Architectural Journalism Portfolio

Architectural Journalism Portfolio

Sharayu Wadekar Undergrad, 2021

I

design

abstract

structures

call

it

and

art,

Reads mythology, writes erotica.

A part-time Physics head banger.

then build pile of conclusions and call it Architecture.

Singularity

2018-2019 Literature Forum Head D.Y Patil School of Architecture, Ambi, Pune May, 2020- Sept, 2020

Nov 2019 National Elocution Competition Participant

Editorial Intern Rethinking the Future, WFH

February 2020 Open Mic (Poetry/ Story) @HaikuJam, Bandra, Mumbai

Co-author for an Article On vertical living and it’s shortcomings under Dr. Mansee Bal Bhargava

February 2020 Jaipur Literature Festival Quite pleased to exist around Shashi Tharoor, Samir Saran, Manish Malhotra, Faye D'Souza and Sonia Singh

July 2020

July, 2020- Feb 2021 Editorial Intern Publication of a book on Engaging Cities, under Lalit Kishor Bhati Nov 2020- Feb 2021 Research Intern Rethinking the Future, In-office

Qualifications College

D.Y Patil School of Architecture Ambi, Pune Junior college

Pace IIT and junior college Mumbai School

St. Mary’s Convent High School

February 2020 Sponsorship head @Sunburn college fest, Core committee

February 2021 Undertaking a Research That got selected for National Student’s Conference, 3rd Edition

W hat have I done?

W hat have I done?

Dualities

Apart from talking about Tschumi and Jencks for hours,

Allied Courses

I research the sensual nature of Architecture,

Coursera

hop at book fests, no matter if it’s Jaipur or Mumbai,

Advanced Writing University of California

and ocean swim early morning then beach walk late night, Cycling from Miramar to Bambolim like a pro,

teach theory of structures excellently, write erotica and prove how close we are to god.

Mumbai All other achievements faded to this.

Hawking, Jencks and Ravi Shankar are a team, aren’t they?

Anything else?

Mumbai ~ Goa ~ Pune Behavioural biology

Cosmology-Astrophysics Mythology

Death metal-Hindustani Running-swimming-Cycling

Phone: 9067367483 Mail id: sharayuwadekar99@gmail.com LinkedIn: sharayu-wadekar-b103841a5 Instagram: www.instagram.com/sharaeiouuuurghh/ WordPress: invincibletirade.wordpress.com/ My author profile on RTF: https://www.rethinkingthefuture.com/author/sharayuwadekar/

INDEX I] CRAFTED INDIVIDUALLY FOR RTF (Re-thinking the future) 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Landscape for psyche Spaces of Judiciary and how their design influences users Liz Ogbu; creating impact through design 10 Myths about contemporary architecture History of Architecture and the possible influences

II] CRAFTED COLLABORATIVELY 6. With Mansee Bal Bhargava, Sharayu Wadekar Life in vertical buildings in the covid-lockdown times and otherwise is not good for sure 7. Sharayu Wadekar, Keval Morakhia, Saakshi Borse Writing Architecture, NASA, 2020 III] CRAFTED INDEPENDENTLY

8. Abstract selected for National Student’s Conference, 3rd Edition, Pune

1/ L A N D S C A P E F O R P S YC H E SEEING WHAT THE UNIVERSE WANTS US TO

‘We are a landscape of all we have seen.’

– Isamu Noguchi Wait. What? ‘We’ ‘are’ ‘a’ ‘landscape?’

Sounds stupid but, who are ‘we’ and what is ‘landscape’?

‘We’ are referred to as rational beings communicating, reproducing, and proliferating our intellect (intellectual abilities). However, today everybody is living the fast life and running the ratrace, melting the importance of the surrounding environment. Our daily routine blinds us inside the built refraining admiration of the landscape outside. Yet on a stolen glance, all we could see is a dense forest of bizarre trees or pastoral land with vibrant flowers we can barely pronounce!

Answering the latter question, Google infers that landscape is ‘all the visible features of an area of land

,often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.’

Considerably valid to this definition, landscape architecture has been solely treating the aesthetic appeal of the land. The landscape merely seen as a residue, actually works as a labyrinth or inanimate nature instead of a trajectory to our intellect.

A century to Olmsted coining the term ‘landscape architecture’, various aspects have yet been obscured to the intractable perception of designing the land. Many architects have fallen prey to this conception but have not realized the impacts of it, as the architect’s role doesn’t concern the after-effects of the design on users Link for the article: https://www.rethinkingthefuture.com/freshperspectives/a2077-landscape-forintellect/

2/ S PA C E S O F J U D I C I A R Y A N D H O W THEIR DESIGN INFLUENCES USERS

©https://theculturetrip.com (Palais de Justice)

‘Space’ and ‘Judiciary’.

