Design workspace is never conventional

I would love to compare the present Indian architecture to a typical romantic Indian film in which there is a hero, villian, the hero goes behind the heroine, the villian conduct occasional attack, the hero defeats the villian in the climax. There are couple of fight sequence, song and dance, and almost every Indian cinema is predictable today! Earlier, the audience never felt boring about the film quality, but they enjoyed the humors and lame jokes inside the film. But today's audience can not really love such film anymore. They need more practical and naturalistic elements.

The space in which I have learnt designing was just a typical array of lintels and beams with regular typical arrangement of doors and windows. I do not really want to think the designer/engineer had really known the users inside, because from my personal experience, it is horrible. Just like Indian cinema, these spaces inside my college are just a typical space which can be found in almost every Indian or at least so called modern Kerala houses.

From my personal experience being a stressfull designer, I have really felt the importance of the essence of a work space and in what all ways it can influence the user and the activities inside this space. An individual's thought inside a typically designed space is still typical. It is not that they force themselves not to think different, but there is no automatic transition of thought process from typical to unique happening inside these spaces. Why do you think the students show up with just similar or not so unique design sheets at the end of a semester?

On a very random visit to Avani Institute of Design I was totally excited to see the actual space for young designers. It was delightful to see the spatial quality of the studio. The studios had different design scheme, different material finishes, lighting, dimensions, and fenestrations. Painting the plastered wall was not so important.

Space in which the students' works were exhibited.

There was a certain undefined curiosity within me while I was walking through the corridors. It had an unusual grid system. Only required and important spaces were highlighted. Others were left blank, yet interesting. 

Crafted out works

They had really maintained the contour sites and had taken the advantage of the natural slopes. Some walls were never constructed, because there was a natural boulder which undirectedly acted as a  textured wall.

Artworks by the first year students

Is sustainable architecture important?

Photo: Luis Dalvan

Thanks to the rapid industrialization, earth had suffered a lot in such a small time frame. There was merciless killings of so many animals, cutting down the trees even if there were no important use for it, spilling dangerous chemicals on the nutritious soil, we have to talk about sustainability now. Take the time to understand that sustainable architecture is not planting bushes and creepers on your terrace. This area of study is very huge and indigestible to few. Mentioned below are few points on the sustainable architecture.

Reducing human impact

Everyday life of more than an average human being impact the nature negatively. We are excellent at throwing out waste, even a small bit of toffee wrapper on wherever we are present at that time. We can build a house without completely wiping the plot out of trees and plants right! Why don't people maintain the slope of a space instead of slicing a huge quantity of soil out?! You should learn from Glenn Murcutt

Lesser energy consumption

Buildings are environment friendly only if you design it in such a way that no increased energy than required is needed to run the building. If you take out every plants and trees, and cover the refreshing soil with concrete interlocking, there is no point in complaining about the heat induced in the building. Probably it is time for a new air-conditioner.

Usage of natural materials

While the nature had blessed us with more than enough materials for construction, we still try to invent new materials after the dangerous 'cement'.  Plastic materials for construction are becoming a new trend. Why cant we build something using the mud, timber, rubbles,bamboo, hemp, cork, flax, and soy?! If you cut a tree today, you should plant five trees in its place and that's called sustainability. People who complain that natural materials are unavailable at their place of dwelling, are the same people who will try to build an 'igloo' in the Sahara desert.

Patriarchy in Kerala Architecture

There is a systematic algorithm in which a house plan is rendered by a designer to the client. The client, and the designer may not give respect to the surrounding members including the other members of the patriarchal family. Although this practice is quite less as of now, the people who came back from the Arabian gulf will definitely know how to define the activities in a kitchen.

This post speak through the eyes of the system of architecture followed in Kerala. 

Vernacular architecture of Kerala. | Source: https://architecturesstyle.com

Kerala had witnessed a lot of different feudal chiefs who hailed themselves to be superior and powerful. Untouchability was a practice amongst the different race of people, which is found even today. But back then, there was a time when women were not allowed to come into a group of men, sometimes women were forced not to show themselves before the men as well. Thinking about the architecture back then, the design will certainly have had a significant negative impact.

Considering the spaces inside a home back then, the living room used to be a posh area which is cool and occasionally ornamental. Decorations varies from house to house depending on the economic stability of the family or the patron. There will be a lot of chair, sofas, bed etc for seating facility for outcomes. The walls would be decorated with artworks which would spell out the social status of the family. 

Then there are guests in which a group of men, women, children come and visit them. There is a strange rule that all the women amongst the guest should go away from the living room and they can be in groups again inside the house, maybe near the 'nadumittaom' ( central courtyard open to sky ) or mainly inside the kitchen.

