RADHIKASELECTEDPORTFOLIOARCHITECTURALWORKS2019-22MALEKAR
RADHIKA MALEKAR EMAIL ID : malekarradhika@gmail.com CONTACT : 9833003516 This portfolio is a compilation of my work until 4th year as a student of Architecture. I intend it to be an integral part of my reflective process and I look forward for it to allow me to communicate through my work, creating new networks and friendships.
NON - ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE 2021 - 2022 STUDENT COUNCIL Was an active member of the student coun -cil of the School of Environment and Architecture during my third year of B-ARCH 2021 - 2022 CONTENT COMMITTEE Was an active member of the content com mittee of the School of Environment and Architecture during my third year of B-ARCH 2022 CONNECTED COLLAB STUDIO (CCS) A student driven attempt at an exhibition between four colleges 2005 - 2017 PRACTICED KATHAK Learnt and practiced the classical dance form of Kathak for 12 years and gave 5 official exams of the same 2013 WasSINGINGpartof a group which sung a playback chorus for a song called “Tu Aadi Hai“ for a movie called “Black Home“ WORKSHOPSEDUCATION SKILLS 2007 - 2017 GRADE 1 - 10 Bombay Cambridge Interna tional School, IGCSE board 2017 -2019 JUNIOR COLLEGE Bhavans College (Andheri), HSC board 2019 ONWARDS B-ARCH School of Environment and Architecture 2019 Sinan : Genius of domed buildings - Neesha Mewada 2020 Pixar in a Box 2020 The Bricoleur : Bricolage as a Method - Rupali Gupte 2021 Film Appreciation - Avijit Mukul Kishore 2021 Multilinear Narratives & Digital Spaces - Moomal Shekawat 2021 Living in a Metaphor - Anuj Daga 2022 Looking in/Looking out - Prajakta Potnis 2022 Drawing Out the Everyday: The Scribe And The Labyrinth - Apurva TalpadeModel-makingSketchingInDesignSketchupRhinocerosPhotoshopAutocad MS-Word, Excel, Powerpoint LANGUAGES English, Hindi, Marathi
SETTLEMENT STUDIES | SEM 2
CONTENT 1. FACTORY AS A MOULD 1 DESIGN MODULE | SEM 3 2. HOME AS A PLAYSPACE 5 DESIGN MODULE | SEM 4 3. SOUNDSCAPE OF WATER 11 DESIGN MODULE | SEM 5 4. GHADIYALJI 17 ALLIED DESIGN | SEM 3 5. ESQUISSE MANUAL 19 TECHNOLOGY MODULE | SEM 4 6. WETLAND CONSERVATORY AS A STREET 23 DESIGN MODULE | SEM 6 7. TEXTILE MUSEUM 29 SYSTEMS, DETAILS AND DRAWINGS | SEM 6 8. DIALECTICS OF RELIGION THROUGH MODERNISM 35 CULTURE AND BUILT FORM | SEM 4
Could space mould light? Such that every surface would have its own dia logue with the play of light.
Could space mould movement of body? Such that the objects in it create space for the body to meander through them. Could it probably even mould the body navigat ing through it? Such that it would constantly negotiate with the body and sometimes mould itself too. Could the factory as a space then itself become a mould? These questions led to the emergence of the design proposition.
Could space mould volumes? Such that the body would hide, stretch, spread, run, gather with other bodies or just be.
FACTORY AS A MOULD DESIGN MODULE | SEM 3
Could a mould not be just an object? Such that it would become a space in itself.
Could a factory be more than a production Suchspace?that it is sensitive to the bodies which oc cupy it with their nuances. Could social hierarchy be questioned? Such that all bodies would be comfortable with themselves and each other.
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NARRATIVE DRAWING 2
EXPLORATION THROUGH PHYSICAL MODELS 3
PLAN SECTIONAL PERSPECTIVEINSIDE VIEW 4
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As Kavya’s parents leave for work, the 6-year-old is left at home with her grandmother. She spends her day, Hiding under the table, Rocking on her toy horse, Crawling beneath the bed, Sliding on the staircase railing, Leaning over the terrace ledge, Gazing out of the window, Imagining a world with her toys.
