Kaushik Portfolio (2018 - 2022) by Kaushik Shrinivas

S h r i n i v a s

2018 - 2022

POR TFO LIO

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A Startup Journey. Some Digital Art. Some Architecture. Undergraduate Thesis.

+91-9884399230 kaushikshrinivas1996@gmail.com

@the_elancer Chennai, Tamil Nadu

Hi there! I’m Kaushik Shrinivas Creative, assertive, dependable, level-headed and eccentric are a few words I’d use to describe myself. I’m an architect with a fiveyear degree and four years of experience freelancing, who got the opportunity to explore the designer in me. I’m the founder of a startup that teaches architecture in Tamil, my mother tongue, whose branding and creative visual aspects were designed by me. I’m currently looking forward to streamline my interests into visual and communication design, and build a career based on it. 7

Work Experience 2016-2017 Architecture Intern at COSTFORD & LBC, Trivandrum • Supervised the construction of 2 residential projects in Trivandrum, Kerala. • Made a compendium of 24 buildings designed by Laurie Baker & COSTFORD, named ‘Trails’. • Co-facilitated several NASA-LBC Exposure Programmes at Laurie Baker Centre. • Co-facilitated Summer School 2017 at Laurie Baker Centre.

2018-2019 Associate Architect at COSTFORD & LBC, Trivandrum • Co-facilitated Summer School 2018 at Laurie Baker Centre. • Prepared a report for UNICEF, KILA & Thrissur District Collectorate to develop Thrissur into a child friendly district during the post flood situation in 2018.

2019 Architect at Dharmalaya, Himachal Pradesh • Co-facilitated workshops related to earthen building and participated in the construction of earthen buildings.

2020-2021 Freelance Architect, Chennai • Constructed a grotto using exposed brickwork and rib vault for a Christian community in Thiruvallur. • Supervised the construction of a 3-storey residential building with alternative building technologies in Tambaram.

2020-present Founder, Chief coordinator of Maavilai Founded a startup to teach architecture in Tamil.

Awards & Recognitions • JK AYA Best Architecture Student of the Year 2018. • Runner up of National Awards in Excellence of Architecture Thesis 2018. • Honorary mention at Asia Young Designers Awards 2019.

Software Knowledge

A Startup Journey.

Maavilai

In 2020, I kick-started an initiative with a team of like-minded architects and engineers to teach architecture in Tamil. Our work focuses on equipping people—who need not be architects or engineers—with knowledge that’s necessary to build sustainable, costeffective and dignified housing.

Maavilai

The Many Layers of Our Work... The founding of Maavilai was to challenge the gate keeping that exists in the architecture fraternity and make education inclusive. However, inclusive could mean many things and one key aspect to ensure that was by simplifying learning mediums. For instance, we made sure that our language was simple, by choosing words based on familiarity, syllable count, specificity, etc.

Social Media & Content Creation Social media platforms, particularly Instagram, gave us the space to explore making short bursts of content to set the tone of the larger work we’ll eventually do. One other aspect of ensuring simplicity was based on the looks of our content. Anything and everything we present is mostly graphical, but complemented with some amount of text. We also add a touch of playfulness with the choice of colours, that are unapologetic and saturated, which give out a sense of childhood nostalgia.

Laurie Baker’s Books in Tamil Translating Laurie Baker’s books into Tamil is one of the ‘larger works’ I had mentioned. Since we can’t create content as such, as we’re merely translating someone’s work, I explored our scope for design primarily in 2 areas - the cover and the composition. There were 9 books and I intended each of those to have their own theme colour. The books are A5 sized and are designed to be handy. The next few pages show the photographs of all the 9 books along with their cover designs.

Photos: Gnana Soundhar

Stationeries What started as an initiative, grew into an organisation. An organisation, needed its own set of branded stationeries. The stationeries were designed to reflect the character of our brand—that’s minimal, vibrant and elegant.

Website Maavilai’s website is a bilingual, e-commerce website which also has a blog section. The website is designed in dark theme, but I explored the use of saturated colours on it. As we expected our audience to be not so well versed with technology, I not only kept the aesthetics of the website minimal, but also went a step further to keep only essential actions or touch points on a given page.

The Logo Maavilai translates to ‘mango leaf’ in Tamil. There were three things I had in mind while designing the logo. One, it should be a typography of the word ‘Maavilai’ in Tamil. Two, it should be an abstract of a mango leaf. Three, it should represent the transition of colours in a mango leaf across seasons. The end result is an amalgamation of all these three objectives.

Some Digital Art.

The Woman of My Dreams

Partners 53

Mount Fuji & Chuerito Pagoda

Pallaanguzhi

Triplicane Chariot 57

Mom’s Childhood

Typewriter 59

Me and Thaathaa

Annanagar Tower 61

Chinmayi

Money

Some Architecture.

Geetha Kumari Residence, Trivandrum The residence of Geetha Kumari is a hilltop residence facing a valley. Since it’s located on a hill, it was challenging to even position the building, but it was nevertheless done with very little intervention to the site. As much as possible, conventional, energy-intensive materials were avoided and local materials were used for construction; all this with zero compromise in the function and aesthetics of the house. It was designed and built by COSTFORD; I supervised the second half of its construction.

Sasikumar Residence, Chennai This was one of the first independent projects I took up along with 2 more architects (Dinesh Jeyachandran & Pavithran Selvakumaran). We explored several Bakerian techniques such as rat-trap bond, filler slab and exposed brickwork. However, we also went a step further to experiment some of our interests such as stone walls, vaults, corbels, etc.

Undergraduate Thesis.

Agaraadhi “Agaraadhi - From an Epoch Bygone to a Habitat Redefined’ is a habitat restitution project, which studies and analyses the reasons for cultural and environmental loss in one of South India’s most culturally rich places Mahabalipuram. After thorough analysis of the issues, it becomes clear that the problems are highly accentuated from denying the natives the right to access their historic common lands.

Mahabalipuram and its Villages - The Context Ever since Mahabalipuram was subjected to a tourism oriented development, it got the attention of developers and institutions, ultimately increasing the value of the land surrounding it. This had an adverse effect on the lifestyle, economy and even the architecture of the native people. My thesis proposed an institution that can unionise people and act as a point of documenting, celebrating and propagating their vernacular practices. Hence, the campus was designed to reflect the region’s own architectural styles.

A Typical Local Mud House

A Typical Local Brick House

Proposed Campus Intervention

Cafeteria Cafeteria is one of the buildings that take inspiration from the native brick-lime buildings, though re-imagined to suit modern needs. It serves the food requirement of the building science institution, Unschool, residences and the dormitories. Without losing the essence of the native architectural style, I tried to make a difference through the volumes I created—the difference in volumes was primarily created to break the monotony of the long cafeteria space.

Unschool Unschool is the largest building in the campus. It is specifically designed with mud to break the stereotype that mud buildings are ‘kaccha’ in nature. The building is designed with multiple accesses, courtyards and seating spaces, to break the rigidity and create a more child-friendly environment. Additionally, the trees on the plot were retained as it is and the spaces were designed around them, so as to respect the site’s natural geographic conditions.

Design Strategies

Social Fabric of the Campus

Ultimatum All in all, the campus was designed to create a social fabric among the seemingly individual buildings—to tie different groups of people and invoke conversations among them. However, this was also done in a way that’s respectful to the local environment and belief systems. Good architecture entails connecting the intangible dots and not just the tangible ones. ‘Agaraadhi’ aims to preach these values to the native and the not, and to set a precedent on how a habitat can be rehabilitated in a holistic sense.

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