"Architecture is a Sin Committed to Nature" VINU DANIEL

INDIA'S MOST RADICAL ARCHITECT, VINU DANIEL TALKS ABOUT HIS EXPERIMENTS WITH MATERIALS, AND HIS QUEST FOR ARCHITECTURE THAT IS SYMBIOTIC WITH NATURE

- SEEMA SREEDHARAN

Wallmakers led by Architect Vinu Daniel recently won the Royal Academy Dorfman Awards for Architecture. The award champions architecture from around the world that looks forward to the future of architecture and architectural practice. The jury, comprising some very illustrious names such as Farshid Moussavi RA; Director of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Farrokh Derakhshani; Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hisham Matar; Cornelia Parker RA; Peter St John and Zoë Ryan, Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, was impressed by Daniel’s willingness to improvise, his commitment to sustainability, and his penchant for experimenting with materials and exploring unprecedented on-site interventions.

To say that Daniel’s approach to architecture is unconventional would be an understatement. His creations are like oxymorons in architecture. He at once manages to make his structures inconspicuous, camouflage itself into its context, and yet stand out with its pure geometry. Like the series of sinusoidal walls that seem to pirouette around its axis in the Pirouette House, or the Ledge House in Peerumedu, Kerala, which has been designed as a shard that seems to be protruding out of the mountain into thin air. Inspired by a dream sequence, and built with casuarina poles (which is usually considered waste and used only as scaffolding), the Ledge House too blends in, yet stands out. For the Shikhara residence, Daniel translated the human habit of “holding up a hand to shield their eyes from the harsh west sun” into architecture.