of supply and demand would come into natural play and this huge almost insatiable market opportunity would be grabbed by developers and construction companies. Curiously, that is not the case. None of the high profile corporate companies has a workable idea to address this massive issue. LCH remains on the periphery of our development and growth paradigm. No one seems interested and enthusiastic. What is lost sight of is that investment in housing has a wide ranging ripple effect stimulating all sectors of the economy from the labour market to consumer goods as
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owners would then ‘build’ up their homes. It is a known fact that housing or any building has three essential components for it to be complete – land, the building itself and service infrastructure. In the rural areas, villages and small towns, land is relatively cheaper to come by whereas in cities it is a precious resource. If land is the stumbling block in the roll out of LCH schemes, where are the creative ideas to address this issue? Our elite management institutes are also silent with no forthcoming strategies. LCH in its entirety is no doubt intimately connected with land and infrastructure, but, as architects, let us focus on the building component. To be fair, several architects, engineers and institutions have over the years come up with systems and materials to have a crack at the problem of cost-effective construction. The underlying assumption in all these ideas is that the ubiquitous RCC frame structure with panel walls in brick/concrete block is not cost-effective enough to qualify for LCH status. There is also an undercurrent; especially among architect innovators that RCC frame is too mainstream to be an ‘alternate’ technology which comes with its own sexiness. Ironically however, when it comes to cost, each of the new systems is benchmarked against the same, much reviled RCC frame! From Stabilised Compressed Earth Blocks (SCEB), RCC precast panel slabs, filler slabs, bamboo reinforcement, brick vaulted roof, arched foundation to ferrocement, a whole range of ideas have been articulated, experimented with, tested and built out in labs and on the field. The LCH bandwagon has varied players – from a hugely bureaucratic, government-run CBRI to a young individual architect working on his own steam deep in the countryside. State housing boards and corporations (the self appointed benefactor of the EWS) have testily adopted some of these technologies but are comfortable in their faith in RCC frame structure. This may be because the engineers who head these departments have a creeping suspicion about alternate technologies from the strength, durability and practicality point of view. They may not be far off the mark; the infamous Yelahanka housing scheme constructed with SCEB in late 1980s which started eroding is an oft quoted example. However, what they end up building is nothing better – poorly constructed and designed RCC buildings often in godforsaken places. Looking out of the train window, one often comes across rows and rows of boxes that make up ghost colonies in the country side. These are the housing units that the poor are happily living in, at least statistically, in government records! Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and Voluntary groups fare better on the LCH index. They are a large benefactor and user of innovative and cost-effective building technologies. This could be due to their relative freedom from bureaucratic processes and red tape which strangle even the most well intentioned government officer. They have sponsored and got built large swathes of housing for fisher folk, cyclone/tsunami affected, dam and mega project displaced, etc. Not least because of grants, funding and goals set by international agencies, there is a desire to look at LCH as a humane endeavor imbued with design and build quality and not just as a statistic. However, a caveat here. If LCH has to be unsubsidised and true to its actual cost to the end user, the grant and aid which is invariably part of international funding, muddies the water a little. HUDCO, which was such a proactive promoter of LCH till the early 1990s is unheard of today in this field. In a truly pioneering fashion for those days, a public agency recognised the need for good design as an essential starting point and appointed some of the best architects for the projects. There was a fillip given to local materials and technologies. That momentum died with the exit of its visionary top management. If it had been sustained with the same passion, I am sure the last couple of decades would have witnessed a sea change in the LCH scenario. Despite the combined efforts of NGOs, Individuals, State Housing Corporations, HUDCO, etc, the glaring fact remains – their contribution is nothing more than an infinitesimal speck of the total housing need of the country in the low-cost sector. Dare I say ten per cent or less. And if you take the overall housing sector need, maybe less than one per cent. This is where the conundrum hits us in the face, like a jack hammer blow to the jaw! Why has there been no credible progress? Whatever has been done by innovative architects are minute islands of newness, barely taking root in people’s imagination and spreading of their own accord. They have remained seminar pieces for discussion in international symposiums or as pretty pictures to be printed in glossies. In the meantime, people have not stopped building. In fact in the rural areas, RCC is making quick inroads to the detriment of vernacular building practices. It does not need an observant eye to catch this one-sided battle as more and more RCC flat roofs are defining the rural skyline. Is RCC really more cost-effective than well established local techniques? Or is it that the villager adopts a foreign material/form to up his social quotient much like his urban counterpart does with imported ones from Singapore and Shanghai. A deeper investigation into this Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
phenomenon is required. Relevant to the discussion here, though, is that all ‘designer’ cost-effective technologies – the funicular shells, brick/Nubian vaults, sloped filler slabs, et al – are more congenial to rural landscape because of their inherent inability to have an upper floor, an imperative in the urban milieu due to limited land availability. But even so, rural folk are not adopting these techniques, notwithstanding efforts of the Nirmithi Kendras, which has limited success in Kerala. They are in fact moving wholesale to RCC, the bugbear of ‘alternatists’! Allow me to meander a bit here. RCC is the most complex component of all processes in the building construction, such as stone masonry, brick work, plaster, etc. It requires a fair amount of skill in centering, steel fabrication, concrete laying, etc. If our so-called simple village folk are taking to it, it means a new genre of craftsmen are beginning to flourish, driving another nail into the vernacular coffin. That turns us to the urban/metro sector where the need for LCH is glaringly visible in the proliferating pavement dwellings, migrant colonies, squatter housing, etc. One soon realises that the LCH scenario here is even bleaker than in the countryside. And this is when our urban population is set to double in the next couple of decades! Whatever little one sees of LCH, it is in the government sector with its Rajiv Awas Yojana and JNNURM programmes. With almost zero attention to good design and cost-effective construction, these mega projects (generally around 1000 tenements) are invariably high-rise RCC frame structures – again engineer driven design, as mentioned earlier. Most of the LCH technologies listed earlier are suited for low-rise buildings leaving very few credible options for the dense urban habitat. Given these conditions, the only feasible option seems to be precasting, which is still in its infancy in the regular commercial sector itself. Precasting also requires its own ecosystem in terms of machinery, manufacturing skills upgradation – necessitating huge capital. With no other workable system, the LCH market in the private sector offers conventional RCC at a low cost achieved through low quality. Apartments that leak and crack, leave alone collapse! Or we see people living in unfinished houses, steel reinforcement sticking out, roofless toilets and walls yet to be plastered. So have we reached a dead end in the search of effective cost-effective building ideas? It does not seem a happy picture and architects’ contributions, while worthy on their own, seem to be barely scratching the surface. In this uninviting landscape, let me venture to give some ways forward. Again, these are
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architect/building centric ideas generally limited to the urban realm and need to be dovetailed into land, infrastructure, policy, finance initiatives to complete the framework: •
The dialogue in the architectural fraternity which has been hijacked by the ‘dubious green’ brigade must be steered towards Low-cost building. One should not miss the point that low-cost often translates to low eco-impact and real green. Strangely, architects seem to be aloof to the issue and have relegated what essentially is their turf to developers and their campaign for affordable housing. Forums must be opened, conventions should be held and websites created on this theme and architects should be in the forefront in collaborating with the government in policy initiatives and influencing the real estate industry. Not that the awards are any barometer of real capability, but the Indian Institute of Architects awards or any other well-known award does not have a category for LC architecture!
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Though there has been a burst of architectural colleges in the past couple of decades and the curriculum gets tweaked now and then, it is quite appalling that it does not include a subject on cost-effective building. The present student community is wholly divorced from the need, techniques and the empathy required for design in this sector and are still fed the staple – and now stale – diet from McKay and Neufert. In fact, the generation of architects since the dawn of the liberalisation era (when, not very coincidentally HUDCO initiatives dried up) have grown up on hi-tech – high cost architectural assignments like resorts, multiplexes, metro stations. One does find a rare brave student thesis taking a shot at LCH, but sadly it falls short due to the lack of ideas, paucity of data, case studies and regulatory standards. The pedagogical initiative in cost-effective construction should extend to the engineering education as civil engineers are prime to the task.
• A comprehensive and creative relook at city planning processes should be initiated to release urban land in city
centres (and not disconnected suburbs) for LCH. Thinking out of the box, if metro lines can be built on road medians, why not housing. Multifunctional use of school buildings for sheltering the homeless during night, flexible mobile shelters and earmarked spaces for their installation are other ideas to be explored. Not all LCH needs to be ownership based, as a large segment of the homeless is migrant in nature. Market driven systems can be evolved to offer limited tenancies, which will extract the poor and homeless from the clutches of the slum mafia.
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A comprehensive and dynamic database of material rates, techniques, labour inputs, eco-footprints should be created along with new regulations and standards for low cost building. Only then financial institutions will come forward to fund initiatives in this sector.
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The building developer community is much criticised for corrupting the administration, violating the building regulations and giving rise to land mafias. While much of this is true, it is to their credit that the country’s existing housing stock is almost entirely due to their enterprise. If it was left to the state, I may not have had a home to sit and pen this article now! Unless we turn around the image of LCH as something charitable, subsidised and borne out of pity and make it market oriented and dynamic on its own terms, we will not move ahead.
In a sort of self goal at the fag end of the match, let me suggest that the term ‘Low-cost Housing’ is itself inappropriate. A house is the ultimate physical possession of any human – be it an ‘Ambani’ or the rag picker – and it does not give any sense of pride and dignity to a home owner to be labeled as the proprietor of a cheap house. When neither ‘Affordable Housing’ nor ‘Low-cost Housing’ seems to capture the essence, I leave it to the readers’ imagination to come up with an apt term and more importantly an apt strategy!
About the author: G Shankar Narayan has a practice in Hyderabad for the past 25 years and teaches, writes and campaigns on architectural and habitat issues. He can be reached at shankar@shankarch.com.
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THE DIALECT OF CONTENT In conversation with IA&B, Kevin Low discusses his philosophies on context, the unnecessary categorisation of architecture on its formal tenets and the importance of allowing architecture to harbour a narrative. Images: courtesy smallprojects
Kevin Low.
Kevin Mark Low is a Malaysian architect whose work has gained global recognition through his practice, smallprojects, which was established in 2002. He has presented papers on building technology at Harvard University and lectured in the architectural department at MIT. While in the United States, Kevin has worked in architectural practices both on the East and West Coasts and studied closely with the Aga Khan Foundation, earning awards of research grants and fellowships to Italy, North Yemen, Spain and Bangladesh. Apart from practising architecture individually, he has also, over the course of his career, been professionally involved in writing, environmental sculpture, illustrating, teaching and copyrighting. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
IA&B: You have spent a considerable amount of time in the West acquiring your architectural education as well as teaching and writing. Whose work, would you say, has impacted your development the most as an architect? KL: It is not commonly understood that all it takes to become a known architect is one, just one, good work, while the production of a few beautiful buildings is all it takes for an architect to become famous, never mind if those buildings are indeed good buildings. Very, very few architects, living or dead, have done more than two great buildings in their lifetimes. I believe we have iconised architects for too long now, having forgotten how difficult the act of design truly is. For this reason, specific works rather than specific people have impacted my development the most, having to do with the way those works related to their specific contexts through deep content rather than purely formal issues. These works include - Commerzbank, Frankfurt, Germany; Architect’s house, 33 rd Lane, Colombo, Sri Lanka; Louvre Museum extension, Paris, France; Terminal 1, Charles De Gaulle Airport, Paris, France; Exeter Library, Connecticut, USA; Cimitero Brion, San Vito d’Altivole, Italy; St Louis Gateway Arch, St Louis, USA; Chapel at Ronchamp, Ronchamp, France; Cabrera House, Buenos Aires, Argentina. IA&B: How, would you say, the landscape and ethos of Asia, which you were introduced to after your education, are different from those of the West? What factors remain constant for both regions? KL: To be sure, my introduction to the ethos of Asia happened during rather than after my education, most so under the tutelage of Professor Ronald Bentley Lewcock, providing me with what I only now understand as a fairly balanced view of the rather silly debate of East and West – more insight might possibly be had if we were to focus our attentions on the predicates of a Northern Hemisphere/Tropics divide instead. That aside, I had quite a few classes in architectural history, including Egyptian, Roman, Greek, Romanesque, Gothic, early-to-late Renaissance Architecture, coupled with coursework in Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian Architecture. There was a semester I
in conversation took for a class titled ‘Architecture since 1945’ that had to do with how architecture developed right after the Second World War. It is interesting to ask if contemporary architecture in Asia is governed by an ethos or rather more by a good sense of commercial well-being – while it is clear that Asia, by way of the oldest architectural traditions – Indian and Chinese, as example – has had very strong intrinsic values that served to guide their architectural pasts, it is not to say those same values still influence their cultures and societies today. In this respect, little separates Asia from the West architecturally, as they are both primarily predicated on the iconism of form rather than deeper values of content – if a difference exists at all, it is that Asia still plays catch up to the rules set by the West. While Japan appears to be the exception, not quite belonging to either Asia or the West, it nonetheless plays predominantly to the same rule of form. So, fundamentally at least, the factor of moral origin, in relation to content, remains constant regardless of geographic context. What we do observe as unique qualities that differentiate one from the other, are actually mere differences in form. This is not to say that particular individuals in various parts of the world do not make an actual difference, as we are seeing increasing evidence of a richer, more developed sense of what architecture could, and indeed, should be. Seed practices in Ecuador, the Corn Belt regions of America, small practices in Queensland, all demonstrate evidence of an increasing awareness to more substantial issues that architecture as a practice can engage with. It is important only to recognise that these do not necessarily represent the architectural landscape, or ethos, of entire countries or regions.
