Hasta La Ideas

Working with skilled local craftspeople is both a duty and an opportunity for Indian designers, says Prateek Jain of lighting design company Klove, in the third and final movie from BE OPEN’s Made In… India Samskara exhibition in New Delhi.

“It’s the biggest job of a designer to make sure that they work with handicrafts people,” says Prateek Jain, co-founder of Klove. “Whether it’s a fashion designer who works with an embroiderer or whether it’s us working with wood carvers or stone cutters.”

Both sides benefit when designers work with traditional craft producers, says Jain, and can help bring craftsmen’s work to new markets. “It’s very important to apply a more contemporary design aesthetic to these handicraft [skills]” he says.

Jain’s chosen medium is glass, thanks to an encounter he had with craftsmen in Ambala, a town in northern India. When he saw local glass-blowers creating intricate glassware for laboratories, he knew he had spotted an opportunity.

“We saw that they were doing these beautiful, flawless bowls of silica glass,” he says. “The blowers had been making beakers, flasks and test tubes for generations. We realised that [we could use] this skill set to explore home decor.”

Together with his partner Gautam Seth he took these techniques used for creating lab-ware into unexpected contexts: creating luxury lighting installations for an international client base.

Klove now creates large, ornate custom-made lighting installations working in a palette of blown glass, brass, steel and copper.

Klove was participating in the Made In… India Samskara exhibition. Curated by Fashion Design Council of India president Sunil Sethi and creative think tank BE OPEN, the show celebrates collaborations between contemporary Indian designers and skilled Indian craftsmen.

For the show Klove used blown glass and beaten metal to create a large lighting installation in the shape of a peacock, India’s national bird.

“We knew that [the curators] wanted to represent India in a modern way. Instantly the idea of a peacock came into our head because it’s the national bird,” says Jain. “We wanted to represent the peacock in a contemporary manner but at the same time have a strong Indian aesthetic to it”.

The feathers that make up the peacock’s fanned tail are represented by 48 slender glass stems, similar in form to elongated laboratory flasks.

“The great part about being in this country is that you have great access to a great resource of talent. You have craftsmen who have been doing this work for many centuries” says Jain.

Samskara, which ran from 10 to 28 February at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi, launched BE OPEN’s Made In… programme, a two-year-long project focussing on the future of craft in design.

The music featured in the movie is a track called Bonjour by Kartick & Gotam on Indian record label EarthSync.

The post Work with Indian craftsmen to keep handcrafting
skills alive, says designer Prateek Jain appeared first on Dezeen.

Architect Anupama Kundoo discusses the power of craft and working with traditional stone masons, in the second of our series of movies from BE OPEN’s Made In… India Samskara exhibition in New Delhi.

In keeping with the brief of the Made In… India Samskara exhibition, Indian architect Anupama Kundoo worked with Indian stone masons to produce the exhibition.

Curated by Fashion Design Council of India president Sunil Sethi and creative think tank BE OPEN, the show celebrates collaborations between contemporary Indian designers and skilled Indian craftsmen.

For architect Anupama Kundoo, being surrounded by work made using hand-crafted techniques is a reminder that there is an alternative to the “standardised industrial products”, people have become used to.

“We are all different, we are all unique, and it’s very strange that we have to be adjusting ourselves continually to standard products.” she says. “We have just accepted and surrendered ourselves to this future: it doesn’t have to be like that.”

She describes her installation as an undulating landscape, made from three principle elements: ferrocement slabs, pools of water and modular slabs of hand-levelled granite. This landscape hosts the homeware, lighting, clothes and furniture on display.

Kundoo teamed up with stone-cutters from Tamil Nadu in the south of India to produce the slabs that dip and rise throughout the space. These long granite strips make up both the floor of the space and the surfaces for displaying the exhibits.

“These heavy slabs flow through the space like ribbons,” says Kundoo. “They frame the space and the undulations come out [of] the function: to raise the slab to the level required to display a particular object.”

“The actual elements are modular. The pieces rest on a sand bed and they can be reassembled in a wide range of ways and it can all be directly reused,” she says.

It took the masons six week to level the granite used in the exhibition, through a painstaking process of hand-levelling, a technique normally used to make stones for grinding masala paste, says Kundoo.

