Di 32 | Suprio B - A Subtle Landmark | DOMUSIndia 09/2014 by Suprio Bhattacharjee

September 2014

domus 32 September 2014

Volume 03 / Issue 10 R200

Author

Contributors Deepika Sorabjee Suprio Bhattacharjee Photographs Andrea Basile Bharath Ramamrutham Christopher Taylor Clair Arni Edmund Sumner Filipe Balestra George Socka Hélène Binet Hideki Shiozawa Jonathan Leijonhufvud Jose Palaez Nelson Kon Tom Arban Vanessa Davis

INDIA

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Oriole Henry Writer

Kaiwan Mehta

Luciano Semerani

Confetti Outskirts and outskirts

Stephen Bates Bruno Krucker

Learning from the city

Yang Zhao

Home-for-all in Kesennuma, Japan

Filipe Balestra

Urban Nouveau

Architecture every day

Deepika Sorabjee

Christopher Taylor

Proximity of existence

Oriole Henry Kaiwan Mehta

Clair Arni

Work and intimacies

Kaiwan Mehta

Malik Architecture

Projects The visual versus the perceptive

Kashef Chowdhury

Friendship Centre, Gaibandha, Bangladesh

HCP Interior Architecture

A subtle landmark

Steven Holl

Extension of the Glasgow School of Art

Venessa Beecroft Enzo Cucchi Alberto Garutii Luigi Ontani Michelangelo Pistoetto

Art calling design

LA CITTÀ DELL’ UOMO

Giacinto Di Pietrantonio

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Rassegna Furniture

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Feedback George Baird’s Toronto

Volume 03 / Issue 10 R200

George Baird INDIA

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Title Editorial Churning of the ocean

Suprio Bhattacharjee

September 2014

Design

Contemporary museum for architecture in India

Authors Filipe Balestra Architect

LA CITTÀ DELL’ UOMO

CONTENTS 21

LA CITTÀ DELL’ UOMO

032 September 2014

Cover: As cities are being forced to undergo drastic changes under the banner of cluster development that wipes out the nature and structure of living that already exists, the implementation of incremental housing development has become imperative. This image from Urban Nouveau depicts how increamental housing is intended to grow within the urban fabric of the city.

The designs of the Lupin Research Park in Pune, as well as that of the Friendship Centre in Gaibandha, Bangladesh both draw inspiration from mandalas and layouts of ancient monasteries. This diagram of the Sitakot monastery at Dinajpur, 7th-8th century CE was a special reference for the Friendship Centre in Gaibandha, Bangladesh

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22 EDITORIAL

CHURNING OF THE OCEAN

As we were closing this issue, and dealing with the pressures that go along with sending pages of a magazine to press, the respite every evening was to sit and listen to one of India’s finest scholars, Dr Kirit Mankodi, lecture on ‘Masterpieces in Indian Art’ – which was a four-evening lecture series at Jnanapravaha (Mumbai) and the subject matter of the lectures was essentially sculpture from the premodern period. I say respite, as listening to the lectures became an occasion to slow down one’s thoughts and engage softly (yet deeply) with the material at hand, as that was the tone with which a fine scholar like Dr Mankodi entered his series of lectures and engaged with every object he discussed. And in that smoothened and staid thinking process, one’s thoughts begin to wander amongst the many alleys and bylanes in one’s mind thinking of many questions relating to the subject and content of the lectures, but also the other issues that are pressing one at that moment; and every time one is closing an issue it is a dense period of not only physical activity (work and labour) but it is also a period intense thinking (weighing options, choices, sequences, evaluating, reading, writing). So one takes the theme of ‘masterpieces’ out for a walk, practically first looking at the situations at hand where anyway the intense activity is churning – the monthly ‘samudramanthan’! Evaluating and engaging with works of art, design, and architecture on a daily basis is an exercise in debates on what is the meaning of what we are looking at, and dealing with? Where does beauty lie and when will it evaporate, or never appear, but yet there is a sense of stress and disturbance (productive though) that leaves one thinking, and pondering? Where shall one find the conversation between beauty and meaning? And what are the ecosystems within which these objects float, and where do they extend to? Within this map of questions, one asks, ‘what, then, is a masterpiece’? This question implies there would be a set of properties and characteristics that would qualify an object as a masterpiece. Would it be possible to individualise the question to specifics, where then every object answers the question for itself, yet belonging to the ocean called ‘masterpieces’, setting up possible dialogues between many masterpieces, but letting them live their own history and rendezvous in the world of objects, rather than streamlining a multiple range of objects into a straitjacketed structure of what a masterpiece should mean and do? In this way, the possibilities for a masterpiece open up, surely within the limits of an ocean that is a shared and discursive space, rather than closing down on a restricted set of properties and checklists. This ocean could also be that churning ocean where arguments are in constant action and production. The magazine, month after month, is also that churning, debating objects and ideas, producing estimations and assessments as well as platforms for evaluating and rethinking questions – new and old. Every feature and every essay is a contribution to the question –