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and space for the sake of form, a simple exchange of emphasis which prioritises the enclosure of context over the design of a mere building. It means that the garden is not something one designs around good architecture. Rather, that good architecture begins with the garden, when distinctions between in and out cease to predominate in the design of space. With the garden house, architecture begins only as an extension of its garden. Not because it cares less about the importance of good spatial organisation and flow, geometry or design theory in architecture; on the contrary, it merely establishes the garden at the beginning of its spatial theory. As such, what is commonly identified by convention as the site, its boundaries and the building setbacks, cease to be seen as limits which bound an area, but are imagined as an unbounded volume in its context; urban, suburban or rural. Which is to say that the trees in and around the site, the house next door and the open fields or distant hills, the rising sun and the evening wind, become the cues, the primary bye-laws to begin design by, within which building bye-laws and the land office are both uncritical though necessary parts. Architecture thus begins when lines are drawn to relate rather than separate. Walls only happen to accentuate the moments when they are absent. Doors and windows are placed only when they can be kept open, and where the outside, the garden and borrowed landscape flow in and through the building with the grace of a ventilating breeze. And surfaces are seen as
IA&B: smallprojects is “less concerned about the theatrical than it is about the dramatic. It has more to do with possibility than with statement.” Could you tell us about the philosophy of your practice? KL: As in the quote you have provided, I believe that the most profound architectural ideas and developments affect the drama of life, and create fresh possibilities of human interaction, rather than simply follow norms of formal statements that merely stylise or symbolise the human endeavour that is life. Spatial and formal metaphors are wonderful, but they mean nothing more to the actual relationships and details, the flesh and bone of human existence, if emphasis on its formal contributions as an art is placed ahead, and to neglect of, its deeper significance as a human science. Architecture is an art and science – I try to engage it only as far as its art is an honest reflection of the questions it asks of the sciences, and the humanity which it attempts to provide answer for. IA&B: What is the concept of ‘garden houses’? Could you tell us more about its principle and application? KL: The idea of the garden house began simply as a token for what I feel all architecture is really about – the design of environments, where the elements of nature find inclusion rather than exclusion by way of its garden room. The garden room begins with the substance of context before the design of organisational space
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the means to trace the passing of time. The garden room only finds life through time leaving its trace: architecture can similarly evidence its immersion in time through its garden, since the walls which unclose architecture are the same walls which enclose the garden room. The garden house is architecture’s acknowledgement of its garden room. IA&B: You have spoken about “the natural state of ways and material in architecture” and your wonder at how “buildings can be as imperfect as human beings”. Could you elaborate on this? KL: The way in which I interact with my architecture is total; friends are made of contracts and contractors, of detritus, specific building culture, materials and their manufacture, the act of use, of maintenance and the tectonics of construction. As friends, they are less there for the act of building than for what they intrinsically are, evidenced in the final product; one chooses not to hide the nature of one’s friends but to discover them over time. Design thus becomes less the act of showing than of revealing – that of the details of space and its assembly, of production, of weaknesses and strengths of materials, and the character of elemental finish. A construction effort observed to be less skilled through act or appearance is not always rectified, but is Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
instead given integrity through the design of its relationship to its immediate physical context – the materials and processes of construction, each understood for their basic characteristics and specific applications, find expression in the tectonics of what is created. The simple issue of time passing becomes essential; that familiarity and sense of scale that only comes with age, guide my deliberations and decisions, as time has considerably less impact on the quality of light and space (as volume) than it does on the materials that reveal them. Architecture as a process does not end when the building is done, it barely begins. People age, as do materials and buildings: I am predisposed not merely to make their transition as gracious and dignified as possible, but to re-engage them in ways I never realised were possible. In the same way some of us age with dignity and grace, so architecture too can – the question is what one does to encourage the circumstances under which such gracious aging happens. As such, I select materials and engage methods of construction less for how they are able to hide inaccuracy or imperfection, growth and decay, or the ravages of use, than for how all these aspects find their natural place as part of the aesthetic character, the life of the building. IA&B: You have previously stated, “Architecture, as a process, does not end when the building is done, it
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barely begins then.” Could you describe your process of approaching a design? KL: Approaching design involves a deep understanding and regard for the specific context the design is intended for. If we believe architecture is a language and it takes a week to learn basic phrases in a new country we are visitors to, a month to string some sentences together, and no less than a year to speak somewhat fluently in that new language, it would feel very presumptuous for me to think I could visit a site in a completely different society and culture for a week, or even a month, and then design fluently for that site (let us not even talk about poetics). For the specific context of Malaysia, I am unable to think of architecture as something complete the moment its construction is done, as time and the violent grace of the monsoon tropics will continue to change what is contractually completed. The processes of weathering, the collection of detritus and gradual ageing of surfaces are things all architecture endures, and my sense is that the more I am able to design for this change, for the effects of time passing, the better the buildings grow old and evolve with age. However, much I might fail more often than succeed, it is part of the process in each project I undertake. IA&B: “We can only ever begin what time alone can complete.” What, according to you, occurs with time that completes architecture? In this light, do you think
architecture can ever stand complete? KL: I believe the previous question answers most of this one – in the sense that it is in a constant state of ageing and evolution, a building inevitably goes through a few life cycles – a few stages of coming too, but never quite arriving at completion, if you may – as part of its existence. In this regard only, it is perhaps unimportant to identify a point in time that a building actually finds completion, but that what is designed and finally constructed offers a grace of balance at whatever stage in time it is found. IA&B: You have spoken passionately about “the wrinkles of an old face that tells its story of scars, tears, joy and pride”, with reference to architecture. What, in your opinion, can architects, do to encourage circumstances under which architecture can age gracefully? KL: Through deeper understanding of four things – 1. The integrity and qualities inherent in each material specific to one’s context. 2. The manner those materials find detailing as related to the peculiarities of one’s building culture. 3. The forms and spaces that best suit the climate specific to the geography of one’s site. 4. The way in which the above three take to and accommodate the specific activity and dwelling of people, the process of weathering, the gathering of stains, dirt and detritus over time and under the specific conditions of heat or cold, humidity or aridness, wetness or dryness, and relative light or shade, of the specific site of one’s work. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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IA&B: The Sibu Pavilion is a global toilet that derives from the natural idea of a bush. Could you give us some insight into the deeper narrative of this inspiration and its evolution into design? KL: Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the Pavilion’s starting concept, being inspired by the first global toilet of a bush, was merely a formal (pun intended) to generate the interest required of a pavilion for a garden festival. The actual significance of the Sibu Pavilion was in its answer to the question of why park public-toilets all look similar, commonly expressed as three blank walls with high level windows for privacy and the last remaining wall with a door for access. As such, the formalisation of entrance to the bush toilet took the shape of a screen wall, sufficiently tall and wide for the privacy required behind it. With a thickness that allowed it to be filled with the green garbage of fallen leaves and branches, twigs, and cut grass, the wall simultaneously functions as a garbage can and compost wall for accumulated park detritus, thus reducing the need to cart all the park-side organic trash to site removed from the vicinity. IA&B: Even with labels like traditional, modern and post-modern which are becoming a popular enforcements in architecture, what do you think, remains the real essence of architecture? What in your opinion, is the most important aspect in architecture? KL: If the essence of architecture is not about creating labels, nor about promoting or belonging to them, as I believe you have correctly pointed out, it is clearly then the furthest thing from the formal art of creating special solutions or answers. The essence of architecture is, quite simply, the art of asking relevant questions, and in doing so, making discovery and not objects, of solutions. IA&B: “I would rather the foundations of architecture be rooted in content and all those issues that go beyond mere texture, colour, shape, material, space and size.” Could you tell us why you believe so? What are these issues that you are talking about? KL: Perhaps it is the easiest if I describe the story of the seashell and the sea to help explain the distinctions. There was the narrative of two architects who were asked to design different phases of an aquarium. The first asked what an aquarium should look like, and drew inspiration from the shell of the multi-chambered Nautilus cephalopod. Upon dissecting it, he found that the chambers within corresponded quite well to the various sizes of tanks required, the mother-of-pearl lining the inside shell provided a lovely effect that would bring iridescence to the large gathering spaces within, and the spiral that formed the spine of the creature perfectly described circulation paths based on the Fibonacci series – and his aquarium ended up with the wonderful volumes and formal qualities expected of an iconic building, and well…looking somewhat like a seashell. The other architect started by asking what the sea was about and he discovered upon research it was about high tides and low
tides; about the most luminous shallows of the Maldives and the deepest shadows of the Mariana Trench; it was about the most delicate ecosystems known to Man, as well as the most powerful forces of currents on Earth. He found that it was about sunrises and sunsets and about the food chain. His aquarium became something beyond a single name – it opened before sunrise and closed after sunset; had tanks so shallow you could walk in them and feel fishes nibbling at your feet, and others so deep you had to take elevators down a hundred and fifty feet to understand the true meaning of the word pressure. It connected in a way to the deeper functions of circulation and use that helped our understanding of everything the sea was about, with rooms that adjusted to the rising and falling tides, and tanks that changed mood according to the weather outside. Its form developed in a way that grew from the force of the content that filled it, with the originality of its shape a simple by-product from the strength of its content. Architecture inspired by form merely imitates form itself in the design of a clever answer. Architecture inspired by content creates form only as a relevant response to a profound question. Which is to say that one may well have the ability to create good form and not have the ability to do good architecture. IA&B: Amongst your contemporaries, whose work do you admire? What aspects of their work do you find the most intriguing? KL: Due to the complex process architecture is, I admire different architects for very different reasons. An architect who might be very good with the assembly and detailing of materials might not be as proficient at the content of spatial organisation; and one who is brilliant at rethinking, say, what a school is, might be simply awful at how it is ultimately built and detailed. The varied issues that architects address do not end here, but I think this provides a decent preface to my choices that follow. I admire Al Borde from Ecuador for their sensitivity in exploration of material use, put to deepening our attention to the circumstances of the people we rarely design architecture for; Alfredo Brillembourg, less so for the formal outcomes of his work (which lack refinement in design), than for his attention to issues of function, use and content, in relation to the lives of the masses; Sonny Chan, for the fact that he still pushes envelopes of design and the risk of failure through engaging the rigors of the profession at an age where most architects are more comfortable riding on their successes; Girish Doshi, for his amazing talent at making very odd spatial configurations (and subsequently, unusual relationships between activities) feel entirely normal and relevant; Palinda Kannangara, for the degree of humility I believe it takes to distinguish a great architect from merely a competent one; and Bijoy Jain, Wang Shu,and Junya Ishigami, specifically for their abilities to engage the formal craft of design construction and building in the specific contexts they operate within. The projects Sibu Pavilion, Threshold House and Gardenwall Offices by Kevin Low are featured on page 64. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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A wheatgerm eyebrow on the wiremesh compost screen of dead leaves and park debris, at Sibu P.avilion. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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The East elevation of the Sibu pavilion with the lounge on the left and the cluster of aromaticum trees screening the toilet.
The Timelessness of Simplicity Through the course of three projects - Sibu Pavilion, Threshold House and Gardenwall Offices, Kevin Low expounds on the integrity of a more natural aesthetic, which is practical down to the last detail, functional and meticulously responsive to climate; in its own unique way grafting a nuanced dialect evocative of its time, place, culture and narrative of creation. Text: Chandrima Padmanabhan Images & Drawings: courtesy Kevin Low
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ounded in 2002, smallprojects is an aptly named modest practice run by Kevin Low that engages with the design of the built environment at the smallest scale, from the grooves in a door handle to the copper plumbing celebrated on unfinished canvasses of concrete and brick, to mailboxes. Each project is painstakingly crafted to its finest detail of mechanical practicality, not attempting to hide the imperfections of the rigor of construction, its cycles of growth and decay finding a natural place in the portrayal of its creation. Working alone with no employed staff and mostly within the context of Malaysia, which Low is well acquainted with, he lets his work speak for itself in a rhetoric that values honesty and simplicity over the white noise of refinement through a constructional intelligence that is responsive to its process and programme. With nature as his studio, Kevin Low’s work bears no trace of the struggle to respond in a parlance that neither harbours nostalgic preservation nor glorifies contemporary ubiquity.
His work is not heavy in a materiality that seeks to withstand for centuries, unchanged, through the ravages of time; ones that engulf in scale and overwhelm the spirit, seeking to leave an indelible watermark on the land that will outlast its own lifespan. Kevin Low instead achieves a sense of timelessness by building lightly in materials that fade and weather; retractable doors and trellised windows that let in the wind, sun and rain, in a way that wraps around both landscape and space. He does not seek a permanent mark on the land, but a process to stand the test of time, the process of decay and renewal giving it new life with each turn of the cycle. Just as a conversation gives us a deeper understanding of an individual’s context, moving through his buildings evokes the storyboard of an enduring legacy of ingenuity and rooted contextuality; an art in placemaking, where every brick is a story, every room a novel, every home a poem, and every space within immortal. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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CONCEPTUAL PLAN
Sibu Pavilion Commissioned by the Sibu Municipality of Sarawak for the 2006 Malaysian Garden Festival in Kuala Lumpur, the Sibu Pavilion was meant to house, at best, a mildly landscaped public toilet facility to simply perform the utilitarian task of adequately servicing the festival grounds at the Lake Gardens, the oldest city-park in Kuala Lumpur. Living as we do, in a society of iconisation; the new language of consciousness preoccupied with representation and symbolism, a public toilet immediately conjures a typical image in the mind, of three sterile walls, resentful windows placed high and narrow, with a door to close its dull utility away from the rest of the design. A status quo of aesthetic ubiquity that is rarely ever questioned to good effect, these non-places remain empty, meaningless environments, which only serve to further detach the user from their physical environment.
