Projects Gallery

Theatre X : The Architecture of Possibilities by Aarushi Kalra

Statement –

“Giving people a small ‘ ! ’ moment.” – Studio Nendo

This statement has helped shape my approach to design and has been at the centre of my design process. I aim to design spaces that inspire and excite.

Having trained as an architect, my work aims to be methodical, and my vision of interiors seeks structure. I like design to be curious, introspective and inquisitive, that delves into an idea bigger than just spatial experience.

Studying at the RCA has pushed my understanding on how various spaces can be imagined and interpreted. My projects here have explored the boundaries between architecture, interiors and other fields of art and design, opening my mind to infinite possibilities.

Having grown up in India, a diverse country that is perennially trying to strike a balance between tradition and modernity, I try to bring a unique perspective and a complexity of thinking to my work. I enjoy making spaces that are complex in conception but are easy to experience and engage with. The Display Platform has helped me develop this art of storytelling through a multi-layered spatial design language. My designs’ complexity lies in the nuances of the narrative that reveals itself through a simplistic imagery and relaxed storytelling. Some might say that a recurring theme that runs through all my projects is the duality of perception.

I want people who experience my designs to feel small “ ! ” moments intuitively.

The Brief –

What is the Architecture of a Digital Space?

Retail stores are looking for innovative ways to create flexible, experiential and sensorial spaces. By observing how digital interfaces allow for an efficient and multidisciplinary user experience, how can we marry the two to create a more dynamic retail experience than ever before?

“Translating the digital into the physical”

Border&Fall is a website and digital-only platform who challenge preconceived notions of the sari as a traditional, outdated or gender specific garment. Their mission is targeting a global youth audience to reinvent and change this perception through artist collaborations and creative multimedia such as talks, films, and exhibitions.

This project was conceived as a space to encapsulate both the essence of Border&Fall website and the Sari, a place for boundless creativity, adaptability and flexibility. The space derives its identity in the interplay between the ideas of a sari being a 9-yard-long blank canvas for personal expression and the website being an infinite blank canvas for a multimedia-rich user interaction.

Border&Fall as a concept space with its structure and systems, enables the stories of the collaborating artists to shine through, just like a weaver weaves new stories on a highly mechanised loom. The design philosophy of the store is to allow collaborators a blank canvas, indeed a ‘magic’ canvas on which to display their work. An elaborate system of invisible jigs, fixtures and pulleys ensure that the space is able to transform to respond to the most dynamic of spatial configurations.

The space treads a balance between the space’s digital and physical (tactile) elements by creating a strong and clear dialogue between the two; allowing it to offer itself as a blank canvas, nimbly taking on the identity of the voice(s) and the programme it represents. The space in essence, thus, mimics the fluidity of a Sari, acting like an architectural, ever changing display, with a vivid and mesmeric user experience

Interpreting The Brief

Spatial Attributes — If the website were a physical space, the key attributes that would translate into the real world would be Adaptability, Flexibility and the Ability to be a Blank Canvas.

Theatre X — This project has been conceptualized in two parts. The first part details out the Border & Fall website as a physical space and the second half shows how the space transforms as a collaborator takes over.

Welcome to Theatre X

Spatial Design — A minimal, clean, aesthetic that allows a collaborator to use the space as another expression of their creativity.

Spatial Flexibility — An elaborate system of invisible jigs, fixtures and systems ensure that the space is able to transform to respond to the most dynamic of spatial configurations

Border & Fall x Rimzim Dadu

Border & Fall x Rimzim Dadu — “I am not a cut-and-sew designer. I like using fabrics that allow me to to transform their inherent character.” Rimzim Dadu is known for her innovative use of materials, that challenge conventional methods and perceptions. She works with unconventional materials like metal, paper and plastic that are used as the building blocks for her textiles

Invisible Landscapes — Interpreting Rimzim’s work, it would seem as though she draws inspiration from her vivid travel memories, heavily inspired by vibrant, organic landscapes to create minimal, structured garments and textures.