Kaiwan Mehta

what is criticism? And further extended to the question – what is architecture? Which today could also be posed – where is architecture? I do not mean the latter in a way many people complain of ‘no good architecture these days’; but the last question is more in the sense of where all are we talking about architecture besides the building-object. What qualifications are we dealing with in this realm that is architecture? The range of questions is vast, and always a work in progress, but one that stands the test of time every time an issue of the magazine is printed in the public sphere. Like the last few issues, this time as well we begin with an essay that evaluates or gets into a ‘thick description’ of the ‘tools of the trade’ – a discussion on Lina Bo Bardi and John Hejduk’s contributions to the understanding of cities. The city and housing remain important for this issue of the magazine, as we look at Filipe Balestra’s journey into India and the Indian metropolis where crowd and clutter turn from exotica to resource and methodology. His journey and the way it has now shaped his studio practice point to an important aspect that we need to pay heed to in India – incremental development! Development that is not seen as a wipe-out of what exists to give way to a shining new – that breathes a certain kind of arrogance in the way we discard inherent and accumulated knowledge in existing systems, structures and neighbourhoods, but a development that takes pains to identify and weed out the problems rather than decimate an entire way of life. Growing for a better tomorrow within what exists today is very possible, and in my own research work with older neighbourhoods within cities, one has always emphasised that the study of such neighbourhoods and their biographies is not to make a plea for material conservation of these areas, but in fact to identify and understand the knowledge and cultural value they are capable of holding and do hold yet, within their spatial configurations, that can be of value to human life and quality even as we develop towards newer ways and ideas of life. Talking of value, and not nostalgia, we bring in two photographic investigations – one into mansions and institutions from a colonial period in metropolises like Mumbai and Kolkata, and the other around professions that newer economies are pushing out of our cultural ecosystems. In both these investigations we realise the interiority of spaces that these photographers land up capturing. Interiors in buildings and built spaces, and interior vis-à-vis architecture is a much abused and misused sphere of this field and its practice, and at Domus India we wish to recover that space, understanding it for the essential role it plays in spatial realities and the shape of our cultural make-ups. Interiors should not be reduced to flashy photographs and obscure assemblage of objects, but it has to be understood as the psychology of cultural spatiality, it has to be understood as a sphere independent of the exterior form and structure of a building (many times, if not always).

Deepika Sorabjee’s text on the photographs by Christopher Taylor precisely grasps the weight of interiors and their capacity to hold values and memories through changing habitations. While in the works of Clare Arni, one encounters the urban interior as the everpresent testimony to its unnoticed existence. Urbanity exists much in its interiors; it is, in fact, at many times produced in its many hidden interiors, and spaces of work combine with the idea of space, the idea of labour that also produces the city, the idea of materiality and objects that make up the urban geography for us. The Lupin Research Park in Pune, designed by Mumbai-based Malik Architecture comes at an interesting point here – where, as we explain in the feature, it has a series of double stories to tell, double stories always in some debate with each other. The exterior is a formal discourse with the texture of terrain, as nature, where architecture brings in a geometric sensibility to world and earth otherwise in chaos (at times productive chaos); while the interior is textures of elements and materialities producing a terrain of their own rather than the formal clarity of its exterior. The sculptural outside sits in dialogue with its textured domesticity of the interior. A building that navigates between more modern and some pre-modern habits and imaginations, as it plays its dialogue between architecture and nature, human need for utopia versus natural temperament. Simultaneously we bring in the Friendship Centre in Bangladesh by Kashef Chowdhury where the natural site and terrain are redrawn and pushed to produce themselves into an architectural geography of courtyards and bricks – one, a familiar reference from collective memories and the other, a visual guarantee towards (or simulation of) oneness with earth. The debate on architecture and nature, or exterior and interior is played out in a certain way here, formulaic at times, referential in the ‘critical regionalism’ mode also at times, but yet strong enough to keep the tussle going! In talking of form and form-ness, questions of light and crafting interiors, the extension to the Glasgow School of Art also throws up another set of approaches to the question of architecture, interior and the inhabitation of form, the proposition to engage materiality. And finally talking of interior spaces and debates on beauty and meaning, and art and masterpieces, we enter the homes of five Italian artists picking on the magazine’s ‘unflagging and profound interest, in the subject of living, from home to the city’. Interiority as the aspect of living – as much as it is the aspect of cultural accumulation, as much as it is also the production of work and life – is something that comes across in full bloom in this beautifully detailed feature. The insides, the city, the home (and habitation) – themes that will keep us thinking as architects and designers, artists and urbanists, will continue to occupy the pages of this magazine. km

