Dutch windows

Time and again, I have remembered the presentation by Sverre Fehn, where he showed a project he had completed in the Netherlands and talked about how he had been pleasantly surprised with how much glass one could use in a dutch residential project.



So many years later, as I walk the streets of Amsterdam, I recollect that talk and wonder at how the Dutch keep the interface between their houses and their streets both transparent and beautiful.

a way of seeing Review - March 2009

Over the years, I have opened several times John Berger's book 'Ways of Seeing' and been entranced by its words and its images. This blog had to be called 'a way of seeing architecture' because so much learning has always come to me from the book.

So far, this blog has had posts about architectural design and heritage conservation in India that have ranged from questioning what is good design, to understanding why Codifying Indigenous Building skills is important to contemporary architectural design and some observations on the vernacular architecture of the Konkan houses. The blogpost on Bimilipatnam documents the process of people's participation in a conservation effort on the east coast of India. There are some thoughts on the Chettinad houses of Tamil Nadu and the heritage conservation at Hampi.

The search for meaning in architecture and heritage goes on...so, what IS good design? HOW do we create an ecosystem for heritage conservation?

"But suppose there IS no meaning! Suppose life is fundamentally absurd! Or suppose EVERYTHING matters, which would be worse??" - Calvin, in 'Its a Magical World' Calvin and Hobbes Collection by Bill Waterson

Looking at the 'everyday'

April, like a child writes hieroglyphs on dust with flowers,
wipes them away and forgets

Rabindranath Tagore
in 'The Fireflies'

an experience of "seeing"

The experience of designing this project was such a joyful one. It was one of the few properties in the city that abutted the beautiful waters of the Bay of Bengal. A wall had to be built to ensure security. I wanted to think of a design that would be a wall and yet not be a wall. This is what we did. This blog would like to explore the many ways of seeing and designing that are part of the universe and that we may just discover some day!

All of us "see" in a different way. We make for ourselves each day our own kaleidoscope. A child climbs a wall to seek adventure. He wants to know more. When he sees more, he knows more. One day, he stops climbing the walls. He thinks he knows enough. So, he stops "seeing"

Many of us cannot stop "seeing" more. With a mind to perceive what comes before us, we continue to look and to see, if the grass is green and if the pebble is indeed round. Every day one sees and cannot help seeing.

Who is to decide what architecture can or cannot say? Each of us may read a different story. Why believe in any one story when you know that within each story are wrapped up many, many stories; or that the end of one story is the beginning of the other. That everything in this world has a story to tell, and if we care to listen, we can hear them all.

In a world of people and places, in a world of nature and light, there is much that we may not have seen before. To look within our world for a new story, for the many, many stories that each story has within it. We find a new beginning sometimes, when we think we have reached the end of our imagination. It is for this beginning to a more creative existence, that more stories unfold.