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In a way of contention against this cultural epidemic, Kevin Low’s design of the Sibu Pavilion intelligently addresses every element that goes into the making of a workable public toilet, rooting its functionality to a communion with nature, or a bush if you will. However, the experience of the Pavilion takes one further than its literal pun, through a labyrinth of 126 ‘eugenia aromaticum’ trees (sourced from a nursery in Southern Malaysia) that tightly cluster around the rectangular span of 72sqm of perforated steel that is open-to-sky and raised slightly off the ground on steel legs. This minor attention to detail allows breathability by virtue of the airflow through its apertures and treads lightly on the land without affecting the grass beneath, in keeping with the transience of its purpose as a pavilion. Before the Pavilion snakes its way into the central toilet space, it opens out on both sides. One end of the Pavilion, which is well-shaded and hidden by an expansive ‘Tembusu’ tree, functions as a transitory lounge of sorts, an actual ‘rest-room’; a responsive replacement to the tiresome queues that usually revolve around public restrooms. It is furnished with a sofa and armchairs, and languid views across the lake. The other end, screened by an extension of the compost screen-mesh, offers adequate privacy to accommodate a tea room.The two-step stairway in the centre where the pavilion deck converges, proceeds to navigate through a narrow pathway to the inner sanctum which houses a squatting-pan commode and a remnant branch whimsically holding out a roll of toilet paper. The mainstay of the design, however, is the three metre tall, steel-framed, wire-mesh wall filled with dead leaves and garden
CONCEPTUAL ELEVATION
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View of the Pavilion from the North-west.
Entryway to the Pavilion, behind the compost screen.
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The rustic squatting pan commode. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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The entrance door and the narrow pathway navigating its way to the toilet beyond.
debris, situated in front of the entrance pathway to the toilet. The wall provides the requisite privacy and is by no means drab and monotonous; it is a true representation of its place and function, serving as a relieving ground, by way of metaphor, for green park-waste.This prevents the need for the arduous and inane process of amassing debris from the park, only to be packaged and dumped in landfill elsewhere. The Pavilion’s compost-wall is piled with park detritus, compacting over time, encouraging the odd organic germination, and following through on their natural, humid cycle to decomposition, which is eventually removed from the bottom of the wall to be used as garden food. Two niches are cut into the thickness of the wall for basins to facilitate the washing of hands, the water run-off draining into the composted pile below. Standing tall as the only discernable element earmarking the entrance to the Pavilion, its identity is clearly evoked in a process representative of the ecology of the park.
FACT FILE: Project Name Building Type Location Architect Main Contractor Client/Owner Gross Floor Area Completion Date ↑
Basin cut into the niche in the compost wall.
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Sibu Pavilion Public Restroom Pavilion Lake Gardens, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Kevin Low Fe Design Sdn Bhd Sibu Municipality/Ng Sek San 72sqm 2006
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Threshold House Set amongst a row of regimented, post-war terraced houses, on a threshold of forty feet in depth and twenty feet in width, the narrative of the Threshold House was restricted at the onset. Designed in a way that every line drawn conduced relationships rather than separated spaces, the essential delineations were made by contrasting the textures of materials resplendent in their natural forms, and through an intelligent design and placement of furnishings to suggest a semblance of enclosure and division, in lieu of rigorous, walled demarcations. The living and dining area, simply separated by an open, steel bookshelf, share an unequivocal camaraderie through the visual porosity it offers, and is carefully designed to accommodate a simple installation process, lifted off the ground on steel posts with stainless steel, threaded feet below. The attention to detail in that one bookshelf is telling of the intricacy with which each aspect of design is negotiated. Each shelf consists of three rows of steel flat plates fixed on its edge: measurably spaced to support books of varying widths, sturdily enough. Not only does this allow easy airflow in and around the books, which, in the humid climes of Malaysia, could otherwise leave lingering traces on any book, but the slats are also narrow enough to disallow any amount of settled dust to distract from the simple ornateness of the bookshelf or the books it houses. All of Kevin Low’s additions to the interior have a similar dedication to utility, constantly questioning and designed
to address even the simple annoyance of residual dust, a phenomenon that stares us in the face every day, and one we resign ourselves to, as an inescapable trace of habitation, rather than as a design conundrum. Thresholds are defined and negotiated in multiple ways across the canvas of the ground floor which along with the living and dining areas and their adjacent courtyard spaces, contains a kitchen and an adjoining service area. The first floor, in its stead accommodates a single bath and bedroom, with large, openable windows allowing its occupants to enjoy the light brought in by the double storey space over the living area. Swathes of unplastered concrete in the living room, form artwork on the walls while the formal exactness of the paint on the staircase purposefully draws attention to the informal construction; a marked honesty to the spaces themselves by way of truly representing the story that went into the making of the household. Designed to age with time, the Threshold House inspires a quiet introspection of the beauty of creation in a state of continuous change. There is a certain poetry in the way Low’s building comes together, not in a way which would allow this lyrical distinction to be privy only to a select design fraternity, but to everyone who engages with the building, as they are made to do so in both thought and physicality. From the tapware of brass and copper, every joint is carefully crafted, its nuances left bare for everyone to revel in the oft-forgotten, childlike pleasure
The back lane threshold; cradling the tangle of wires hanging across the façade, rather than burying it. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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A simple, steel bookshelf delineating the threshold between the living-dining area.
GROUND FLOOR PLAN
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FIRST FLOOR PLAN
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(Above and Below) The contrast in materials subtly defines the boundaries between spaces and thresholds.
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The eye is naturally drawn along the piping, following its route of functionality.
The materials are left largely exposed and unfinished, defining an aesthetic all its own.
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The intricacy in the utility and formwork of the copper and brass joints, left uncovered.
of understanding new ideas. This appeal does not necessarily come from the final product, but from the process of its creation to which it owes its existence that remains visible in it. It is impossible to use the restroom, without allowing the eye to naturally follow the piping along the walls, just as the unplastered brick makes you want to run your hand along its textured surface. A simple token of appreciation to the art of creation, the beauty in its plainness celebrated, giving joy to the people who crafted them, and forming a part of the sketch of the house. It reminds us that the reason we look to nature for quiet contemplation is because its web of animated intricacies gives our eyes reason to wander, muse and draw inspiration from the metamorphoses of the commonplace. Kevin Low’s work affords a similar sentiment. Creating architecture that makes you question the penchant for sharp, shiny edges of a finished product instead of ones blunt with the acquaintance of use, with wind and light flowing through with a familiarity that does not shut out either; and the animate vibrancy of a home that has been lived in. Minimalist in expression, regionalist in perception, critical in thought, his architecture transcends style to a more humanitarian way of creation, too natural for labels.
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The formal line of paint, drawing attention to the informality of construction.
FACT FILE: Project Name Building Type Location Architect Main Contractor Site Area Gross Floor Area Completion Date
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Threshold House Two Storey Rowhouse Taman Riong, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Kevin Low Fe Design Sdn Bhd 111.6sqm 109.5sqm 2012 Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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Main civic stair of the complex. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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West face, Block B, the bruised brick and unfinished concrete.
Gardenwall Offices In a reinforcement of ideals on a much larger scale, the Gardenwall Offices were conceived as an alternative to the proliferation of the soulless, unoccupiable glass towers that are our present-day office spaces; a predominantly western concept of white-collar elitism in a mediascape of buildings transformed by their corporate identities. The design of spaces are a continuum from one behavioural setting to the next, shaping and moulding the way we interact with our physical environment, making it almost cruelly paradoxical that we are forced to spend more than half of our lifetime in a space so completely devoid in its contextual reference to both place and community. In an attempt to plan for the amassing square footage, that could be as responsive as it usually is efficient, Kevin Low designed the building to innately respond to the specificity of the tropical climate of Malaysia and its people. Using building materials that are locally sourced and local labour that is conversant in the craft of its nuanced origins, the towers of brick and concrete are left largely unfinished. These façades naturally weather, a canvas for the scorching sun, driving rains and extreme rates of growth and decay on its surfaces; the discolourations only adding a certain charm of imperfection, or personality to otherwise either indescript
or notoriously aggrandised walls. The ductage is similarly left out in the open; clean lines running their course within minimal casing, favouring the benefit of higher ceilings than those stunted by a superficial one of neither functional nor aesthetic necessity. The technical intricacy of Low’s work can be read as an implicit condemnation of the industrial and post-industrial way of construction which no longer allows materials to express their innate textural and aesthetic qualities, but instead hankers after those submitted to an often, endless series of transformations that subdue their fundamental characteristics in a globally acceptable version of sharp-edged finesse. The four towers were amassed and configured ideally, to beget a differential pressure across its East and West ends to effectualise cross ventilation to every office within, each integrated with two full, operable sides of glazing and a common trellised corridor, to maximise internal airflow. Long external corridors shared by each floor, connecting the work spaces, also encourage people to step out into the daylight now and again, to create fresh possibilities of human interaction and generally make the office space more liveable by virtue of minor considerations of basic sociology. The towers converge at a shared plaza space; a space that allows people the semblance Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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Typical elevator lobby and the simply-cased, open ductage above.
Concrete carpet stair negating the need of imposing columns across the space.
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Vertical neighbourhood interior decks.
SITE PLAN
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It reminds us that the reason we look to nature for quiet contemplation is because its web of animated intricacies gives our eyes reason to wander, muse and draw inspiration from the metamorphoses of the commonplace. Kevin Low’s work affords a similar sentiment.
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WEST ELEVATION
The Forestgrove across the West Block extends across all the towers, providing the much needed shared space.
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of community, in what is actually a community of people. A forest of trees occupying this area, as with the rest of the building, continually grows higher, progressively enveloping more of the building in a cool shade that dually also functions as an ambient space for informal lunches and meetings. As an ode to what could be the vibrancy of a creative, and inspired work culture, the design of the shared community spaces is sometimes only an afterthought in a planned office milieu, as people are increasingly expected to be a part of the cursory meet and greet culture that huddles back to the routine behind their desks as soon as possible. A standardisation increasingly misrepresented as universality, which was soon media driven as the measure of propriety. Cultural and geographic environments are diverse, evolving and thriving, yet we somehow choose to dress our built environment in standardised ideals of LEED certifications and pander to global perceptions of pedigree. Spaces that thrive with activity because of their intrinsic yet grounded aesthetic only draw more activity, fostering stronger work environments and relationships. The services of the building, were the only strictly zoned spaces in the towers, renegaded to the side of the building facing the highway which greets the smells and sounds of the utility kitchens, toilets and HVAC with its own polluted cacophony. The project of the Gardenwall Offices comprehensively garners relevance in the specificity of its design for a context, which rightfully encompasses the physical site, society, culture and the rigors of contemporary use.
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Lobby, Block A.
FACT FILE: Project Name Building Type Location Architect Main Contractor M & E Engineer C & S Engineer Client/Owner Site Area Gross Floor Area Completion Date
: : : : : : : : : : :
Gardenwall Offices (PJTC) Commercial Office Space Damansara Perdana, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia Kevin Mark Low LAL Engineering Sdn Bhd MEP Engineering Sdn Bhd JPS Consulting Engineers Sdn Bhd Tujuan Gemilang Sdn Bhd 21 840sqm 103 473sqm 2010
East elevation across the highway. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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The Immeasurable
The Cuncolim Freedom Fighters’ Memorial and Valpoi Bus Stand & Community Hall in Goa by Rahul Deshpande and Associates form lines of inquiry into the spatial crux of temporal spaces and into a premise of whether architecture is an index of a further reality, or simply a means to an end. Text: Maanasi Hattangadi Images & Drawings: courtesy Rahul Deshpande
The Cuncolim Freedom Fighters' Memorial - a symbolic link of the past and the future. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
architecture
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s layered as architecture is, it has always been an intense intersection between intentionality and expression. But then, there is an idea of the immeasurable – the space of exchange between the two tangents. As Alvaro Siza said, "there are ‘complexities and internal contradictions' – external, also, when a new structure is confronted with what preceded and what surrounds it, taking on a not necessarily predictable destiny. For this reason, the more character a building has and the clearer its form, the more flexible its vocation". It is about curiosity, question, experiment. Goa-based architect Rahul Deshpande’s two projects, the Cuncolim Freedom Fighters’ Memorial and the Valpoi Bus Stand & Community Hall, cross the
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boundaries of a singular discipline and exists in multiple modes. Each space is coextensive through the concept he creates; an open space, a space constantly seeking resolution, a space defined by the possibilities of achieving more than its purpose of existence. Ways of interconnecting various possibilities then emerge and complexify systems of distribution with their own spatial and cultural mannerisms. The resonances, the responses that one seeks, present themselves already couched in the culture that generates them. Spaces upon spaces transpire. Newly-focused communities gather, fostered by newly-common interests. In a manner of speaking, in discussing and debating these issues, one can outline both these public spaces.