PROJECTS

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PROJECTS 73

HCP Interior Architecture A SUBTLE LANDMARK In a new building for the Alliance Francaise in Ahmedabad, Canna Patel deftly handles a multi-layered programme within a tight site, to create a set of spaces that celebrates the collective, as well as the role of institutions within a city’s fabric Text Suprio Bhattacharjee Photos HCP Interior Architecture

In the articulation of a multi-layered programme within a tight site, the architects succeed in celebrating and amplifying the modest scale of the building, by etching this urban figure as a subtle landmark within the city’s fabric

The new building for the Alliance Francaise in Ahmedabad sits not so far from the busy NH228 that connects the city with Sabarmati and Dandi. Set within the quiet confines of a piece of the city marked by its low- to midrise residential buildings, this project nestles comfortably into its surroundings, yet strikes a noticeably distinct pose that allows it to stand out from its mundane neighbours. The programme for the institution is twofold: to provide a space for instruction for the French Language courses that it conducts, as well as to stimulate discourse through cultural programmes. On a tight site, the building stacks these requirements in a rather straightforward manner that aids the legibility of a user’s interaction with the institution. On the ground floor, an entrance and reception area acts as a fulcrum between the multi-

purpose hall (meant for cultural activities such as lectures, performances, and exhibitions) and the vertical circulation core that defines the building’s street-side facade. The first and second floors contain spaces for instruction – classrooms – as well as the necessary support facilities. The library occupies the third floor, while the fourth floor contains classrooms as well as other spaces meant for pedagogy and the institution’s legacy. What sets this building apart as an institution and a place of exchange is the way in which a mere stacking of the programme is suitably challenged and inflected by the sculpting of the building’s north facade, and the experiential transitions made by the users from city street to classroom. The entry into the institution is marked by the projecting canopy-like mass of the second and third floors. The cantilever

Above: the ground floor entrance area bifurcated by an oblique metal trellis to modulate the flow of visitors. Right: the reception area that acts as a fulcrum between the multi-purpose hall and the vertical circulation core

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74 PROJECTS

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A 6

10 11

3 8 7

13 2

9 14

1 Entrance 2 Reception & waiting 3 Multi-purpose hall 4 Outdoor cafe 5 Classroom - 1 6 Classroom - 2 7 Classroom - 3 8 Conversation class 9 Toilet 10 Classroom - 4 11 Classroom - 5 12 Director’s cabin 13 Admin 14 Pedagogy 15 Library 16 Book Shop 17 Campus office 18 Teacher’s room 19 Classroom - 6 20 Classroom - 6 21 Heritage section 22 Terrace

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GROUND FLOOR PLAN

FIRST FLOOR PLAN

SECOND FLOOR PLAN

THIRD FLOOR PLAN

FOURTH FLOOR PLAN

FRONT ELEVATION

Below left: Inside, the circulation core and the reception create an atmosphere that indicates the stripped down atmosphere of the internal spaces. Below right: The red vitrines bathe the staircase core in a vivid red

NORTH ELEVATION

SECTION A

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Project Alliance Francaise d’ Ahmedabad Location Ahmedabad Client Alliance Francaise d’ Ahmedabad Principal Architect and Designer Canna Patel Design Team Associate Architect Mili Amin Associate Project Manager Avdhesh Vishwakarma Senior Designer Mukesh Patel Art & Accessories Sonal Patel Architect Namit Chopra Interior Designer Tanisha Punjabi Jr. Architect Sanjay Kolakaluri Rashmi Makwana Site Area Built-up 1681 m2 Carpet area 1391 m2 Project Area 621 m2 Civil Contractors Bakeri Group Structural Engineers Bhoomi Consultants Electrical Nishchint Engineering Consultants Pvt. Ltd. (Samir Mehta) Plumbing Vimarsh Utility Consultants (Arvindbhai) HVAC Avon Air (Jaimin Mehta) PMC Bakeri Group Interior work Bhavna Furniture (Rambhai) Landscape Greenways (Snehal Dave) Site Supervision Bakeri Group Model maker HCP Interior Architecture Pvt. Ltd. Initiation of Project January 2011 Completion of Project June 2013