HOME AS A PLAYSPACE DESIGN MODULE | SEM 4
NARRATIVE DRAWING 6
INITIAL DRAWINGS KAVYA’S HOME 7
PHYSICAL MODELS 8
SECTIONAL PERSPECTIVE 9
VIEWSPLAN 10
SOUNDSCAPE OF WATER DESIGN MODULE | SEM 5 PRANJAL SANCHETI AND RADHIKA MALEKAR 11 WalkingPHENOMENONonwetground. A damp wetness hanging in the atmosphere Every step, every breath feels moist Hearing nothing but the sound of drops. Drops of water which are falling off the edges onto the ground, onto the body Hearing nothing but the feet splashing through puddles Hearing nothing, but is it something? Pausing somewhere to just observe, hear, feel Just to be there. Be there for a moment or two
12 SITE SENSORIUM
13 APPARATUS
14 SECTIONPLAN
This diagram of the design emphasizes on the existence of the tanks and pipes which become the voids within the monolithic structure. This juxtaposition of solids and voids allow the built form to become a soundscape of water and hence curates the experience of inhabitation.
DESIGN DIAGRAM
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16 VIEWS
17 GHADIYALJI ALLIED DESIGN | SEM 3
This story was written and compiled during an Allied Design Module called the The Bricoleur : Bricolage as a Method, conducted by Rupali Gupte. Ghadiyalji is a story of a person called Anant, whose obsession is to work with gears. Trained under a watchmaker as a part of his first job, Anant’s interest in watches first developed over there. With a violent turn of events, Anant is forced to move to the city and take up a clerical job, pulling his love for gears to a halt. His madness of gears compells him to tinker with his tools, sitting there in the office, working on various watches of his neighbours and colleagues.
the QR code above to go through the entire book.
The story explores his spirited practice of working with the clocks while sitting at his desk and talks about the idea of challenging the productivist logic by turning a place of work into a space of en Kindlyjoyment.scan
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19 ESQUISSE MANUAL TECHNOLOGY MODULE | SEM 4 GROUP PROJECT BY JAHANVI NAIK, EESHA PETHE, TANISI K, RADHIKA MALEKAR
20 HOW TO:
21 ROOFING DETAILS
22 WATER AND WASTE MANAGEMENT FACADE JOINERY FURNITURE JOINERY
WETLAND CONSERVATORY AS A STREET DESIGN MODULE | SEM 6 23
The term environmental thresholds talks about a dynamic relationship of landscape & the built environment that enhances coexistence of biodiversity. The course intends to look at the natural & built environments as temporal, dynamic, and not static because of the processes and flows in the environment being in constant flux and the habitation practices being ever changing. Contrastingly enough, the experience of the site remains to be rather extremely detached. De tached from wetlands, the neighboring settlements, factories, people in general and most impor tantly from the street which connects it to the main road and the Sewri train station. Although the character of this street is much different from the usual crowded city streets, the stark height of the basalt rock on the site makes it difficult for the site to have any interaction with the street. A street, if checked in a dictionary, is a public thoroughfare in a built environment. It is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, in teract, and move about. There is life associated with the idea of the street. Life and energetic selves make a road into a street. Responding to this intent, the additional program hence emerges to be a market place which the street can afford in its multiplicities. It is then that questions like “What is the experience of a street?” and “How is a Wetland Conserva tory imagined as one?” came up, which further drove the design, where the idea of street became a metaphor through which the design emerged.
24 DESIGN CONCEPT
25 FORM EXPLORATION
26 SPATIAL PLANNING
27 PLANS CUT AT VARIOUS LEVELS
28 VIEWSSECTION
29 TEXTILE MUSEUM SYSTEMS, DETAILS AND DRAWINGS | SEM 6
The formal exploration of the intent began by working with walls and trying to understand ways in which movement of light as well as people can be shaped. While constantly searching for ways to break linear movements of both light and people, the exploration opened up a range of possibili ties of spaces. Parallely, bricks as a material was considered to be used.