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SITE
GOA Salcette A R A B I A N
N H-17 M A R G A O - C U N C O L I M
CUNCOLIM BUS STAND
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LOCATION OF THE SITE
Cuncolim Freedom Fighters’ Memorial When Rahul Deshpande was sought to commemorate the Cuncolim Freedom Fighters’ memory as an architectural expression, it evolved into a similar node of celebration; a remnant of history that was pieced together as the future. The Cuncolim Freedom Fighters’ Memorial speaks of a tragic and heroic tale of ‘the brave and patriotic citizens of Cuncolim, who were the first to revolt against the Portuguese regime and were suppressed, tortured and brutally killed in their long war with them which eventually ended up liberating Goa on 19th December 1961.’ In retrospect of this milieu, the approach deliberated more on authenticity and atmosphere. Rahul Deshpande explains, “When the time had come for the people of Cuncolim to pay their tributes to their predecessors, they hoped for something that could relate to them on a personal level.” This agenda doubled up with his strong assessment of war memorials which, as he believes “are embroiled in local ethnic and religious tensions, either reflecting the contribution
Each element and view of the park is choreographed to evoke metaphorical allusions to the freedom movement. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
of particular groups to the conflict or being rejected entirely by others. Architecturally, war memorials are relatively conservative in design, aiming to produce a tragic but comforting, noble and enduring commemoration of the war dead generally through a lush green landscaped areas with a symbolic exemplification of their undying resolution, with either a tower or a flame.” With so many underpins to memorials – an obsession with the superficial over the fundamental, with image over content – being built today, it does seem that an expression that is predefined forces us to look at a concept in a certain way. Whereas here, the architecture attempts to suggest, or to invent other ways of looking at it; it is a structure that liberates one – to create new uses, newer limits, an audacity within a framework that is open to interpretation and re-appropriation. Here, one sees a cultural shift towards a more collaborative environment. The Memorial talks simultaneously of movement and monument, of instability and institution, a centre and its displacement.
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The Memorial Tower, aloft at 15m height, is meant to emphasise the 'unwavering determination of the Sons of Cuncolim.' Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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1 Concrete Walls 2 Black Granite Flooring 3 Glass-clad Tower of Triumph 4 Water Fountain 5 Sandpit Play area for children 6 Backlit Glass Name plate 7 Granite Seating 8 Planter 9 Bamboo Planter 10 Pump room and Filtration unit
PLAN
MIGHTY WHITE WALLS that surround and enclose the park depict the Powerful and Intimidating Portuguese. The White colour represents 'Pakhlo' or the white man, whereas their sharp edges represent the ruthless regime.
Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
BLACK GRANITE FLOOR represents the suppressed dark-skinned native Goans, always at the feet of the high and mighty White-skinned Portuguese - 'Pakhlo'. The doom and sadness of those times is expressed by rough and shining Granite flooring.
CHILDREN’S PARK The carefree children playing in the park with enthusiasm, are the true and ultimate representation of liberation.
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The design stands to represent different forms of preservation – of both, meaning and memory. It comes together as a moment of truth, weaving together its scale, detail and texture upholding ancestral and metaphoric ideas representing the Spirit, the Power, the Intimidation, the Struggle, the Revolt, the Bloodshed, the Resolve and the Triumph of liberation through its scale and elements. The design arranges these principles into a new language articulating a process wherein art becomes architecture. In a fairly ubiquitous setting, it catches one by surprise. Where one would expect a cloak of silence to descend on the city humdrum, it explodes into a cohesion of energy. Here onwards, the architecture plays out in distinctive roles, revelling in guidance of the metaphysical nuances attached to it. The facile planning is stretched over an area of 700sqm and gradually, the whole reading spans out in balance as an episodic narrative. ↑
CONCEPT SKETCH & SECTION
THE BLACK MIRROR The past and the future seem to interplay through the mirror reflecting the dark history and a promising bright future reflected by the fearless and happy children playing in the fountains.
BLOOD RED TOWER of TRIUMPH The lean but straight tower reminds us of the strong resolve and firmness of the sons of Cuncolim, which culminated in the Triumphant Liberation of Goa.
NAMES OF MARTYRS in RED The names of the freedom fighters etched in red transparent glass metaphorically represents the bloodshed and their sacrifice.
December 2013 Indian Architect & Builder - November
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A simple enclosure is worked out within the suburban context, within dramatically domineering walls that angle in synchronicity. “The Mighty White Walls,” the architect says, “that surround and enclose the park depict the powerful and intimidating Portuguese. The white colour represents ‘Pakhlo’ or the white man, whereas their sharp edges represent the ruthless regime.” Periodically and symbolically raked as a low slung fence, the unassuming railing at the entrance is the first indication of the experience and owes more to typifying the crudity of prison bars that determined the languishing fate of the freedom fighters than to a stylistic agenda. A gate at its far end, expanding into the sudden smoothness of a gleaming granite path, leads one in. It is the notion of a journey that takes one forward. The linear motion on this pathway treads on a surface of a deliberate texture that is partly polished, partly rough, an interpretation of the oppressed dark-skinned native Goans, who slaved at the feet of the Portuguese. Dispelling this overwhelming sense of desolateness and imprinting the sky with one gash of mellowed red while resting in a black pentagonal base at the end of this axial route, is the memorial – The Tower of Triumph. The work of art gravitates the park, unfolding a seating along the way, anticipating the white walls, and simultaneously commanding a focal point in the park. It simplifies and complicates a space and its surrounds congruously merge into telling of the story of emancipation. The prescribed walkway approaching the Tower, pauses in a curatorial moment at the white glass panels impressed with names of the martyrs in red and an attenuate seating amidst flowering shrubbery, midway. A striking analogy to the sacrifice and bloodshed of the freedom fighters to their motherland, the crimson hues of the names are accentuated by the backlit panels in the night. “The walk towards the Tower is very significant. Every view from the path has a well-etched role; a story to tell; a message to convey. The linear view in the direction of the pathway leads the eye to the reflection of the red tower on the granite floor, symbolising the resolve of the natives which made them emerge forcefully from the ground celebrating the victory and the freedom of their motherland," elaborates Rahul. Staged in an essence so intense, the Tower revels in an expression of converging mediums
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Vertical M S railing and gates mark the entrance, leading one to a path ringed with endemic Sadafuli flowers.
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The white angled walls depict the repressing Portuguese regime while the black granite flooring reference the suppressed dark-skinned native Goans.
The Tower, being reflected on the polished granite walkway, epitomises the resolve of the natives to rebel for their freedom and emerge victorious.
Personifying the sacrifice and bloodshed, the etched names of the martyrs glint in red.
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The composite structure of the tower is a framework with M S at the core, clad with two layers of toughened glass in a carefully chosen shade of red.
of art, engineering and architecture. Soaring to the height of 15m, it is grounded against the cantilevered stretch and unexpected windloads. The potent intent and poetic of the inert volume relies on the precise shade of red, an exacting exercise that the architect undertook to ensure that the analogy to the sacrifice is established. As the sky darkens, a flush of light washes the tower from the base – its form gently dissolving into night. “The design of a war memorial encumbered in historical tensions
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TOWER: SECTION
and sentiments of both pride and loss along with the varied expectations of the families of the martyr’s is easily one of the toughest challenge for a designer; and to get it right, perhaps the most fulfilling. The design of this war memorial proved to be an emotionally intense and challenging task as it had to pass on the message to the next generation and result in an engaging and distinctive public space which encourages interaction, attention, thought and question at the same time”, states Rahul. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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In light of this perspective, the choreographed spaces move from being sculptural to the perception of a public space in the cultural landscape of Cuncolim. Across a median crossover as a parallel sequence of events, are white frames of play equipment in a huge pit of white sand levelled below to the left of the pulpit-like path, and just ahead, lies a silent corner by the day which comes to life at night as a fountain arena. Its adjacent angular walls bear plates signifying and detailing the history of the war. The site, thus halved and painted with a variant so dynamic, does not assume altogether a different fabric from the memorial. From its overlaps, a new and particular rhythm is enlivened wherein visitors have accepted the plurality in multiple juxtapositions. They have made it their own – as children who throng the play area and splash in the fountains, as parents who explain the history of the martyrdom to them from the plaques, as families of the freedom fighters who come to reminisce and introspect. “This happiness, the enthusiasm and the glee on the face on every child is the true and ultimate purpose of the memorial; to express liberation and freedom”, says Rahul.
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The children's play area inset a contrasting yet lively parallel sequence of events.
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A filtration plant is set within the site which recycles the water for the fountains, for the shrubs and a bamboo planter in the northern corner beyond the walls and its voids. The wall framing the length of the site, and ultimately the Tower, is an expanse of black mirror amplifying the context. A reduct of the formal gesture, it reflects glimpses of a balance – of emotions, of two kinds of complexities, of a resonance between the past and the future, of a closed yet contextual, a reticent yet live space in the vicinity of the everyday. In an approach so visceral, the Memorial makes one see that it is absurd to conform to the narrow possibilities of a programme. There is, of course, a theoretical basis and history to place-making as well, but complementing that, there are the other pedagogical parts and other disciplines that feed into it. And it is not necessarily about those disciplines; it is about the process and the possibilities one is rewarded with. Summing up his intent, Rahul Deshpande says, “The memorial itself holds the promise the countless have died protecting – a liberated future for the generations to come. It is liberation in the truest sense of the word.”
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FACT FILE: Project : Cuncolim Freedom Fighters’ Memorial Location : Goa Architect : Rahul Deshpande Client : Goa State Urban Development Corporation (GSUDA) Structural Design Team : Rahul Deshpande, Anil Palekar, Archana Mahambare Karpe and Nisarg Gaude Project Management Consultancy : Rahul Deshpande and Ranjeesh Gopal Electrical Consultant : Castellino Consultant Prime Contractor : Shrika Constructions Area of Development : 700sqm Appx. Cost of Project : `73 lakhs Year of Completion : June 2009 Construction Duration : 9 months
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The background of the liberation movement is etched on a plaque on the southern set of white walls.
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Children playing in the fountain, emblematising the truest sense of liberation that the design seeks to manifest. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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The materiality and diaphonous form of the roof sculpturally identify with the rain-laden clouds surrounding the hills of the Western Ghat.
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VALPOI MARKET
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Jogger Path
Bus Stand
Community Hall
Children's Park Legend Bus Stand Area Community Hall Area Recreational Area
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ZONING PLAN
Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
Valpoi Bus Stand & Community Hall The value of doing more is necessarily not esoteric. And in doing so, it seems as an idea of counteracting – architecture that is not subjugated by self-constructed conditions but as an active response to the realities. As a sacrosanct approach, the Valpoi Bus Stand & Community Hall arrives at a defining moment. Imbued with material consideration, like the Memorial, it is a microcosm that can be read in many ways. This totality is seldom concerned, in any crucial manner, with matters of form or analyses of allusions. This idea then takes architecture beyond its isolated being, deeper into the conditions of its existence. The narrow roads of the Western Ghats, lead to the town of Valpoi in Sattari Taluka of Goa. The enquiry was fundamental - the Government of Goa approached Rahul to design a multi-purposed communal space inclusive of a Bus Stand, a Community Hall, and a Children’s Park with a Jogging Track. The design was thus proposed as a planimetric triptych, not to replace, but to generate an encounter of a building that is not only the core of a place but also its collective identity. The scenic context of Valpoi receives an extensive 200 inches of rain annually and is frequently exposed to bouts of thunder and lightning. Against this idyllic backdrop, the Valpoi Bus Stand and the Community Hall, as an extension of it, emulates the sense of the wafting rain clouds against the mountain slopes. Externally, this is expressed as a seemingly afloat metal roof that is designed to crown the random rubble laterite stone walls in an allegorical symbolism. The austere composition of these angular planes of stark hues forms the imagery of the complex. In a serial and lineal organisation of built-up area of 2862 sqm and area of development over 17500sqm, the planning is a dichotomy of porosity and compactness. Functionally, it is connected in fragments of the three spatial activities – each co-opting a singular volume. As open and exploratory are the Parking, Lawns and the Play Area, the constructs of the Bus Stand and the Community Hall are as hermetic and closeted.
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VALPOI JUNCTION
1. Gents Dress Room 2. Ladies Dress Room 3. General Store Room 4. Office 5. Store Room 6. Ladies Toilet 7. Gents Toilet 8. Kitchen 9. Service Area 10. Electrical Room 11. Drivers Rest Room 12. Canteen 13. Waiting Area 14. Shops 15. KTC Office 16. Inspection Officers' Room 17. Toll Booth 18. Ticket Counter Room 19. Rain Water Harvesting Tank 20. Idle Parking Bays
PLAN
The westward portion of the site is allocated for the Bus Stand - accessibility for the buses, waiting areas, offices and its transient parking zones. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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The inconspicuous lighting enhances the roof's expression as a stroke of lighting.
SECTION
(L & R) The functionalities of the bus stand, such as the waiting areas and the security cabin are subtly manifested in the restrained texture of the design.
The westward edge of the site is positioned as the Bus Stand, with sleek and secure laterite walls retreated against a widespread clearing for the accessibility of the buses. In its radical angles, coherence is achieved. As an applique and rhetorical component, these walls slant and convolute to characterise profiles of entrances, the security cabin and supports the columnar grid waiting areas. Progressively, a concise zoning such as the waiting areas, shops, canteens, drivers’ resting areas, unfolds wherein perambulation of the users and buses are carefully separated. The entrance of the Community Hall opens out into its individual parking. A rush of small steps ushers one inside through the latent entry. Lightly scaled in a rectangular disposition, the plan of the Hall is composed of the auditorium and generalised services such as the offices, storage, kitchen area and electrical room. Sombre laterite-clad funnel-shaped corridors within the Complex, flow from Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
the Bus Stand into the stillness of the auditorium. Amidst the bold use of white majorly, earthern hues and a variance of blue, the elementary aesthetic of the interiors can be manifested into any usage. Staggered planes trace the outline of the roof, concealing the lights and air conditioning ventilators. A layering of space is constructed hereon – openings of doors and windows pan out to the grassy lawns outside, and the threshold between the two spaces is ambiguously defined. With flexibility and duality infused into the space, it emerges as a physical environment that can adapt to the diversity of the community. As a continuous extension to this green landscape, the Children’s park to the east and the Orchid to the north assert their presence congenial to the humility of the place. Slightly recessed, the triangular sanded Children’s Park deviates from the monastic quality of the rest of the design. Detailed to retain its evident tactility
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The exposed laterite walls, defining the spaces, provide a sense of direction to the visitor.