From Dusk to Dawn — The space reflects the delicate, surreal and structured essence of her work. Programmatically, the space has been planned as a user journey that includes immersion zones, installations, a central sculpture and an experiential retail environment.

The Making Process : Lavender Fields

Design Philosophy : Sunrise

Exhibition : Surreal Day

Shop : Sunset

White, A Blank Canvas — With this pandemic, it is evident that people will be hesitant to step out. Though, physical shops caught in a conventional sense will soon be less relevant, purely digital spaces, on the other hand, feel removed from a human connection. In this context, this project gains a new resonance. I have tried to make this space a part of a larger conversation. Almost as a filler in the community, one where people come to build a wide variety of experiences and is not limited by a certain person or function. Truly a white, blank canvas.

Marissa Housing, at Dhahran City, Saudi Arabia, by Architecture Dialogue

No place like home
To put the feet up and look out to see
The rising or the setting sun
To have dinner with the moon that has risen
No place like home
To see green change colour
To sense the seasons, pass by
To savour flower, scent and changing colours
No place like home
For morning walks and moments of solemn refection
Yet know that you are not alone
And that a friendly smile beckons just around the corner
No place like home
For a cup of tea
On the deck with butterflies and bees
Offering a moment of contentment and reflection
No place like home
For feeling the cool breeze
Hearing it pass through the peep holes of destiny
Seeing it gently moving past the Palm tree
No place like home
To be grounded in the senses
Yet be connected to the eternal bliss
A beautiful life, waiting to be lived!

The master planning of the Marissa Housing responds to the local climatic, social and sustainability needs to create a contextually appropriate architecture. The contemporary Islamic style architecture responds to the brief by providing an introverted planning that is designed around a central landscaped courtyard. The residential units are enclosing a shaded and landscaped courtyard that is optimally shaded and densely planted as an oasis amidst the city. Each of the unit has proximately positioned parking, which allows residents to park close to the house for ease.

The brief of parking, building and open space with a 33% proportion each is divided by taking the parking to the external extremities and consolidating the greens to the centre. The ground parking is divided to the four corners and the residential units are divided into four blocks around a central courtyard. The public amenities of reception, club house, amphitheatre and a children’s play area are all accommodated in this shaded landscaped courtyard. The internal courtyard is completely free of vehicular movement. The roads and parking are limited to the perimeter of the plot and in close proximity to the residential units. Additional drop off points are provided near the public lobby for ease of access for the elderly and children.

The architecture style and planning is inspired from the world heritage site, Jeddah, the Gate to Makkah. The traditional typology of shaded streets with filigree fenestration, solid masonry walls and terraces are interpreted in a contemporary planning and form. The rowshan, jail and lime wash solid whites create a contextually appropriate style that is rooted in history and reinterpreted for a contemporary aesthetic and use.

The villa typology is reinvented as a house with private courtyard, garden or terrace. The generous and double height living and dining spaces, both look into the private landscaped court with an internal staircase to the floor above. The planning of the units is such that the circulation space use is minimised and usable area maximised. Access to private landscape courts with external or lush courtyard views with voluminous living spaces creates the experience of a private villa. While this being features of units on ground floor, the units on second floor has large terraces with planting at all levels The terraces in each unit become active during the evening or night and enhance the use experience of the house. The bedrooms are spacious with generous wardrobe space and balconies overlooking the city or the internal courtyard.

The one-bedroom unit is divided over two floors with an internal staircase to give the experience of an independent house. The balconies, terraces and courtyards are sensitively provided to ensure usability and enhanced experience.

The following design elements are integrated into the design:
– Internal courtyard.
– Thermal insulated external walls.
– Shading screens: provide shading and filtration of lights inside the living spaces through rowshan or filigree timber fenestration.
– Double glazed windows.
– Smart system.

The landscaped courtyard, is created as a shaded and landscaped oasis offering respite and awe. The stepped open-air theatre that leads up to a water feature creates a congregational space surrounded by local flora. The trees, landscaping and the water all contribute towards creating is micro climate that is cooler, humid and has a cooling breeze. This is the heart of the project, providing space for all public and communal activities. The secluded oasis, filters the harsh external environment and creates a relief and retreat space within.

