Arun Rajendran Portfolio Print Version

Portfolio ARUN KRISHNA RAJENDRAN Information Designer + Architect

It’s a stair!

It’s a graph!

raj.arunkrishna@gmail.com | www.arunrajendran.com

It’s a building!

Contents WAYFINDING MERL Wayfinding Academic | 2015 -16 Reading Town Centre Wayfinding Academic | 2015 -16

INFORMATION DESIGN Data Visualisation Academic | 2015 -16 Home Reference Manual Academic | 2015 -16

ARCHITECTURE Ecovillage Academic | 2012 -13

Wayfinding

Information Design

Architecture

Wayfinding | MERL Wayfinding

MERL Wayfinding This is an academic self-directed project. A live project brief was chosen. The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) in Reading was undergoing renovations. The new arrangments of the galleries and the displays required a new wayfinding system.

The museum also serves as a library, a venue for hire and also has a garden that will be open to the users of the Royal Berkshire hospital opposite. All the different types of users have to use a common entrance and architectural interventions was not a viable solution as the building was under graded buildings list. The place was in need of effective signage solution.

The signs take inspiration from the rural signs, commonly found in village entrances, pubs, and farms. The hardware of the signage reflected the theme and the collections of the museum. The choice of colour, material and typeface try to remind the visitors the kind of signage system found in the rural landscape in the past.

Wagon Walk

5

Concept

Victorian Tractor

Printing Industrial nation

Plough

Country side

Equipments

Agriculture

Wagon

Rural Engineering

‘How did the signs look in the past?

What did people see as signs then?’

Technological changes Tools Estd 1951

1930s & 1940s Iron

“How d What d

MERL Wayfinding & Signage design

LANDSCAPE & ENVIRONMENT

Wagon Walk

Visitor Regulations You are not allowed to consume food and drink inside the Museum, except in the cafe.

Smoking is not permitted on the Museum premises.

If you have a disability, you may be accompanied in the Museum by your guide, assistant or companion animal. You are not allowed to bring animals into the Museum under any other circumstance.

You must not bring into the Museum any item of luggage which has a size greater than 40x40x5ocm or a weight greater than 8kg.

?

You will not hold us liable if we remove or destroy, due to saftey reasons, any property that you have left unattended.

Except where indicated by notices, you are permitted to use hand-held cameras (including mobile phones) with flash bulbs or flash units, and audio and film recording equipment not requiring a stand.

You are requested to turn your phone to silent in the galleries, library and reading rooms.

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MATERIALITY

Museum of English Rural Life

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Library & Archives Reading Rooms Seminar Room Conference Room Toilets

Accessible Toilet

Wayfinding | MERL Wayfinding

The English country side signs - Observations After the mass production of wrought iron, the country signs were mainly made of them, replacing wood. They could be seen everywhere, from farms to houses and from pubs to palaces. Silhouettes of prominent scenes, pets and sceneries were the main theme. Every village had a sign featuring a significant place or even events, famous personalities etc,. On studying the English rural signs, a few observations are made: >>

Most of the signs were in black, the colour of the metal. However few were painted and heavily decorated.

>>

They were installed on poles or suspended from the top or the sides. The suspended ones can be seen often in pubs, farms and houses.

>>

The signs were always in serifed typefaces.

7

Museum of English Rural Life

Visitor Regulations You are not allowed to consume food and drink inside the Museum, except in the cafe.

Smoking is not permitted on the Museum premises.

If you have a disability, you may be accompanied in the Museum by your guide, assistant or companion animal. You are not allowed to bring animals into the Museum under any other circumstance.

Regulatory sign Visitor regulations sign was not present in the existing museum. The receptionist had to give verbal information about these regulations in the museum.

You must not bring into the Museum any item of luggage which has a size greater than 40x40x5ocm or a weight greater than 8kg.

?

You will not hold us liable if we remove or destroy, due to saftey reasons, any property that you have left unattended.