Spacious corridors encased within the laterite walls lead to the community hall.
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Simply curated, the interior materiality is flexible so as to transform as required.
The auditorium of the Community Hall. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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through restraint of material palette in paved walkways and raised plinths inside the play zone, it celebrates an interplay of colours and liveliness. A winding walkway of around half a kilometre, in dialogue with the play area and the orchid, doubles up as a Jogger’s Park. The existing site terrain had a hundred mango trees and in a votive gesture, the Orchid’s trees are planted as a guerdon.
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The Community Hall opens out into lush green lawns.
The Children's Park and trail for the joggers.
Rooted in an extraordinary sense of ordinariness, the architectural ethic of the Complex identifies ineffably to the place. With referential adherences to the site being a mining quarry previously, the mounds of laterite are translated to the walls, and the roof enveloping the construct, closely in spirit to its lightningsparked sky especially in the figurative lighting at night, shapes a language of synergetic and intricate spatial forms. The sectional stacking of the conventional trussed roof framed from galvanised metal sheets is oriented to induce rainwater harvesting towards the middle. Conservation of this rainwater enables supply to the Orchid and for other utilities. Sculptural and suspended, the roof is illustrative of sensitivity of a making and materiality coupled with a scalar objective. The artistic motility of the roof, the intimacy of spaces and sociability of the programme mediates this quest of changing the perception of a subject and its relationship to an architectural object. It negotiates continuity, drawn from a response from the users to propagate a situational building to a reciprocal one, to allow their way of life to personify a space. For them, architecture becomes a spontaneous process and receptive to their familiar surroundings. When talking about this, Rahul mentions how the children are intrigued by the Community Hall and want to play in the locked places. “The journey is more important than the destination” quotes Rahul Deshpande as he explains the concept behind the design. He says, “This was made possible by offering its users the scope of visual anticipation at the possibility that the next will be better than the last; by indulging the concept of variety into the design and while going to the place one can really sink into the feeling it imparts on them.” And thus, grows the architecture of Valpoi Bus Stand perceptually in an incremental way – from a transient infrastructure, to a participation in public life, to a journey.
FACT FILE: Project : Valpoi Bus Stand & Community Hall Location : Goa Architect : Rahul Deshpande Client : Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (GSIDC) Structural Design Team : Rahul Deshpande, Anil Palekar, Bipin Chanekar Archana Mahambare Karpe & Nisarg Gaude Project Management Consultancy : Rahul Deshpande & Ranjeesh Gopal Prime Contractor : Shilpi Constructions (Civil & Electrical Works) R S Lawande (Acoustic Works) Aprant Motors Pvt Ltd ( HVAC) Ohm Engineers & Electricals Pvt Ltd (External Electrical work) Approx Estimate of Project : `7 crores Year of Completion : November 2012 Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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Is it about the evocative, the reminiscent or the expressive? Within the multiplicity of its nature, it emphasises on the importance of thinking of all three fundamentals at a holistic scale, including social and cultural dimensions. While Rahul Deshpande’s interest lies in this shift in approach, his concern has catalysed and extracted prolific meaning for public spaces or a more pronounced scale of urbanity. At outset, if one looks past the metaphors, the connection between the idealised order of architecture and of its venturing beyond its responsibility reveals the process of its own becoming. It stems from the architect’s own ongoing crusade, for public transport and more, not just in delineating project requirements. With the crises that accompanies the hollowness and ineffectuality of the conventional system of ‘problem solving’ practice as a whole, the design of the Memorial and Bus Stand & Community Hall, brings into play a conversation for generating architecture not just as a response but as a subject that begets one. Can we conjure a whole landscape out of a single physical process? How does one recover meaning from that landscape? Somewhere in between the answers to these concerns, lies the architecture of the two projects, as a fulfilment of a philosophical quest – of a remembrance and of a transition.
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The scale, sensitivity to its context and composition are co-mingled and reshaped to refine a new architectural language.
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The roof surges higher to mark a sense of arrival for commuters in the Bus Stand while acting as an insulation against the weather.
In faultless proportions, the roof is equivocal in investigation of form, expression, material and detailing.
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SCHOOL WITHOUT WALLS By Neelkanth Chhaya
Prof Neelkanth Chhaya critically questions the idea and role of an institution in an increasingly multidisciplinary design world. He stresses on an essential diffusion of knowledge from an array of influences and a constant learning-in-practice. Prof Chhaya advocates creating communities of learning which enable the teacher and the student to assimilate influences and react to an unpredictable future. In this essay, he outlines his thoughts on a desired model for an architecture school and the values associated with the same.
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revious articles in this series dealt very well with the large issues - conceptual, structural and methodological - which challenge the educational system and the profession of Architecture in India today. Valuable ideas and insights have been contributed which should form a base for evolving our response to this challenge. The nature of the tasks before the profession have been defined, the structure of the educational process has been discussed, the content and methods of teaching have been looked into and the values informing education have been outlined in various ways by Sen Kapadia, Prem Chandavarkar, A G K Menon and Shirish Beri. I propose to start by discussing the school itself, and only briefly touch on the larger issues at stake. Nothing of what I say is new, it has been done to a greater or lesser extent everywhere, but I feel it would still be useful to put these views down as reference for improving architectural education today.
“The biggest hurdles are twofold: the desperate shortage of teachers on one hand, and the ill-developed documentation of practice – whether grassroot practices or contemporary practice – which might form the study material for critical thinking.”
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Uncertainty and the responsive institution: how do we build organisms that are constantly learning? The one thing that is certain about the future is that everything is uncertain. The physical environment, which has always been considered to be an unchanging backdrop of human activity, is itself likely to undergo major changes and upheavals with climate change looming on the horizon. Resources are certainly likely to be less easily available, while the demand for them increases.
Economies are volatile and rapidly changing. Political structures are stressed to the limit and new and unknown forms of organisation are very likely. Technology is changing and transforming our relations to the world at an ever-increasing pace. Social forms, customs and norms of behaviour are rapidly changing. Cultures are in a stage of reconfiguration with increased and instantaneous communications. Less tangible, but of equal and perhaps even more importance, are the changes in the psychological and social environments of students and teachers. There is a huge proliferation of information of all kinds, readily available at the click of a button. The media technologies have encouraged a much smaller attention span, with the attention flitting from byte to byte at great speed. In this environment, sustained slow thought and deep inquiry are difficult. All physical or geographical contexts are instantaneously interconnected. Consequently all cultural forms and peculiarities are flattened, and identities of individuals and groups homogenise and desperately harden in defence, constantly reforming. In short, every aspect of life that we have considered stable and relatively fixed is no longer so. Similarly, individuals, both students as well as teachers, being affected by the changing environment of education, are also different, and institutions, built out of human
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architectural education
participation, need to take that into account. Institutions are built to suit particular conditions. Educational Institutions are no exception. In a period of flux, how do we build responsive, agile, flexible organisations which are capable of learning continuously, modifying their shape and their methods to suit ever-new challenges? In the past, institutions were built to answer an unchanging and eternal order. They were meant to propagate a mode of living that the culture considered valid. Today, perhaps, we need to keep the objectives more open. As a consequence, perhaps the shape of our organisations will need to be more open-ended and fuzzy. The contents of curricula and the methods of study will have to be more tentative and open to development. Moving Beyond the Industrial Model of Education: Where does learning occur? Is school a place where we train young people to be efficient workers to feed the needs of the society? Is it a place where existing knowledge is transmitted to new entrants to the profession? Perhaps these are part of its objectives. If this set of objectives was sufficient, we could go on forever simply refining the content and methods, making sure that competent individuals came out of this systematic grounding within the sheltered walls of the institution. We would have to attend to the clarity and manageability of the system, sufficiency of financial, material and human resources, the availability of appropriate instructional material, and the development of technologies and methods for the efficient transmission of knowledge. We could treat it as an industry. Industry needs a well-defined task, a clear picture of resources available – both material and human, infrastructure and tools. It is finite. We might think of it as an enclosed system, where the test is the difference in character between the raw materials that go in and the product that comes out. It is vital to make sure that the product fulfills the need. Prediction of what is needed is essential to the viability of this production. The more accurate the prediction, the better the fit and therefore, the more successful the industry.
Unfortunately (or fortunately!), it is not possible to have an exact idea of a society’s future development, except in broad statistical terms. This is especially true in our age of rapid, unprecedented and unpredictable change. Those professions that work with specific, concrete conditions, and respond appropriately – such as architecture – cannot define themselves narrowly. Sufficient flexibility and responsiveness, sufficient redundancy, has to be built into their outlook and methods. (Evolution is littered with the extinction of too-specific forms unable to respond to changing conditions.) Even if we could have accurate forecasts of the future, and therefore, treat education as an industrial enterprise with a defined product range, the Indian situation would present nearly insurmountable obstacles to installing such a procedure. Huge deficits of finance, infrastructure (space and machinery), skilled manpower (teachers), along with poorly prepared raw material (incoming students) and a fickle market would give nightmares to the best entrepreneur or manager! The Situation of Architectural Education in India Today: The huge proliferation of schools of architecture in India in the recent past presents a worrying picture. There are not enough teachers, and equally there is no tradition of creating basic learning resources such as texts and documents. It is in this scenario that we have to think of finding ways to ensure that quality of learning is not compromised. The biggest hurdles are twofold: the desperate shortage of teachers on one hand, and the ill-developed documentation of practice – whether grassroot practices or contemporary practice – which might form the study material for critical thinking. Other constraints, such as infrastructure and finance, might be more amenable to sorting out, but the above-mentioned hurdles are not easy to solve fast. This would mean that we have to reconsider the very structure of architectural education – its stages, its qualifications and its organisation. We need to envisage a different kind of Place of Learning entirely.
THE SCHOOL Going Beyond the Walls: What is the alternative? A School of Architecture can be thought of as a place where some kind of systematic introduction into the world at large, and the built environment in particular, is made possible. This is a process of enculturation, a steeping into the mores of the discipline of architecture. Yet can it also be a place where society is put under the lens, where alternative visions of what could be, are developed? Could it be also the place where the history of knowledge of the discipline and the profession are discussed? For such a kind of model of education, we would have to rethink the closed educational environment, and connect it creatively to other societal formations. We would need to consider the whole of our social and cultural environment as the place of learning, and think of the 'school' as a more defined place of learning the ways of thinking, which too would be continuously evolving in encounter with ongoing events. Such reflective thinking – where facts are gathered and organised in many different ways, critically scrutinised and imaginatively reconstructed – can occur only in small intense interactions between interested people. a) School as Locus and Centre of Learning Process: Each school should be composed of a small group of teachers, some with an academic and research bent of mind, and others doing practice as well as teaching. This tight-knit team should be alive to locally available expertise, and bring in, in a wellcoordinated way, people from various areas of knowledge, and enter into a dialogue with them, making their knowledge more effective in the architectural curriculum. b) Small groups for learning to think, large groups for transmitting information and existing knowledge: Instruction in well-established methods and information-based learning can effectively be taught to large groups of students. On the other hand, critical and creative Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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Architect, academician, and thinker, he was the Dean of the department of architecture at CEPT (Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology) in Ahmedabad till recently. He has researched and worked extensively in the domain of appropriate architecture for India, documenting places of historic significance and authoring numerous critical papers on the same. The wholehearted investment he has made in teaching architecture, and his intense involvement with the school, is reflected in his practice.
thinking needs face-to-face or small-group interaction. So even if, for economic or other reasons, there is a need to have large intake of students, the design studios should be offered to limited groups of students. c) Communities of Learning: School Networked, Network of Schools: Rather than a self-sufficient enclosed entity, it may be better to think of the school as a distributed and networked system, forming a strong and focal node of thought and knowledge. It would access all kinds of societal resources and channelise them to the task of learning-to-think. Another way of saying this is to say that a school should be a community of learners, some more advanced and experienced, and others more na誰ve and needing guidance, within a world of knowledge distributed within the profession, the tradition of building, the local knowledge in the artisanal system, research in the fields of ecology, landscape, biology, material sciences, various branches of engineering, the human sciences, planning, economics, management, etc. Such knowledge is also woven into literature, stories, myths, and forms of art. Every school is located within such a milieu. Could we envisage this community as one which taps into all these forms of knowledge while carrying out the process of education? India is fortunate in having skilled and inspiring thinkers in all of these fields, and even in small towns many of these resources are available. Could such thinkers become our guests and co-thinkers, co-teachers, dare I say co-learners? Further, such schools would have to consider themselves as part of a larger Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
group of schools sharing certain human and experiential resources. In short a community of schools. Each school should strive to build up a special area of interest and expertise, and thus, a diversity of approaches would become available. Perhaps the well established schools in an area should guide and mentor the new schools, and provide them support.
In a different way, engineers and scientists offer a greatly developed method and outlook, and definite clear-cut knowledge. They too should be involved in the students learning environment.