What do we understand by these terms is how we perceive them, subconsciously. Our perception alters our experience of space, especially a judicial one. Judiciary is directly related to a sense of law and justice. If it disconcerts this sovereign sense, it transforms into a space for rebellion.

Even though our experiences prove irreconcilable to the purpose of the structure, architecture has the power to condense it onto a conceptual scale.

Winston Churchill has famously quoted once, ‘We shape our buildings and, afterwards our buildings shape us.’

So, how do we shape our spaces for the judiciary without undermining the very notion of law and justice, exorbitantly?

Several theoretical works have been conducted on courthouses and a few on embassies, yet there’s a scope for a lot of research on the rest of the judicial spaces.

Amongst these bunch of judicial spaces, courthouses, synecdoche the judiciary system and is abstracted as the gradual resolution of intangible justice to a tangible one. Courts are intricate spaces.

They require separate sections and dissemination arrangements of judges, inmates, general society, and now and again juries.

With a plethora of attention given to the ambience of courthouses, the spatial arrangement often goes unnoticed yet formulating its influence on users.

The Palais de Justice in Brussels is as colossal as it appears, rendering a thin seam between power and law enforcement. Its grandeur regards it as-built ‘of 10 million human skulls, a vast mountain of remains caulked together with crusted blood and rubber.’

Despite this terror and expressions, its inside is reflected as ‘over seven hundred thousand cubic meters contain[ing] corridors and stairways leading nowhere, and doorless rooms and halls where no one would ever set foot, empty spaces surrounded by walls and representing the innermost secret of all sanctioned authority’ (Wilkinson, 2018).

Disapproving the prerogatives publicised by the traditional perceptions of justice and architectural brace to the same, Renzo Piano has enhanced the Paris skyline with the audacious Tribunal de Paris.

The building though gargantuan, in contrast with The Palais de Justice, reflects equity and power through its built. Piano in an interview stated, ‘Justice has changed enormously these past 100years, but [courthouses] have remained the same.’ The glass cladding, steel engineering, boxed, and securitized arrangements for the defendants preach a different story than expected.

Despite all the grandness and hypothesis put into the designing, it was convicted by the very users and labelled as blatant and forcibly eliminating communication with one another.

‘Architecturally the emphasis throughout history has been on the aesthetic experience or mental associations that the built environment evokes rather than on the evocation of behavior, with the image rather than the result’ (Mercer, 1975).

Architecture being perceived as art and scrutinized thoroughly is plausible. However, there exist a few foxholes that lead to the potentially nearest presumed reality.

In tuning from the rudimentary experiences of non-frequent users, courts tend to be an uncomfortable and unsafe place

©http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/ Tribunal de Justice

A definitive objective is to make a safe and harmonious state for all members by studying the individual psychic impacts of structure on the diverse clients.

(E.g.: The staff contrives different issues in comparison to prosecutors or police and thus have different aims from the space to offer them.)

Entering a court building can be stressful for some clients. Individuals in a state of confusion while entering a new court building will likely be unable to take in signs, directions, or cautions. Studies have revealed, a withdrawal space attached to the chambers of jurors or judges can reduce their strain considerably.

Similarly, separation is a must for the protection of vulnerable witnesses from abusers.

Link for the article: https://www.rethinkingthefuture.com/designing-fortypologies/a2970-spaces-of-judiciaryand-how-their-design-influencesusers/

3/ LIZ OGBU- CREATING IMPACT BY DESIGN

Liz Ogbu ©www.lizogbu.com

“Architecture hasn’t done a great job by telling all our stories equally.” -Liz Ogbu.

It’s appalling for people with an architectural backdrop to hear this.

What makes it interesting is that the architect herself has quoted this!

Liz Ogbu is recognized as an urbanist, designer, and social innovator who has said this herself in a Ted-talk she delivered. Being the founder and principal architect of Studio-O, her work orbits around empathy, cross-disciplinary design thinking, design focused on encompassing humans. Her research methodologies reflect the same principles. Studio-O works with nonprofit organizations, municipalities, companies and has linked up with various firms and clients. She is well known as an expert in sustainable architecture and resolves social issues with creative transformation.

Ogbu, a proud African-American architect (though she never introduces herself as one, work speaks on her behalf) is a role model for many with color. Her work is an exceptional result of all the biases and challenges she faced to reach the peak. In an article, she has talked about being a black woman whose existence is the exact opposite of dominant white patriarchy in architecture. Building her path, Nike Foundation, Jacaranda Health, Pacific Gas & Electric, and Oakland Museum of California are few of her clients to name.

