All around the city new buildings are coming up. They come in various shapes and sizes. Some cover themselves with glass and metal, others with stone. Some attempt to look 'modern' while some flaunt fluted columns and other classical elements from...
At a party, a friend remarked that until a few years ago, the average man's working life revolved around two things. One was getting your daughter married off and the other was to build your own house. Life could be divided into pre and post 'own...
Last summer, on a visit home, my father pointed to a mango tree growing in the backyard and said that it was a sapling brought from our ancestral home many years ago. It's parent tree still casts shadows on the land where as a little girl; my...
"One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing." Oscar Wilde Quite a few years ago, in the North American city of Milwaukee a man called Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested and tried for murder. Apparently tired...
We react to most things in the world as a set of opposites. Good and evil, love and hate, empty / full and so on, where the absence of one seems to imply the presence of the other. In the early nineties, some Architects, mostly in the US and Europe...
I learnt with interest from the pages of this newspaper last week that Bangalore is reportedly a funky city; in fact one of the ten most funky cities along with NYC and London. After reading the report on India in Newsweek magazine, an Architect...
A friend who runs an art gallery tells of a lady who had come in to buy a painting for her newly completed house. She spent hours at the gallery, studying each painting before selecting one. But to my friend's surprise, instead of buying it, the...
Throughout the country, you will find the executive branch of the state housed in buildings which look similar to palaces. From Parliament house to state legislatures, in most cases certain architectural features are common. These buildings are...
After prolonged ambivalence, a classmate of mine finally decided to settle down in the US. He asked me to look up his parents in Bangalore, who were quite upset by his decision. In a sprawling, elegant house covered with Ivy, on a trellised patio...
Among the many peculiarities in the Indian Building industry, there is a phrase which sends shivers down the spines of Architects and contractors alike. The oxymoronic "cheap and best". To the uninitiated, this may sound strange, but what must be...
"I want a colonial style house; you know, with lots of Arches, bay windows, balconies with wrought iron work etc." Said a potential client. I rifled through my mind to try and picture what he meant. Failed miserably. Most of the colonial buildings...
Some time ago, I dropped in at a friends' house. I found that he had actually painted the entire house red. The walls, ceilings and even the window frames were all a dark red. Heavy, velvety curtains of the same color covered the windows. I felt...
Once we received a Purchase order for Architectural services from an Industrial client. It had little columns filled with cryptic comments like 'ex Bangalore' and 'E & OE' and suggested that excise gate pass / invoice should be forwarded along...
"I'd rather be good than original " quote attributed to I. M. Pei, American Architect
Flipping through a "foreign" Architecture magazine with glossy pictures, I was struck by the resemblance of a building in Dallas...
A friend surprised me the other day by stating that large areas of glazing are appropriate for our climate because of the glass being more reflective than say a brick or stone wall. He went on to say that buildings with curtain walling...
Recently, a builder called to say that he was "canceling" the elevations on two sides of the building we were working on for him. This did not mean that he wanted some sort of a magic building with only two sides. It only meant that he felt that...
A Building is not something you finish. A Building is something you start."
Stewart Brand "How Buildings Learn"
It is easy enough to start building something, but where and how do you stop ? A mother nurtures and...
Someone once described the average American house as a cardboard annexe to a two car garage, commenting on the importance of the automobile in that country. It would be probably be overstating the case, to say that the average middle class house...
A friend brought his son who recently graduated from High School to see me the other day. He was contemplating various career options and wanted advice on 'making the right choice'. Like many of today's young people, his son was a hard...
In our time, on building sites all over the country you will men women and children working ceaselessly to erect edifices that house us. They work passionately, sometimes mechanically, listlessly. They eat, sleep and live on site. Their...
In response to readers queries on different types of flooring we look at various options. This column looks at granite.
The basic requirement of a flooring material is that it gives you a level, smooth surface. It should be hard,...
In my fathers' house there is a large room with lots of windows and no grills. During daytime, he has the luxury of sitting and taking in the view, unhindered by grills. At night, he locks the door leading to the rest of the house from...
"The measured selection of some things requires the exclusion or ignorance of others." Lebbeus Woods, The New City. I especially like the ignorance part. I have long suspected that ignorance plays a significant part in smart and snappy decision...
A friend who wanted to sell an apartment near Whitefield put an ad in this paper. He relates that prospective buyers kept asking him how far his place was from MG Road. On realising that Whitefield had’nt moved – it was still where it...
"Limited by space, a frog in a well cannot conceive of an Ocean.Limited by time, an insect born in summer cannot conceive of snow."
Chuang-tsu, "Autumn Flood"
While I have never really understood Einstein's...
"Congratulations ! You are now the proud owner of a "project X" apartment home. Guaranteed to give you many years of comfortable living, this apartment is made of the highest quality material and designed for the discerning customer such as...