Except where indicated by notices, you are permitted to use hand-held cameras (including mobile phones) with flash bulbs or flash units, and audio and film recording equipment not requiring a stand.

You are requested to turn your phone to silent in the galleries, library and reading rooms.

Library & Archives Reading Rooms Seminar Room Conference Room

Directionsl sign Type 1 The directional signs informs the various user groups about the spaces in the museum so that the unintentional crossing over of users and activities do not happen.

Toilets

Directionsl sign Type 2 Wagon Walk

These decorative directional signs are primarily targeted at the visitors. They provide directions to the spaces where the museum would like to draw the attention of the visitor.

Garden

Locational sign

LANDSCAPE & ENVIRONMENT

Accessible Toilet

These decorative locational signs are primarily targeted at the visitors. They inform which gallery the visitor will be heading next. These are placed at the threshold between two galleries.

Room Identification sign These are used to label the spaces and activities. They are found on the doors or next to them.

Wayfinding | Reading Town Centre Wayfinding

Reading Town Centre Wayfinding The Reading town centre is an area having diverse features like shopping, offices, historical sites and parks. It serves as a commercial and recreational hub for the town of Reading and the villages around it. The eclectic functions required a clear wayfinding strategy.

The colour-coded finger posts, the bus-stop maps and the colour-coded totems form the sign family. For the colour coding, the places were grouped into three categories.

This allowed the use of only three colours for the coding which can be easily remembered.

The town centre has a rich heritage. The backsides of the totems are utilised to provide additional information about the cultural and historical places. Lenticular panels provide evolutionary views of a site. This enables to get an overview of the town and the attractions even if one hasn’t visited the sites or if the sites are closed.

In addition, the Reading explorer map was designed. The app is integrated with HistoryPin. It allows the user to open the camera and it overlays historical images of the site in real-time.

9

15min

The Oracle

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The first recorded town or guild hall for Reading was known as the Yield Hall and is known to have been situated beside the River Kennet near the current Yield Hall Lane. However by the middle of the 16th century this had proved too small, and the spoils of the dissolution of the monasteries were to provide both of the town's next two halls. Initially, in 1543, the town was granted part of the former friary that was later to become Greyfriars Church.

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King’s Road

King’s Road

Duke

Street

Bridg

16 Simm

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Abbot’s Walk

8

Market Place

Minster

C

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The Oracle

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YOU ARE HERE

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John Lewis

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Street

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Oxford

Oxford Street

Forbury Rd

18

Broad Street

Broad Street

Reading council reading.gov.uk

Street

10

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West Street B3

Simply scan the codes

Napier Rd

Station Hill

Street

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Station Road C2 Union Street B3

Need further Information?

Transportation in Reading reading-travelinfo.co.uk

Rd

Friar

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Explore Reading using the Reading explorer app A-Z guide for exploring Reading.

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The iconic building that, today, is generally referred to as the Town Hall in Reading is no longer used by the Civic Authorities of the town. The southern side is the original town hall and council chambers built by Alfred Waterhouse in 1872/6. This is now a conference centre. The northern side was originally the free library, museum and concert hall, now the museum (and art gallery) and concert hall alone. It was added by Thomas Lainson in 1879/82.

Forbury Road

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The Oracle

15

Hexagon

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Reading Bridge D1 St. Mary’s Butts B3

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25

14

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Minster Street C4 Oxford Street A3 Queen’s Road E4

Crown Street D5 Duke Street C4

Union Street

24

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12

King’s Road D4 London Street D5 Market Place C3

Caversham Street A3 Chatham Street A3 Church Street C5

Street

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Shopping & recreation

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West

9 10

Library D4

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Merchants

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23

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Abbey Ruins C5

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17

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18

County Court C3

Minster of St Mary the Virgin D2

19

Crown Court D4

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20

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2 3

Borough Council E2

Queen Victoria Monument C3

21

St Giles church F3

22

Magistrates Courts E2

St Laurence’s church C3

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Main Post Office D3

9

Simeon Monument D3

24

Police Station E1

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6 7 8

Shopping & recreation Broad Street Mall

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12

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Civic & institutional

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1

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London Street D5 Market Place C3

