Di 14 | Suprio B - Detailing Gestures | Domus India 01/2013

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domus 14

January 2013

Contents

14 14 • Volume 02 • Issue 03 • January 2013 / CCBA, Christopher Benninger when I awake in the still of the night... / Opolis deriving value in places / MAD, Matthew Allen an empathetic twist / Frida Escobedo, José Esparza modernist masks / a-RT, Bhattacharjee detailing gestures / Y D Pitkar, Smita Dalvi deep surfaces / Pedro Reyes transforms weapons into musical instruments / K T Ravindran on Oscar Niemeyer CCBA / Opolis / MAD, Allen / Escobedo, Esparza / a-RT, Bhattacharjee / Pitkar, Dalvi / Ravindran, Niemeyer

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14 • Volume 02 • Issue 03 • January 2013 / CCBA, Christopher Benninger when I awake in the still of the night... / Opolis deriving value in places / MAD, Matthew Allen an empathetic twist / Frida Escobedo, José Esparza modernist masks / a-RT, Bhattacharjee detailing gestures / Y D Pitkar, Smita Dalvi deep surfaces / Pedro Reyes transforms weapons into musical instruments / K T Ravindran on Oscar Niemeyer

India

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Op-ed Edgar F N Ribeiro

Future of the Delhi Master Plan Op-ed Mario Lupano

14 • January 2013

India

Editorial

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Architects made in Italy

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Journal

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Photoessay Tommaso Bonaventura, Alessandro Imbriaco Cover The Suzlon One Earth campus in Pune is the head office of the Indian wind power company, designed by Christopher Charles Benninger Architects. The building set in generous gardens and waterbodies draws inspiration from iconic motifs such as the Brahmasthan and the deepasthambh, around which the buildings and spaces organise themselves. The corporate atrium is imagined as a vertical glass garden from which channels of water flow and radiate out. All of this, along with the transparency of the buildings achieved by a calculated design of form and skin helps to energise the campus as an inspiring place of work (Photo courtesy CCBA)

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Material evidence

CCB Architects, Christopher Benninger

When I awake in the still of the night... Opolis Architects, Kaiwan Mehta

Deriving value in places MAD Architects, Matthew Allen

An empathetic twist

Rishav Jain

Contemplating the crafts Photoessay Y D Pitkar, Smita Dalvi

Deep surfaces

Contemporary Museum for architecture in India curated by Kaiwan Mehta, text by Suprio Bhattacharjee

The Heinz oeuvre

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Oscar Niemeyer, K T Ravindran

Meeting the Master Beatrice Galilee

Audi Urban Futures

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92 98

Pedro Reyes, José Esparza

Gun Politics

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86

Rassegna

Bathroom

104 106 112 116

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Frida Escobedo, José Esparza

Modernist masks a-RT, Suprio Bhattacharjee

Detailing gestures

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Dealing with two very different scales of urban imagination and intervention are two projects by Mumbai-based a-RT. Everyday urban programmes such as the office building or an art gallery are narrated through relationships of materials and spaces drawing in life from the street. They indicate a hope to recover the city that always lives in the fear of turning into a wasteland

Detailing gestures

January 2013

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The airy chamber as a circulation hinge where the staircase allows the users to engage with the outside