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Above: the street aspect of the building creates a subtle landmark, and the cantilevered volume ensure that one would do a double-take while walking on the street. Right: a four-storey metal trellis on the southern

facade created to serve as a vertical garden. Below left: entry to the building that begins weaving the insideoutside spaces. Below right: classroom area overlooking the open-air balcony

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amplifies the modest scale of the building’s size and programme, and creates an urban void that marks one’s transition from city to institution. A single column anchors this space of transition – defining the edge of the city and the street drawn into the site as a quasipiazza, and the boundary of the institution’s space of exchange – its outdoor cafe and multipurpose cultural space. A large metal trellis sitting obliquely serves to modulate this flow of the city and its people – gently beckoning them to move sideways into the building. This inflection creates a three-storey void over the verandah of the outdoor cafe – a grand space for gatherings and events, that is connected through large vitrines to the multi-purpose hall and the reception area. The upper floors projecting into these voids have the character of the residential buildings that surround it – making this feel like a ‘large open-air balcony’, as the architects state in their description of the project. Inside, the circulation core and the reception create an atmosphere that indicates the stripped down atmosphere of the internal spaces. Plywood makes a comeback here as a key material in the interior spaces, with simple constructions that begin to define screens (like the one upon entry that sits over the staircase) as well as the reception desk with its non-fussy and direct construction. The exposed edges of the material hark back to the classic plywood furniture of the mid-20th century, as well as echoing the horizontal bands that envelop the building’s facades. Exposed plywood also makes its presence felt in the library furniture, its deep browns striking a suitable contrast with the whites and the reds. This simple material / chromatic palette defines the interior spaces of the building, along with a range of dolomite stones that create a pared down ambience for the institution. In the reception, classic wrought iron armchairs are given a polychromatic netting – perhaps the only burst of colour within the institution. Commonplace materials and furniture are elevated in stature by their deft yet restrained articulation to create a set of dignified, yet distinct spaces. One cannot overcome the fact that there seems to have been a desire to lend the interior spaces a domestic character – in tune with the urban setting of the institution. From the street, the circulation core creates a beacon within this residential neighbourhood, with its axial elevator core marking a ‘towerlike’ feature flanked by red vitrines that pivot open to let in light and air. The red vitrines bathe the staircase core in a vivid red – a

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perceptual marker as well as spatial event. The street aspect of the building creates a subtle landmark, and the cantilevered volume ensure that one would do a double-take while walking on the street. Elsewhere, on the southern facade, a four-storey trellis with a pattern that repeats the one at the entrance, creates what the architects hope will become a ‘vertical garden’ – a gesture to the residential building that sits adjacent. The building’s key aspect is its northern face, sculpted and inflected by the city – the voids mirroring the open expanse of the ground that affronts it – as a salute to the city, as well as the activities and exchange the building wishes to stimulate as well as contain – the addition of a space of celebration of cultural discourse. This void shapes the nature of the internal spaces – with the oblique line determining the layout on certain floors, as well as the semi-open spaces that surround the void. Two of these barrel transversely through the building’s body, creating verandahs between the academic spaces on the first and second floors, symbolically puncturing any reading of this as a hermetic institution. This is the building’s victory. In the articulation of a multi-layered programme within a tight site, the architects succeed in celebrating and amplifying the modest scale of the building, by etching this urban figure as a subtle

landmark within the city’s fabric. The dignified and collective character of the institutional is wedded to the intimate character of the domestic, in a blending of oppositions that is as much a reference to the urban setting of the institution, as well as the scale of the building it is contained within. This would make the building a reference point for the neighbourhood in the future, as well as a reminder that a city is made by the celebration of the collective.

Above: on a tight site, the building stacks these requirements in a rather straightforward manner that aids the legibility of a user’s interaction with the institution. Below left: view of the classroom area. Below right: classic wrought iron armchairs in the reception with polychromatic netting add a burst of colour within the institution