Parts, Wholes And The Spaces In Between

Sonal Sundararajan introduces Samira Rathod's free-spirited and rebellious explorations in the world of architecture, furniture and design.

- Sonal Sundararajan

The 5000 sq. ft. pavilion at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2022-23), designed and built by Samira Rathod Design Atelier (SRDA), is a large enclosure built entirely out of construction debris.

Event pavilions, almost as a rule, have to address questions of impermanence – materials like bamboo and light steel can and are often repurposed. What is special about Rathod’s pavilion is that it is made of matter that has been discarded as useless – chipped tiles, broken walls, brick pieces, junked granite, among other things.

With a large sloped roof, the building is suffused by a different and deflected sense of time and memory. The walls and the roof allow the light to enter through the crevices of its shattered material. This porosity makes for a fragmented, airy space, with skylights offering patches of brightness over a cement floor run through with waste pieces of quarried granite. The large windows at the top swing open with the turning of a handle at the bottom, a small gesture that translates into a big move. This ‘architecture of salvage’ serves not just functionality but also poetry that is corporeal and spatial. The project reprises the ideas of Project Boject, a research initiative that the firm undertook in 2013 in Khetwadi, Mumbai, looking at the possibilities of reassembling detritus to make new buildings. Memories of buildings persist in the reused material; waste is reemployed; and every material and structural aspect of architecture is mobilised to generate a greater delight in the act of inhabiting a space.