HOUSE OF ARCHES, at Palakkad, Kerala, by Akhil Gopi

This is an experimental project of reinterpreting courtyard housing typology. We aimed to break the conventional sloping roof courtyard housing typology with some unique architectural characters without changing the overall planning. The courtyard is conceived as a spatial divider, like a family camp, to consolidate and share the conviviality and burdens of daily living without feeling overcrowded at night. The courtyard is excavated in plan to optimize views and passive solar gain, allowing light and air inside, while sinking the house into the landscape to maximize thermal insulation and intimacy from the urban context. The rooms are conceived as a continuous sequence of event spaces. Each room is equipped for the varying performances of daily living, framed by the outside, suggesting an architecture of simplicity and harmony between the built and the vegetal.

Project Facts –

Site area_ 45 cent

Built area _ 3300 sqft

Client_ Mr. Sudheesh

Location_ Palakkad, Kerala

Design team_Akhil Gopi, Akhil Das

Banganga Crematorium Redevelopment Competition by S|BAU / Suprio Bhattacharjee

The design for the Banganga Crematorium evolves as a series of diverging paths and routes traced out on a restored site topography and affected by pre-existing conditions – such as Samadhi structures that needed to be retained, a community temple that needed to be redesigned at the exact same location within the plot, children’s burials that were retained at their existing locations and existing, worn-out metal structures that too were retained. These paths along winding routes amplify a ‘distancing’ from the cacophony of the city – heightening the sense of procession along a sequence of narrow and constricting volumes until space is released and the physical/perceptual senses and views expand – to encompass the sea, the sky and the barren landscape.

Interpretations, such as a memory or association to a place, is referenced in the remnants of pre-existing constructions that are maintained in their original locations – rust-covered steel roof frames of the previous pyre sheds – reinterpreted as abstract pieces set within the landscape and re-used as support for the new roof structure of the wood-fired pyre pavilion – now raised upon a plinth to allow for expanding views across the western boundary wall onto the distant horizon of the Arabian Sea.

Visitors would perceive the building as a landscape formation where fragments of ‘built’ elements – raw pigmented cast-in situ concrete elements that read as extensions to the barren landscape mingling with steel and pivoted polycarbonate (in the congregation space) – create a sense of place by immersing the individual in the phenomenology of the site – heightening the awareness of natural elements, modulating these elements such as the sunlight and the expansive views across the Arabian sea, and reinforcing connections with the ground, with the earth. The individual is offered the space to withdraw and observe, the opportunity to record, or ‘trace’ the sense of stillness as natural forces continue unabated – the motion of the sun cast as shadows upon walls, the changing intensity of the wind as it funnels through the building, the reverb of the sea crashing against the craggy coastline of basalt – all the while one is aware of the motion of people as they engage in the act of mourning, remembrance or quiet contemplation.

As the individual moves further in, vistas expand to allow for release, and adjacent spaces are subtly demarcated through level differences, through the use of walls that enclose, low walls and platforms that act as seating ledges or benches, raked concrete planes that heighten a sense of enclosure and porous screening elements of bamboo, wood or stone. Time will eventually weather the raw concrete surfaces and the other natural materials to offer us a beautiful allegory to the cycle of life, death and harmonious universal balance – the acceptance of mortality and change.

A sense of isolation is created to allow for inner realisation and peace, stillness and silence broken only by the sound of waves crashing against the rocks below. The culmination of all the paths leads to an intimate promenade that follows the western boundary along the restored topography of the site. A pre-existing exit to the rocky coastline (through a band of informal setttlements) affords those willing to venture beyond, the opportunity to connect directly with the breath of the sea.

The project thus constructs an extended journey across a narrow, linear site, perceptually expanding its cross-section through non-linear, sinuous routes, whilst deflating the compression of urban life through a choreography of spatial experiences. The set of splayed paths leads from the gross-ness of the outside world, to an intimate yet expansive experientiality that offers the individual a sense of spiritual inner release coupled with a one-ness with the vastness of the forces of nature. The predominant sense is that of a sense of incomplete-ness (or perhaps a choreographed ruin?) – much like our lives and how the loss of a loved one makes one – but perhaps with a realisation that this ‘incomplete-ness’ is a mere reflection of the tangible self – with the necessary permanence of nature ensuring one’s sense of wholeness and completion.

