Architecture portfolio

PORTFOLIO

BY PALAK JAIN

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BORE-DOME

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BORE-DOME SIZE : 37 inches x 41 inches MEDIUM : 3D MODEL INDEPENDENT PROJECT YEAR : 2020

This model is an outcome of the neverending hours of boredom and isolation that being affected by the coronavirus thrusted on me. My eyes would often get caught on these multiplayer games that I could no longer play with while being quarantined. It was almost as if they were mocking me from the shelves. In order to productively utilise my time, I decided to make a structure with playing cards, jenga, dominoes and carrom disks.

Despite seeming unrealistic and impractical at first, this long standing piece started seeming pragmatic once I made the rough sketches and the layouts.

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MEANDERINGS

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MEANDERINGS SIZE : 60 x 50cm MEDIUM : RELIEF INDEPENDENT PROJECT YEAR : 2019

Dadu’s ghost stories on silent silvery nights, Sometimes animals, birds, winged creatures or angels The cuckoo’s hoot in the summer sky, The scent of the blossoms heralding spring And the inevitable rustle of browned autumn leaves Oh! What layers of jumbled memories Holds my mind, my heart, my art.

This relief artwork is inspired by this short poem that was written by my younger self. I decided to paint what this scribbling in my diary was trying to portray. Using all the imagery and arranging these fickle thoughts, I compiled it in this artwork, where all the elements on the canvas have first been modelled by clay.

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ON MY MIND

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ON MY MIND SIZE : 29.7 x 42.0 cm MEDIUM : CHARCOAL AND PENCIL SHADING INDEPENDENT PROJECT YEAR : 2019

This is a self-portrait, made by rendering charcoal and colour pencils. The monument drawn on the head, reflecting how it is on my mind, is Hawa Mahal (palace of the winds), a palace in Jaipur, India. Built from red and pink sandstone, the palace sits on the edge of the city of Jaipur.

When asked what monument I find the most interesting for its architecture, somehow my almost immediate answer would be Hawa Mahal. The most intriguing component of this structure is that being built centuries ago, the building is naturally ventilated and naturally lit. During a research on green and sustainable architecture, I came across this magnificent and alluring masterpiece. Ever since, I have admired the structure and tried to capture it’s7 beauty through this piece.

CULINARY NOSTALGIA

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CULINARY NOSTALGIA MEDIUM : DIGITAL INDEPENDENT PROJECT YEAR : 2020

This is a digitally created drawing of a cafe made using photoshop along with the comprehensive layout of the plan to explain and present it clearly. The intent behind this is to put together an interior drawing of a cafe that used to be right next to the house my family stayed in before we shifted. I often got despondent when I would think about how this place no longer is existent, so I have tried to assimilate the cafe in this sketch, extracted from the best of my memory.

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PIGEONHOLE

MEDIUM : DIGITAL INDEPENDENT PROJECT YEAR : 2020

This is a 3 dimensional model made using a computer program ‘SketchUp’. While experimenting with a wide range of design applications, I decided to make this interior design layout of an office. I have observed carefully and created a work environment with lots of plants and proper ventilation along with ample workspace to ensure employee satisfaction and 10 efficiency.

SCRUTINY

This is a series of photographs from my recent excursions to Bank, a subway station in London; Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital; and the Tower Bridge, a suspension bridge in London. The one thing that is common about all these pictures is that when each one of these was shot, I stood awestruck for about a minute at the foot of these astounding structures, before I could snap back into reality. It is always a struggle to try and capture the scene exactly in accordance with what visual images I interpret when I see them, but this is what I11 strive for as an amateur photographer.

MEDIUM : PHOTOGRAPHY INDEPENDENT PROJECT YEAR : 2019

SUPPER, ANYONE ?

SIZE : 42.0 x 59.4 cm MEDIUM : PEN AND INK INDEPENDENT PROJECT YEAR : 2020

Several techniques of layering marks have been used to create the necessary transitions in this pen and ink artwork. With the help of a crow quill, I have used techniques of hatching, stippling, contouring, doodling and contrasting lines to compose this still life. The painting manifests an evening meal, typically light and informal. The required level of focus for the contrast, 12details and precision in this art piece was meditative.

THE AGELESS ONE My baby eyes did not Capture the majestic Himalayas in one glance My young mind today Does not comprehend the wisdom of these times O lord, when will I have the sight and the insight to know the wisdom of the ages, gathered through the sages.

SIZE : 29.7 x 42.0 cm MEDIUM : OIL PASTELS INDEPENDENT PROJECT YEAR : 2020

This artwork was also inspired by a short poem that I scribbled in my diary a few years ago. Here, the books and the sage, are symbols for the wisdom that i aim to acquire as i age. As Dr. Seuss. quotes, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more 13 places you’ll go,” I believe books and reading should pave my path to acquiring knowledge.

CAPTURED

SIZE : 42.0 x 59.4 cm MEDIUM : CHARCOAL AND WATERCOLOUR INDEPENDENT PROJECT YEAR : 2019

Made using charcoal and watercolour, this piece incorporates my passion for photography and also my expeditions to places in old Delhi with my grandfather.

The monument in the display screen of the camera is Red Fort, a 17th century fortress, in the city of Delhi in India that served as the main residence of the Mughal Emperors. The motive behind depicting this in the screen is to recount how my first photography trip was to this place in old Delhi. Despite being built centuries ago, it has stood the test of time. I have, in this piece, incorporated the splendour 14 of this fort and a carefully observed and intricately made rendering of my camera.

BLUE PERIOD

SIZE : 30.5 x 40 cm MEDIUM : LINOCUT INDEPENDENT PROJECT YEAR : 2020

This is an observational drawing of an open railway track in India. My maternal grandparents used to live very close to a railway platform and we would often see through a roofed structure along the outside of their house, a similar scene.

