Architecture
Domus India
Studio Lotus - Comfort In Construction?
Urban clutter and the struggle for space can raise some queer situations — where is one located; what is one aspiring towards; and how will one respond to a neighbourhood of mixed imaginations? As different imaginations sit next to each other — where land values, access to space, and hope for a better living will struggle for survival and identity — urban neighbourhoods will be geographies of new complexities, varying social and economic values jostling for space and existence. In such a situation, how is the architect to respond? Is it possible for one to completely turn away from the urban clutter, or rather, is that the right thing to do — completely ignore or blind yourself to a reality of the neighbourhood? How does one preserve one’s self from the troubles of chaos yet not disconnect with the reality of negotiations? A house recently designed in a Delhi neighbourhood precisely jostles with these questions — as evident in its design — and decides to adopt the trope of the veil, one that preserves yet connects, one that is transparent yet contains a privacy. This house continues to connect the inside and the outside as much as it veils one from the other — juggling context!
4 min |
June/July 2017
Domus India
040 Milan
In Meditazioni sulla felicità (“Meditations on Happiness”), published in Milan in 1763, Pietro Verri writes, “A wise man’s happiness begins from within and then extends to the objects he creates,” and continues by saying, “The happiness of each of us is achieved in public happiness.”
5 min |
June/July 2017
Domus India
‘Hangar For The Passerby' At The Kiran Nadar Museum Of Art, Delhi
Hangar for the Passerby is an exhibition about artist collectives — both collaborative and participatory art practices — in India.
2 min |
June/July 2017
Domus India
Beyond Pretty Things
As the Indian academic year sets rolling for another annual cycle, it is always an occasion for one to begin thinking about the broader field of practice.
4 min |
August 2017
Domus India
Experiments And Arguments In Design
Every object of everyday use and interaction is an object of design; design is the value of idea, labour, and expression put together. It is a debate whether design should remain subservient to the everyday existence of the object, or design should overtly express itself as the statement and part-purpose of the existence of any object. Architect and designer Rooshad Shroff’s recent exhibition comprising pieces of furniture responds to a contemporary moment of excess, access, and availability. The excess of options available are explored; the ability of a craftsman challenged by the properties of a material; the access to craftsmanship as labour, as skill, and as tradition of knowledge, is something that Shroff takes advantage of, but also keeps stretching the limits of this relationship between craftsmanship and knowledge existing within the practice today. The title of the exhibition is then, perhaps, fitting enough: ‘15,556’, or Fifteen Thousand Five Hundred and Fifty-Six Man Hours, referring to the number of hours taken to make the pieces on display
4 min |
August 2017
Domus India
Seen From Afar
DIARY OF A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY THROUGH A FORGOT TEN ITALY
4 min |
August 2017
Domus India
When Business Makes Culture
LA RINASCENTEA CREATIVE LABORATORY
4 min |
August 2017
Domus India
The Busride Design Studio: Soupy Spaces
With a brief that mentioned ‘make mistakes’, the interior design of a sprawling house in Pune is interpreted through a series of folding and compact objects – a multi-purpose cube and a seating terrain – that make the interior space an ambiguous and more conceptual arena. By transforming the overall experience from ‘living in rooms’ to ‘living amongst objects’, the design offers the opportunity for unpredictable relationships to be discovered with everyday object.
7 min |
September 2016
Domus India
Feedback: Wang Weijen Hong Kong
In a spatial odyssey looking down on Hong Kong’s Central District from the Victoria Peak, one would see a wave of verticals springing up from the sloping terrain all the way down to the water edge.
3 min |
September 2016
Domus India
My Taranto: A Critical Walk
To the eyes of all the world, Taranto is a city in a tragic state of degradation and abandon. Michael Jakob sees “over-planning” as the cause of this decline and believes an act of love is required for the good and the ugly, applying landscape architecture to heal its living spaces.
6 min |
January 2018
Domus India
Mathew & Ghosh Architects A Duality In Design
Located on an urban site surrounded by existing buildings, the House with a Veil is perched high at the second floor level, among the foliage of the trees. Its veil-inspired screen on the street-facing side adds to the aesthetics, while protecting the house from natural elements, providing privacy, and allowing the architects to open up the house on the other side into a tropical-forest-like garden – all aligned to the inhabitants’ aspirations for their dream home.
3 min |
January 2018
Domus India
Ateliers Jean Nouvel Louvre Abu Dhabi
A new museum conceived not as a building but as an actual piece of city is the extraordinary project given to us by Jean Nouvel in Abu Dhabi. Hosting the story of humanity, this small citadel constructed with buildings, squares and alleys is umbrellaed for comfort by a magnificent dome that forms and creates a layer of artificial nature on top.
3 min |
January 2018
Domus India
Is There An Indian Way Of Designing?