Seeing the exhibition design, with these familiar techniques used in unexpected ways, had a dramatic effect on the craftsmen, said Kundoo.

“They’ve been making stone slabs for generations. But when they see [them], in this kind of composition, they realise that that they can make anything.” she says.

Kundoo works between Spain and India. In 2012 she exhibited her Wall House project at the Venice Architecture Biennale. This project also used the skills of Indian craftsmen — she brought a team to Italy to construct a full-size replica of a house inside the Arsenale.

Samskara, which ran from 10 to 28 February at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi, launched BE OPEN’s Made In… programme, a two-year-long project focussing on the future of craft in design.

The music featured in the movie is a track called Bonjour by Kartick & Gotam on Indian record label EarthSync.

The post Don’t surrender to “standardised products”
says Indian architect Anupama Kundoo appeared first on Dezeen.

In the first of a series of movies from BE OPEN’s Made In… India Samskara exhibition in New Delhi, exhibiting designers and co-curator Sunil Sethi discuss the importance of Indian craft and its significance in the modern world.

Fashion Design Council of India president Sunil Sethi, who curated the exhibition with creative think tank BE OPEN, explains that the aim of the show was to highlight the quality of products that are both designed and produced in India.

“BE OPEN has given a very nice platform to the Indian designer, in different disciplines, to be able to show their best,” he says. “Traditional craftsmen – when they team up with an Indian designer – the product can be truly of an international quality.”

Sethi believes there is a demand for high-quality, hand-made products, which, with its rich craft tradition, India needs to take advantage of.

“I feel that, in the international market, the customer wants to take home something special,” he says. “India needs to cash in on its handicrafts. That is the key thing to take from this exhibition.”

Products on show at the exhibition included homeware, lighting, clothes and textiles, as well as contemporary furniture, all made using traditional techniques.

Delhi-based designer Gunjan Gupta presented a range of chairs made from everyday Indian objects, including laundry sacks and traditional Indian masand cushions.

“I’m bringing craft back into the design vocabulary,” she claims.”It’s important for us as a rapidly modernising culture [not to lose traditional craft skills]. It’s also something that has extremely unique artisanal value around the world.”

Fashion designer Rahul Mishra, who had a range of intricately-embroidered dresses on show, says that using traditional craft techniques is a way of boosting the economy in India’s countryside at a time when more and more people are flocking to overcrowded cities.

“The beauty of craft is that it allows a rural Indian – who has never been to a city, who has never been outside of his village – it gives him power to execute his artistry,” he says. “I am here to create jobs in villages. Rather than just designing a product, if you can create a nice system, I think that is a job well done.”

Prateek Jain of design studio Klove presented a peacock-shaped lighting installation made from glass produced by glass-blowers who usually make laboratory equipment.

“We use skilled blowers to make our products who make scientific equipment for labs,” he explains. “It’s a new way of applying a skill set that has been available to us for many years.”

Samskara, which ran from 10 to 28 February at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi, launched BE OPEN’s Made In… programme, a two-year-long project focussing on the future of craft in design.

The music featured in the movie is a track called Bonjour by Kartick & Gotam on Indian record label EarthSync.

The post “India needs to cash in on its handicrafts”
says Made in… India exhibition co-curator appeared first on Dezeen.

The concrete cells of the canopy spanning this new airport terminal in Mumbai was designed by American firm SOM to reference both the open-air pavilions of traditional Indian architecture and the arrangement of feathers in a peacock’s tail (+ slideshow).

The new 40-hectare terminal at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport will accommodate 40 million passengers a year for both international and domestic flights, and was designed by SOM to adopt the styles and motifs of the regional vernacular.

“We designed an airport that is intimately connected to its surroundings,” said SOM partner Roger Duffy. “By subtly incorporating regional patterns and textures at all scales, Terminal 2 resonates with a sense of place and serves as a spectacular symbol for India and Mumbai.”

The check-in hall is located on the upper level of the four-storey terminal, directly beneath the perforated concrete ceiling. This canopy is supported by 30 tapered columns that are punctured with similar recesses, creating a decorative pattern of openings that are infilled with coloured glazing to allow light to filter through the space.

“The monumental spaces created beneath the 30 mushrooming columns call to mind the airy pavilions and interior courtyards of traditional regional architecture,” said the design team.