By collaborating and co-operating with other schools, a school might be able to synergise and enrich what it can individually offer. We have shown great alacrity in collaborating with schools from abroad, but we have not built links between schools in India itself. Doing this may help us fill the gaps and improve the educational content.
None of these specialists or learning methods can work in an isolated subjectspecific manner. Continuous dialogue with the architects in the faculty, even joint teaching, is needed for them to be able to recognise the needs of the young architecture student. Equally, they would challenge and engage the architect faculty members to continuously clarify, articulate, reformulate and even question their own biases. This creative engagement would transform the learning environment.
d) Tapping the Widest Range of Learning Resources and Experiences: Instead on focusing only on what happens in the classroom, we need to start tapping every kind of learning resource and experience. Building sites around the school are very good places to observe and learn by first-hand experience. Good practices can be understood, and bad ones can be an even better mode of learning! Works of architecture in the vicinity, whether contemporary or historical, offer excellent materials for study, discussion, analysis and critical thinking. Schools should make more use of these opportunities. Local artisans, technicians and craftspeople are a pool of knowledge of materials, tools and techniques, apart from having a very distinct mode of apprehending reality. If connected with the school, they could contribute very well to the learning process.
Finally, people from the arts, and experts in the social or human sciences do have a great contribution to make to the school.
e) Creating New Learning Resources: Schools should not only be places of transmitting knowledge, but should be also places where study and documentation leads to creation of new learning resources. This can be as simple as climatic studies (even basic climatic analyses of every place in the region), detailed and systematic documentation of local constructional practices (many parts of India have distinct well-developed traditions), glossaries of regional language terms related to built environment and construction, measured drawings of vernacular buildings in the area, documentation of environmental responses in planning and design, customs and lifestyle peculiarities of the area, etc. Thus, the school would become an archive of much sought-after local knowledge.
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Formats for the rigor and correctness of such documentation could be formulated, and a publishing programme initiated. Even if publication is not possible, at least each school should ensure preservation and cataloguing of such studies in their library for reference.
should be required to renew and validate her/his status as a registered practitioner by attending education programmes and perhaps by passing examinations periodically.
f) The Profession as a Source of Learning:
While extending the learning process spatially and in terms of resources as well as temporally extending the learning process through the life of the practitioner would benefit the profession, the need to have thoughtful, creative and competent teachers in the schools is urgently required. This must become an ongoing continuous process. There are many steps that could be taken in this direction.
Simultaneously, can we look forward to the profession documenting its works and its methods more systematically, in the form of case studies, innovative design practices and working details, as well as notes and discussions on particular aspects of practice? This again could strengthen the richness of study materials and help in the rebuilding of a professional and educational tradition and ethos. The Indian Institute of Architects and the Council of Architecture should continuously publish texts such as 'Architect’s Working Details', 'Practice Notes', monographs documenting design process and product of important contemporary works, perhaps award-winning designs, in an academically useful format. This needs to go beyond the image-rich coffee-table type publications. It need not have critical comment, only detailed design information. This should be considered an urgent priority. LIFELONG LEARNING IN THE PROFESSION: For the professional, learning does not end in the school. This is particularly the case today, when new developments in technology, and rapidly changing nature of tasks accompanying societal change, constantly challenge the professional. Learning new methods, and keeping abreast of changing societal realities is a necessary ongoing process.
TEACHERS:
I) Workshops for Young Teachers: At present National Institute of Advanced Studies in Architecture conducts very short subject-specific training programmes for teachers. There is a need for longer, intense and immersive workshops for teachers, of at least two weeks duration (preferably longer) conducted during vacation periods. Such workshops would emphasise teaching methods rather than subject content. II) Networks of Teachers, Platforms for Sharing and Discussion: Often teachers work in isolation, far away from opportunities for growth through discussion. There should be regular opportunities for meeting other teachers to share and discuss ideas and methods. This could be organised region-wise, or in terms of subject interest areas, or on other suitable lines. Biannual conferences/seminars should be held. The ACSA (Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture) is a good model of such a forum. Web-based forums can also be set up. These could be open for all teachers.
a) Need for a Professional Examination: Thus, the profession must institute both the Registration Examination, which should take place after a period of gaining professional experience.
III) Recognition and Propagation of Good Teaching Practices: Through publications and exhibitions good teaching practices should be widely disseminated.
b) Periodic Revalidation of the Registration:
IV) Tenure Optiions:
This should be supplemented by continuing educational programmes. Every professional
It is often the case that those who opt to teach become disconnected from the
currents of development in the profession. On the other hand, practitioners who teach often do not get deeply involved in the Teaching Community. A variety of options for involvement should make it possible for the teacher to have substantial period of involvement in the profession every few years. Similarly practitioners should be able to devote themselves fully to teaching for a definite period, rather than be only visitors. Other options of tenure types, which allow continuous engagement in the profession and vice-versa, should be instituted. All the above need active engagement of all institutions connected to architectural education and the profession, i.e. the Council of Architecture, Indian Institute of Architects, Universities and Schools of Architecture, and of course the government, both at the national and state levels. Especially where funding is needed, a co-ordinated and concerted plan of action involving all of them is essential. However, there is no need to wait for the total plan to emerge and be accepted. Action by teachers and schools should be possible and must proceed apace.
Neelkanth Chhaya, December 2013
This column invites eminent academicians, ethical teachers, teaching architects, institution builders and design educationists to comment on architectural education (and design education as an extension) in the context of India. Concerned architects / academicians / educationists / teachers and students are invited to write to us / call us / email us for further discussion. Your deliberations / observations / critique / counter-arguments and agreements will be deeply valued. We must create a meaningful community of like-minded people to negotiate our future as professionals and responsible citizens of a globalising India. We must hold ourselves responsible for the quality of architectural and design thought in the coming decades. Please send your feedback / comments to iabedt@jasubhai.com. IA&B believes that this issue is of prime (and unprecedented) importance at the moment for the future of architecture in India.
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spaces inspired by nature
spaces inspired by nature
spaces inspired by nature the author
Shirish Beri graduated in architecture from CEPT, Ahmedabad in 1974. Since then he has been trying to understand and explore the relevance of the quality of our space to the quality of our life through his numerous path breaking designs. His search for wholeness and his explorations find expressions in his paintings, sketches, poetry, film, eco farms and education besides his architectural designs. His works which tend to reflect his life values and address his concerns in life, have won him numerous national and international recognitions. He has lectured and exhibited widely at important forums in India and abroad. He lives in and practices from Kolhapur and Andur.
Shirish Beri the editor
Shirish Beri
Shirish Beri
Yashwant Pitkar is an architect and a photographer of architecture. He is Associate Professor at the Sir JJ College of Architecture, Mumbai. He was awarded the Senior Fellowship in Photography by the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, 2001. He has travelled extensively over the past two decades, documenting buildings of India with his unique photographic gaze. He has held many exhibitions of his photographs. His photographs are published in ‘Jagmandir’ (Penguin), a palace in Udaipur; ‘Whispers of the Soul’ by Sudhir Diwan; and his own book ‘The Romance of Red Stone: an appreciation of ornament on Islamic architecture of India’ (Super Book House). He is the co-editor of ‘Nari Gandhi’ (Art and Design Book Press) in 2009
This book tries to explore the many ways in which Shirish Beri tries to address his concern of man’s alienation from nature through his work as an architect. Eleven of his nature inspired designs featured here aspire to directly or indirectly help in bringing man closer to Nature. Each project with a number of relevant images and drawings, discusses its genesis, its basic concept along with its expression in the actual design, the technology, construction materials and finally the user feedback. Eight illustrated essays discuss his views on various issues concerning architecture and life. They range from sustainability to art; from the immeasurable spirit dimension to the vernacular architecture; from aesthetics to ethics in the architectural profession; from the various tools of connecting to nature to architectural education. A number of his own poems are also published here to give us a deeper insight into his thinking as well as to reinforce his thoughts that are expressed in the essays. Along with this book, comes a dvd of his award winning film “The unfolding white” which delves into his work that searches for the oneness and wholeness in life. Can the quality of our life improve when we live and work in spaces inspired by nature? This book answers this question in the affirmative.
can our work help us in starting a warm, intimate dialogue with nature? then, can this rapport with nature make us more sensitive, compassionate and responsible human beings?
Free DVD of the film “The Unfolding White” included.
Edited by
Yashwant Pitkar
www.superbookhouse.in
house.in
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Front Cover.
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Back Cover.
‘spaces inspired by nature’, a discourse by Shirish Beri on his values and theories highlighting the importance of nature, landscape and architecture, induces a lingering sense of inquisition and articulates that architecture needs to be a bridge between man and nature.
“I
n a very real sense, Shirish became a living example of the Renaissance man. When his father pleaded with him to send him abroad to study, as he had done with his elder brother, Shirish reasoned that the same money would build a small retreat in the nearby mountains. There in the mountains he could contemplate and think! There in the mountains of his mind, he could create!” says Christopher Charles Benninger in his foreword titled ‘portrait of the architect as a young man’. The book of this constantly evolving ‘young man’, much like his discourse and practice, has a natural flow to it. It is a compilation of his philosophy, musings, experiences and observations of nature through architecture depicting the same struggle for seeking truth, beauty, freedom and answers, as one does in the youth. The book opens with the editor’s note titled ‘an architect of nature’ by Yashwant Pitkar. Here, he recalls how a book that was originally placed in the context of a monograph on an architect, eventually evolved to become one on ‘an architect of nature’, with Shirish Beri in mind. This is followed by a letter from B V Doshi, wherein he mentions his dialogues with Beri and Beri’s continuous strive to scrape out questions in life. He also praises the spatial and volumetric qualities of his Kolhapur retreat stating, “it made me aware of your personal search for freedom.” In the introduction, Beri vividly ties together scenes from his life making for a visually stimulating narrative. The composition of the passage intelligently makes use of sepia-toned imagery alongside the narratives to enhance the nostalgia of walking through the author’s memories. Its account is intimate to read as if reading a diary of his conversations with people, the movement of thoughts Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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A sepia-toned image from the introduction.
↑SKETCHED PERSPECTIVES AND VIEWS
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Photographs of featured projects.
inside his mind, anecdotes and incidents that he has collected over time. The book then unravels as a carefully curated selection of his projects. Having designed extensively across the country, Beri presents examples from diverse typologies. Excerpts from dialogues with clients, users and curators of his buildings have been included herein to establish the author’s view of the social role of an architect which is of servitude and not propriety. Fascinatingly, the collection of photographs show the buildings in an inhabited state, perhaps as a conscious choice to emphasise the ‘human’ movement and interaction with architecture – a point that Beri often mentions in the book. Juxtaposing these at places, with a sketch from a similar perspective, the author subtly indicates the power of thought in translating the right ideas to physicality instead of mere dependence on technology. Regularly punctuating the array of projects are essays, poems and sketches penned down by the author, the latter being on topics varying from design to driving past old trees on familiar roads. The essays, however, are focused on key ideas such as ‘working with nature…towards sustainability’, ‘spirit & space’, ‘learning and teaching architecture’, ‘aesthetics of ethic in architecture’, ‘connecting to nature’ and ‘art as a metaphor in architecture and nature as an art in architecture’. His end note on ‘architecture without architects’ dwells on the subject of vernacular architecture or as he calls it “timeless architecture”. Through the poems and illustrations, Beri exposes glimpses of the constant tussles between his inner thoughts and the outer world. He also throws light on this metaphysical connection to a site which he describes as the calling to converse with the existing physical elements like stones, boulders, streams and mounds and placing his design in its womb. For an architect with such intensity, Beri is a frugal writer coining complex philosophies in simple words. As he says in a passage “my works are not designed to create iconic, grand, exhibitionist forms or graphic compositions that attract the eye, but to create more humane, socially relevant, more natural and sustainable spaces that nurture the human spirit”. Herein, he summarises his entire work ethic – of humility and of man, and his architecture as an iota of the entire ecology. The book comes with an additional DVD of his award winning short film – ‘THE UNFOLDING WHITE’, on his search for oneness
and belongingness in life. This film acts as an extension to the written word. It sets a tone of restlessness with images shifting between a frictional urban life and the respite that nature provides, with verses from his poetry narrated in the background, all the while creating the same inquisition as the book. In a nutshell, Beri follows a humane and sentient tone to explain his passions, work and philosophy driven by a conscience which is cosmically one with the nature. He effectively uses the rhetoric to evaluate and challenge the predetermined notions of the institutionalised minds of trained architects. He questions education and ponders on a platform for ‘unlearning’, for breaking away from the mass production of architects and for finding one’s inner voice in the cacophony of the sermons given by a great many. The humility with which he resists the mispronounced fads of modern architecture is penetrating. He asks one final time, “Can our work help us in starting a warm intimate dialogue with nature? Then, can this rapport with nature make us more sensitive, compassionate and responsible human beings?” It is a book that triggers one to find answers to these questions and many others of one’s own, from within.
FACT FILE: Book : spaces inspired by nature - Shirish Beri Edited By : Yashwant Pitkar Publisher : Super Book House Language : English ISBN : 978-93-81452-01-1 Reviewed By : Anusha Narayanan Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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Remembering Bawa
Geoffrey Bawa in Lunuganga, mid 1990s, Unknown Photographer. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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Architect and writer David Robson reminisces the known and unknown facets of Geoffrey Bawa – an incredible architect with an unparallel legacy of thought and practice in Sri Lanka and the tropical Southeast Asia. Robson’s intimate and personal account of the life and legacy of Bawa celebrates the tenth year since his demise in 2003. All drawings and archive photographs are presented courtesy of the Geoffrey Bawa Trust. Other photographs are by the author or have been drawn for the most part from the collection of Harry Sowden.