She was a kid who was engaged in modifying her room into a gallery and carried immense inclination towards drawing.

Link for the article: https://www.rethinkingthefuture.com/freshperspectives/a1301-liz-ogbucreating-impact-by-design/

4/ 10 MYTHS ABOUT CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE

Link to the article: https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/fresh-perspectives/a1444-10myths-about-contemporary-architecture/

‘Contemporary Architecture’ is a new fancy in this ever-changing field. Right from justifying your weird design before the unsympathetic jurors, to star architects throwing a design on paper very uncommon in its design, Contemporary has found its way!

An ever-satisfying definition of Contemporary Architecture is a long dream. Google refers to it as, “Contemporary architecture is the architecture of the 21st century. No single style is dominant; contemporary architects are working in several different styles, from postmodernism and high-tech architecture to highly conceptual and expressive forms and designs, resembling sculpture on an enormous scale.” This still doesn’t seem to sum-up the sublime nature of Contemporary architecture.

So, what is contemporary architecture then? It’s difficult to put it up in precise words.

So let’s play it reverse and understand what all contemporary architecture isn’t; 10 Myths about Contemporary Architecture.

1. Contemporary Architecture isn’t ‘MODERN ARCHITECTURE’.

Contemporary is often misunderstood as Modern architecture. The term ‘Modern Architecture’ ironically is a style marked by the late 1950s, whereas Contemporary is an on-going trend. Irrespective of the era, the design philosophies vary on a broad scale. You can correlate them but can’t consider both of the terminologies as the ‘same thing’. There’s a contrast between ‘modern and ‘Modern’. So, next time when you spot an imbecile misinterpreting them, enlighten.

2. ‘ICONIC ARCHITECTURE’ is ‘Identity theft’!

Architecture serves a lot of purposes, and they are mostly irreconcilable.

Contemporary architects have impacted negatively on the definition of the ‘iconism’, where the purpose of design, context, and micro-climate is lost in making the structure an ‘eye candy’. Structure loses its original identity and masks a contrary one. (‘Identity theft is not a joke, Jim! Millions of families suffer every year!’)

5/ H I S TO RY O F A RC H I T E C T U R E AND THE POSSIBLE INFLUENCES

Source: archdialy.com

Right from the humans of the Neolithic Age giving up on caves and moving to rectangular houses till Le Corbusier's grid defying the order established by the Beaux-Arts movement, the time has built Architecture every single day.

History of architecture is an intensive study about the way history of evolution.

(Um, even the biological one? YES.) We can not by any means' un-connect' the two.

As Herbert Spencer has quoted 'Survival of the fittest,' the monumental history of the built which we see today has survived its way through the revolts of the modern era. The ruins and the remains narrate how society and culture have evolved all this time.

Understanding the HOA (History of Architecture) is quite a task for those who aren't keen on rationalizing the 'why' and 'how' of the world we see today.

And honestly, it is a task (not that I am against).

But briefly, by the term 'History of Architecture,' we understand how civilizations over the world originated, rose and collapsed; the best and worst examples of human intentions.

Architecture is highly influenced by Politics, sociology, psychology, science, theology throughout evolution that every little change in these variables yields its effects on site.

E.g.; -Imagine how Einstein's inventions in relativity waged wars and the era of Modernism began (space-time is to blame!).

-The demolition of the Babri mosque paved the way to 27years long verdict.

Architecture is not an easy affair, you see.

Or going back to ancient history, -The Greeks looked for flawlessness through the methods for their design and imaginative articulations by utilizing straightforward structures from past styles to make a language that got inseparable from their way of life. This language communicated design through structures, yet instead how the crowded lived with and inside spaces inside spot. Greek engineering filled in as the basis for compositional articulations long after the civilization had imploded.

-The ascent of the Roman period saw the use of the structures made by the Greek in another field. From the think back of the past language, the 'Greek' another one created. For instance, the Greek requests are 3: Doric, Ionic and Corinthian, while the Roman requests utilize 5, with the expansion of the Tuscan, which precedes the Doric and the Composite sitting soon after the Corinthian. This shows a transition to extend the Greek way of thinking into a language that utilizes the past types to look to another ideal.

Instead of a serious commitment, HOA is quite fun and transcendent. It's a storyline of more than half a million events we missed, maybe because we were born in millennia, however. On an ending note, I'd quote the dialogue heard from a recurring Spotify ad where Harsha Bhogle says, "It's a journey you'd never want to miss."

See you on the other side of reality.