Caversham Street A3

Minster Street C4

Chatham Street A3

Oxford Street A3

Church Street C5

Queen’s Road E4

Crown Street D5

Reading Bridge D1

Duke Street C4

St. Mary’s Butts B3

Friar Street B3

Station Road C2

Forbury Road D2

Union Street B3

Greyfriars Road B2

Waltington Street E4

Gun Street B4

West Street B3

Need further Information?

Transportation in Reading reading-travelinfo.co.uk

King’s Road D4

Blagrave Street C2 Broad Street A3

Reading council reading.gov.uk

Opening hours

Reading explorer

Tuesday - Saturday: 10am - 4pm Sunday & Monday: Closed

Explore Reading using the Reading explorer app for Android & IOS

Admission free For more details visit www.readingmuseum.org.uk

A-Z guide for exploring Reading. Simply scan the codes below

Reading explorer Explore Reading using the Reading explorer app for Android & IOS A-Z guide for exploring Reading. Simply scan the codes below

Bus stop maps

Totems

Finger posts

The existing bus stops have provisions for timetables and advertising. However, the timetables take up a lot of space. To over come this, the panel will be split in two: one half for the map and the other for the timetables. The map provides walking distance. This allows the users to avoid taking buses to close locations and will thus encourage walking.

The totem provides information in four levels. The current location, the directional signs, the map and the key and finally other essential information through website links and QR codes. The back of the totem has a lenticular panel that shows how a place looked in the past

To overcome the inconsistent finger post signs, the signs are fixed on to exclusive poles that match with their colour scheme, giving a sense of system.

Wayfinding | Reading Town Centre Wayfinding

Reading Explorer App The Reading explorer app lets the user to set alerts to favourite destinations.

The app will alert the user with the directions to the locations for which the user has enabled the notifications. This uses the iBeacon technology. Another feature of the app is the Historypin integration. Upon reaching a historical location the app will notify the user to open the camera. Upon doing so, historical images of the same area will be overlaid onto the camera screen.

11

Integrating Historypin* as an additional layer of information to the overall wayfinding experience.

* Historypin is a digital, user-generated archive of historical photos, videos, audio recordings and personal recollections. Where Google Street View is available, users can overlay historical photographs and compare it with the contemporary location. Currently, this is available only on desktops. For this project, it was proposed as an additional feature to the Reading Explorer App.

Information Design | Data Visualisation

Data Visualisation The data visualisations look at the housing scenario in the boroughs of London. For this, data on the cost of buying and renting a house, monthly and annual incomes in the boroughs, were collected from the UK government data website. Two visualisations were designed.

The static visualisation is set to appear in a magazine that covers issues relating to real estate. The visualisation was based on the average annual income and average monthly income. It gives a trend on the buying and renting over a period of four years.

The interactive visualisation is set to appear on the ONS site that features data visualisations on many issues in the UK. The interactive visualisation allows the user to enter specific annual or monthly income and can check the affordability of buying or renting a house respectively.

13

Visualising the London housing bubble.

All

Business, Industry and Trade

Economy

Employment and Labour Market

People, Population and Community

House rent and house prices: how expensive is your area?

February 24, 2015

By ONS Digital

Did you know that the most expensive houses on average in the London Boroughs were in Kensington and Chelsea at £975,000 in 2013?

The rent in Kensington and Chelsea could cost 98% of the average monthly slary in 2015.

There are plenty more interesting facts in the new house rent and price statistics for the London Boroughs, shown in our new interactive map. Explore your area and find out where your next move might be.