Models

LIVING WEAVE, at New Delhi, India, by S|BAU / Suprio Bhattacharjee Architecture Unit

The population of people living in slums in India, today exceeds the entire population of Britain. Slum Clearance projects as variously seen in the past have had limited success with incongruous built environments imposed upon a people whose lifestyles are in marked conflict with the spaces they are (supposedly) ‘rehabilitated’ within. The key in the project then, on finding a solution that ‘integrates the culture and traditions of Indian society with improved living conditions for inhabitants of urban slums’, was an opportunity to develop a built environment that may have a closer connection with the lifestyles of the people it shelters.

The proposed scheme, spread over a 3 Hectare area in the heart of New Delhi, is conceived of an intricate weave of the ‘farm’ and the ‘dwelling’, drawing from the traditional Indian courtyard typology, enabling community living (and farming) through a modular, scalable model that offers residents the benefits of low purchase cost, flexibility to expand as per means, and the potential of skill development and employment through self-build.

Modular Relationship

The building block of the built community is a single cluster that is a combination of 4 housing units integrated with individual farms. Modules combine together to form a continuous tapestry of farmlands over the roofs of dwellings that may be worked on together by the community as farming is traditionally practiced in India and much of Asia. This ‘weave’ gently undulates over the length of the site, cascading down to form flatter expanses for play areas and market zones. The sense of porosity and fine grain of informal settlements is maintained, with courtyards that house the vertical circulation cores linking up at ground level, while the sense of a continuous landscape is retained at the roof level.

Implementation Strategy

An incremental building strategy ensures a low capital cost for residents acquiring a dwelling unit within Living Weave. A combination of ‘Infrastructure’ and ‘Infill’, where ‘Infrastructure’ is the shell comprising the structural system and service core, and ‘Infill’ is a palette of locally available low-tech building materials that becomes the enclosing skin, enables lower cost of acquisition and enables dwellings to evolve over time as family needs increase and economic standards rise.

Self-build

The ‘Infill’ is made up of a ‘Kit-of-Parts’ that is fabricated in the craft workshops as part of the built community and assembled by the residents themselves. This ensures skill training and employment generation in the act of building itself that stays as valuable knowledge within the community. The self-build strategy with a set of definite modular elements enables customization of the dwellings so that residents may choose materials of their choice as per their needs and preferences, as well as contextual and micro-climatic conditions each dwelling encounters. The kit-of-parts consists of [a] Brick wall (rat trap bond) [b] Bamboo reinforced concrete panels [c] Bamboo screens [d] Recycled perforated metal screens.

Incremental growth

The building system comprises a fixed core with flexible internal configurations. This allows residents the option of expansion as the requirements of a family increases. With time they can be transformed and customized, by residents themselves in an incremental manner – dwelling floor area may be increased from the provided 30.25 sq.m. to over 50 sq.m. over time.

Project Facts –

Awards: Environmental Quality Mention

Year: 2012

Design Team: Dhara Mehta, Jude D’Souza, Suprio Bhattacharjee, Sonali Praharaj

Location: New Delhi, India

Project Type: Open Competition

Keshopur Wetland Centre at Gurdaspur, Punjab, India, by S|BAU / Suprio Bhattacharjee Architecture Unit

The Interpretation Centre is situated amidst a wetland. A key idea at the heart of the project was the restoration of the landscape of the site to its prior state as a wetland, similar to that of the surrounding landscape, rather than have the state of imposed artificiality to which it had been consigned. Visitors would thus have an experience of a building immersed into the natural environment that they would later experience in fuller measure on their tour through the wetlands.

