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VOL 29 (8)

APRIL 2016

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MUMBAI

TOTAL NUMBER OF PAGES INCLUDING COVER 92

INDIAN ARCHITECT & BUILDER

“I really believe in the idea of the future.”

- Zaha Hadid(1950-2016) Tribute in IA&B May 2016 issue.

FOCUS 361o Conference 2016, ‘Architecture & The City’ IN CONVERSATION I M Kadri ARCHITECTURE Jindal Vidya Mandir, Ratnagiri

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VOL 29 (8) | APRIL 2016 | www.iabforum.com RNI REGISTRATION NO. 46976/87, ISSN 0971-5509 INDIAN ARCHITECT AND BUILDER

Chairman: Jasu Shah Printer, Publisher & Editor: Maulik Jasubhai Shah Chief Executive Officer: Hemant Shetty

CURRENT

The latest news, events and competitions in architecture and design from India and abroad.

Editorial: Meghna Mehta, Divya Pai Email: iabedt@jasubhai.com Design Team: Mansi Chikani, Kenneth Menezes Subscription: Dilip Parab, Prakash Powar Production Team: V Raj Misquitta (Head), Prakash Nerkar, Arun Madye

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Information of state-of-art products, from across the globe, which are slick, contemporary and innovation.

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IN CONVERSATION

An Eloquent Balance Between Traditional And Contemporary Practices

In conversation with IA&B, I M Kadri speaks about his early influences

and the architectural journey of I M Kadri Architects.

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ARCHITECTURE

Educational nucleus in a natural setting Designed by I M Kadri Architects, the Jindal Vidya Mandir creates a collective learning experience through a climate responsive structure within a placid environment.

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361 DEGREE CONFERENCE 2016

Architecture and the City Exploration and meeting of ideas through practices seen from all over the world, 361 Degree Conference 2016 analyse-synthesis-evaluate the subjects for professionals and student participants.

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POST EVENT

An overveiw of 361 Degree Conference 2016, which was held at the Nehru Centre in Mumbai on 17 th and 18th February 2016.

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LECTURE SYNOPSES Toyo Ito, Toyo Ito & Associates, Japan

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Sir Peter Cook, CRAB, UK

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Scot Horst, USGBC, USA

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Yann Follian, WY-TO, Singapore

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Chitra Vishwanath, BIOME, India

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Sanjay Puri, Sanjay Puri Architects, India

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Paolo Matteuzzi, Zaha Hadid Architects, UK

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James Law, Cybertecture, Hong Kong

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Stephane Paumier, SPA, India

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Ton Venhoeven, Venhoeven CS, Netherlands

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Eugene Pandala, India

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Christopher Benninger, CCBA, India

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EPILOGUE

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Architecture in coherence with the city - an issue or a resolve ?

SPACE FRAMES

Craft - An Eternal Possession A photo essay portraying a rich cultural heritage preserved and refined with time in the blissful land of Uttarakhand.

Cover Image: © Iwan Baan and Zaha Hadid Architects

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ERRATUM Article ‘In Conversation with Aniket Bhagwat’ in the January 2016 issue of IA&B: courtesy ‘Terrace Alive’ magazine, an initiative of Dr.Fixit - Pidilite Industries with IA&B. Printed & Published by Maulik Jasubhai Shah on behalf of Jasubhai Media Pvt Ltd (JMPL), 26, Maker Chamber VI, Nariman Point, Mumbai 400 021.

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An eloquent balance between traditional and contemporary practices In conversation with IA&B, IM Kadri speaks about his early influences, his architectural journey and finally the recent publication on his works.

Text and Images : courtesy I M Kadri Architects

Indian Architect & Builder - April 2016

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Jivan and Maneck.

of a verandah within the home creates urban courtyards transported from the old architecture of Ahmedabad.

IA&B: Clients play an important role in anchoring the growth of an architecture firm to support its beliefs and philosophies.

How did you gain the support of your esteemed clients?

IMK: I’ll tell you about one of my clients - it all began with a design competition for the TATA Chemicals office at Bombay House. All other architects had proposed, senior officers to be seated alongside the windows whilst the staff was made to be seated deeper inside. I reversed the planning – I proposed that all the staff be alongside the windows and senior officers be located in the interiors of the office. On seeing my proposed design, the then Manager at TATAs called me and said ‘I like you’. I was nervous. Turned out he was extremely happy with my design as it aligned with his philosophy of uplifting the workforce.

That was the beginning of a new relationship with the house of TATAs. Following this, I got the opportunity to work on several projects with the TATA’s including the TATA Chemicals Township at Babrala.

An aspect of my work that I have consistantly maintained over the 200 projects I have designed is that I never repeat my designs. I charge a hefty fee from my client and I then believe that my buildings are my

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Haveli House.

client’s property or possession. As every client must take pride in the buildings that I have designed for them, I reinvent and innovate in every one of my projects.