House rent Vs Monthly income

House price Vs Annual income

Enf

Hrw

Brn

Hgy

Wth

Hdn

Elg

Brt

Cmd

Isl

Hck

Rdb

Hvg

Hns

Hms

Kns

Wst

Cty

Twr

Nwm

Bar

Rch

Wns

Lam

Swr

Lsh

Grn

Bxl

Kng

Mrt

Crd

Brm

River Thames

100% 80% 60% 40%

Stn

Monthly rent

Aff

Enter Monthly salary

KNIGHT FRANK: THE LONDON REPORT

18

Cty: Bar: Brn: Brt: Brm: Cmd: Crd: Elg:

City of London Barking & Dagenham Barnet Brent Bromley Camden Croydon Ealing

Enf: Grn: Hck: Hms: Hvg: Hdn: Hns: Isl:

£

Enfield Greenwich Hackney Hammersmith & Fulham Havering Hillingdon Hounslow Islington

2011

Kns: Kensington & Chelsea Kng: Kingston upon Thames Lam: Lambeth Lsh: Lweisham Mrt: Merton Nwm: Newham Rdb: Redbridge Rch: Richmond

2012

2013

20%

o r d a b ilit y

Ratio of monthly private rent Vs monthly income

2014

Swr: Southwark Stn: Sutton Tow: Tower Hamlets Wth: Walthem Forest Wns: Wandsworth Wst: Westminster

Did you know that the most expensive houses on average in the London Boroughs were in Kensington and Chelsea at £975,000 in 2013?

The rent in Kensington and Chelsea could cost 98% of the average monthly slary in 2015.

There are plenty more interesting facts in the new house rent and price statistics for the London Boroughs, shown in our new interactive map. Explore your area and find out where your next move might be.

House rent Vs Monthly income

House price Vs Annual income

Enf

To

h Wt

Wst

s Wn

Cty

Bar

Brn

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2011

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2012

2013

20%

Ratio of monthly private rent Vs monthly income

2014

Swr: Southwark Stn: Sutton Tow: Tower Hamlets Wth: Walthem Forest Wns: Wandsworth Wst: Westminster

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Did you know that the most expensive houses on average in the London Boroughs were in Kensington and Chelsea at £975,000 in 2013?

The rent in Kensington and Chelsea could cost 98% of the average monthly slary in 2015.

There are plenty more interesting facts in the new house rent and price statistics for the London Boroughs, shown in our new interactive map. Explore your area and find out where your next move might be.

House rent Vs Monthly income

House price Vs Annual income

Enf

Hrw

Brn

Hgy

Wth

Hdn

Elg

Brt

Cmd

Isl

Hck

Rdb

Hvg

Hns

Hms

Kns

Wst

Cty

Twr

Nwm

Bar

Rch

Wns

Lam

Swr

Lsh

Grn

Bxl

Kng

Mrt

Crd

Brm

River Thames

′1 1

′14

Read cloc kwise

>40%

Abc: Inner London

Xyz: Outer London

Cty: City of London

Bar: Barking & Dagenham

Year

2011

2012

2013

2014

Avg. annual income

31046

31137

31626

31252

Avg. mothly income

2302

2381

2373

2348

30% 20%

Stn

Monthly rent

Elg: Ealing

Enf: Enfiel

Grn: Greenwich

Hvg: Havering

Hdn: Hillingdon

Lam: Lambeth

Lsh: Lewisham

Swr: Southwark

Stn: Sutton

Brn: Barnet

Hac: Hackney

Hns: Hounslow

Brm: Bromley

Hms: Hammersmith & Fulham

Isl: Islington

Mrt: Merton Nwm: Newham Tow: Tower Hamlets

Bxt: Bexley

Cmd: Camden Hgy: Haringey

Kns: Kensington & Chelsea Rdb: Redbridge

Wth: Waltham Forest

Crd: Croydon Hrw: Harrow

Kng: Kingston upon Thames

Rch: Richmond upon Thames

Wns: Wandsworth

Wst: Westminster

Dataset source: http://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/london-borough-profiles/resource/445fbb06-8945-499b-b1e6-1933afa3c642