An essay attempts to dissect the all-embracing notions of art, craft, design, and technique, revolving around the idea of ‘Indian’ homogenisation and plurality in tandem with current design practices
7 min |
November 2017
Domus India
Ettore Sottsass
It is not easy to write about Ettore Sottsass in Domus, after he contributed for decades to the conception and creation of our magazine.
4 min |
November 2017
Domus India
Shanghai
Shanghai is a legendary construction miracle among modern cities in China and the Far East. It was from Shanghai that China, as an ancient and traditional agricultural civilisation, began to move towards the ocean, towards the world.
4 min |
November 2016
Domus India
Revisiting A Royal Past
Located in the Kodagu district of Karnataka, the Nalknad Palace was built in the late 18th century during the reign of King Vira Rajendra, perhaps as a place of refuge for him as he was then fighting Tipu Sultan. The two-storeyed structure is replete with pavilions, intricately carved wooden pillars, and a host of paintings across several rooms. While it is not yet known how long ago the paintings were made, they depict scenes from the court and images of royalty.
6 min |
Febuary 2019
Domus India
John Berger's ‘Bento's Sketchbook'
While a plethora of letters and writings of the 17th-century Dutch philiosopher Bento de Spinoza were published over the years, his sketchbook was never found. When critic and writer John Berger was gifted a blank drawing book, he promptly dubbed it as Bento’s Sketchbook, using the imaginative space to explore the process of drawing, storytelling, and Spinoza’s life
5 min |
Febuary 2019
Domus India
From Railways To Ateliers
A cultural platform experimenting with new approaches to producing and exhibiting, the LUMA Arles workshop for artists, curators, scientists and designers is also open to the public
3 min |
Febuary 2019
Domus India
Essay Kinetic City
Architect and pedagogue Rahul Mehrotra dwells upon how by restructuring the city-making process, the 'Kinetic' and 'Static' Cities can be intertwined beyond the physical and can engage the inhabitants of the city
7 min |
Febuary 2019
Domus India
The Public Knowledge Space OMA, Qatar National Library, Doha
Simplicity and complexity Gulf states and the public realm Enclosed urban spaces
4 min |
Febuary 2019
Domus India
The Walkable Roof Hong Kong West Kowloon Station
One of the East’s most important infrastructure nodes, designed by Andrew Bromberg at Aedas
1 min |
Febuary 2019
Domus India
How Letters Mark The City
Signs are the markers of a city and need to be in the place they are marking
9 min |
Febuary 2019
Domus India
Indian Aesthetics Museum In Transit
Spread across the environs of Terminal 2 of Mumbai’s international airport, the Jaya He Museum houses a diverse collection of art and installations, blending it with various aspects of the architecture, design and culture, thus creating a unique experience for those transiting through this large space
5 min |
June-July 2019
Domus India
Tribute I M Pei (1917-2019)
Kenneth Frampton, in his book Modern Architecture: A Critical History, in chapter four (Place, Production & Scenography, International Theory and Practice since 1962), discussed the imaginative interpretation of Fuller’s project on geodesic domes, Kikutake on Marine City, Isozaki on the Gunma Prefectural Museum, Rogers & Pianos’ Pompidou Center and Foster + Partners’ Hong Kong-Shanghai Bank.
1 min |
June-July 2019
Domus India
A Moment Of Pause
A compilation of essays by American poet Mary Oliver brims with her meditations on reading, on the natural world, the idea of home, and her creative endeavours
6 min |
June-July 2019
Domus India
The Observer
In Taipei, OMA experiments with a new type of centre for the performing arts.
2 min |
June-July 2019
Domus India
Photo Essay Ceilings
In 2011, a Mumbai-based photojournalist was assigned to make photographs of a brothel in Sangli to accompany a reporter's story for a news magazine. While the photos did not eventually get filed, they are testimony to how a different viewing perspective can help one see a reality, as much as open up the question of urban interiority. These photos enable us to review a sense of space and architecture within dense towns and urban neighbourhoods, where it is the private that becomes public, where the insides of spaces ask for a narrative beyond the normative inside-outside binary used to view cities and its spaces. While the photographer contemplates the ethics of his task at hand, this set of photographs also questions the systems of documentation and analyses used to capture spaces, cities, and architecture.
4 min |
April 2019
Domus India
Artefact In A Neighbourhood
Located in Bansberia, a busy town on the west bank of the Hooghly river, a small corner on a plot belonging to a community became the site for an architectural intervention that realises the neighbourhood as the confluence of the sacred and human, the celestial and political.
5 min |
April 2019
Domus India
Planet Europe - Brussels 22.01.1972
Signing ceremony of the accession treaty of Denmark, Ireland, Norway and the United Kingdom to the European Community
9 min |
April 2019
Domus India
Infrastructure As Foreign Policy
Building a new world order From Beijing to Madrid Infrastructure and power Neo-colonialism?
5 min |