Volume 03 / Issue 01
November 2013
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CONTENTS 35
Contributors Jasem Pirani Suprio Bhattacharjee Ekta Idnany
Author Kaiwan Mehta
38
Editorial Two years of Domus India
Photographs Rohit Raj Mehndiratta Rajesh Vora Bharat Ramamrutham
Nicola Di Battista
42
Editorial Domus, the human city
Kenneth Frampton
44
Towards an antagonastic architecture
Alan Fletcher
47
Confetti Beware wet paint
Historian
Kalyani Majumdar
48
Many hands, many forms
Alan Fletcher
Shanay Jhaveri
52
Interlocking the magical, the marvellous and the mystical
Visual Arts Researcher
Martand Khosla
54
The workings of architecture
Marthand Khosla
Aprita Das
56
Captial between the covers
Mustansir Dalvi
58
A sense of repose
Writer & Publisher
Smita Dalvi
60
Collating a journey
Mustansir Dalvi
Eduardo Souto de Moura
62
An unscientific autobiography
Alberto Campo Baeza
64
An idea in the palm of the hand
Werner Oechslin
66
Man as intellectual
Architect
Kaiwan Mehta
69
studio VanRo architects
Projects Pandora’s jaali
Alberto Campo Baeza
Jasem Pirani
80
SJK Architects
Poetic link, tectonic integrity
Suprio Bhattacharjee
86
Malik Architecture
Sitting as glazed boxes
Architecture Historian
Ekta Idnany
92
DCOOP Architects
Discernable patterns
Hans Kolhoff
Hans Kolhoff
98
Hans Kolhoff
Two ministries in The Hague
Hans Kolhoff
108
For an architecture of the city
110
Rassenga Bathroom
Authors Kenneth Frampton
Design
Shanay Jhaveri
INDIA
023
LA CITTÀ DELL’ UOMO
Architect
Arpita Das
Architect & Historian
Smita Dalvi Architect & Historian
Edurdo Souto de Moura
Architect
Werner Oechslin
Architect
November 2013
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INDIA
023
LA CITTÀ DELL’ UOMO
Cover: in the Jaisalmer Airport by studio VanRo architects, an element like the jaali weaves colours, forms and light in the building, without much value difference between the element and the structure
Title
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LEISURE HOUSES
PROJECTS 93
DCOOP Architects DISCERNABLE PATTERNS The Kashid House, a weekend home in Alibaug — with architecture that stays true to its elemental functions of shelter and comfort — is imbued with a sense of reverence and honesty ‘as a whole’, but assumes a more playful investigation when it comes to ‘the parts’ Text Ekta Idnany Photos Rajesh Vora
At first glance, the house in Kashid by DCOOP Architects lends itself to very expedient visual consumption. The diagram in its graphic and material reading is almost elemental, with rusticated random rubble walls, Mangalore-tiled roof, detached column and wooden framed doors and windows. The expediency is purposeful in its final manifest but yet it is delayed when one starts to look closely at the sum total of the parts that combine to make the whole. A deeper reading of the architecture and the drawings reveals a perhaps understated interest in collage. While the architecture intentionally does not challenge the archetypal programmatic or functional content of a weekend house, it produces an extremely effective, if simple diagram on the arrangement of the programme. Programmatically the house is organised to a lopsided ‘T’ — pun
Opposite page: the living rooms exhibit a series of panelled and louvred windows. This page: above, the sandstone staircase; below, every element in house is visible in its fundamental and essential nature and nothing superfluous can be added or subtracted
(and oxymoron) intended — with one of the arms, assuming the living spaces and the other arm the sleeping spaces of the house. However, beyond this basic organisation the architects differentiate the programmatic parts using volume and definitive material expediency. The largely unassuming rectangular single volume of the living room and the kitchen has a symmetrical double-pitched roof, is clad with innocuous random rubble and has large expanses of glazed windows, contributing to the conventional image of the weekend house. In stark and ironic contrast, the volume containing the sleeping spaces is taller, massier, asymmetrical, with deliberate volumetric extrusions where punctured and painted red! Even internally the architects seek to set up the contrast by the deliberate juxtaposition of the relatively docile kotah stone used
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96 PROJECTS
in the living room against the fiery and graphic sandstone used in the staircase and landings leading to the bedrooms. It is in this material reading that one can at first identify that the architectural dialogue is primarily interested in part to whole relationships. The next reading supporting the argument can perhaps be gleaned out of the assembly of the structure, masonry, fenestrations and roof — parts contributing to the whole. There is a conscious attempt by the architects to expedite the tectonic reading of the architecture. Immediately at the porch one is greeted by a prominent freestanding column that supports a naked steel beam that further supports the metal struts and the steel rafters of the roof. The entire assembly could be perceived as a historical tribute to architecture in one well-stated line. Every element is visible in its fundamental and essential nature and nothing superfluous can be added or subtracted. The same tectonic and material honesty continues throughout the interiors of the house as well. The materials used internally — wood, stone, cement boards, plaster, paint — all appear in their most guileless form, thereby avoiding any subterfuge in how the building comes together. Even spatially and volumetrically one can sense through the large, unhindered well-lit and
This page: below, parts of the house exhibit a Mondrian-like graphic composition; bottom, the living room is a largely unassuming rectangular single volume. Opposite page: the rusticated random rubble walls, Mangalore-tiled roof, detached column and wooden framed doors and windows that make up the weekend house
ventilated volume of the living space that the architecture stays true to its function of shelter and comfort. While it is in the formation of the whole that the architecture continues to take itself seriously, one can sense an immediate departure from this seriousness when one looks to investigate the parts that put the whole together. The architecture assumes a light-hearted exploration when it comes to the fenestrations. Exceeding beyond the essential functions of light and ventilation, the architects choose to employ a more graphic approach with the doors and windows. The living rooms exhibit a series of panelled and louvred windows that are composed within the essential grid of the super structure — the divisions of the mullions contributing to the rhythm of the structural bays of the shell and the roof. But it is in the doors that one sees a break from essence. The several bays of double doors leading to the back of the house are rendered in a Mondrian-like composition. While pragmatically the composition of the rotated L panels might be the result of necessity to lock the doors but essentially the juxtaposition serves to reinforce the part to whole relationships established throughout the house. In fact, looking closely, one can identify the repeating ‘L’
motif throughout the house. Most prominently it appears in the concrete L beam that gets embedded in the wall to form the in-situ bench along the bays of the louvred windows. But graphically it can be perceived in floor plans, the shape of the porch, the panelled doors, the juxtaposition of the extruded volumes on the facade of the house, the rubble cladding on the external walls and the gable walls within the house. Even if this repetition is not premeditated, it is definitely a result of the natural geometry and language that the architects are interested in, and therefore subliminally intended. However, at no point does it tend beyond graphics to ornament. It would perhaps not be wrong to say that DCOOP’s approach to architecture as ‘a whole’ is imbued with a reverence and honesty, but it assumes a more playful investigation when it comes to ‘the parts’. While the whole lends itself to a simple and expedient image, it is the graphic heterogeneity of the parts that causes one to pause, look longer and find discernable patterns and pleasure.