Bringing Design Into The Fold

Ankon Mitra believes that folding isthe cornerstone of existence, whether innature, architecture, the paper craft oforigami, or life itself. The Co-Founder/Director (Landscape) of New Delhi-basedHexagramm is as much an architect andlandscape designer as an origami artist,and he blends these multiple roles into ahugely satisfying professional journey.

Tell us about your formative years in design. 

AM: From grade 9 in school, I knew I wanted to become an architect, though there were no architects in my family or circle of family friends at that time. I do remember these fantastic books by Usha Albuquerque which had different career descriptions in some detail; I may have read about architecture as a career in those books. I guess I had this notion that architecture would allow me to read, write, draw, research, and have feet in both the applied sciences and in the arts. However, I can now say with confidence – it was the best notion I have ever had in my life!

I got into the School of Planning and Architecture (S.P.A), New Delhi by the skin of my teeth; I was rank 50 in a list of 50 general candidates who got in that year (2000). The next five years were the best of my life. Unlike C.E.P.T or Sir J.J, S.P.A has no sound ideological moorings. It allows students to subscribe to different ideologies (often influenced by the individuals who taught us and their personal convictions in turn). I was a modernist, a vernacularist, a postmodernist, a revivalist, a futurist and a deconstructivist at different points in my academic life. After a point I began to look beyond these ‘isms’ at the nuts of bolts of architecture. And all good architecture has very good underlying geometric resolution. So it boiled down to mathematics. That was one of the sound principles which I carried with me as I stepped out of college into the big bad world of architectural practice.