Aff

Ratio of monthly private rent vs monthly income 20%

60%

100%

Ratio of median house price vs gross annual income

Enter annual salary

Cty: Bar: Brn: Brt: Brm: Cmd: Crd: Elg:

City of London Barking & Dagenham Barnet Brent Bromley Camden Croydon Ealing

Enf: Grn: Hck: Hms: Hvg: Hdn: Hns: Isl:

£

Enfield Greenwich Hackney Hammersmith & Fulham Havering Hillingdon Hounslow Islington

2011

Kns: Kensington & Chelsea Kng: Kingston upon Thames Lam: Lambeth Lsh: Lweisham Mrt: Merton Nwm: Newham Rdb: Redbridge Rch: Richmond

2012

2013

2014

10%

o r d a b ilit y

Ratio of monthly private rent Vs monthly income

Swr: Southwark Stn: Sutton Tow: Tower Hamlets Wth: Walthem Forest Wns: Wandsworth Wst: Westminster

10× 20× 30×

Editorial

Interactive

Knight Frank is one of the leading real estate consultancy providing information on commercial and residential properties. The company releases reports about property trends and other infrastructure related issues every month. The reports are available as booklets, books and can even be downloaded from their site. This visualisation is designed to be featured in their report on the housing crisis in London.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest independent producer of official statistics and is the recognised national statistical institute for the UK. Visual.ONS is a website exploring new approaches to making ONS statistics accessible and relevant to a wide public audience.

This visualisation appears on the Visual.ONS website where the users can check the rental and buying affordability based on their income.

Information Design | Home Reference Manual

Home Reference Manual The project explores the relation between text and images to provide clear information. A recipe book on pickles was designed. The illustrations bring in a playful charm to the feel of the book.

The book was designed to have a rustic feel which in itself is very much about pickling, its long traditions and techniques.

15

A study on the interrelationship between texts, graphics and photographs.

Architecture | Ecovillage

Ecovillage This undergraduate thesis was a live brief in South India. The 118 acre site, on Bangalore - Mysore highway, is designed as an ecovillage with the vision to create a community of the size of a small town or village, made up of individuals and groups of various sizes and social structures, which allows and encourages its members for sustainable living. The ecovillage tries to recreate some of the culture of the traditional towns and villages, while trying to retain the advantages a city offers.

The village has villas, villas with home offices, apartments, school, a recreation centre and a central plaza. The community attracts people who have the luxury of working from home, creatives, retired couples and people who want to escape the city life. A mix of such building types encourage people of varied age groups to be part of the community, helping each other.

The design of the ecovillage reflects the spontaneous planning of the traditional villages and the stress will be on creating an ambience which is human in scale, while retaining the character of the land. The architecture is be a blend of the vernacular with the contemporary, adapting appropriate materials and techniques.

The project also encourages local craftsmen and artisans. A short term goal would be the employment of these local skilled workers and in long term, the village will act as a centre where the dewllers of the comunity and people from neighbouring communities can come and learn the crafts and techniques.

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Three entry points

Central plaza + Axis addition

Radiating paths

Staggering the paths

Ground floor G+1 G+2

Nolli’s plan

Open space

Circulation

Building heights

Active recreation

100m radius

Residential

Passive recreation

200m radius

Commercial

Active farming

300m radius

Public

Passive farming

400m radius

Open space

Grazing lands & OSR

500m radius Walking distance

Land use

Architecture | Ecovillage

Ground floor plan

First floor plan

Section BB

Vernacular techiniques Vernacular construction materials and technologies have been combined with the modern space planning needs.

Traditional concepts such as courtyards and verandas have been extensively used. Using vernacular practises will help preserve the vanishing culture and can employ local skilled labours, boosting the local economy.

Front elevation Typical 2 bedroom villa with home office NTS

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The central plaza, the heart of the community serves as a backdrop for diffiernt activities.

Thank You.

raj.arunkrishna@gmail.com | www.arunrajendran.com