House for 2 Brothers

Puzhutivakkam literally means “The dusty place”. This is could be a pithy discription for pretty much any Indian town or city, but the original copyright goes to the Chennai neighborhood located at the south eastern periphery of the city.  A jumble of ill-planned streets and modest single family homes, Puzhutivakkam with neighboring Adambakkam, Nanganallur and Madipakkam was the preferred destination of retired pubic sector employees in the 70s and 80s to purchase a plot of land and realize their Indian Dream with their hard earned retirement funds . But now, in the age of stratospheric real estate prices, even their gainfully employed sons and daughters who tend to populate the software industry may not be able to afford their parents property that easily.

There are two options for those who would like to upgrade their smaller dwellings. Either they can sell out to a developer and get themselves a brand new, cookie-cutter apartment along with a tidy sum of cash. Or take it upon themselves and risk the treacherous world of self-managed building construction.    With House for 2 Brothers  (H2B), the client Santappa Kalian braved the latter route with the able intervention of  Mahesh Radhakrishnan and his team at the Madras Office for Architects and Designers (MOAD) and in the process have realized a clean, contemporary insert in the land of dust.

Very early on the design process Mahesh recommended they would not demolish or make any major alterations to the existing residence and the new construction will be a deliberate extension with minimal intervention  to the existing home.  Firstly it can be a technical nightmare while attempting a major renovation with a 30 year old construction. Secondly he wanted the new construction to express itself to the fullest without having to diminish the importance of the earlier home. A meticulously designed, custom detailed assemblage of pristine white volumes, the H2B is a 2-bed, 2-bath, 1200 sf extension to an existing parent. While the new addition is built upon the existing north-south circulation spine, the two dwellings couldn’t be more different from each other, just as the two generations responsible for realizing these buildings.

The moment you cross the threshold from the old living room with low ceiling and shuttered windows to the new addition, you are made aware it not your dad’s house anymore. Soft glow of indirect sunlight greets you as you walk across the new hallway, doubly lit by the skylight above the adjacent stairway and the clear story windows inserted in the space between the ground floor and first floor volumes.  A cantilevered, minimalist stairway leads to first floor with a view of the backyard beyond the terrace paved with china mosaic with mangos from the adjacent tree gently resting on the parapet.

The new heart of the ground floor is the dining space with the view of the lotus pond, enveloped on three sides by a deliberately patterned ferro-cement Jalli. A new age mashrabiya reminiscent of digital pixels provides the much needed privacy from the immediate neighbors while allowing the breeze the pass through.  During late evening, as the setting sun filters its way through the Jalli, the dining space is magically transformed into a three dimensional chiaroscuric tapestry of golden sunlight and deep shadows - a place where performance is guaranteed every evening as long the sky is clear of cloud and haze. As the twilight gives way to darkness, the Jalli dematerializes with the warm glow of incandescents.

The contrast between the old and new house could not be any more apparent when it comes to the choice of materials, textures, and play of natural light in animating the interior spaces. Yet they both co-exist as a single multigenerational dwelling, reconciling differing aesthetic, social and functional priorities. The new extension, hardly visible from the access road does little to strip the parents’ home of its identity. Yet, it firmly asserts its modernity  without compromising on the utility of both units.

At some point the white exterior walls of modernist volumes will eventually bite the Puzhidivakkam dust as they weather the unforgiving Chennai heat, smog and annual monsoons. Yet, those naturally lit, intimate interior spaces will continue to play host to the daily tango between light and shadows for generations present and future.

A million pantones in brown: Mid-day visit to Sarangapani Temple, Kumbakonam

"Photography Strictly Prohibited" - The menacing board greets you even before you enter the main mantapam in Sarangapani temple. Considered as one of the 5  celebrated  Vishnu shrines located along the banks of Cauvery   (the other "Pancharanga Kshetrams" being in Srirangapatna, Srirangam, Trichy and Mayiladuthurai), the multi-walled Sarangapani Temple during the middle of the afternoon is an oasis of serenity within the bustling commercial heart of Kumbakonam. The visitors are few, and most of them looked like locals.  The cool interiors stands in welcome contrast to stifling afternoon heat and you can say its nap time for many. There are fewer raised eyebrows when when the camera shutters unceremoniously breaks the silence and reverberates across the pillared halls. And best of all, you get to witness the dramatic play of daylight as its streams through the narrow skylights and temple courtyards, creating a limitless palette of brown and grey shades across the array of columns.

But all good things must come to an end. After about an hour, the word must have got through that someone is having too much fun with his camera. I eventually got yelled at by one of the watchmen for flouting the rules. When I mutter something like "I thought we werent supposed to photograph the shrine", it infuriates him even more and he started questioning my literacy before I scurry away. The party may be over for my camera sensors for now. But day after day the sun beams will continue to shower their magic on those granite reliefs and stone cold floors, as it has always done for hundreds of years. And thats one memorable matinee you can always experience for free.

The Bangalore Sabbatical

Urbanslate has been under a ridiculous extended hibernation.  The blog is being revived on a new and improved Squarespace platform.  Urbanslate revival also coincides with my 6 month sabbatical in Bangalore. Never mind that two of the six months have already transpired without a single entry. In the next few months, I look forward to visiting and photographing recently completed buildings by Mahesh Radhakrishanan from  MOAD and Dhanasekaran Muthu of Architecture Design Group apart from sharing photographic vignettes from Bangalore and beyond. Watch this space for some inspiring works by emerging talents that has been staying under the national and international radar for way too long.

Architectural Review reports on India

Architectural Review is probably one of my favorite architectural journals that is still surviving. While not immune to the print diet that has been afflicting most of the image intensive monthly publications, it still manages to feature innovative international works with good photography, readable plans and well written commentaries. As an added bonus it comes with little or no advertisements that features anorexic women caressing unaffordable stainless steel bath fixtures - how refreshing !!

Given that it is a rarity to have works from India featured in AR, it was a treat to browse through the September 2010 issue that was entirely focused on India. But make no mistake - it only took the editorial team 20 long years to revisit the country for an entire issue.  Not  too many surprises in terms of featured architects - Bimal Patel's IIM extension in Ahmedabad, Stephen Paumier/Spa Design,  Rajeev Kathpalia/Vastu Shilpa Foundation among others. And off course they has to be an essay on Dharavi. The most lyrical project of all is the minimalist Shiv Temple in rural Maharashtra by Mumbai based Sameep Padora.

A lot of things have changed in twenty years, and some have not. The Delhi-Ahmedabad-Mumbai triangle still retains its monopolistic stronghold in getting its work noticed in the international arena. With a big share of the Ahmedabad design diaspora settling in Bangalore, coupled with  self-made emerging talents from less glamorous architectural schools, there are certainly lot more stories waiting to be told from beyond the established architectural triangle.  Perhaps we need to wait for another twenty long years.

Death by Asphalt

A not-very-helpful New York Times article on the sorry state of traffic safety in India could be summarized in two lines:

"The fast-growing Indian economy has resulted in a steady increase in traffic fatalities.  No one really knows what to do about it !!"

You don't need a 1500 word article to arrive at this conclusion. Pretty much any Indian resident  or even a regular visitor can tell you that. However, one line caught my attention -- newly privatized highways in Brazil have much lower rate of fatal accidents compared to other roads. Wish the reporters had more to say about how Brazil is doing better.

Link to a  bit more substantive article in BBC ( June 2008) on similar topic has a shocking revelation (no sources provided) : Traffic deaths claim more people in India than AIDS, TB and Malaria combined.