While the intent of the Interpretation Centre was to be a warm and welcoming space to visitors, it was clear from the outset that greater emphasis was to be given to the wetlands – the raison d’être of the building. The Centre was therefore designed to be one with its surroundings, tracing an intuitive, unobstructed path that would lead visitors through the built space of the Centre onto the unbuilt, open landscape of the wetland. Like leaves on a connecting stem, spaces were asymmetrically planned along this path – the function and location of the spaces dictating their volumes and orientations.

Essential communicated information unfolds gradually through various visual media as a visitor moves along the trail to the wetlands. The different functions of the Interpretation Centre are organized along this path not as closed rooms but as experiential spaces, each with a distinctive dialogue set up with the exterior. Thus a visitor is pleasantly surprised at every turn.

The orientation of the functional masses was strategically planned to allow the building to dissolve into the landscape, allowing for unobstructed views through the building onto the surrounding landscape. Built spaces – both functional enclosures as well as circulation areas were scaled down to provide for a more intimate spatial experience and also to emphasize the vastness of the wetlands. The entire site was interconnected by ramps making barrier-free access possible to almost every point.

Roofs with large overhangs provide shade to the visitors to picnic, rest and play while on their trip to the wetlands. Some roofs are made accessible to visitors for bird viewing and other activities. All roofs are designed to function as green roofs with the thermal mass of the soil helping regulate interior conditions to comfort levels. Roof slabs are angled to block out the harsh sunrays.

The undulating landscape of the site creates a rhythm alternating between wetland and dry land. The transition between ‘ground’ and ‘roof’ is also gradual.

Bamboo was selected for non-structural screen walls to further de-materialise the built mass into its natural surroundings. The screens act as a breathing skin which creates a play of light and shade while giving interior spaces a warm and earthy feel.

A porous, diffuse building that stretches out to embrace the site in a series of light, strung-together pavilions, the Keshopur Wetland Centre is an endeavour to touch the ground lightly within a sensitive and fragile ecosystem, and in doing so, bring focus to the need for preserving and perpetuating it for generations to come.

Project Facts –

Location: Gurdaspur, Punjab, India

Team: Dhara Mehta, Sonali Praharaj, Jude D’Souza, Suprio Bhattacharjee

Site Area: 1.17 Ha

Year: 2012

Way Side Amenties, at Delhi, by Kalayojan Architects

This work was conceptualized as an International public standard amenities project for a new national highway (eastern peripheral expressway) around New Delhi India. Many independent functions such as hotel, food courts, hospitals, petrol pump with electric charging facility, dhabas, local handicraft market, car and truck parking facility, public parks and large fountains were all seamlessly incorporated in planning of this 10 hectare land.

One of the distinguishing features of this work is the roof, with its sinuously curved profile and beautiful cut outs binding the otherwise disparate functions together.

The movement of incoming and outgoing traffic was planned in a way to avoid any intersection between them.

This project is envisioned to become the benchmark for all the upcoming way side amenities projects not only in India but Internationally

Raksha Shakti University, at Gandhinagar, by Kalayojan Architects

Raksha Shakti University is being planned as a school for security education, located on the outskirts of the Gujarat capital Gandhinagar. The objectives of this institute comprise an integrated modern, scientific and technological training for Indian youth in internal security and facilities for research in internal security. The slightly undulating site identified by the organization lies next to the Lavad village in Dehgam taluka on the banks of the dry Meshwo river.

Kalayojan’s design, in its innate style, makes the layout placements prioritizing response to site topography by placing the parade grounds and play fields on the flatter plains and the residential facilities on the contours at the water front. The discipline followed throughout the layout in terms of axial development and formal, almost symmetrical placement of facilities serves to define its identity as a defence establishment. This discipline in planning is further buttressed by a meticulous maintenance of view lines through all facilities on the campus.

The colonnaded passages running all around the main buildings alongwith their central courtyards provide relief from the extreme heat of the climatic region. The height of these stone clad colonnades around main administration and institutional buildings sets up the impactful scale of the institute’s architecture.

The residential facilities are treated with a warmer exposed brick exterior. Kalalyojan’s zigzag placement of these hostel blocks ensures the 4 squadrons that form each battalion share a common recreational space placed in the centre of the 4 blocks.

