Sourabhs work

Dear all,

This is to show you some of Sourabhs work , a glimpse of which you saw the other day . These are the videos of the various construction methods and some pdfs too. Do write to him at soar.hub@gmail.com and also visit the website www.sourabh.tk to see his other work in areas of ecology and education also.

1. How to build a house with a single bag of cement: http://www.sourabh.tk/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Sukalatti.pdf
2. Gram Mangal: http://www.sourabh.tk/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Gram-Mangal-Learning-Home.pdf
3. Solar Pasive Greenhouse: http://www.sourabh.tk/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/solar-passive-greenhouse.pdf
4. Sendriya Shouchalaya or Organic toilet :http://www.sourabh.tk/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Sendriya-Shouchalaya-Kuran.pdf
5. Cob Toilet: http://www.sourabh.tk/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Cob-Loo.pdf
6. Junk Shed: http://www.sourabh.tk/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Junkd-Shed.pdf

• Slate tile roofing

• The precast jaali bottle

• A traditional rubble foundation

• Rammed Earth formwork

• Compressed mud blocks

• 
  

Blog -Indian by Design

http://indianbydesign.wordpress.com/ is an interesting blog on Indian design. I recommend all students to bookmark it.Just reproduced on article featuring Aniket Bhagwat below .

More information on Aniket Bhagwat is available on  http://www.landscapeindia.net/

ArchiFeature > Aniket Bhagwat

 

19aug08

*An Indian By Design Exclusive*

 

I featured Aniket Bhagwat last month, and there has been considerable interest in his work; landscape and architecture. So I got in touch with him (thanks to dear friend Ambrish), and dug deeper into his works and thoughts. Here’s Aniket Bhagwat, talking about his projects, meandering into thoughts on architecture, Spade – an Indian architectural design magazine published with peers, and finally wrapping up in a discussion on enduring design.

> Sirpur Paper Mills

“A 2100 sq. mt corporate office building in Gurgaon, Delhi. The building is wrapped with Corten steel, that will rust and age over a period of time. The Deviarts Foundation gallery, headed by Lekha and Anupam Poddar, occupies two floors in it, and opens with a showcase on 30th August, 2008. The building will be complete by Diwali.”

“A 2100 sq. mt corporate office building in Gurgaon, Delhi. The building is wrapped with Corten steel, that will rust and age over a period of time. The Deviarts Foundation gallery, headed by Lekha and Anupam Poddar, occupies two floors in it, and opens with a showcase on 30th August, 2008. The building will be complete by Diwali.”

> Aakash

“Aaaksh can host 7000 people under the metal grid. It’s a rare example, where you can custom light to precision, a space of almost 1,00000.00 sqft, without flood lighting it. The lights allow limitless variations, each light being about 6 feet in diameter.”

> The Terrace and Floor Patterns at Devigarh

“I like the Devigarh landscape because to me, it combines nuances of the physical past of the space, along with cultural references of a feudal culture, and presents it in a new language, that is not explicit, but initiates a dialogue with the keen observer that remains much after he has left the place.”

Beach House at Tithal

“The Birds are lights. The angle of their perch can be altered depending on the owners fancy. Sometimes the Birds can dip to drink water, or seem to take flight. Their eyes light up the pool.”

Pool in Delhi

“That’s Anupam Poddar’s garden that we restored, and built the pool within it. The steps are concrete Ls, that do not touch. The pool was built on the edge of a Banyan tree. We planted a more feminine tree atop the pavilion, and a small delicate tree at the other end in water – almost like a family, holding the water.”

Vakola Project

Jariwalla House

“Jariwalla was interesting. It’s a modern house in Ahmedabad; exposed brick and concrete on the outside. We then hollowed out the house, and filled it with clearly Indian interior spaces that use traces from wooden Parsi jaalis instead of walls and south Indian columns in a melange that we wanted to see if it sat well together. The light inside the house is very gentle. Samira Rathod worked on it with furniture that was chunky, heavy, detailed, almost refuting all this modern euro stuff.”

Outhouse for Hemant and Meena

Halfway Retreat

“The stone court is a driving court, where guests have to navigate their cars as they arrive.”

Upcoming Projects:

Deviratna

“This is Anupam’s next hotel, after Devigarh. Work has started at site, in Jaipur. Spread over 22 acres, it will house 60 odd rooms and is committed to explore a new idiom of contemporary design, that’s rooted in the understanding of Rajasthan’s culture and climate.”

The Devarshi House

“This is turning out fine. It’s changing a lot from the images, but getting quieter in some sense – the story about how it got built is going to be fun to recall. It’s for a wonderful young person, who loves design and loves cars too – the house is like a street that he can drive right through in.”

The Jain House

“This is a house of many actors – the central brick lounge that peers at the north, the verandah, a stockade that holds two rooms and a pool at the back, and a glass dining pavilion at the end of the verandah. It’s under construction. I am going to bake bricks for this dome specially, thinner flatter bricks, baked in different hues of fire.”

