Di 18 | Suprio B - Tensions and Complexity | Domus India 05/2013

leisure houses

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May 2013

Tensions and complexity Discussing the house designed in Alibaug by Mumbai-based Malik Architecture is an invitation to explore the concept of designing vacation homes in non-urban settings. In this design, the housetypology is explored visually as well as spatially; its riveting structure and form, its process of design, attention to detail and the juxtaposition of space-types draw attention to the demands on architecture that contemporary cultures make Design

Malik Architecture

Text

Suprio Bhattacharjee

There is this arresting gleaming thing that one could spot on a hill top in Alibaug — that leisure home outpost across the Mumbai harbour, where wealthy city dwellers can enjoy a slice of idyllic life — sufficiently close to the city, yet not too close. Designed by the studio of Mumbai-based Arjun Mallik, this dwelling stretches itself out languidly over the highest portion on the plot of land it sits upon, attempting to complete the hill in the manner of a landform building. Partly dug into the hillside in the manner of a ‘cave’ and partly treading lightly over it like a ‘nest’, the house operates as a dialogue between these two – or rather in keeping with its architectural antecedents, between the almost-opaque and solid concrete ‘bunker’, and the trussed ‘bar-building’ borne upon it that attempts to wrench itself free of the former.

It is difficult to not be fixated by its discordant visual syntax of skewed planes, canted steel columns, tilted surfaces and angled openings that belie its rather straightforward internal organisation. From a distance this manages to overwhelm the perception of the building. Up close one realises that there are sufficient interstitial spaces and voids that seem to puncture the ‘mass’.

But there is no singular mass here — this is not the classic solid-void stereotomic exercise of building.

Rather, one realises, that there is not really a 48

Alibaug

Photos

Bharath Ramamrutham

single building body, but instead a ‘collection’ of bits across what one begins to see clearly as two functional levels. Each programmatic spatial entity forms one of these ‘bits’ with a sense of the outdoors and the presence of the elements forming the spatial-perceptual connector between these.

These bits seem to have adjusted their relative distances such that they seem to be ‘at just the right distance’ from each other — not too close to cram up the hillside, and not so far that they can no longer be read as being interdependent and part of a larger whole. Orienting themselves roughly along the north-south axis to form a T-shaped plan, this ‘society of bodies’ huddles partly under a twisted and contorted wing-like folded1 roof plane that seems to be in the process of being violently ripped off its moorings by the downward slide of the raked prow-shaped fuselage bar, caught in suspension for a brief agonising moment by the tendon-like catwalks and the ruptured steel shell just before that cataclysmic tip over the precipice.

The architects state that they ‘chose to deconstruct a cuboid that is tilted and suspended over the ground and seems to simultaneously float and flow down the hill’2 — but if this is meant to imply a fragmented, fractured building body, it is not very clear in the articulation of the surfaces and building volumes. There does not seem to be an immediate visual association that

This spread: structure is called in to play an expressively proficient role, with the deft articulation of junctions and the tectonic challenges inherent in a building such as this where materials, surfaces and volumes collide at the oddest of angles 49

Tensions and complexity

Alibaug, IN

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See Anthony Vidler, Warped Space (MIT Press, 2000) for an engaging discussion on the ‘fold’ in architecture, as well as Folding in Architecture, Architectural Design, 1992

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From the architect’s project note

See Peter Blundell Jones, Opus 15 (Edition Axel Menges, Stuttgart, 1995), p. 11, for an interesting discussion on the ‘building-body’ and its contradictory theoretical stances

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4 See Annette LeCuyer and Brian Carter, All American (Thames & Hudson, London, 2002), p. 111. Meaning ‘not predetermined but instead emerging through the action of context upon form’

It is a mistake to assume a generalised ‘western’ attitude or ideal — as the tendencies and intellectual / theoretical stances are vastly different on both sides of the Atlantic, and even within the Anglo-Saxon and greater European region

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See Peter Blundell Jones, Opus 15 (Edition Axel Menges, Stuttgart, 1995), p. 11

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See the forceful and moving works of the Austrian architect Günther Domenig, especially

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his Nazi Documentation Centre in Nuremberg; the drawings of Lebbeus Woods in his War and Architecture Series (1992) as well as those documented in Radical Reconstruction (PAPress, 1997), and Daniel Libeskind’s initial built works To quote Hugh Pearman, Contemporary World Architecture (Phaidon, London, 1999), p.