The whole day long we would have to listen to the rail squeals, horns and whistles. Now that it is embedded in the archive of my memory, I tried to create this scene as true to life and as realistically as achievable.

This piece was made using the techniques of linocut printmaking. With a V-shaped chisel, I cut a reversal design into the linoleum surface, inked it with a brayer and then impressed it15 onto paper.

HAPHAZARD OF CHANCE

SIZE : 42.0 x 59.4 cm MEDIUM : PEN AND INK INDEPENDENT PROJECT

Life forms illogical patterns. Despite being haphazard, it is full of beauties. I have always enjoyed lumbering around places, stumbling on landmarks and I often find myself at sixes and sevens about the way I go about things. This artwork, made using pen and ink, expresses just how irrespective of the confusion, disarray and mismanagement, the structures stand bolt upright. I have with this embedded in it, how despite all this, this structure turns out beautiful and each intricate detail stands 16 out, similar to what we need to imply into our lives when their is a disarray.

ROTTEN CORE

The intent of this artwork is to symbolically represent the dissimilitude and the contrast between the sprawling monuments and the decrepit and rickety houses in these metropolitan cities.

SIZE : 42.0 x 59.4 cm MEDIUM : MIXED MEDIA INDEPENDENT PROJECT YEAR : 2020

The Eiffel Tower on the top of the apple is a symbol for the resplendent monuments, tourist attractions and renowned sightseeing places sitting on top of the worn out and ramshackle buildings. The apple is rotten and delineates the rotten condition of the cities. The torn pieces of newspaper and rags on the apple symbolise neglect and the poor condition 17of these settlements to which we often turn a blind eye.

NE PLUS ULTRA

SIZE : 29.7 x 42.0 cm MEDIUM : WATERCOLOUR INDEPENDENT PROJECT YEAR : 2020

This is an interior drawing with an optimum use of the area of this long drawing room made using watercolour. The glass window parading the beautiful landscape view of the hill, the unfinished and homely aura set by the bricks on the ceiling and the flooring and the simplistic wooden table all give a feeling of comfort, warmth and relaxation; it is a feeling that I would want in an ideal drawing 18 room.

BETWEEN ART AND QUARANTINE

I challenged myself to make a painting depicting the current affairs and the upshot was this one-point perspective of skyscrapers along with the COVID-19 bacteria falling from the sky as though it is raining and instead of water droplets, the virus is spreading everywhere.The pandemic put a complete shut down on all the daily hustle. The sky is gloomy and dull, in perfect accordance with the present scenario.

SIZE : 42.0 x 59.4 cm MEDIUM : PEN AND INK 19 INDEPENDENT PROJECT YEAR : 2020

GLOBETROTTER

SIZE : 29.7 x 42.0 cm MEDIUM : BLACK AND WHITE INK INDEPENDENT PROJECT YEAR : 2018

This one point perspective is collection of concise but detailed drawings of buildings that I have come across during my trips and expeditions. I have somehow extracted the likeness of these buildings from my memory and from the archive of photographs from my peregrinations.

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EXEMPLAR

SIZE :29.7 x 42.0 cm MEDIUM : WATERCOLOUR INDEPENDENT PROJECT YEAR : 2020

The structure of the buildings in the drawing is inspired by the body of a pen. While observing how the barrel of the pen is shaped, I could find resemblance with that of a tower or a building.

Who knew something as tiny as a pen can have a formation similar to a high rise building despite its gigantism? The thin grooves cut into a pen to hold parts together, the small, thin pieces on the feed, all appear similar to the structure of a high rise building. This piece essentially combines all the similitude and homogeneity of 21 both a pen and a building.

RICKSHAW WALA

MEDIUM : PHOTOGRAPHY INDEPENDENT PROJECT YEAR : 2019

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These photographs are from my jaunt to Rajasthan, a place in India.

The first shot is of a ‘rickshaw’ driver. I observed this three-wheeled cart being driven by ‘Ramsewak’, a migrant labourer from a rural settlement, whose main source of income now is pulling this ride for passengers throughout the city. As disheartening as this is, he has a family of eight, depending on it. I have captured him in his natural working environment and have tried to express the hardships faced by most Indian rural migrant labourers through it.

The second picture is shot using a lens ball. It was astounding to note how the ball uses refraction to bend the light as it passes through the glass, which is denser than air. It acted as a natural frame to capture the scene of a desert directly behind it, upside down.

GEOMETRIC ABSTRACTION

SIZE : 54 x 70cm MEDIUM : 3D MODEL INDEPENDENT PROJECT YEAR : 2020

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GEOMETRIC ABSTRACTION

This 3D model is made by putting in order, irregular geometric shapes cut out of a single rectangle using a sun board. Once all the segments of this structure are assembled in a fixed order, the rectangle is obtained yet again. While playing around with these hunks and blocks, I managed to create this installation taking inspiration from the works of Esther Stocker as an installation artist and added solid colours to each of the geometric elements.

I admire how artist Esther Stocker creates installations that are designed to disorient viewers and are full of geometric and linear forms. I have through this, closely related abstract and geometrical perspective to each other.

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PENTAMEROUS

SIZE : 53 x 70 cm MEDIUM : 3D MODEL INDEPENDENT PROJECT

This 3D model is a representation of a structure of a house, built similar to the concept of a birdhouse.

Piqued by the lack of variety and interest; tedious repetition and routine, in the buildings around me, I decided to make a rather different design with 5 edges and by adding slopes. The pentagonal shapes add a captivating approach to it. While sketching the layouts, I tried to play with shapes and come up with 25 a feasible plan for a multi-storey model along with a staircase and railings.

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