Marble is a metamorphic sedimentary rock of crystalline texture. Generally considered a softer stone than granite, it is a material that has been extensively used over centuries. An incredible variety of marble is available in the market today....
Our grandparents built houses that would last over a hundred years. They built structures which their children, and maybe later, their grandchildren would inherit. Very few of these ancestral houses remain now. Most have been torn down; not...
We were talking about Vasthu when an Architect friend of mine, perhaps one of the most successful in India remarked that he has never believed in Vasthu all his life. He said that his own house of twenty years or so was not built according to...
At a shop in commercial street I watched sheepishly as my wife expertly and matter of factly, asked for, briefly argued and got a discount on the items we had purchased. The shopkeeper, sitting below a prominent "fixed price" sign, smiled and bid...
Ho ! Who will exchange old lamps for new ones ?!
Maghrabi the Magician in the story of Alladdin. 575th night. The Book of the Thousand and one nights.
The story is well known to most of us. Aladdin’s lovely but ill...
I read somewhere that the sewer systems below New york city were designed and built sometime in the early 1800's. Elisha Graves Otis invented the Elevator in 1857 and William Le Baron Jenny's Second Leiter building, the first frame structure, was...
In the last column we talked of the importance of planning. What does planning ahead mean when you are building a house ? Here are some things one could do.
Basically allocate enough design time and decide on everything before you...
There are a number of brands of plywood available in the market now. Many claims are made as to the durability and quality of plywood and if one were to go by the advertisements, the market is clearly flooded with high quality plywoods. There...
In the fall of 89', along with a group of about twenty students from various countries, I eagerly awaited my first class in graduate school in the US. Soon, a plump, white haired man in his late fifties rolled in. After pleasantries and...
Sometime ago, on a site visit to a project in Kerala, I had found that the contractor had not painted a staircase railing dull yellow as we had instructed him to weeks ago. On being asked why, the contractor was apologetic. He said that while...
"I live in my house as I live inside my skin: I know more beautiful, more ample, more sturdy, and more picturesque skins: but it would seem to me unnatural to exchange them for mine."
Primo Levi, 'Other Peoples trades'
Levi talks about...
The Viennese Architect Adolf Loos, writing in the late 1800's relates the story of 'the poor little rich man', who commissioned an Architect to design every aspect of his house. Even the furnishings, furniture, paintings and artifacts were all...
You would have heard about intelligent homes by now. Technology that allows you to control just about any electrical appliance from your PC, cell phone, or even through the net. Apart from security systems such as motion detectors, glass break...
One of our clients wanted his office Interiors done. His brief was simple. Apart from the design requirements, he wanted the best possible materials to be used and the workmanship to be exceptional. This was pretty much the case for almost every...
"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, …."
T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton
Do you always sit at the same place at your dining...
"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, …."
T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton
Do you always sit at the same place at your dining...
"If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it really fall ?"
It is the year 2020. In the great city of Bangalore, which had shown unprecedented growth over the last decade, Mr. Rao, ( not his real name ) who had made a...
After going through a number of books on Vasthu shastra, I was convinced that such texts were surely of divine origin. What struck me as curious was the lack of any reference to beauty. While a great many things are discussed and authoritative and...
The Western world views the pursuit of happiness as a primary goal. Generally happiness involves attainment of various targets or situations rooted in the world around you. Continuous satiation of ever increasing desires is seen as the way to go....
"No one, wise Kublai, knows better than you that the city must never be confused with the words that describe it."
Italo Calvino – "Invisible Cities"
After fording the river and following the westward wind for a single...
If you look under the hood of an ambassador car you will find a lot of "wasted space". In today’s newer, better designed cars, you will find everything neatly and compactly organised with hardly any extra space. This is desirable because the...
In a house, each square foot of window, on average costs around five times as much as a square foot of wall. If you consider the cost of curtains or blinds necessitated by the window, it would probably be six or seven times the cost. If you...
I read that Steel from the fallen World Trade Center building has been purchased by a businessman in Central Europe. A part of this has found its' way to India. A scrap dealer in Delhi or Punjab has imported a few thousand tonnes into our country....
"Let the width of the street be equal to the average height of the houses on either side."
Leonardo Da Vinci, Circa 1450 A.D.
Sounds perfectly logical, does'nt it ? This would mean that sunlight to the streets are not cut...
The riverside at nights end, Moonlight in shadowy retreat Seeping back into earth, lighting up my eyes. As I came to fill my pot. The fragrant languid air carried with it the promise of all that was yet to be and from across distant...
1. Riverrun Sleepy cars crawl up the mountain Light through shimmering trees A streak of silver in the wetgrey night. Oldbones resting, the silent bridge The river roars. 1.1 The lament of the bridge Corroded by love. gradually...