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en years have rolled by the year since Geoffrey Bawa’s death and fifteen since ill-health forced him to hang up his tee-square. Time to take stock... What was his legacy? How were his ideas disseminated? What influence has he had? What were his qualities? Who was Geoffrey Bawa?
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BAWA’S CAREER Bawa’s architectural career began at the end of 1957 when, at the age of thirty-eight, he returned to Ceylon after completing his studies at the Architectural Association (AA) in London and became a partner in the near moribund firm of Edwards, Reid and Begg. The practice occupied offices in the Colombo Fort. His fellow partners were Jimmy Nilgiris and Valentine Gunasekara and early collaborators included Turner Wickramasinghe and Nihal Amarasinghe. At the end of 1958, he recruited Danish architect Ulrik Plesner who worked as his close associate until the end of 1966.
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The Guest Wing of the Polontalawa Bungalow.
The early buildings with which Bawa and Plesner were associated – such as the Ekala Industrial Estate and the Bishop’s College Classroom Block – followed the precepts of Tropical Modernism that had been promoted at the AA by the likes of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew. After 1961, however, they adopted a more regionalist approach which took its inspiration from traditional typologies and technologies – as was evident in their designs for the Ena de Silva House, the Bandarawela Chapel and the Polontalawa Bungalow. In 1962, the practice moved to new purposebuilt premises in Alfred House Road where Gunasekara operated his own separate studio while Bawa recruited a batch of young assistants that included Anura Ratnavibushana, Ismeth Raheem, Pheroze Choksy and Vasantha Jacobsen. 1967 was a year of catharsis. A disagreement over attribution led to Plesner’s departure, Gunasekara moved out to set up his own office, Nilgiris was forced into retirement Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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Sitting at the Polontawala Bungalow.
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and the engineer K Poologasundram suddenly appeared as Bawa’s sole partner in a reconstituted Edwards, Reid and Begg.
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BANDARWALLA CHAPEL, DRAWING FROM EDWARDS, REID & BEGG
The following decade was one of consolidation. Bawa and his colleagues managed to ride the political storms and survived the constraints of the Bandaranaike government, producing a series of innovative designs for hotels, such as the Serendib at Bentota and the Neptune at Beruwala, and public buildings, such as the Mahaweli Tower and the Agrarian Research & Training Institute. One by one, however, his team of young collaborators upped sticks and left to set up their own offices. By 1977 when J R Jayawardene came to power, only Vasantha Jacobsen remained. The new government signalled the beginning of Bawa’s busiest decade during which he built the new Sri Lanka Parliament and the Ruhuna University Campus. In 1989, in his seventieth year, Bawa ended his partnership with Poologasundram and withdrew from Edwards, Reid and Begg. However, instead of retiring, he now started a small design studio in his Bagatelle Road home, recruiting a new generation of young assistants including Sumangala Jayatilleke, Amila de Mel and Channa Daswatte. Over the next two years Bawa was happy to amuse himself with a succession of fantasy projects in India and Southeast Asia until a commission to build the Kandalama Hotel at Dambulla in 1992 kicked off, a final six years of astonishing activity. In 1998, ill health finally overtook him and he suffered a stroke which left him paralysed and unable to speak and, after five terrible years in the shadows, he finally died in 2003.
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Bandarwalla Chapel, Photograph by Bawa, 1963.
Bandarwalla Chapel, Interior Photograph by Bawa, 1963. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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LUNUGANGA - BAWA'S ESTATE - PLAN DRAWING
Lunuganga - Bawa's Garden and Estate. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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LUNUGANGA - DRAWING
Lunuganga - Bawa's Garden and Estate.
BAWA’S LEGACY Lunuganga and 33rd Lane
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Lunuganga - Bawa's Garden and Estate.
Bawa’s personal architectural odyssey began in 1948 with his purchase of the rubber estate near Bentota which he renamed ‘Lunuganga’. The project to transform this into a landscaped garden took up most of his spare time and money for the next fifty years. It was here that he experimented with interplay between building and landscape, between inside and outside space. The result was one of the most important Asian gardens of the 20th Century. Then, in the early 1960s, he bought a row of tiny bungalows off Colombo’s Bagatelle Road and embarked on a process that would transform them into a labyrinth of courtyards and 'verandas' topped by a white Corbusian tower. This town house also served as his space laboratory where he experimented with architectural scenography and the effects of light and shade.
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Aerial view of Lunuganga.
His town house and country estate both survived and are open to the public. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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Bawa in his Studio, Sowden, 1985.
NONIS' COPY DRAWING OF THE 33rd LANE RESIDENCE, 1985
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PLAN OF JAYAWARDENE HOUSE, MIRISSA
Houses Although Bawa was involved in the design of atleast twenty-five private houses, several have been demolished and many more have been compromised by insensitive alterations. Today, only a few survive in their original form: the A S H de Silva house in Galle, the Raffle House in Ward Place, the Bandaranaike House at Horagolla and in Colombo the de Soysa House and the Jayakody House. Few of Bawa’s houses were open to the public and several have never been properly documented or published. Nevertheless, his designs were enormously influential and had a big impact on the housing aspirations of a whole generation of urban Sri Lankans. During the 1960s the population of Colombo was growing more rapidly than its infrastructure which meant that land for housing was becoming increasingly scarce. Shrinking plot sizes reduced privacy and comfort, threatening the viability of the bungalow typology which the British had bequeathed. Bawa’s first response was to turn the house in on itself and resurrect the courtyard. Courtyard houses had been popular with the Kandyan Sinhalese, with Jaffna Tamils, with coastal Moslems and even with the colonial Dutch, but their use was discouraged by the British and by British planning regulations.
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Jayawardene House, Mirissa. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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ENA DE SILVA HOUSE - COPY DRAWING BY VERNON NONIS, 1985
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Ena de Silva House, Colombo, Photograph by David Robson.
The Ena de Silva house was conceived as a series of pavilions and verandas contained within a high surrounding boundary wall and arranged to form a major central courtyard and five subsidiary courtyards. Its spatial qualities were enhanced by the choice of materials: walls of plastered brick, roofs of half-round Portuguese tiles, columns of satin wood, windows of timber lattice, floors of rough granite. The house recalled ancient Kandyan Manor Houses, but the open plan and continuous flow of space suggested a more contemporary parti. The typology was further developed in a set of row houses in Fifth Lane and an austere walled courtyard house in Cambridge Place. Sadly none of these has survived in its original form: the Ena de Silva House, surely one of the most significant Asian houses of the 20th Century, was demolished in 2011 to make way for a hospital car park, all but
one of the Fifth Lane row houses have been replaced and the Cambridge Place house has been much altered. Bawa’s second response was to build upwards. The house that he designed for future Housing Minister, Pieter Keuneman occupied three floors, and turned the normal spatial hierarchy on its head: the ground floor was given over to a car port, office and staff quarters, the first floor was occupied by the kitchen and bedrooms, and the top floor was reserved for sitting room and roof terrace. Similar tower designs were employed in the hauntingly beautiful Martenstyn House and the de Soysa House, while the Jayakody house and Bawa’s own house in 33rd Lane combined the typologies of tower and courtyard. A third response was the ‘roof house’: houses such as the Polontalawa Estate Bungalow and the Jayawardene House at Mirissa dispensed
with walls and asserted the primacy of the roof in the tropics. These prototypes offered a new design strategy for tropical urban living and set in motion a lifestyle revolution which would later spread across tropical Asia. Bawa drew inspirations both from 20th Century Modernism and from Sri Lankan tradition, and encouraged people to value their own past. Today, however, his architectural vocabulary and palette of materials have become so commonplace that Sri Lankans have forgotten just how radical they were only fifty years ago. The importance of his innovations, which has never been fully acknowledged in his native land, was clearly established by the Singapore-based writer Robert Powell in his series of books on the tropical Asian house – books which adopted Bawa’s drawing style and extolled his design philosophy. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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Serendib Hotel, Bentota - View of the Entrance Court.
Serendib Hotel, Bentota.
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Hotels
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KANDALAMA HOTEL IN DAMBULLA, 1992 - PLAN
Kandalama Hotel, Dambulla.
Between 1965 and 1997 Bawa produced designs for thirty-five hotels. Of those intended for Sri Lanka, thirteen were built but only five – the Triton, the Neptune, Kandalama, the Lighthouse and Blue Water – still accurately represent Bawa’s original design intentions. Of the ten designs for other parts of Asia only one - an extension to the Connemara Hotel in Chennai - was ever realised, though it has since been demolished. In 1966 Bawa drew up the master plan for Sri Lanka’s first purpose-built resort at Bentota and, having built its unique tourist village, went on to design two of the five designated hotels. The Bentota Beach Hotel was arguably the first in Asia to offer an alternative to the banalities of international hospitality architecture and proposed a building which responded to site, climate and tradition - a building which was ‘of its place’. The hotel was set on a mound between the river and the sea on the site of a former Dutch fort. The ground floor entrance area and service wings were contained within a massive stone rampart while the reception rooms were arranged around a courtyard at first floor level with two levels of bedrooms above them. The design used a palette of materials similar to that of the Ena de Silva House and invoked the atmosphere of a Kandyan manor house, but the organisation of outward facing cells around a central communal courtyard also appeared to draw inspiration from Le Corbusier’s monastery of La Tourette. Typically, Bawa had borrowed from widely different sources to create a new hybrid. Import restrictions forced Bawa and his team to improvise, and apart from the single lift, almost everything in the building was produced locally. Between them they produced all furniture as well as the soft furnishings and artwork. Tragically this masterpiece was ruined in a disastrous makeover in 1997 and the subtle magic of the original design was lost forever.
Lounge at the Kandalama Hotel. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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KANDALAMA HOTEL, DAMBULLA - SECTION Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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A series of hotels followed including the Serendib at Bentota, the Neptune at Beruwala and the Triton at Ahungala, each of them unique and each of them surprising in its originality. Then during the 1990s came a final outburst of creativity which produced the astonishing belvedere at Kandalama, the rugged ocean-defying Lighthouse in Galle and the urbane Blue Water at Wadduwa. Bawa’s ideas were carried to Bali by his friend, the artist Donald Friend, who invited him to build the Batujimbar estate at Sanur in 1973. This and the later White Book helped to broadcast his innovative designs around Southeast Asia where they served as a primary source for a whole generation of hotel builders and exerted a huge influence on hospitality design throughout the tropical world.
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The Bentota Beach Hotel - Atmosphere.
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The Bentota Beach Hotel.
The Bentota Beach Hotel - Old Aerial Image. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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Ruhuna University Campus.
Ruhuna University Campus - Courtyard. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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Educational, Social and Commercial Buildings. Bawa’s classroom designs for St Thomas’s Preparatory School and Bishop’s College employed the language of ‘Tropical Modernism’, whilst the St Bridget’s Montessori was an essay in ‘Contemporary Vernacular‘ and was intended to evoke the idea of a village school. Later, the Ruhuna University Campus offered a masterly demonstration on how to weave magic with simple low-cost buildings by marrying them to the topography and developing carefully landscaped spaces between them.
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Agrarian Research & Training Institute.
A series of low-cost buildings for the Catholic Church – among them the chapel at Bandarawela, the farm orphanage at Hanwella and the Integral Education Centre at Piliyandala – demonstrated how Bawa’s evolving methodology could be applied to a variety of inexpensive social projects. The Ekala Industrial Estate was an early essay in Tropical Modernism, though its simple white prismatic forms did not stand up well to the tropical climate. In contrast, the Pallakelle Industrial Estate near Kandy successfully adopted simple pitched roofed pavilions and employed a palette of traditional building components.
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Agrarian Research & Training Institute - View of the Court.
The Mahaweli Office Building, commissioned in 1976 for the State Mortgage Bank, was an uncompromising modernist design for a sculptural high-rise and was later hailed by Malaysian architect Ken Yeang as the world’s first ‘bioclimatic skyscraper’. The building’s plan-shape acted as an aileron to trap prevailing winds and was orientated to minimise solar gain, while its façades were designed as a breathing wall to encourage cross-ventilation. The Agrarian Research and Training Institute in contrast, created a prototype for low-rise low-energy office development, and used simple low-cost materials. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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The Sri Lanka Parliament Building From Across The Lake.
The Sri Lanka Parliament The new Parliament in Kotte, commissioned by President Jayawardene in 1979, was Bawa’s biggest and the most significant work and survives almost intact, though after thirty years it too is showing signs of wear and tear. Bawa imagined that the Parliament would stand on its own island in the middle of a new lake at the heart of a garden city. The building’s necessary monumentality was softened by its pitched roofs and deliberately contrived asymmetries and it was surrounded by gardens and pavilions to host meetings between people and their elected representatives. Together with Tamil engineer Dr K Poologasundram and architect Vasantha Jacobsen, a devout Buddhist, Bawa set out to create a building which would reflect every facet of Sri Lanka’s complex history and culture and serve as an icon of transparent and accessible democracy. However, architects’ intentions are often ignored. The UDA’s plans for a garden city were forgotten as the new Parliament was engulfed by the chaotic new suburbs of Kotte and Battaramulla, while the idea of an open parliament was sacrificed to the need for security, and the intended image of multi-ethnic plurality was subverted to one of Sinhalese-Buddhist hegemony. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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The members' Terrace and Garden at the Parliament in Kotte.