A 'nadumittom' | Source: https://architecturesstyle.com

The kitchen, being supposedly an important and hygienic space amongst the whole house is never designed and built with respect. Sadly, almost every kitchen inside a chauvinist patron run house are so pathetic that the user has to go through a lot to maintain that space. 

There are no proper air ventilation inside, and the stove used to be fueled by dry timber and cow dung back then. While the flooring in the living room is of imported tiles and beautified, the flooring in kitchen might be  mostly a layer of lime mortar or cow dung. The walls never have had better days at all. All the unplastered walls would be faded with the dark smoke. There is no proper furnishing or even a small place to relax for atleast five minutes!

a pathetic old kitchen | source:https://i.pinimg.com

I should really thank the present generation of people who work hard to spread the fact that even the female members of a family should get some leisure time in their life. Why is it always they have to cook the meal for the family?  A husbands are least bothered about their wives' physical and mental health being inside the home for days and not going out. It is never good to be home always.

Frozen Anachrony by Ego Design Studio

Architects: Ego Design Studio

Location: Kottiyam, Kerala

Area: 4244 sq.ft

Year of completion: 2016

Photographs: Running Studios

The project was a question on relevance? The relationship between a particular architectural style, time, context and its repetition in this society, which is heavily media, dictated. The built form in its style questioned its relevance in the time and context in which it was conceived and executed and the connecting mass in the center questioned its own relevance amidst the already irrelevant mass. The brief demanded a Victorian style residence. After tedious attempt to convince the client of its irrelevance, the project was perceived as an installation which would question the idea of relevance.

The built form was designed as two parts, the guest and living spaces in front and the personal spaces behind. These spaces were designed in Victorian style in terms of their architectural elements, scale and planning principles. Then the two blocks were connected by means of a contrasting transparent glass and steel volume, giving an illusion of irrelevance in the existing Victorian mass.

While the viewers questioned the relevance of the central glass and steel mass amidst the Victorian architectural style. The glass and steel mass questions the popularity and existence of these imagery replicas in the todays time.

The project was a Victorian building based on a Kerala context. The client used to be working outside and got influenced from the architecture of the place where he was working. Like any guy who came back after working in a foreign country, He wanted to build a home exactly the same way how he saw the houses back there.

Though the layouts inside the house were nothing more than the usual algorithm, there were certain elements where the architects tried to make an impression such that it consisted of Victorian craft on it.

This alone thought alone started asking a question of its relevance on a Kerala contest. Why is it being forced to appear in this space? Doesn't it create an impact in that particular row of houses? Is it good and important? 

Well, the question itself questions its relevance. This question of relevance must be asked must be done without confrontation of the society's or of an individual's ego, but as an expression , an art that would question themselves and understand the society's ego. 

 

Message to frustrated young architects

Message to frustrated young architects 

I'm perusing an online media post of a youthful architect that I might want to cite verbatim as it gives a knowledge into the brain of the youthful architects of India. 

"Try not to go for architecture except if you have a force hallway to misuse, or a family that is into development! The calling is a sinking boat, and it's 99% disappointment and misuse once you see through the shallow fabulousness." 

With the title "architect" decreased to a joke by courts that have believed that any Amar, Akbar and Anthony can begin a business of offering architectural types of assistance, a small child procuring the expert title has little to begin with, and if that isn't sufficient, the plan business can really give exercises on nepotism to even Bollywood. 

All in all, is there any expect a very much prepared and gifted youthful architect? 

The appropriate response is "Yes" if architects comprehend what their identity is and the most ideal approach to grasp this is to take a gander at verse, exposition and now, the jingle. 

In the event that we see correspondence, words are the structure blocks utilized by everybody with changed degrees of abilities. 

Toward one side of the range there are individuals who impart without having the option to utilize right language structure, while on the opposite end there are artists who can keep the guidelines of syntax as well as compose utilizing complex meters. Some can scarcely compose realities while others can weave a perplexing similitude in a tune. 

The structure plan industry can be planned entirely on this marvel as a wide range of structures get built, going from a worker setting up a tin-shed that resembles a messed up sentence to a Central Vista expected to become image of a rising country and thus should be an epic with extraordinary request and solid allegory. 

While most architects dread the unfit and all the more so the designers swarming the market, what they need to understand that most different partners, particularly designs are not prepared to be writers. 

On the off chance that we take a gander at incredible artists, they have an extraordinary preparing to have the option to track down a higher request in words and a more profound significance in what they experience. They are prepared to get familiar with the specialty of composing utilizing a meter, and furthermore prepared to sharpen their faculties that permits them to encounter better subtleties. 