IA&B: Lastly, we believe you are launching a book on your wide range of works. Could you tell us a bit about the monograph, “The Architecture of I M Kadri”?

IMK: It is after long that we have released the book ‘The Architecture of I M Kadri’. The book is authored by theorist Kaiwan Mehta. When we began writing I did not know what to expect since it is a critical biography. But surprisingly, the book has turned out beautifully.

It is not just a portfolio of works but a thematic and historical analysis of the architect’s oeuvre. Along with being a monograph, it traces the architectural history of India in the decades post-independence through reflections on my works.

The book has a lot of archival material. Axonometric views that were developed to determine form and proportions of buildings and meticulously done ornamental details at that time are all showcased in the form of hand drawings. The book has a Foreword by architecture historian and professor of architecture theory, Peter Scriver.

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TOYO ITO

Redefining Boundaries of Architecture Toyo Ito is considered one of the world’s most influential architects. His potential to explore new forms to address the private and public life of an individual were some of the key aspects of his seminal projects such as the Sendia Mediatheque, Tama Art University Library, TOD’s Omotesando Building and many more, which eventually led him to win the Pritzker Prize in 2013.

Day 1, Lecture Synopsis: Meghna Mehta Images: courtesy Archin Photo and Toyo Ito & Associates.

Initiative for Tomorrow’s architecture Every year, regional cities, old dwellings and historical areas are destroyed and redeveloped into new skyscrapers. Every building is a grid becoming neutral and homogenous. In skyscraper apartments, it is separated from the outside environment. Each unit is identical, unattached to its surroundings belonging to any floor rise or region. Not only the architecture, but even the people have today, become impersonal and identical.

An interesting idea can be, to understand, how one changes the boundaries of architecture.

Modernist architecture clearly divided the inside and the outside. Toyo Ito’s architecture attempts to redefine this rigid boundary. Sometimes, amalgamating the exterior natural environment within the built, in other cases, the natural light or air ventilates through the building, while occasionally creating system networks.

The Boundary In contemporary buildings, the structure is disconnected from the outside due to the boundary, the walls and the roofs. In olden days, Asian buildings had transitionary spaces from outside to

Asian Architecture and cities have inherited the culture of integrating with nature and are opened to nature. ↑

© CapitaLand

CapitaGreen.

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© National Taichung Theater

National Taichung Theater, Taiwan.

© National Taichung Theater

National Taichung Theater, Taiwan.

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© Miyagi Prefecture Sightseeing Section

Sendai Mediatheque.

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SIR PETER COOK

Dreaming Reality One of the founding members of Archigram, the avant-garde futurist architecture group of the 1960s, Sir Peter Cook, the British architect, professor, and writer has been a pivotal figure within the global architectural world. His significant works are the Art Museum in Graz, Austria (Kunsthaus) has brought his radical ideas on technology to the world. Sir Peter Cook and other members of Archigram were awarded the Royal Gold Medal by the RIBA in 2004.

Day 2, Lecture Synopsis: Meghna Mehta Images: courtesy Archin Photo and CRAB studio

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rchitects can be understood as artists and dreamers while in the past they were considered as individual professionals. The architects of the past dreamed of being called artists. Le Corbusier is known to have himself called an artist as opposed to an architect. Today, the dreamers and drawers are part of the game, the encouragement can be seen in the form of digitisation of processes where students dream and draw using the robots. For all the dull architecture being taught today, many prefer to teach “What not to do, What not to try. Where not to go. Who not to read.”, because according to some, dreams are not meant to be realised.

Dreams can be old dreams, dreams that might be realised, might not be realised relating directly to the tangible nature of things.

Metamorphosis The drawing of the Plugin city 1965 very often being misinterpreted, is an interpretation of what happened to a little old village if converted into a city, hoping to bring the idea of the nature of ‘Internationalism in architecture’. Physical Metamorphosis is an extension of an idea or a dream, resulting into the transformation into a built structure which starts with the form and is then left to be in operation. The accomplishment of the success of such an idea is when the building takes over the patina of time, the vegetation starts to grow and the wood does not remain pristine achieving a natural evolution.

The evolutionary process of an idea can be scribbled through or it can be an idea for an illustration for a magazine. The metamorphosis of an idea lies in the process from its conceptualisation to its fabrication to when it is rolled back and forth when it is reconsidered many times to ultimately reach its realisation.

Slithering, Flying, Melting and Overgrowth Philosophies of various styles of architecture have developed through time and some also into ‘isms’, due to the various interpretations defining models of space, form, order and design. The notions of ‘slithering’, ‘flying’, ‘melting’ and the idea of ‘overgrowth’ are such ideas developed through the thoughts and philosophies developed through the drawings and concepts imagined, dreamed and evolved over many years.