The Santoor Farm

“This project has not started yet- it’s a house built around existing trees.”

The Interview:

Indian By Design: Your introduction states that your firm handles residential, industrial, recreation, urban, institutional landscapes, and ecological redevelopment projects. Did you start with the aim of doing all of it, or did it evolve with time?
Aniket: The firm is my fathers’ – he started it. So it’s an old firm which started as a clear landscape design firm in 1972, and has evolved since. So we did not start with that charter, but over the years found that was the kind of work we did. For the last 8 years, we now do a select amount of architecture that we find interesting.

Indian By Design: When someone approaches you with a project, how do you go about analysing what it could become?
Aniket: I approach any project with the intention of making the client a partner in the process- so what the project aspires to be is a collective vision- not mine or ours alone.

Indian By Design: I met an architect from Sri Lanka who felt modern Indian Architecture was not distinctive enough. Do you feel that to be true? What do you think is the biggest challenge Indian architecture faces today?
Aniket: Well, modern architecture anywhere in the world is the same- except for notable examples. I think Indian architecture is doing just fine, but could show more life from time to time. You see, the fact that we shy away from the kind of buildings and shapes that the world is building (Zaha Hadid et all)- is a tribute to the fact that we are sensible and in some sense mired, in some sense respectful of our cultural, economic and spatial context. But sometimes we take the mantle of being sensible, as a burden, and it weighs down Indian architecture greatly. The flip reaction is the irreverent work that seems to dot our urbanscape. But this too- needs longer discussion. In a nut shell, I disagree.

Indian By Design: Have Indian clients and architects begun to appreciate the true potential in landscape design?
Aniket: Well, it’s been a huge change over the last 10 years- so in general I would have to say yes, emphatically, yes.

Indian By Design: On Spade
Aniket: It’s a design magazine that few of us get out – first issue was out a few months back – we plan to do only two issues a year. It’s a magazine dedicated to Indian Architecural Design – no ads, no sponsors.

Indian By Design: How do you feel about design competitions?
Aniket: Most of them in India are poorly run, badly managed, and have poor judging capabilities. They also, almost never allow the winning project to be built. Generally a waste. I keep away from them.

The discussion:

Aniket: I find that in India, a lot that gets lauded is actually work that’s trying to copy work else where in the world, and is not rooted enough to the understanding of our culture, context and skill sets. Also, a fair amount of work has visual quality as a premium concern, and the space does seem to lose its charm upon repeated viewing, and holds little to simulate the mind, other than the initial visual spectacle.

Indian By Design: About what you said about design and how it should guard itself from turning transient. Felt it absolutely true in the context of architecture, which once built is there forever, and has to answer to generations, but felt that sometimes art, graphic design, interiors and the like might be excused from the sterner form of this caveat. As they can be delightful even if seasonal and ephemeral.

Aniket: I disagree. While the ephemeral, or the transient has place in any discipline, if a discipline lays claim on being temporary as a right of exixtence, god help it. We seem not to be able to seperate between the transient act of being and the nature of permanence communicated as an idea. When a rare flower blooms, is it transient, or is its memory permanent? A broken love affair? Transient or sears your heart forever? We make the mistake in distinguishing between the two as if they are two separate identities. That which is transient, perhaps has a greater value of being a permanent memory because it’s a singular focused emotion. That which strives for permanence, does not always manage to, since it has many paradigms to respond to. Now think of a great ad campaign, the old Beetle Volkswagon ad campaign, the Marcel Breuer chair. Permanent? Transient?

Apart from working on Landscape and Architectural projects, and writing for Spade, Aniket Bhagwat is also faculty at CEPT, teaching post-grad Landscape and under-grad Architecture. He can be reached via his website.

This article was published in Mumbai Mirror this weekend. Its an interview of Architect Rahul Mehrotra , who has launched this book "Architecture in India since 1990".He talks about the city of Mumbai and the changing face of the urban landscape.


Rahul Mehrotra ia an Indian architect trained at the school of architecture at ahmedabad and at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Prof Mehrotra has been in private practice since 1990 and built extensively in India. His projects range from Interior and reuse projects to historic preservation, urban design as well as Architectural commissions. Mehrotra has taught at MIT since 2007 and teaches design studios as well as a seminar course that examines emergent forms of Architecture and Urbanism in Asia. He is currently the director of the SMArchS program at MIT.