Construction and structure details

Design

a-RT Text

Suprio Bhattacharjee

Mumbai

Photos

Bengaluru

Rajeev Thakker

Suburban business districts are non-places. The same kind of corporate glass-fronted architecture, the same formally turned out, well-behaved attire. A sense of ‘officious-ness’ — that remains the same across the globe and is as disregardful of context as it is monotonous in terms of experience. One could walk on the streets of such an urban setting without the real presence of life other than those zipping past in their automobiles and the perceived presence of people within those impenetrable façades. And one could be anywhere in the world. Bengaluru’s Whitefield district has over the past decade transformed to offer this very disorienting urban experience. Generic hotel blocks and office buildings line the wide streets. But at the intersection between 1st Main Road and Road no. 10 one cannot stop noticing an interesting building corner. It has a sombre presence, but is open and inviting. It forms an imposing portal, a six-storey light-filled cavern, and stands apart with its strange gauze-like translucency. It completes the urban volume of the office building it is a part of — more like a parasite clinging to its host. And more arresting than its host. Rajeev Thakker, the building’s architect, explains that the beginning of this significant urban gesture lies in the way in which a typical courtyard block was slowly transformed during the design process to a void scooped out at the corner of the building volume. This is a space open to Bengaluru’s salubrious weather and a receiver for the gentle eastern morning sun. A space which draws the city in, and in opposition to the ubiquitous glass-enclosed atrium, a soaring open-air chamber with civic proportions is formed — although not truly a civic space. The architect describes the character of this space as ‘institutional’ — perhaps an indication that the design intent was to create an immediate experience for this office building that would stand out from the regular. This airy chamber becomes a circulation hinge — taking advantage of the weather, the staircase allows users to engage with the outdoors as they move between levels. And the lift lobby overlooks this space — thus allowing this corner volume to become a spatial focus in everyday activities. A set of glazed boxes cling to the main building volume across from the staircase — these are conference rooms at each level sheathed in clear glass. Behind this dramatic enclosure is however a generic deep-plan office space on a regular structural grid. The elegant curtain-wall façade with its banded horizontal reveals and alternating tinted glass does strike one as common though, after the triumph of the corner. The floor is a textured field of strips of granite in myriad surface finishes interspersed with stone-clad benches that emphasise 78

the public nature of this space. The affinity for texture continues, however visually, onto the sides of this open-air atrium. Panels of silver-grey powder-coated perforated steel sheets form a visibly ‘thick’ wrap to the portal, with random skewed openings on the side that hint at the underlying structure of raked concrete columns, fleetingly visible through the metal scrim. A staircase landing even manages to sneak through the façade, allowing for the momentary experience of being thrust out of the building (and under the open sky) before being summarily pulled back again. The experience of the façade also becomes tactile at this point, allowing users to engage with this light-modulating surface up close. Light filters through the openings in the roof and bounces off the sides, the shadow of the roof enticingly disappearing into the pattern of light-filtering perforations. The translucent, overlapped nature of the surface blurs shadows and creates a moiré effect, experienced while walking within this volume or while driving past. Seen from within the void, the random openings on the side wall capture glimpses of the city while the portal frames the view across — the city in motion is amplified by the slight cant in the edges of the thick ‘wrap’. The roof openings are covered in glass to keep out the rain. An entrance canopy deflects in plan, continuing the gentle ‘oblique-ness’ of this corner volume. This manages to add a sense of dynamism to an otherwise conventional deep-plan office building. The architect explains that the corner in itself was an experiment — carving out that volume meant that an additional floor was added to maximise FAR consumption, and Bengaluru’s building regulations permitted the generous scale of this space as sellable area was not compromised. One wishes that the material experimentation could have been carried across the other façades too — but of course the financial implications on the construction cost of this speculative office block would mean that this would have not been possible. Metal scrim façades have visibly been around in the world of architecture since the past two decades. Their light-weight nature as well as their alluring material qualities has engendered an entire tradition of architecture that revels in the space of the ‘second skin’ and the ‘layered façade’ — at times with brilliant didactic force, and at times with an intention to obscure the more generic boxes underneath. This distinct building corner shares the energy and a certain ‘rawness’ that one may find in similar other works that allude to a machine aesthetic, as well as a sense of movement that amplifies the surface’s material effects. But its most important aspect is 79


Detailing gestures

Design and process sketches 80

Bengaluru, IN

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The floor is a textured field of strips of granite in myriad surface finishes interspersed with stone-clad benches that emphasise the public nature of this space. The affinity for texture continues, however visually, onto the sides of this open-air atrium. Panels of silver-grey powder-coated perforated steel sheets form a visibly ‘thick’ wrap to the portal, with random skewed openings on the side that hint at the underlying structure of raked concrete columns, fleetingly visible through the metal scrim 81


Bengaluru, IN

Detailing gestures

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January 2013

2 1

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Entry/Exit gate Security Landscape Atrium Office space

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5 1 4

3 4

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12m

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Entry Gallery Storage Washroom Office Workstations/Pantry

