Meandering through the Studios

Kush Kalavadia, Studio II

The studio intended to design a pavilion for the people who want to enjoy and to engage with nature and to observe how surrounding is responding to one’s personality. The site was near a lake in Rataiya village of Rajkot. Natural elements directly or indirectly always play a role in defining spaces, like here, the cluster of trees, wind from the lakeside, certain undulations on land, gives an expression to nature and challenge the designer. However we had to design a pavilion by using very basic space making elements like wall, column, roof and plinths then, organizing them with basic principles of design and providing some sort of enclosure. We have measure drawn the whole site, stayed there from morning to evening and analysed the whole site, but the lock-down was declared when we had just begun the design stage, so it was a challenge that we had to design based on whatever we have experienced first hand and drawings we made. Still, the studio was very interesting, as it focused on when humans require a certain kind of environment and it is not limited to the architecture of buildings.

| Utsav Bhalani, Studio V

Ajab Shahar Museum, a place to display regional art works in different forms. The museum has to be designed for the exhibition of various artists of Saurashtra. The project involves designing of space to exhibit and learn the works of “Dhatu”, “Mati Kaam”, “Poshak” and “Sahitya”. This time I had a different experience while designing as the studio started off with the contextual analysis where we had to place masses of different volumes and study them in reference to the site. Then to study the volumes introspective of the functions in the program. Finally, placing all functions on the site and also wanted to make it climate and context responsive. Further, detailing out the design my central idea was to give a magical experience to the spaces as Saurashtra is magical too. Then the end goal was to give a subtle experience of the museum to the user which will submerge with context.