Assistant Editor - Courtyard | Official College Newsletter Club Head - Dance club Zonasa dance trophy 2019-220
Mangalore
Lourdes Central School,
1. A Residence For Rockstars
Design Studio Sem 2 : A house For Chouce User Group
2. Melukote
Sem 2 : Individual Measure Drawing Exercise
3. Public space design
Design Studio Sem 5: S,M,L Project
4. Film School
Design Studio Sem 6 : A Film Institute
5. Working Drawings
Sem 6 Design And Construction Drawings I Work Live Project
6. Design For Your Own
Sem 7 Interior Design
7. RSP
Sem 3 : Related Study Program I Hariharapura
8. Work Done Since College
9. Miscellaneous
Paintings and Articles
House by tHe lake : an exercise in aedicules
sem 02: summer semester: 16 weeks
asso. Prof. kiran kumar
asst. Prof. kavana kumar asst. Prof. tosHi singH
The semester’s focus was to study and understand aedicules and then design a house for a clientele of our choosing with contrasting professions to further explore these spaces within spaces.
Our site was situated 50m away from Kukkarahalli kere. We were required to put together a user profile, one that was contrasting in nature, and design a house for them with the promise of the experience of aedicules. The objective of this semester was to understand how the quality of space differs along with the experience of it by modulating just four walls and their roof.
Program : House By The Lake
Site : Mysuru, Karnataka
Site Area : 1800 sqm
PLANS
Axonometric View
Sections
Views
a weaver’s residence
sem 02: summer semester: 16 weeks
asso. Prof. kiran kumar
asst. Prof. kavana kumar
asst. Prof. tosHi singH
Semester 2 also had us visit Melukote. We were to study the houses and identify aedicules. Upon identification, we were asked to pick one and understand it’s functionan. We were to understand spaces in the way in which they were used by the residents of Hariharapura. We were to select and study one of our particular interest and document it.
I chose Mr Ramesh’s house as I took a keen interest in his work. He is a weaver and the documentation includes his space of work, which is a cosy hole in the ground at the far end of his living room.
The architecture of this hole or depression acomodates and allows for his work in hand loom, perfectly enginered to fit him into the space so as to enable him to work on the elaborate setup placed on the ground.
Public sPace design
sem 05:winter semester: 12 weeks
Prof. nelson Pais
Prof. ryan tHomas
asso. Prof. kiran kumar
asst. Prof. krisHnaPriya r
asst. Prof. akasH rai
asst. Prof. sHreyas baindurw
The studio required us to try and understand public spaces of different scales. It implored us to understand the essence of any public space and question what makes a space truly public. We were to write our own brief for a minor exercise on intervening in a post office and the major task asked of us a public space design along with Street intervention for the site across from the road.
The intent of the studio was to sensitize us on site conditions and the people that belong to them. To derive programs that would help and cater to the needs of it’s users.
Far from seeking answers, I was still grappling with trying to understand the questions in my own head. While studying the stretch of the site and all that it’s comprised of, I couldn’t help but be surprised by variety of activity the street harbours. This, I found deeply disturbing. Disturbing because there’s no combating the fact that the street is infact unsafe at certain points of the day. I would know. And so it makes you wonder, what gives?
I looked to Jane Jacobs curiously. Eyes on the street go a long way in securing a place. Making it a safe space, by the logic of having constant surveillance, being constantly watched. Also disturbing but we’ll come back to that.
5468796 Architecture’s Social Housing in Winnipeg is a project that is imagined to be inspired by Jane Jacobs “eyes on the street”. It is constructed in such a way that the private spaces overlook the public spaces to make way for a certain level of intermingling.
Yet it’s been criticised for exactly that. For not being safe enough, the blame for which was duly alloted to the designers. This brought into existence the article Do We Expect Too Much of Design? By Vladimir Gintoff.
What struck home in this article is the architect’s response when asked why he didn’t anticipate this result and plan accordingly.
“Neufeld states ‘if you design for the worst case scenario, then the worst case scenario will happen.’ Asked for further clarification on this, Neufeld said, ‘When we sit down to design social housing we want to be careful not to criminalize lower-income populations with all sorts of negative characteristics before we even get started.’ In other words, adding a gate from the start would have done nothing to generate community with the project’s public space, and it would have made the development intentionally separate from its surroundings—possibly making it a catalyst for a higher level of unsavory behavior in the neighborhood, albeit emphatically removed from the development itself.”
So is that what it is? Our self important government buildings and apartment complexes and residences along with public buildings focus on removing themselves from the context in order to distinguish themselves. “The last century offered early promise in addressing such issues with proposals to house the masses in immense slabs and box buildings, structures almost as large as their social ambition. But what became an asset of scale overlooked, or more probably misunderstood, the social degradation that such largeness elicited.” Sounds familiar.