Museums are spaces where knowledge is shared and produced through a process of mean ing-making. This process involves an object telling a story and an observer experiencing it. Hence, the exhibits in a museum surely become the central focus but the idea of experience of the muse um as a building somehow curbs at the objectification of these exhibits.
Generally, museums and exhibitions are closed off, box-like spaces which have a certain quality of light highlighting the exhibits. This is usually achieved by using artificial light systems, even during the day. Moreover, they have a rigid sense of movement where the exhibits seem to be cordoned off against walls, while the entire space exists in complete separation from the outside. All of these became provocations to the design intent which further shaped around questioning the existing form of a museum.
30 STAGGERED SECTION
31 GROUND FLOOR PLAN
32 ELEVATIONSECTION
33 STAIRCASE DETAIL SHEET
34 TOILET DETAIL SHEET
During the early 1700s, the avant-garde people of the society started questioning the feudal sys tem and the orthodox church. The idea of modernity was and is still approached in many ways.
DIALECTICS OF RELIGION THROUGH MODERNISM SETTING RELIGION IN A MODERN FRAMEWORK BUILT FORM MALEKAR
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While few, like Descarte, thought about it through rationalism and few, like Locke and Hume worked with it by understanding empiricism, Kant chose to steer the mid way and talked about modernity by proposing his “Two world theory”. The society which Kant was negotiating with had a rigid hierarchical structure with the clergy being one of the most powerful bodies. The parochial arrangement of the church was politicized to influence people at large. This social construct was being questioned by modernism. With this historical context, we would like to address the ques tion of how religion and modernity would negotiate with each other in a modern context.
| SEM 4 SHREYA MITTAL AND RADHIKA
CULTURE AND
Luce Memorial Chapel was built in Tunghai University of Taiwan in 1963 and was designed by American-Chinese architects I.M Pei and Chi-kuan Chen. Apparently, this is the only church ever built by I.M Pei. As christianity is a minority religion in Taiwan, this building proved to be the meeting point of western traditions and China’s nationalism conditions. China being a commu nist country, strongly opposed the protestant missionaries in the early 1800s, who were trying to preach Christianity. This led to the formulation of certain conditions under which Christian Uni versities could be established in China. Keeping these conditions in mind, the foreign missionary communities tried to build spaces which avoided overruling local traditional cultures. By hiring I.M Pei to design a chapel in their campus, the Tunghai University ensured to build a western chapel which would be sensitive towards Chinese traditions and culture. PAVILION
LUCE MEMORIAL CHAPEL PHILIP’S
LIGHT QUALITY IN THE INTERIORS
FRONT ELEVATION OF LUCE MEMORIAL CHAPEL SCHEMATIC DIAGRAM OF LUCE MEMORIAL CHAPEL
The form of the Luce Memorial Chapel was influenced by the Philips Pavilion designed by Le Cor busier. The Chapel is positioned in a way that it does not hold a dominating position contextually, unlike other conventional religious buildings. The architect used newer material technologies which could afford the complexities of the struc tural design having the mathematical hyperbolic paraboloids. The structure has 4, thin towering walls which resemble a pair of praying hands. This has an effect on the viewer and it is enhanced by the overall design of the space which allows a good quality of light to enter giving it a sacred value.
