OUR DESIGN MANIFESTO: ARE ARCHITECTS AND INTERIOR DESIGNERS STILL RELEVANT IN THE ERA OF PINTEREST AND AI?
With the advent of more sophisticated tools available to clients and end-users via social media sites such as Pinterest, and now, AI apps such as Midjourney, I’ve been giving some thought to the value that architects and interior designers bring to projects. The fact is, what people used to rely on us for as a profession has changed.
BUILDING WITH EARTH
Tucked away deep in the heart of Auroville, the Auroville Earth Institute (AVEI) is an inconspicuous place that has explored offbeat techniques for building construction. It specialises in stabilised earth and ferrocement construction. We had the opportunity to learn some of their techniques at the CSEB Intensive workshop offered by the institute. The workshop was primarily on Compressed Stabilised Earth Blocks (CSEB), lightly touching upon constructing with rammed earth and poured earth, making composite lintels and building arches.
CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN ARCHITECTURE
Humans need to feel that they belong in a place. We need to have a connection—say, a communion--with our surroundings. In the built environment, we often sacrifice this greater sense of integration with a space for the false security of place identification. Often, this is done clumsily or without any attention paid to local context, and broadly termed as “placemaking”, which is a catchall for projects that strike just the right note, but just as often, completely tone deaf to the surrounding context
THE POTENTIAL OF MUD: THE ORIGINAL BUILDING MATERIAL
Mud is considered to be the poster-child in terms of what we consider to be a “natural building material”. Yet, it tends to be underutilised and passed over in favour of more high-tech, energy-intensive materials, even in contexts where it is ubiquitous, and where there is a need for low-cost building materials. For a recent team-building exercise at SKDO, we got our hands dirty (quite literally!) and experimented with different types of sample mud plaster mixes and proportions. This got us thinking more about the potential of mud in the context of affordable housing…
WHAT DOES SUSTAINABLE LANDSCAPE MEAN TO YOU?
The word 'sustainable' has been overused to the point that it is in danger of losing its meaning. After all, if everything is sustainable (and all manner of wrongs righted by adding solar panels), then nothing is. When it comes to landscaping, especially, many projects gain valuable green building certification for doing nothing more than using drought resistant plants and drip irrigation.