A dash of COLOR!

Indians love colors to the extend that we have festivals just to celebrate them. Not sure whether it is an Indian trait, I even dream in colors. This particular post on "Arkitalks" is aimed at bringing out the significant role that color plays in Architecture.

Featuring one of my residential projects that recently got a dash of color on it.

Before

After

(AMRUTHAM, Trichur, Kerala - Built in 2009)

Handy Design Tool

Forerunners

"The Masters" of my trade!

Bill F. Baker, SOM

"When I was a young structural designer, one of the experienced architects came over and chewed me out for designing a stair that was fine functionally, but was quite ugly. He told me that a structural engineer should design a structure so that the architect feels bad if he has to cover it up"

-Bill F. Baker, SOM.

(The Burj, Dubai, world's tallest building, 108 floors, 818m height, "Fritz Leonhardt Prize", 2009)

http://www.som.com/content.cfm/william_f_baker

The Berg!

Look closely at the picture posted below! The beautiful snow headed mountain full of flora, fauna, little streams, water falls and integrated activities like trekking, skieing and what not! What a beautiful place to be, but where is it??

It is "the berg" - world's largest man-made mountain which is more than 1000 ms tall and will be in every aspect as close to, if not better than, a real mountain..!It is proposed to come up in Berlin, at the site of the former Tempelhof airport. This is proposed as a tourist attraction in the otherwise slopeless city and is initiated as part of adding green spaces to urban environments..

It is conceived, developed and detailed by the german architect Jakob Tigges and has already stirred up a cyclone of reactions and a mixture of emotions world-wide. The world architecture is still unsure whether it should be actually built or retained in the extends of human imagination..Standing tall at 1023m, if built, it will bag the tag "World's Highest Icon".

By the time I completed my studies, I had one thing clear about my way ahead in Architecture. I would not build to leave a scar on Mother Earth and would remain second to none other than the "Creator". But "The Berg" is an alluring challenge to my idealist idea. It alters the Mother Earth in a 'claimingly' improved manner..

Thinking a little further I feel, for the same reasons why "human cloning" is considered unethical, this would also be an intervention unadvised! While I enjoyed reading up about "the BERG" and remain appreciative of the Architect who developed it to the point of execution, I feel that as a responsible architect, he should leave it at that..

What do you feel about "the BERG" ?

The YinYang Entrance Plaza

Concepts

Buildings

Interiors

Residences

Process of Design

Most exciting part in the process of design is when the requirements are in front of me and I try to make sense out of the written ones and the few unwritten ones.

Only a part of the requirements will be put out and the rest are for you to figure out. And there will be subtle but strong messages about the taste, background and architectural exposure of the client.

Once you have this understanding of the project where you know what is expected out of you (which is not often so easy!), the design follows / flows…!

The project above is an entrance gateway design for a Naga client, who didn’t know what to expect. He had a picture with him; the picture of an entrance arch which he saw somewhere.

In this case, the client's exposure to architecture was limited to the few recollections of Naga Architecture (refer image). Also noticed that the image he shared was slightly monumental in scale and was quite modern. That’s when I hit the bull’s eye!

The idea to recreate the Naga feel in modern clean lines took off from there and at the end of it all, I got a happy client!

Hitler's Architecture

Did you know that Adolf Hitler in his early years, earned a living by using his artistic skills to produce paintings that were sold to the public or used for postcards?

Hitler studied fine arts, music, opera, painting, sculpture and architecture. While living in Vienna under conditions of poverty, he read voraciously and spent whatever meager income he had to attend lectures, concerts, opera, and the theater. Even when he barely had enough money to survive he refused to compromise and always purchased the best paints, brushes, paper, and canvas.

As a remarkably prolific artist, he is estimated to have created between 2000 and 3000 drawings, watercolors, and oil paintings. His artistic talent revealed itself at an early age and continued painting and drawing throughout his life. Even while behind the front lines in World War 1, he continued to paint in his spare time and contributed instructional drawings and cartoons to the military newspaper.

His art continued throughout his leadership of Germany and included detailed building plans, furniture design, city planning, and monuments. Hitler considered the lack of architectural standards to be a serious problem. The words below are his thoughts on city character:

“In the 19th Century our cities began to lose the character of cultural centers and became simply human settlements.

When Munich was a city of 60,000, it wanted to be one of the major German centers of culture. Today nearly every industrial city claims this honor, usually without being able to show any significant accomplishments of its own. They are nothing more than collections of houses and apartment buildings.