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The Broadcasting of Bawa Bawa used contacts in London to gain publicity for his work. The Architectural Review showed seven of his early projects in 1966 and twelve years later carried a perceptive critical essay by Michael Brawne under the title ‘Bawa in Context’. The first book devoted to Bawa’s work was published by Concept Media (the publishing arm of the Aga Khan Foundation) in Singapore in 1986 and came to be known affectionately as the ‘White Book’. It was orchestrated by his friend Christoph Bon with the assistance of Architect C Anjalendran, and was edited by Brian Brace Taylor. The book was the first of its kind to feature an Asian architect and was unique for its mixture of picturesque drawings, all made in the explicit Bawa style, clear photographs and short pithy texts. It was an instant success, particularly across Southeast Asia. Ten years later, I was invited by Bawa to collaborate with him on a more detailed and comprehensive book but our collaboration ended suddenly when he suffered a massive stroke early in 1998. This tragedy almost nipped the project in the bud, but his trustees asked me to continue under my own steam. My book, ‘Bawa the Complete Works’, finally appeared in 2002, a year before his death. Had Bawa not been incapacitated, the resultant book would have been different, but his influence on the project was still powerful. I tried to represent Bawa’s point of view, though, as I became aware of the importance of his various collaborators, particularly Dr Poologasundram and Ulrik Plesner, I tried to give them the credit they had been quite wrongly denied in the White Book. My aim was to present an objective testimony while avoiding the temptation to theorise or descend into hagiography.
An early reaction to the book, before it was even published, came from the Tel Aviv lawyers of Ulrik Plesner who attempted to stop its publication, claiming that the book “would cause grave damage to the reputation of their client”. This was surprising because Plesner had helped with the research and had approved the final draft before it went to the publishers. The book gave full credit to his role as Bawa’s associate and as co-designer of projects that they developed collaboratively between 1959 and 1966. However, as he has shown in his own published account of his Sri Lanka years, Plesner wanted more: he sought to promote himself, not just as Bawa’s collaborator, but as his 'guru'. With disarming hubris he wrote: “I felt I had serendipitously met something (sic) great which needed nursing and guiding. And I believe that the only architecture school Geoffrey ever had was the one I put him through (over) the next few years.” The reality of their collaboration is now impossible to unravel. Over a period of seven years they were close associates and good friends. Their final unhappy separation was precipitated by Bawa’s solo acceptance of a citation from the Hawaii Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and sealed by Plesner’s insistence that he be given equal credit for their joint work. Plesner went on to publish a number of their projects under his own name and Bawa expunged him totally from the White Book of 1986. Plesner implies, misleadingly and erroneously, that he took on the leading role in the sixteen projects which are featured in his book, though they were all built under the name ‘Edwards, Reid and Begg’, and were designed collaboratively with Bawa and other office colleagues. He makes much of his role in the design of the Polontalawa Estate Bungalow, the jewel in his crown,
and gives an account which relegates Bawa’s contribution to that of a clown who entertained the bystanders. But it was Bawa who set aside the original design and persuaded the client, Thilo Hoffman, to shift the bungalow into a pile of boulders. This was confirmed by Hoffman in 1998: ‘The real client was I. Both Geoffrey and Ulrik were involved; the first tying of strings laying out the foundations of the different parts was done in my presence with Geoffrey and Ulrik and our people. Geoffrey provided the ideas, the inspiration, the basic concept and Ulrik transformed them into reality’. Many predicted that, with Plesner’s departure in early 1967, Bawa would sink into obscurity. But the reverse was true – Bawa’s career ran on for three more decades during which he continued to reinvent himself and produce works of astonishing originality: in the final analysis the period of their collaboration accounted for only seven out of the forty years of Bawa’s working life. Bawa’s international standing was confirmed in 2001 when he received the Aga Khan Special Award for Architecture, and again in 2004 when he was the subject of a massive retrospective exhibition in the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt. At the same time, critical articles on his work appeared in journals in such far flung places as Singapore, Japan and Australia. Ironically, however, his work is now held in higher esteem in other parts of Asia such as Singapore, Malaysia, Japan – than in his native land. In Sri Lanka people pay lipservice to his memory, but little is done to protect or preserve his legacy. One by one his buildings are demolished or altered beyond recognition and the number of buildings which survive in a condition which truly represents their architect’s intentions reduces year by year. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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Bawa’s Influence Bawa’s methods and ideas were first disseminated by his early assistants, who broke away from Edwards, Reid and Begg to establish offices of their own. Each had contributed to the Bawa phenomenon in their own way but each went on to develop their own voice. Though clearly influenced by their time in his office, each produced work which was refreshingly original and none resorted to ‘Bawa Pastiche’.
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Office at Alfred House Road, 1985.
Bawa began to tackle projects outside of Sri Lanka: in the 1970s came the Madurai Club and the Connemara Hotel in South India and the Batujimbar Pavilions in Bali; in the late 1980s there were the spectacular unbuilt projects in Southeast Asia: the Singapore Cloud Centre, the Bali Hyatt Project, Banyan Tree Resort on Bintan, the Albert Teo Row Houses; in the early 1990s came the magical designs for houses in India. All of these contributed to Bawa’s growing reputation, especially across Southeast Asia. But the biggest effect came from the publication of the White Book in Singapore in 1986. It was said at the time that you could not visit an architects’ office in Singapore without finding a well-thumbed copy open on someone’s desk. In the barren desert of functionalist Singapore, Bawa’s regionalist methodology spread like wildfire and was adopted by a whole generation of architects, including Willie Lim, Ernesto Bedmar, Kerry Hill, WOHA, Bensley and Bunnag and Made Wijaya. However, the White Book also encouraged pastiche Bawa. From Bali to Bangkok, the Bawa style was applied like wallpaper. In Singapore McDonald's commissioned a McBawa drive-in complete with reflecting pools and Frangipani trees. In Sri Lanka ‘Bawa-type’ houses sprang up across Colombo’s suburbs and a rash of Bawa-style public buildings appeared, among them the Timber Development Corporation building at Kotte, the Welikada Plaza in Rajagiriya, and Savsiripaya in Wijerama Mawatha. Even the Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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Alfred House Road Office - Gallery.
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new British High Commission was not immune. After 2000 a group of young architects, among them Madhura Prematilleke, mounted a campaign against what they saw as Bawa-mania. Prematilleke called for architects ‘to come out from under the Bawa umbrella’. This sent an important message to the next generation – learn from Bawa, but do not copy him. Bawa, of course, never ‘copied himself’ and tried continually to develop new ideas – he would surely have supported Prematilleke’ admonition.
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Bawa with (L-R) - Channa Daswatte, Ismeth Raheem and C Anjalendran at Lunuganga. Photograph by Robson,1997.
The Geoffrey Bawa Trust Bawa’s estate has been managed since the late 1990s by the Geoffrey Bawa Trust. Against all odds this small group has succeeded in maintaining his Lunuganga Garden in pristine condition and has now turned his Colombo house into a living museum. In 2004 the trust invited Senake Bandaranayake to deliver a memorial lecture in the ARTI building and this has now become an annual event, sponsored by Miles Young, to which key speakers are flown in from around the world. The principle of ‘coming out from under the umbrella’ under-pinned the Geoffrey Bawa Award which the Trust inaugurated in 2009. Based on the Aga Khan Award Cycle, the award aims to encourage good new architecture of whatever complexion. Its first two cycles have revealed a rich seam of original architectural talent and the premiated designers can be said to have learned from Bawa without imitating him. Shyamika de Silva’s Indrasena House is a minimalist modern design which sets up a powerful dialogue between inside and outside space, Palinda Kannangara’s estate bungalow at Ginigathena civilises a rugged landscape, Thisara Thanapathy’s townhouse is a contemporary take on the Bawa-inspired tradition of inward-looking courtyard houses.
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A S H DE SILVA HOUSE IN GALLE - PLAN
A S H de Silva House in Galle. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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Bawa’s Qualities Bawa enjoyed a unique view of the postcolonial world: he was half Asian and half European and his life spanned the divide between colonial Ceylon and independent Sri Lanka. He was an addicted traveller who filled his mind with a rich store of architectural images and he delved into the whole history of architecture. But he also explored the architectural traditions of his native Sri Lanka and was able to fuse elements from widely different sources to create new ideas. He was an intuitive designer with a strong spatial sense and could conjure up fully fledged ideas in his head. These often developed as scenographic journeys, rather like storyboards for a film. He had come to architecture from an interest in garden making and conceived of buildings as elements in a landscape, seeking always to break down the barriers between inside and outside space.
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SKETCHES - THE SINGAPORE CLOUD CENTRE (UNBUILT), 1989
Although he was no great draftsman, he produced endless sketches of plans and sections in order to convey his ideas to his colleagues. He recognised his own shortcomings and surrounded himself with people who were good at doing those things which he was unable to do himself. With them he acted as an impresario, the conductor of an orchestra, an incisive judge, an arbiter of taste, an uncompromising critic: they enabled him to achieve things that he could never have achieved by himself whilst he inspired them to achieve more than they had ever dreamed of. The Architectural Association in London introduced him to modernist ideology, but his earlier training as a lawyer had bred in him a Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
Singapore Cloud Centre - Model (Unbuilt).
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PROPOSAL FOR PONDICHERRY HOTEL, 1973
healthy disregard for cant. Although he adopted a modernist approach in his early work he soon realised that white cubist architecture was unsuited to the humid tropics and shifted towards a regionalist position, borrowing from vernacular forms and adopting local materials and technologies. Coming at a time of economic restraint and import restrictions this shift produced a way of building which was efficient, inexpensive and appropriate to climate and culture. Bawa was driven by pragmatic considerations: local materials were cheap and readily available; traditional forms had been developed to function optimally in the tropical climate. He avoided using large areas of glass or air-conditioners because these were expensive and increased energy consumption. His buildings were naturally cool and comfortable and, long before the terms had been coined, were sustainable, energy conscious and ecologically friendly. He was also driven by aesthetic considerations and strove to create buildings which were contemporary in spirit and yet rooted in tradition. He derived enormous pleasure from making buildings, particularly if they gave pleasure to others, and it was no surprise that he was singled out by philosopher Alain de Botton in his book ‘The Architecture of Happiness’.
Madurai Club Court, India.
In the final analysis we can say that Bawa bequeathed a new but timeless way of building to his native Sri Lanka just as it was emerging from four centuries of colonial hegemony. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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Who Was Geoffrey Bawa? Who then was Geoffrey Bawa? What was the source of his genius? Ten years after his death these questions remain unanswered.
Here, then, is the unanswerable conundrum – what transformed this slightly wayward and aimless dilettante into such a committed architect? Wherein lay his genius? What was the source of his inventiveness? We shall probably never know. - David Robson for IA&B, 2013
Bawa was a very private individual. He enjoyed good company but had few close friends and remained a solitary figure. He divided his life into compartments and went to considerable lengths to keep them apart. When friends got too close, or when they strayed across compartmental boundaries, some inner mechanism drove him to repulse them. He had no long-term partner and, during the latter part of his life, lived only for architecture. At times very generous, he could also be quite mean and was capable of childish spitefulness. Bawa liked to travel both to experience new places and to escape from the claustrophobic world of Colombo. But his greatest pleasure was to spend time in his garden at Lunuganga. He destroyed the greater part of his office records in 1997. He did not keep a diary or, if he did, none has survived. He was reluctant to discuss his work in theoretical terms and avoided interviews. His one written statement about his architecture appeared originally in the Times of Ceylon Annual of 1968 and was then recycled for the Architects’ Journal in 1969 and finally popped up in the White Book in 1986. He avoided being photographed and the only clear recording of his voice was unearthed by accident in London after his death. When Tissa Abeyesekera made his moving film about Lunuganga, Bawa was only willing to appear as a shadowy silhouette in the final long twilit pan shot. In 1954, when Bawa arrived at the Architectural Association in London, there was nothing in his earlier life to suggest that he was cut out to become an architect. His lawyer father had died when he was four years old and he was brought up by his mother and two maiden aunts. His brother was ten years his senior and they were never close. His school career at Royal College was unremarkable and he failed to distinguish himself at St Catharine’s College Cambridge or in his short-lived career as a lawyer. In 1947 a world tour took him through Southeast Asia and across the United States and eventually to Italy where he thought to settle down. But in 1948 he returned to Sri Lanka, bought an abandoned rubber estate, and embarked on a project to transform it into a landscaped park, the project which would awaken his interest in architecture. Six years would pass, however, before he registered as a student at the Architectural Association. There, during three years, he failed to make any lasting impression and was remembered only as the oldest, the tallest and the most ostentatiously wealthy student of his day. Then, at the age of thirty-eight, he returned to Ceylon and embarked on a career which would lead him to become one of the most significant Asian architects of his day. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2013
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Bawa in a Toy Car, 1926 (Archival Image).
DAVID ROBSON David Robson’s intriguing journey as an architect started in 1970s when he worked as the chief housing architect for Washington New Town. In the 1980s, he was assigned as an adviser to the committee formed by the Sri Lankan Government of its housing programmes and became intimate with the Sri Lankan landscape. In the early 1984, David Robson joined Brighton Polytechnic School of Architecture as a lecturer, where he worked till 2004. Robson divides his time between practice and teaching and is a prolific writer. Robson has written some remarkable books on legendary Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa including ‘Geoffrey Bawa: The Complete Works’. Robson has also written and researched on contemporary practices of architecture in Sri Lanka and the Southeast with titles like 'Anjalendran: Architect of Sri Lanka', and 'Beyond Bawa: Modern Masterworks of Monsoon Asia'.