Slithering could mean a gliding or sliding form around a pre-existent building or a bicycle path, which becomes an animator, gliding through a student campus. It can be comprehended as the form of the building or the idea of ‘slithering’ and translucency used together in a Indian Architect & Builder - April 2016

You have a germ of an idea, you fabricate it to a certain degree and then you log the bit that was fabricated and you turn it back on itself and reconsider the idea and move it forward, a roll over between the dream and the reality and back again.

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© Peter Cook

Montreal Tower, 1963.

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© Ronald Kreimel

The Hidey-Hole seen at the Department of Law and Central Administration, Vienna university of Business and Economics

© Richard Bryant

Drawing Studio, Arts University Bournemouth.

structure. The concept of ‘flying’ can be regarded through its many mediums. Some of the key drawings of the 20 th century architects, dream of using the idea ‘flying’ or ‘leaping’ out through marvellous engineering techniques.

The concept of ‘Melting’ can be understood as an idea of the structure merging with the ground. Interesting during developments, some conditions are ambiguous vegetation but almost techtonic. The possibility is that patterns other than the repetitive rectilinear we are forced into, can be designed. The layers do not have to be only vegetation. They can be tectonic, made of machine origin parts, they can be drifted too.

The concept of The Three dimensional City is an awareness of the city which exists in our immediate surroundings as a composition of multiple layers collating together in various ways.

A series of layers put together create a layered ‘pudding’ in the city is usually encompassed and percolated. Architects extract these concepts into the design through verticality and the idea of incorporating elements of three dimensions in their designs through layers; physical, functional or emotive.

The Hidey-Hole Inspired from the English tradition of Landscaping of strange hidden or secret places found in the ground, the dream of the ‘hidey hole’ can be seen as innovative idea which can be the need or conscious effort to deliberate escape or the challenge to insert small things within Indian Architect & Builder - April 2016

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© Peter Bennetts

Abedian School of Architecture, Bond University, Australia.

© CRAB Studio

Unique windows slithering in the Kunsthaus Graz building in Austria.

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Sir Peter Cook’s sketches.

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Craft - An Eternal Possession A photo essay portraying a rich cultural heritage preserved and refined with time in the blissful land of Uttarakhand.

Text: Divya Pai Curated by: Dr Deepak John Matthew Photographs: courtesy Ankana Sen

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ndia, with its diversity in art and crafts, influenced by every region’s own culture and traditions is a collection of reserve in itself. Kumaon Region in Uttarakhand is one such land of distinct ethos cultivated through folklore that defines it.

The significance and role of crafts still exists even after its social transformation. Local people nurtured various forms of customs and beliefs, inspired by the natural splendor like - the lush green environment, the clear sky, snow covered mountains and flowing rivers. The environment has the power to provide a poetic touch to the people forwarding traditions and folkways to carry on their originality, generationally. Throughout centuries, crafts have been embedded as a culture and tradition within rural communities. They are a constant source of inspiration for contemporary designers and the subject of global exhibitions representing India.

Lives of communities are bonded in a special relation of harmony between their people, nature and creativity; while the raw form of civilisation can be easily seen in their art. To preserve them and keep them alive by adapting them into contemporary methods is very essential.

Whether it would be possible to contest this invasion or not, it would be certainly possible to preserve the memory of these rich cultural traditions and customs before they vanish from our sight.

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Ankana Sen Ankana Sen is doing her PhD in photography at IIT Hyderabad. She has a Masters in Photography from NID Ahmedabad and UCA, Farnham, UK. She is from Uttaranchal, Dehradun. She believes the connotation between human culture images is very significant in narrating history and she uses it avidly, as a tool, to convey her ideas. Presently, she is working on a research that is based on Photographic History of Indian Himalayas. As Himalayas have always been portrayed as picturesque, scenic or romantic in pictures she is trying to find out and bring back the lost culture through visuals.

Dr Deepak John Mathew Dr Mathew was Head of Photography Department till 2013 and Founder of the Photography Design Department at NID (National Institute of Design).

Currently he is working as an associate professor in the Design Department at IIT (Indian Institute of Technology). Dr Mathew has developed the curriculum and designed the first post graduate Dual Master level programme in Photography Design in India. With an experience spanning over eighteen years in photography, painting and graphics, he has published several papers and conducted workshops on photography worldwide. Dr Mathew has taught as visiting professor at many institutes in India, New Zealand and UK. Deepak John Mathew’s Website: http://djmphotography.in/

Space Frames investigates issues of architecture and environment through the medium of photography. To contribute, write to us at iabedt@jasubhai.com or to the curator Dr Mathew at dr.djmathew@gmail.com.

Indian Architect & Builder - April 2016