“The constellation of colours makes reference to the peacock, the national bird of India, and the symbol of the airport,” they added.

A 900-metre long glass wall with a gridded cable frame provides the hall’s facade. The decorative canopy extends beyond the walls to offer protection from both intense heat and monsoons, but also creates an area where Indian departure ceremonies can take place.

The rest of the terminal is laid out with an X-shaped plan, where modular concourses radiate outwards from the central core to minimise walking distances to boarding gates.

Floor-to-ceiling glazing offer passengers the opportunity to watch planes arriving and departing, while patterned jali screens help light to filter gently through the spaces.

Photography is by Robert Polidori, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here’s a project description from SOM:

Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport Terminal 2

Ten years ago, Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport welcomed six million passengers per year through its gates; today it serves nearly five times that number. With the city’s emergence as India’s financial capital and the country’s rapidly expanding and economically mobile middle class, the existing airport infrastructure proved unable to support the growing volume of domestic and global traffic, resulting in frequent delays. By orchestrating the complex web of passengers and planes into a design that feels intuitive and responds to the region’s rocketing growth, the new Terminal 2 asserts the airport’s place as a preeminent gateway to India.

Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport Terminal 2 adds 4.4 million square feet of new space to accommodate 40 million passengers per year, operating 24 hours a day. The terminal combines international and domestic passenger services under one roof, optimizing terminal operations and reducing passenger walking distances. Inspired by the form of traditional Indian pavilions, the new four-story terminal stacks a grand “headhouse”, or central processing podium, on top of highly adaptable and modular concourses below. Rather than compartmentalising terminal functions, all concourses radiate outwards from a central processing core and are therefore easily reconfigured to “swing” between serving domestic flights or international flights.

But just as the terminal celebrates a new global, high-tech identity for Mumbai, the structure is imbued with responses to the local setting, history, and culture. Gracious curbside drop-off zones designed for large parties of accompanying well-wishers accommodate traditional Indian arrival and departure ceremonies. Regional patterns and textures are subtly integrated into the terminal’s architecture at all scales. From the articulated coffered treatment on the headhouse columns and roof surfaces to the intricate jali window screens that filter dappled light into the concourses, Terminal 2 demonstrates the potential for a modern airport to view tradition anew.

A Gateway to India

All international and domestic passengers enter the terminal headhouse on the fourth floor, accessed from a sweeping elevated road. At the entrance, the lanes split, making room for wide drop-off curbs with ample space for traditional Indian departure ceremonies. From the moment of arrival, the terminal embraces travellers. Above, the headhouse roof extends to cover the entire arrivals roadway, protecting passengers and their guests from Mumbai’s heat and unpredictable monsoon weather. A 50-foot-tall glass cable-stayed wall – the longest in the world – opens to the soaring space of the check-in hall. The transparent facade also allows accompanying well-wishers, who must remain outside of the terminal due to Indian aviation regulations, to watch as their friends and family depart.

Once inside, travellers enter a warm, light-filled chamber, sheltered underneath a long-span roof supported by an array of multi-storey columns. The monumental spaces created beneath the thirty mushrooming columns call to mind the airy pavilions and interior courtyards of traditional regional architecture. Small disks of colourful glass recessed within the canopy’s coffers speckle the hall below with light. The constellation of colours makes reference to the peacock, the national bird of India, and the symbol of the airport.

The check-in hall leads to a retail hub – a common space that allows passengers to shop, eat, and watch planes take off though expansive, floor-to-ceiling windows. Centrally located at the junction of the concourses and the terminal core, these commercial plazas provide a focal point of activity in close proximity to the gates. Within these spaces and throughout the concourses, culturally referential fixtures and details, such as custom chandeliers inspired by the lotus flower and traditional mirror mosaic work created by local artists, ground the traveler to a community and culture beyond the airport. Regional artwork and artifacts are displayed on a central, multi-storey Art Wall, illuminated by skylights above. The prevalence of local art and culture, coupled with the use of warm colours and elegant accents, elevates the ambience of terminal beyond the typical, often unimaginative airport experience.

Although the terminal is four storeys, interconnecting light slots and multi-storey light wells ensure that light penetrates into the lower floors of the building, acting as a constant reminder of the surrounding city and landscape. At dusk, illuminated from within, the terminal glows like a sculpted chandelier.