On the off chance that we move this to building plan, unmistakably a specialist can be prepared form a sound writing, however it needs an architect to construct a sonnet. 

While this illustration "peruses" all things considered, what does it really offer to a youthful architect who needs to construct a training (and bring in cash)? 

Architects need to understand that composition will consistently be the mass yet verse won't ever be supplanted by it. Thus, their preparation offers them a generally empty space gave that they esteem it as well as will adhere to involving it. 

Things being what they are, how might a down to earth youthful architect do that? 

The first and most basic prerequisite for an architect is to quit being a designer, and all the more so according to a customer, and the most ideal approach to do it is to quit clarifying the plan and dynamic cycle objectively. 

It might sound hazardous to begin with, however on the off chance that an architect will stance to get to a more profound abstract plain ridiculous and objectivity, it will help him/her to move away from the specialist's space that an undeveloped customer can likewise stroll in and begin judging. 

The moment an architect will get certain about "detecting" something that the customer doesn't and quits clarifying his/her choices, a large portion of the fight will be won, however does it help in getting projects? 

While doing architecture like a writer is an approach to involve another plain, yet I am sorry to say that the round of getting projects is a cycle of bastardisation of the very interaction that even artists need to utilize, and that is to begin with composing jingles. 

While it is incredible to investigate graceful architecture for the epicureans, it is significant that one will assemble such structures and that must be conceivable in the event that one figures out how to be perceived and recalled by individuals on the loose. 

While a couple of individuals are conceived artists who don't comprehend or require whatever else, for the majority of us, material achievement is required, and the best approach to it is by making snappy rings that stick. 

In the event that a youthful architect begins his training by utilizing each chance to accomplish something snappy and striking rather than practical and even minded, for example compose a jingle rather than a significant writing, he/she will actually want to move towards building a training as an architect rather than a useful space-organizer that a specialist can be. 

As India moves towards the time of development, Indian architects need to move away from the decree of "Structure follows capacity" and target building solid structures that can obscure the capacity. 

On the off chance that a youthful architect will adhere to these two fundamental guideline of "no clarification" and "striking structure" in the previous period of the training, he/she will actually want to arrive at a point where he/she will presently don't have to compose jingles and will actually want to develop to composing verse that the world doesn't comprehend that it will consistently require. 

With designing developing quickly in most recent hundred years, architecture needs to quit being a blend of craftsmanship and science. Leave the science alone done by designers (and now, might be machines driven by man-made reasoning), as people will consistently require workmanship paying little mind to the moon and the stars that the science will reach. 

Architecture now should be an unadulterated work of art for it to keep offering what mankind will consistently require, and that is a sensorial encounter past the domain of reason.

Relief from architectural stress.

There are certain moments in your life when you feel like giving up learning architecture. If you feel yourself down, you would not really look at your college works anymore. You will try to sit back and relax thinking of why you are not able to do this thing properly. You are confused about what work you are supposed to do. You want to plan your work accordingly but unable to do so. You want to outsmart your friends and perform the best in front of the juror or the reviewer. But you don’t know where to start.

This is a very not so serious case when you are in the middle of nowhere, you work is not started and you don’t know where to start from. In this case, you should not think of quitting the course, because these aforementioned situations don’t mean that you are bad at work. It is only an active force in you that is stopping you from working your stuff properly. You can think of the following points as a solutions

Talk to your friend.

Take your phone and ring that friend of yours who is enthusiastic in talking about the topic. This friend will certainly speak to you automatically about what you should do on your presentation and make sure to not down his/her methodology.

 

Methodology

Though your college forces you to follow one methodology for all your projects, you may try another method to work out your project. Or you should even try making your own method and talk about it with couple of your professors to make sure it will work fine. Now you have your own methodology!

 

Internet

You can find the best and the worst thin on the internet. Choose wisely what contents will help you overcome your confusion and note down needed points. NEVER ever adapt the entire content from a website as it is. People can make wrong stuffs at times and all the things are never same right!

 

Music

Music is the best way to manage your time. The more you listen to short music, the more concentration you will get in order to work out a timely well planned work. You work out your contents with the rhythm of the music, and you can do a lot of work in one single hour.

 

Take a break!

Taking a break is very important. Never go for conventional way of taking break. Like work for one hour, take five minutes break. This is so wrong. You should take break when you are confused. When you are at that point of tight spot where your brain is struggling to make a decision, just go out and take a walk, or watch the birds, or read newspaper. Don’t go for television or browsing mobile phone. Do something which makes your eyes go round and round the frame. So take a break.