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0 whitefield palms

drawings

Design Rajeev Thakker

Client VRaheja Design Construction

Design Team Vijay Raheja & Associates/ Rajeev Thakker

Location 1st Main Road, KIADB, Bengaluru

Civil Contractors Shapoorji Pallonji & Co. Ltd

12m

1  Ground floor plan 2  East Elevation 3  North Elevation 4  Elevation design versions

TFAC2

fact box Built Area 18,581 m2

Design a-RT

Construction Phase 2004-2006

Principal Architect Rajeev Thakker Design Team Rajeev Thakker, Tanya Singh, Anish Shaikh

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12m

1  Floor plan

fact box Built Area 60.39 m2

drawings Client The Fine Art Company, Geetu Hinduja Location Evergreen Building, Waterfield Road, Bandra, Mumbai

2  Entrance Elevation (East) 3  Entrance Elevation (North)

Construction Phase September 2011-March 2012

Exterior Cladding Alufit (India) Pvt. Ltd.

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Mumbai, IN

the reinstatement of a sense-of-place within Whitefield’s bevy of blunderous buildings. The play of material textures recurs as a theme in the architect’s more diminutive works. A gallery within a residential building in suburban Mumbai becomes a canvas for myriad surfaces designed to engage the user in a haptic environment. Wood covers the floors of the two gallery spaces acting as an acoustic buffer (the spaces can also be used for audio/video projections), while in the gallery owner’s office the appearance of (now common-place) Statuario marble is given a surprising twist by conceiving the floor as strips of random lengths and sizes. The ‘generic’ nature of the material is now brought into question, and for once makes the experience of this ubiquitous stone refreshing. The ‘classy’ nature of the marble floor is echoed in the choice of transparent Philippe Starck-designed Kartell furniture. Its see-through acrylic enhances the visual presence of the marble floor besides making the relatively small space seem unencumbered (visually) by furniture. In playful contrast to these chic surfaces, the bookshelf is a raw whitewashed plywood structure, evoking the nature of messy paint-stained atelier walls. The raw character of the bookshelf is not an oddity. The plaster of the gallery walls has been scraped off — and a rough texture is maintained as surface finish. The concrete of the ceiling is made visible. Electrical conduits are exposed and the switchboxes are decorated in ‘truck painting graphics’ — as described by the architect. The use of flick switches strikes one as playfully clever. It is obvious that the designer wants this to be a very tactile space. The gallery space has evidence of a sense of rough-hewn craftsmanship. A number of details were clarified on-site in collaboration with artisan and tradesmen. Few drawings were necessary. This empirical way of working seems to be the future space of work for the architect, engaged as he is at the moment in a number of smaller works that offer him greater control and freedom in terms of materials, details and finishes. He sees this as a renewal of the ‘master-builder’ tradition — where the architect is now placed in that role instead of the distant haloed figure working away at his desk. But the real delight in both these projects perhaps stems not only from their architectonic character, but from their integration with landscaping as well. Upon entering the building compound, the gallery is intended to appear as this burst of lush green at street level, in stark contrast to the nondescript apartment building. A metal armature for potted climbers, in a distinctly organic pattern wraps the façade, and thus in the future the gallery shall become an easily identifiable (and humane) urban landmark. In the Bengaluru building (dubbed ‘Whitefield Palms’ by the developer), a band of xeriscaping confronts the viewer upon entry. While this may strike one as odd in what is no longer a proud ‘garden city’ — the gesture resonates amusingly at a deeper level. For the architect, the choice of this vegetation is a formal one, to accompany the ‘institutional’ nature of the architecture. But otherwise, it could also be seen as an inadvertent commentary on Bengaluru’s growing water crisis and loss of vegetation due to uncontrolled urbanisation and building activity. Or as this strange presence that unwittingly evokes the character of the business district it finds itself in. Oddly scaled and out of place. Buildings that are unmindful of context. But part of a chic urban charade. An urban wasteland, devoid of (street) life. Sometimes one finds these unintended critiques most remarkable. Yes, the developer could do away with those palm trees. And replace the boundary wall along this corner with, say, bollards. We would thus get a piazza or a chowk. And maybe bring in the tea stall kiosk. — Suprio Bhattacharjee Architect

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The interior design is a stray play of material textures; the space has evidence of a sense of rough-hewn craftsmanship; the gallery is intended to appear as this burst of lush green at street level

Detailing gestures

Design and process sketches 84

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