So what makes a space safe? And is it a feat an architect can aspire to accomplish? Do eyes on the street cut it? And speaking of which, designing a space that allows for eyes on you 24/7, the con to that is that there’s eyes on you 24/7. Now I don’t know how that works in what I’m assuming to be a liberal country halfway across the world, but here in India to a young adult, a girl at that, it means that I need to watch my step lest I be judged by my conservative neighborhood aunties that proceed to make me the subject of their kitty parties.
film scHool
sem 06: summer semester: 16 weeks
Prof. anand krisHnamurtHy
Prof. ryan tHomas
asso. Prof. kiran kumar
asst. Prof. asijit kHan
asst. Prof. kavana kumar
asst. Prof. suren aalone
The aim of this semester was to understand the need for fostering a good relationship between the users of an institution and the institution itself. The role of planned or desired open spaces in the nurturing of the professionals to be.
The objective of this studio was to understand the role an institution can play in the lives of it’s students and how sensitive design can enhance the learning experience.
The studio also pushed us to understand how to respond to a scale not previously attempted by designing a tall building.
Program : Film School
Site : Mysuru, Karnataka
Site Area : 3200 sqm
Built area : 5500 sqm
ADMINBLOCK
When I think about what my idea for an ideal education for any child is, I think about the kind of education I would have liked for say 6 year old me to have received. Then I think about what 6year old me would have wanted for herself.
I imagine this ideal education rests someplace in between these two standards. Ideally, kids should want to want to go to school. So how do we achieve this?
Children can’t choose their own classes. They need to dabble in everything in order to pick anything. And so it’s important to study things, ..all things.
I think the minds that structured the education system had the right idea. Only they had no idea what to do with this idea.
An education should be holistic. It should be about generating free thinking individuals. It should be about making learning fun. About building associations and making memories. Every child should wake up and be excited about school. It should be a fun thing to do.
Maybe if they stepped into their subjects like it was a world of it’s own. Maybe if the learning experience was an actual experience. Maybe if history was reenacted and if physics was taught on the basketball field (I’m reaching, I know, but wouldn’t that be something). Maybe
. I think it’s amazing what a little change of perspective can do to an institution.
working drawings
sem 06 : summer semester: 16 weeks
Prof. nagaraj vastare
Prof. sandeeP sen
Prof. vidyasHankar r
asst. Prof, gregory anto
asst. Prof. sanjay kumar
asst. Prof. tHyagarajan c
The studio looked at equipping students with the skill and understanding required to produce clear and accurate drawings that will make the execution of work on site easier.
The working drawings studio involved design and development as well as production of working drawings for the same. The intent was to understand the designing and building process from end to end.
Program: Work-Live Un`it
Site: Mysuru, Karnataka
Site Area: 88 sq m
Built area : 250 sq m
interior design
The interior design studio required us to pick someone we knew and redesign an apartment for them. We were to make them a mood board, get their approval and then move ahead with designing the interiors of this apartment for them. I chose to design a space for my mom and so this is a collage of what the interiors to her new apartment will look like.
related study Program
Prof. kukke subramanya
Prof vidyasHankar r
Prof. anand cHalwadi
asst. Prof. kavana kumar
asst. Prof. cHincHu kumar
asst. Prof. Pallavi dHomse
HARIHARAPURA
The Agrahara is a temple residential complex, that was prevalent centuries ago. It usually consists of a central temple that was the public part of the complex and houses around it that are organic in nature. This is a 300 year old Agrahara in the nearby village of Jammatige.
The Moodera House proposal was a design proposal hat I worked on during my time with Guulshan Roy Architects.
The brief was to design a second home or a holiday home in the outskirts of the city.
reference picture from Palinda Kannangara Architects
Another project I worked on with Guulshan Roy Sir was for a client who wished to builld a beach house as their primary residence.
Paraphrasing Shirin Neshat’s Turbulent
Video Installation
I opened my eyes to behold darkness.
Somehow, the world seemed brighter behind closed lids. And the air.. It seemed to shudder as if in anticipation of what lay ahead. And then it began.
The walls around me came to life.
One minute I’m standing inside of an exhibit, the next I’m in the middle of a dimly lit auditorium. The auditorium bore two threatres. On one stage stood a man facing an audience and on the other stood a woman with a lack thereof.
The man started at his audience.
His... audience. Something was off. He was playing a part, putting on a show. He was lying, clear as day. But why? And then I saw it. There wasn’t a single woman in the crowd. If this bothered him, he did a swell job hiding it. He turned his back to his audience and commenced. But wait, didn’t musicians usually face their audience? So why did he turn?