The exposed concrete in the institutional buildings and exposed brickwork in the residential buildings echo the architecture of Ahmedabad as typified by the works of Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn. They are also expressive of the ruggedness required of a military school. Yet, the touch of colour added to the scene by the red and blue base panels of the hostel windows enlivens the common recreational space.

Other facilities provided include a helipad, an obstacle course, grounds for hockey, football and khokho, an amphitheatre, an auditorium, a stadium, a shopping complex and a students’ mess.

Drawings

Lighting Museum and Energy Centre, at Bangalore, Karnataka, by MayaPraxis

In commemoration of 150 years of power supply to Bangalore, via India’s very first power station in Shivanasamudra falls in Karnataka, the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Ltd, held an architectural competition for the design of a Light Museum and Energy Center.

The 9-acre site is located in Hoodi and has a high tension line passing through it.It is programmed to be a museum, research center and public space.

Brief dictates that the architecture of the LIMEC must celebrate light through form, material, structure and function.

The LIGHT MUSEUM will be a place for the exhibit and study of lighting technology – its cultural, scientific and historical aspects. The ENERGY CENTER will be a laboratory and knowledge center for exchange and experiment of technological research, product design and testing standards in lighting and energy issues.

It will include indoor and outdoor exhibition space, an information centre, research space, public library, training centre to encourage implementation of energy efficiency and alternative energy production systems and a hardware tool lending library.

in addition, performance and event spaces, cafeteria, book shop and lighting store and parking space is included.

Like a prism, the center should focus knowledge as well as disseminate it. Light comes alive in its meeting with the crystal; it dazzles, reflects, refracts light.

The structural geometry of the electric poles seems similar to the geometry of the polished surface of the crystal.

Taking this idea forward the design develops 4 blocks separated by 3 ‘crystal’ courts.

The crystal courts refract the light into the galleries and other spaces by prismatic glass surfaces on two sides. These courts also channelize the prevailing breeze and let it into the gallery spaces where the spaces are not air conditioned. A series of galleries beginning from dark space to the light space showcase the various ways light is used and understood today and through history.

The design uses several strategies to make the building energy sensitive and responsive to the local ecology using passive and active systems.

Bamiyan Culture Centre, at Afghanistan, by MayaPraxis

The Bamiyan Cultural Centre is a space for exhibitions and training, that celebrates the wonderful history of Afghanistan, its heritage, local art and craft, knowledge and techniques. UNESCO, in association with the the Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture and the Republic of Korea hosted an architectural competition, the idea behind which is that culture also makes a valuable contribution to socio -economic development, and in the case of Bamiyan, it will pave the way towards future tourism, and encourage the participation of local communities, in not only protecting and preserving their own cultural heritage, but also sharing it.

The site is in Afghanistan’s third largest city, Bamiyan. A long heritage of trade and culture is seen in the landscape around. The site faces the remains of 2000 year old gigantic Buddha statues carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamiyan valley.

Leaving the flat areas for cultivation and community landscape, the main building was sited in the middle of the site along the steep slope.

By using the existing terrace along the slope and cutting-filling some new ones, the building sits snugly along the slope and helps connect the two terraces. The learning and work center and the community plaza are located in the lower terrace. The entrance from the upper terrace begins an axial path that steps down the 10m slope and ends at the amphitheater at the lowest end. All spaces are oriented keeping in mind the Bamiyan cliff view and the sun from the south.

OUR APPROACH:

To create modern architecture that resonates with the landscape and traditional forms :

use of simple vaulted forms that emerge from the ground but do not dominate the monumental landscape

Organize the functions along the axial staircase in descending terraces

To weave an architectural journey that folds into the terrain of the site :

Begin with a cave-like entrance in a bermed landscape and then move through vaulted forms on terraces stepping down looking onto the Bamiyan Valley.

To utilize local material and technology with innovation

To plan an intelligent structure that retains heat , utilizes daylight and conserves water :

Good thermal insulation is provided by the stabilized earth block walls; glass skylights provide diffused light within and bermed structures keep the temperature even during the winters.