How can such an insignificant place have any appeal? No one will have particular loyalty to a city that lacks any individuality at all, that avoids anything resembling art.

Even the big cities are becoming poorer in real works of art even as they increase in population.

The modern era has done nothing to increase the cultural level of our big cities. All the glory and treasures of our cities are the inheritance of the past.”

Architecture!

Architecture is

*Creativity *******Applicability*

*Responsibility ***CoMMitment*

*Opportunity ****Destiny*

Architecture IS•

Stair Master

I love Staircases. For me, 'staircase' equals 'opportunity for creativity'.

For one of my recent projects, I designed an anticlockwise stainless steel curved staircase with grass treads and open risers! The staircase looked beautiful, sleek and sexy, but for reasons beyond my control had to change to steel and wood at a later stage of design. Sighh!

Would like to share some inspiring excerpts from the homework I did before designing the glass staircase. Click on the pic (a compilation of my references) to get inspired!

THE GREEN BUILDING REVOLUTION

In response to the rising demands, the construction sector has embarked on projects and partnerships in several countries to improve sustainability performance. A number of tools and rating systems have been created in order to assess and compare the environmental performance of buildings.

These initiatives have already had an impact on how buildings are designed, constructed and maintained, the primary focus being improving the long-term performance of buildings by taking into account long-term benefits and costs. Such environmentally responsible buildings came to be called Green Buildings. The following are some of the Green building ratings systems developed worldwide.

o The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ developed in the US

o Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) developed in England

o High Quality Environmental standard (HQE) developed in France.

Of these LEED has been among the most widely adopted, with State and local governments across United States adopting LEED for their public-owned and public-funded buildings. LEED compliant projects are in progress in 41 different countries, including Canada, Brazil, Mexico and India.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) TM

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEEDTM) is a third-party certification program and the internationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings developed by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC).

LEED encourages and accelerates global adoption of sustainable green buildings and development of practices through the creation and implementation of universally understood and accepted tools and performance criteria. It also provides building owners and operators the tools they need to have an immediate and measurable impact of their buildings’ performance.

LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health:

o Sustainable site development

o Water savings

o Energy efficiency

o Materials selection

o Indoor Environmental Quality

LEED® Green Building Certification System

LEED for New Construction and Major Renovations is designed to guide and distinguish high-performance commercial and institutional projects.

LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance provides a benchmark for building owners and operators to measure operations, improvements and maintenance.

LEED for Commercial Interiors is a benchmark for the tenant improvement market that gives the power to make sustainable choices to tenants and designers.

LEED for Core & Shell aids designers, builders, developers and new building owners in implementing sustainable design for new core and shell construction.

LEED for Schools recognizes the unique nature of the design and construction of K-12 schools and addresses the specific needs of school spaces.

LEED for Retail recognizes the unique nature of retail design and construction projects and addresses the specific needs of retail spaces.

LEED for Healthcare promotes sustainable planning, design and construction for high-performance healthcare facilities.

LEED for Homes promotes the design and construction of high-performance green homes.

LEED for Neighborhood Development integrates the principles of smart growth, urbanism and green building into the first national program for neighborhood design.

ADOPTION OF LEED CERTIFIED GREEN BUILDINGS

LEED has been a galvanizing force in the industry and has helped accelerate the trend towards Green Buildings. Today there are 16,727 member organizations including corporations, governmental agencies, nonprofits and others from throughout the industry.

Every business day, $464 million worth of construction registers with LEED. By 2009, 80% of corporate America are expected to be engaged in green at least 16% of the time, and 20% will be engaged in green 60% of the time. According to the McGraw Hill Green Building Smart Market Report 2006, approximately 10% of commercial construction starts are expected to be green by 2010, and the overall value of Green Building construction projects is expected to increase to $60 billion by 2010.

In India, the awareness and adoption of Green Building is picking up, aided by the development of the LEED-INDIA Green Building Rating System adopted by the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC). The two specific programs have been currently adopted

o LEED India for New Construction (LEED India NC)

o LEED India for Core and Shell (LEED India CS)

IGBC now has 366 members, and there are 254 registered buildings, with 26 of these buildings already getting LEED certified. Totally in India we now have 151 million square feet of Green Building footprint. Additionally the IGBC Green Homes rating system has 65 registered buildings and 88 million square feet of Green Home footprint.