I looked into his eyes; dark and hooded and just like that, it all made sense.
There exist two kinds of art. There’s art that helps people escape their reality and then there’s art that pushes people back into their lives. Our man here was practicing the first kind.
There was a certain kind of evil in the way the empty chairs amid the audience would rather gather dust than condescend to let itself be tainted by the touch of a woman. The room felt heavy under the weight of the impact Iran’s oppressive regime had on it’s women.
And so with his back to his audience, he continued masterfully practising the art of escapism, allowing his country-well it’s men atleast to delude themselves into believing that they were okay. That it was okay to lose themselves in the romantic ballad this man had to offer as diversion. No wonder he wasn’t looking them in the eye.. He was taking them for fools. Well maybe they were.
His skin glistened with the effort of veiling in vein, his gratitude for their decadence.
And just as soon as it had begun, it was over; It seemed he had cast a spell on his crowd, put them in a trance. One that they seemed to soak up..one that soaked them up. They applauded and it was music to his ears. Naturally. I had completely forgotten about the other auditorium and the woman who occupied it until her voice pierced through the space, distorted the haze and broke us out of our reveries.
Women weren’t allowed to sing in public here. So what was she doing? She was blind, this much was obvious. So she couldn’t have known that she had absolutely no audience. But she did. Yet it didn’t matter, not to her.
She had something to say and it didn’t matter if there was no one to listen. Because she was there merely to remind herself that she had a voice. And the state could deny her her freedom but it couldn’t deny her this. And so the caged bird sang.
And our main man? he turned and noticed her for the very first time. So did the rest of his crowd.
It was a new dawn. The haze lifted and our vision cleared. Something unspeakable was being done.. The truth was being projected as if for the very first time. Her truth. Hers and every "her" who was ever oppressed or tyranized. She didn’t just sing, no. She screamed and wailed and died on stage. She stripped herself down and laid herself bare. She became the music she emanated. She was everywhere..her voice seeped into our skin and wrapped itself around our hearts. My chest hurt. As did everyone else’s I bet. Her voice took no prisoners and soon each of us held ourselves accountable for her sorrow. Each of us probably were. She did what he wouldn’t.
She pushed us back into our lives.. By the time she was done with us, we had come back down to earth and we were now swimming in her reality, only -it wasn’t just her reality anymore. It was all of ours. It wasn’t just her truth anymore. It was ours as well.
And in the deafening silence that ensued, she was finally heard.
Quarantine Writing
It’s been some time now since my pencil stationed itself against my book, afraid of what it might write. My sense of self was supposed to drop by an hour ago… it seems we’re out of luck. I guess it’s just you and me now. My mother once told me that when I was a little more than six years old, my first-grade teacher found me standing in a corner, dramatically staring outside the window.
Class wasn’t in session and all my friends were wreaking havoc while I continued to stare, transfixed. I stood there for a long time before she asked me what was wrong.
I told her I was lonely.
It’s week three of quarantine, but I can’t be certain.
It’s 1:40 am.
Of this much though, I am.
Kenny Rogers is playing softly in the background. I told him I was trying to focus, but in vain-he seems unfazed. All the words that escape my mouth these days seem to lack conviction, although through no fault of their own.
Sometimes when I close my eyes, it takes me a couple of minutes to find it in me to open them back up again. I wonder if anyone’s noticed.
Dawn broke out some while ago. Yesterday is officially in the past. It’s quarantine day one, except that it’s not. It might as well be, though, for all the impact it’s had on my body. The outside remains the outside.
My house is the same as it’s always been.
The walls are still where I left them… strange, I know, since I keep bumping into them.
I sometimes wonder what’s stranger… the fact that I feel like a complete stranger in my own house.. Or that I don’t think it very strange that I do.
I’m awake for the first time in three weeks. Awake and unnerved, gnawing at my lips. I’m afraid to close my eyes.
I gather myself into my arms and start to rock. First back, then forth. This manages to pacify me. Outside, the grass is growing.
I’ve been sitting unusually still for sometime now, With my right heel tucked under my left thigh and my left heel tucked under my right shin. My shin...has begun to slowly go numb.
I can hear the clock ticking.
Sometime in between its minutes and its seconds, I ticked it off for trying to tick me off. But my apprehending is as defeated as my apprehensions are. These days the world about me seems to move of its own accord, swerving only slightly to avoid me.
The lights are off. I don’t remember turning them off.
It’s dark inside but it’s darker outside.
I turn to look outside my window and before I know it, I’m six years old again.
I’ve been sitting like this for some time now. Body facing north, but my head turned west. My leg numb and my lips torn. Rested, still completely spent. Staring, transfixed. Looking outside the window, watching the outside world and wondering again if maybe the world outside might be watching me too.