The German writer Paul Scheerbart in his novel “Glass Architecture” points out that the image of light carried through glass facades uplifts spirits and morality. Another way by which I.M Pei re sponded to modernity is by the fact that he decided to keep the structure exposed. This was his critique of modernity by going against the idea of cleanliness and the idea of hiding whatever ‘displeases’ the eye. Lina Bo Bardi also brought this critique into her practice when she painted the service pipes of SESC Pompei with vibrant colors. Having implemented these political, philo sophical and technological ideas, I.M Pei breaks away from the traditional form of a chapel, inch ing towardsSKYLIGHTmodernism.OFLUCEMEMORIALCHAPEL
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AXIS MOVEMENT IN THE RONCHAMP CHAPEL AXIS MOVEMENT IN THE TRADITIONAL CHURCHES AXIS MOVEMENT IN THE LUCE MEMORIAL CHAPEL
RONCHAMP CHAPEL
The structure is designed such that the curved shape of the building affords the spillage of inter nal activities onto the external space, moreover this also allows for large congregations like openair religious events to take place. This affordance of space works in tandem with the democratic idea of space which talks about a sense of equality. Traditionally churches and chapels directly opened up to the altar which allowed only linear movement. This layout imposed the dominance of god onto the people entering the space as their movement was compelled towards god, in voking a sense of forced spirituality. If we go back and take a look at the Luce Memorial Chapel, it clearly identifies with this traditional practice. The layout of Ronchamp was consciously designed so as to break this linear movement of a person entering the chapel and bring in an iconoclastic idea of religion. Peter Zumthor also talks about this idea of “directed movement” in his book “at mospheres”, “...induce a sense of freedom of movement, a milieu for strolling, a mood that has less to do with directing people than seducing them.”
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The Ronchamp Chapel was built in France in 1954 and was designed by Le Corbusier. The struc ture sits on the Bourlémont hill which was a pre-existing pilgrimage site. During World War II, the earlier chapel was bombed and now the church asked for a pure space void of extravagant detail and ornate religious figures unlike its predecessors. This was a major shift from the traditional or namental design practice.
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LIGHT DIAGRAMS
OF LIGHT
Corbusier gives the impression of a floating roof by resting the roof on the columns rather than the walls which is explicitly noticeable in the interior where the clerestory windows fit between the top of the walls and roof. These construction techniques; voluminous béton brute roof and skewed reinforced concrete walls rendered in the most extreme white, allowed him to introduce his lan guage of plasticity.
Light is used as an ornament and it becomes a significant architectural element when Corbusier chooses to create a dialogue between light and the form of the chapel. The deliberate thickness of the southern wall affords the angular recession of 27 windows which allow soft light to reflect at various intensities throughout the day. PLAYSOUTHERNTHROUGHWALL
SOUTHERN FACADE OF RON CHAMP CHAPEL SECTIONAL PERSPECTIVE OF RON CHAMP CHAPEL FLOATING ROOF RESTING ON THE COLUMNS
These windows were composed from fragments of hand-made glass inserted into gaps in the concrete. Unlike the colorless glass used in Luce Memorial Chapel, Corbusier consciously decid ed to hand paint these glass windows such that their arrangement would allow for consistent natural light, giving the space an unparalleled ethereal sense. The sun rays pouring in through the window from behind the altar and the light space on either side of the large centrally pivoted square door, give a soft glow to the space. Earlier chapels and churches used to have decorative tinted glass windows having biblical references which were used to propagandize the importance of god. Corbusier chose to respond to this by using his paintings as his language of modernity to critique the traditional use of tinted glass.DETAILS
OF SOUTHERN WALL
As mentioned earlier the walls of Luce Memorial Chapel are kept exposed internally while if we look at Ronchamp Chapel, its walls have been sprayed with gunite, giving them a rough texture, and then whitewashed with plaster. Although plastering the walls might seem like working with the idea of cleanliness, Corbusier had a logical approach to this angle of modernity. This idea of plastering the walls was to enhance the quality of light to be experienced in the space inside.
PLAY OF LIGHT SOUTHERNTHROUGHWALL
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Although both the chapels used light as an integral architectural element, the way the architects have dealt with light varies and so does the experience. I.M Pei’s language of light does not in tend to create the play, Corbusier’s language of light does. Just as Peter Zumthor says, “...but then something would be drawing me round the corner- it is the way the light falls, over here, over there: and so I saunter on…”.
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RADHIKA MALEKAR EMAIL ID : malekarradhika@gmail.com CONTACT : 9833003516 ADDRESS : B/19, Samadhan CHS, Chakala Andheri East, Mumbai-99