A Flexible Footprint

The construction site of the new terminal building was located in close proximity to the existing terminal which had to remain fully operational during construction. This site requirement inspired the elongated X-shaped plan of the terminal, which could both mould around existing structures and incorporate modular designs to accommodate rapid and phased construction. This innovative form also allows for the consolidation of important passenger processing, baggage handling, and retail/dining functions at the centre of the terminal. On each floor, radiating piers permit the shortest possible walking distances from the centre of the terminal to boarding areas, while also maximising the terminal’s perimeter for aircraft gates.

The terminal’s roof – one of the largest in the world without an expansion joint – ensures further terminal flexibility. The long-span capabilities of the steel truss structure allow for the spacing of the thirty 130-foot columns to be far enough apart to not only give a feeling of openness to the large processing areas below but also to allow for maximum flexibility in the arrangement of ticket counters and other necessary processing facilities.

A Hub of Energy Efficiency

Terminal 2 uses a high-performance glazing system with a custom frit pattern to achieve optimal thermal performance and mitigate glare. Perforated metal panels on the terminal’s curtain wall filter the low western and eastern sun angles, creating a comfortable day-lit space for waiting passengers, and responsive daylight controls balance outdoor and indoor light levels for optimal energy savings. Strategically-placed skylights throughout the check-in hall will reduce the terminal’s energy usage by 23%.

At Terminal 2, modern materials and technologies are used to powerful effect. But while cutting-edge strategies set a new standard for sustainable, modern airport design, the terminal is as much a showpiece of the history and traditions of India and Mumbai as it is an unprecedented structural and technological achievement. Rising from the Mumbai cityscape, Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport celebrates both India’s rich cultural heritage and the country’s increasingly global future.

The post SOM completes Mumbai airport terminal
with coffered concrete canopy appeared first on Dezeen.

Photo essay: Polish photographer Alicja Dobrucka has produced a series of images documenting the rapid growth of skyscraper construction in Mumbai, India (+ slideshow).

According to Dobrucka, there are currently more skyscrapers under construction in Mumbai than anywhere else in the world, many of them unregulated, adding to over 2500 high-rise buildings that already exist in the city. These luxury apartment blocks are in stark contrast to the surrounding “desolate slums”, which the photographer says account for 62 percent of the population.

The Life on a New High series depicts a selection of these new buildings and their surroundings, and couples each one with a quote from a property advert, highlighting the disparity between the new high-end consumer and the slum residents.

Mumbai is currently is home to the largest number of supertalls and skyscrapers under construction in the world. This project, entitled Life on a New High, aims to address the issue of the changing landscape and unregulated construction in this financial capital of India.

The city is undergoing a massive construction boom, with more than 15 supertalls (buildings taller than 300 metres), hundreds of skyscrapers and thousands of high-rise buildings under construction.

More than 2500 high-rise buildings are already constructed, in addition to more than a thousand mid-rises existing already. Most of the skyscrapers are residential. Even the richest man in the city lives in a skyscraper. Antilia is one of the taller towers in which 27 floors accommodate a family of four and 200 servants.

The population density is estimated to be about 20,482 persons per square-kilometre. The living space is 4.5 square metres per person. The number of slum-dwellers is estimated to be nine million, that is, 62 percent of all Mumbaikers live in desolate slums.

There is no centralised urban planning and towers keep popping up in all areas of central Mumbai, particularly on the huge pieces of land that accommodated textile factories now closed, as well as in the suburbs. The building companies are supported by the government and are given tax exemption.

All the skyscrapers are constructed by international companies, in many instances from Denmark. The architecture of the new risers has no relation to the Indian cityscape – European architecture is being transplanted to India, transforming this country in the process.

This building boom creates a great deal of problems and makes the city difficult to negotiate on foot. It is also damaging to the environment as the large glass windows require air conditioning, which in turn increases the consumption of electricity.

Advertising agencies appeal to the newly rich, the up-and-coming middle class, using slogans such as: “You don’t just invite friends over, you invite awe”. The new Indian luxury consumer is pursuing a lifestyle where owning an apartment in the “newly builds”, as much as possessing exclusive items, is seen as a clear sign of wealth and power.

The post Life on a New High: Mumbai skyscrapers
photographed by Alicja Dobrucka appeared first on Dezeen.