93. Architects who can be associated with this group are those that explore a kind of ‘technologically-expressive-utopia’, a kind of post-machinist aesthetic — such as Wes Jones and Smith-Miller Hawkinson. Here, it is crucial to note the fundamental difference in conceptual basis (and subsequent formal resolution) that stems from the ‘alternative modernist’ tradition that, for the most part, cannot be seen as part of this group — Hugo Häring, Hans Scharoun, Alvar Aalto, etc., and contemporary practitioners such as (the deceased) Enric Miralles, Carme Pinos, Bolles-Wilson, those of the ‘New Graz School’ such as Volker Giencke and Szyszkowitz+Kowalski as well as the many anthropomorphic traditions. Often they are mistaken to be conceptually and theoretically similiar to this group

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9 Thom Mayne, A Report from the USA, Vienna Architecture Conference, 15 June, 1992

Say, if for a moment, we look at works within this genre by Thom Mayne, Eric Moss and Michael Rotondi (USA), Behnisch Architekten (Germany), and Wolfgang Tschapeller (Austria)

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11 See their Open House (1983) and the Rehak House (1990). Günther Domenig’s SteinHaus and the Open House captured my imagination in architecture school during the late 1990s. See also the early houses of Morphosis and Eric Moss

COOP Himmelb(l)au, The End of Architecture, Vienna Architecture Conference, 15 June, 1992

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13 Anthony Vidler, Warped Space (MIT Press, 2000), p.105. In recent western architecture, this has been linked to the nature of space-making within Baroque sculpture and architecture 14 From French architect-theorist Paul Virilio’s idea of a ‘dromocratic condition’ or a ‘society of speed’ — which negates ideas of a post-modern condition — specifically in western contexts

Like for instance UNstudio’s Mobius House, Amsterdam, Netherlands (1998) or Frank Israel’s Drager House, Oakland, California, USA (1994)

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This spread: Partly dug into the hillside in the manner of a ‘cave’ and partly treading lightly over it like a ‘nest’ the house operates as a dialogue between these two

a viewer can readily derive between the parts, and as such (in its formalisation) it may appear more of an accretion or a collation, a coming-together, than a kind of coming-apart — like a ‘democracy of building elements’3 in a state of unrest. So does this manifestation of a cataclysmic upheaval have geological origins in the movement and churning of the earth’s tectonic plates? Perhaps by sheer idiomatic incident but not by intent.

And no, this is not really an ‘epigenetic architecture’4 that results in ‘vernacular mutation’. A kind of violent exuberance, then?

Okay, let us explore the origins of this aesthetic genre a bit.

This building belongs to an architectural lineage driven by an aggressive visual-spatial language that has its origins in broadly two sources within the ‘western’5 architectural idiom — both seeking to aestheticise a sense of strife or mental struggle within specific cultural, historical and political situations.

First, there are the responses to actual violence and discord by using devices that create imbalance and fracture, resulting in ‘architectural bodies broken and injured in anguished representation of the homelessness and rootlessness which is our destiny in the modern world’6 — a dystopian vision that can lead to an architecture that is gut-wrenching and deeply disturbing, and is meant to evoke an irreplaceable sense of loss.7 This can also lead ironically to architecture that is often described as ‘exciting’ — a testament to the opposing perceptions within the creator and the viewer. Secondly, 50

the rise of the ‘skewed-plate architectural composition’8 by a certain group of architects has also had its origins in many concurrent traditions that physically intend to manifest a sense of ‘complexity’, most embodying similar intents of eventually pursuing a much-needed diversity, heterogeneity and multiplicity within cities and (building) cultures by critiquing the ‘modernist penchant for unification and simplification’9 and the consequent historicist backlash within degenerating and entropic urban contexts. But these approaches take root in a deeply-engaged struggle and consequent response to a specific urban, social and geo-political context, and their respective representation and exploration of diversity and heterogeneity mirrors that very specific situation and reality10 — with a desire to seek wider engagement through urban public architecture.

If we focus only on the dwelling, archetypal sources in recent memory can be seen in the momentous ‘SteinHaus’ (an architecture-manifesto-in-the-making) by Günther Domenig and two houses envisioned by a pair of other Austrian provocateurs COOP Himmelb(l)au in the intellectually fertile grounds of California11 . Typically, houses embody ideas and principles that architects often explore and engage with on larger projects. As such they become laboratories of experimentation in microcosm. Here, one also witnesses how ideas shaped by urban conditions cross over on to the non-urban realm. This may be a function of the blurring of any definitive 51

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boundary between the conditions of living in these two settings through the pervasive presence of modern technology. If one takes forward the idea that this space, far removed from the confinement and restrictions (both legal and perceptual) imposed upon building by the city of Mumbai, offers one a free ground for the practice of an unfettered formal architecture, then this leisure home can be seen as a (strangely) joyous and effusive celebration of release and revelry, something the occupants of the house would also feel during their stay there.

That it is ironically set within an architecture that has origins as a reactionary stance to urban degeneration and strife, can be a bit amusing. Perhaps we can then allude to assertions by COOP Himmelb(l)au that a building such as this tends to the ‘explosive moment when everything that stands in the way of architectural freedom is pushed aside’12 .