Sunday Read

The concrete bungle

Architect Rahul Mehrotra says the city has come undone architecturally in the past two decades

Saloni Meghani

     

Posted On Sunday, August 07, 2011 at 05:26:30 AM

When it comes to making sense of Mumbai’s hodgepodge skyline, architect, conservationist and urban planner Rahul Mehrotra is your go-to man. He has spent many years articulating the city’s architectural identity and history. So if you look outside your window and see one big mess (if you see anything at all, that is), don’t feel alone. Rahul, who recently launched his book Architecture in India since 1990, agrees that in the past two decades, Mumbai has lost all the hope it had thanks to what he calls ‘impatient capital’. “After liberalisation, capital is coming in like missiles falling from sky. These missiles land wherever they want and destroy whatever they choose to destroy.” As a result, architecture has become building-centric, site-specific and myopic. Highrises have mushroomed without any consideration for whether there is infrastructure for them, water supply or even parking space in the zone where they land. About 15 years ago, when he co-wrote Bombay: The Cities Within with Sharada Dwivedi, the other urban documentarian, there was still hope for Mumbai’s landscape. We could have moved either towards a golden age or to urban apocalypse. It is certainly apocalypse now, he says. Sitting in the reception area of his office at Forjet Hill, Tardeo, Rahul, who is a professor at his alma mater Harvard University, qualifies what he says. “There has been a lot of energy in urban India in the past two decades. The arts, intellectual life and entrepreneurship have flourished. But we’ve undone our cities as physical plants.” Back in the mid-90s, there was a lot of land in the city that could be recycled. The mill area was still being discussed and New Bombay held potential because the railway line had just gone there. Rahul was among those who set out to conserve the Kala Ghoda region. “We had just started working on preservation and the first legislation had gone through. I thought that we, as a community, would do it. But politicians and builders have misused the fuzzy period of transition from socialism to free markets when all the rules of a liberalised economy are not yet in place,” Rahul says. To this architect, whose aesthetic you can see at Sakshi Art gallery, Jehangir Art Gallery and the HP campus in Bangalore, architecture is not just about buildings and style. It is also about the processes by which these are created. In his office, which reflects his minimalist style and is made with the clear lines that mark most of his work, is a model in which the structure is designed around two trees so they are not disturbed. The trees peep out of the roof that encircles them. He believes in working in a context and with the environment in mind. How we buildRahul explains the four processes his book talks about. While global trends are a response to the dictates of economics, they are countered by the indigenous and the regional assertions. He cites the work of his father-in-law Charles Correa as an example of the latter and says Kanchanjunga at Cumballa Hill makes natural ventilation possible in a high rise. Alternate practices work towards sustainability and also respond to their context. Laurie Baker, who worked with low cost housing in Kerala, is Rahul’s example of an architect working in this fine grain. The last process entails a revival of the ancient that can be seen across the numerous temples sprouting across the country. It is easy to guess which of these four processes has bulldozed Mumbai in the past 20 years. “Bombay is otherwise the ultimate in pluralism. It is a city that did not have land or a master plan when it began. It grew incrementally as land was reclaimed and every time it was opened up, a generation built in a style popular at that time. If you draw a line around each of its reclamations, it’s like drawing a line around each style of architecture. Fort is an organic medieval town while after the first renewal in 1860s, Neo Gothic buildings appeared along the Oval Maidan. After which, Art Deco was in fashion and Marine Drive represents this trend. In the ’70s and ’80s, socialist internationalism was in vogue and Nariman Point and Cuffe Parade look like they could be in Russia.” We were doing quite all right up to the 90s but it has been downhill since. Urban heritage, of which Rahul has long been an advocate, is also in crisis. “It is important we keep conservation in the urban planning debate. Buildings cannot be around forever. But we should recycle them to keep the architecture intact while renewing their purpose,” he says. He has co-authored books on Banganga, the Fort area and the city’s railways. Good looks are a facade Unfortunately, the nature of high-rises is such that the architectural beauty of Mumbai can only remain skin deep. You can give it a different skin, paint it a different colour but there isn’t much else you can do. “This is why someone like Hafeez Contractor was so popular. He managed to master the art of creating facades. He said that his architecture was three feet-deep because he used the three feet of balcony, free of FSI, to modulate the façade.” Which, according to him, are Mumbai’s ugliest buildings? While Antilla and World One may be ugly because they are vertical gated communities and disproportionate in the midst of the scarcity, it is the slums that bother Rahul the most. “They may be beautiful for the energy and hope they epitomise but as physical plants, they are ugly. No one should have to live in them.” There’s no reason these limitations cannot be overcome. Architects should re-imagine their role in this scenario and work on what needs attention rather than be ‘guns for hire’, the man who planned a rural campus for TISS in Tulzapur and a campus for the NGO Magic Bus says. But he is not for giving the role of architects too much importance either. They are instruments in the hands of aspirations, as are their clients and patrons. In the end, architecture is not the primary spectacle in India, Rahul says. To represent this sentiment, the book has an image of a Ganpati immersion against the skyline. Mumbai grew as land was reclaimed and every time it was opened up, a generation built in a style popular at that time a few more links:  http://www.livemint.com/2011/08/04212957/Modernity-and-mega-cities.html?h=B