In keeping with this architectural idiom, structure is called in to play an expressively proficient role, with the deft articulation 52

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of junctions and the tectonic challenges inherent in a building such as this where materials, surfaces and volumes collide at the oddest of angles. This is the project’s victory in an unbridled sense — immaculately executed and tenaciously resolved to a level of fanatic detail. There is a delight in seeing those steel plates embedded in the massive concrete bowl in slight negative relief, or the splayed plier-like chevron columns that hold up that sculpted concrete undercroft, or the drip mould that defines a seam line under that razor-edge, or the subtle tapering of the column bases and their pin-joints rising ever so lightly out of the rough stone floor, or that warped steel line that goes from here to there and turns around whatever-that-is. Structural forces are in evidence everywhere, whether the delicate tension net that ensures the folded roof does not twist beyond a point as its leading edge cuts through the oncoming monsoon winds, the concrete bridges that are shaped to reflect their bending stresses, or the presence of a structural bearing that reaches out

This spread: this is not the classic solid-void stereotomic exercise of building; there are sufficient interstitial spaces and voids that seem to puncture the ‘mass’. There is not really a single building body, but instead a ‘collection’ of bits across what one begins to see clearly as two functional levels

May 2013

just enough to grasp the dangling edge of whatever-has-comefrom-over-there. This is an architecture of hyperactive visual excess aimed at destabilising one’s perception of spatial balance, ‘presented in a forced and distorted perspective that presses space both backward and forward, finally overwhelming the spectator’s own space’.13 This is an architecture that is about experience through movement — a kind of ‘dromo-topia’ for the fortunate few who will ever get the chance to inhabit its folds.

Unlike a Virilian ‘dromocratic’ space 14 however, this is a private house meant for the pleasure of a few and hence it cannot subscribe to those aspirations.

Distractions along the way do manage to draw your attention away from portions where the building does appear clunky or overwrought. There are moments when the building’s formal articulation does appear heavy-handed. Yes, one wishes those glass handrails were not commonplace, whilst the ‘interior design’ comes across as an attempt to create a generic ‘luxurious’ 53

Alibaug, IN

Tensions and complexity

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1 1 Enterance Porch 2 Living Room 3 Dining Room 4 Kitchen 5 Storage & Utility 6 Bed Room 7 Bath Suite 8 Powder Room 9 Study 10 Den 11 Court 12 Verandah 13 Bridge 14 Engineering Space Pool 15 Water Body 16 Water Tankl

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0 residence at alibaug Design Malik Architecture

Electrical Consultants Vora Electricals Pvt. Ltd.

Principal Architect Arjun Malik

Structural Consultants Strudcom

Design Team Arjun Malik, Jigar Mehta, Ganesh Kugaji

Cladding / Glazing Chiniwala Pvt. Ltd.

Plumbing Suhas Gangan

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HVAC Cool Air Systems

Solar / Rainwater Harvesting / Vermiculture Mungekar & Associates Swimming Pool Silver Pools Location Alibaug, Maharashtra

fact box Built Area 1068 m2 Year of Completion 2010

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1  Plan at the entry level

1  Transverse section at AA

2 Plan at the lower level

2 Longitudinal section at DD 3 South west elevation 4 North west elevation

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Tensions and complexity

Alibaug, IN

inner shell which at times detracts from the forceful nature of that taut and agonised exoskeleton. Besides the riveting formal and structural expressiveness, this house may not offer any radical stance in terms of domesticity or fundamental typological investigation hinted at by its exterior15 . Yes it is open and fragmented — a significant spatial characteristic that offers an antidote to what may be perceived as a physiognomic overdose — which can be seen in concurrence with models and precedents for achieving a sense of openness, whether within indigenous examples or within recent architectural history.

Then there is the question of the aesthetic language itself. What is the source of this strife in this pastoral setting? A reflection of conditions of conflict within our own culture? Does it come across as an anachronism? Or perhaps a manifestation of the architect’s struggle, to operate within a presumably archaic and (still) parochial practice culture through a kind of ‘immigration of an ideological stance’ — not that this position is not fraught with its own problems? A self-referential effort to liberate oneself, then, from these constraints? In that case, is the 56

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architecture of this leisure home really freeing? Or does it bear the burden of the architect’s sense of inner conflict?

Perhaps we would need to explore the architect’s growing oeuvre and wait to see what comes next. In any case, one may not need answers to these questions immediately to observe the enthralling manner in which the pool deck grows out of the hillside or that breathtakingly explosive vista upon entry.

The distant sea and the monsoon clouds marching in over the landscape would be wonderful to view.

— Suprio Bhattacharjee Architect

May 2013

This spread: structural forces are in evidence everywhere, whether the delicate tension net that ensures the folded roof does not twist beyond a point as its leading edge cuts through the oncoming monsoon winds, or the concrete bridges that are shaped to reflect their bending stresses

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