References: Craven, J. (2015). A Quick Tour of Architectural Eras. Retrieved December 03, 2020, from https://www.thoughtco.com/architectur e-timeline-historic-periods-styles175996 Source: archdialy.com

Venkataramanan, O. (2019, November 10). When did the dispute over Ram Janmabhoomi start, and why did it take so long for a resolution?

Retrieved December 03, 2020, from https://www.thehindu.com/news/nation al/when-did-the-dispute-over-ramjanmabhoomi-start-and-why-did-ittake-so-long-for-aresolution/article29933375.ece Source: archdialy.com

6/ LIFE IN VERTICAL BUILDINGS IN THE COVID-LOCKDOWN TIMES AND OTHERWISE IS NOT GOOD FOR SURE

©http://www.thefederal.com

-By Mansee Bal Bhargava, Sharayu Wadekar

The impact of lockdown-affected is underrated currently amidst the world continuing (rightly so) with the Covid affected. Covid and lockdown are interrelated, their effects too are interdependent over time and space.

Although there is right now no such thing like the World meters for lockdown, like the one for Covid, however if we collate the data of the rising issues of just suicides by depression and domestic violence, deaths by hunger and hatred, we may get shocking numbers way far than those affected by coron. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that those not affected by Covid are equally affected by the lockdown with long-term unaccounted physical-psychological impacts.

The lockdown impact is going to be more on people who are living in the high-middle rise buildings with barely a balcony to stand outside, an open space to stroll outdoors and in many cases even no balcony in the building and/or open space in the premise

.We have heard from few people that they have not been out of their flats in the past four months out of corona fear. This is dangerous! In contrast, those who live in a house on the ground including the low income-low infra housing, often known as slums, may have had a better living experience and lesser physicalpsychological impacts. Now, when India is going on with the unlockdown with a big bang-bang (though many states/cities are returning to the lockdown with the upsurge in corona cases), one can relate the issue of physical-psychological impacts from the euphoria of the people to be outdoors in the public spaces like streets and bazaars, as a relief from the lockdown. Most of these people are middle-upper class living in the high-middle rise buildings.

Link for the article: https://counterview.org/2020/07/27/lifein-vertical-buildings-in-the-covidlockdown-times-and-otherwise-is-notgood-for-sure/

7/ 63rd Writing Architecture Trophy, NASA, 2020 Group- Sharayu Wadekar, Keval Morakhia, Saakshi Borse

The brief of the competition asked to agree or disagree with the possibility,

Can design create a more equitable world?

INEQUITY BY DESIGN Scan to access the full article

Let architecture be subjective to create a personal sense of equality, ultimately resulting in a collective sense of fraternity and equality.

Design as a significant apparatus represents force and authority for the general public. Architecture pretty much a synecdoche for politics. For example, Nazi Germany and Rome’s power is a required and favored device to keep the tradition of the general public or territory alive as time cruises by. This example might seem the very notion of inequality, but if seen close, this is the only way out!

By creating opportunities for impact ."A building has integrity, just as a man and just as seldom! It must be true to its idea, have its form, and serve its purpose!".”

- Howard Roark, The Fountainhead.

BRIEF SAYS: While class and economic stature is one factor of consideration as we discus inequalities, there are a multitude of areas of schism that prompt a bias: gender (men, women, LGBTQ), age (for children and for the elderly), physical and cognitive ability (differently abled, autistic, dyslexic) and a plethora of barriers that one has to confront on an everyday basis. In recent times, we have also witnessed many civil movements that are a reaction to societal inequality – Black Lives Matter, The Global Climate Movement, The Movement, The Movements against NRC and CAA in India, Pro-democracy Demonstrations in Hong Kong and many more. A key question to architects and designers is: How can architecture / design help humanity move towards a more equitable future?

It’s been 115 years since Einstein enlightened us with the Theory of Relativity, which implies the fact that 'Everything is relative.' Would it be rational enough to defy this?

Okay, let's make it simpler. Would it be rational enough to claim the predicaments of the 21st century as claws of injustice from a vision of 'farther, practically never existing Utopian era?‘

"Architecture has not done a great job by telling all our stories equally2."

(Ogbu, 2018). So how can design elevate this existing equitable situation? By catering to subjective equality. The collective sense of equality/fair world is a bitter sugarcoated myth. In contrast, we all face inequalities on an individual scale.

Refer the QR code for full article.

8/ 500words abstract that got selected for National Student’s Conference, Research in Architecture, 3rd Edition.

ARCHITECTURE: THE TRANSCENDENTAL SENSUALITY Sharayu Wadekar ( sharayuwadekar99@gmail.com ) Ar. Seemanthini Nakil ( seemapavannakil@gmail.com ) D.Y Patil School of Architecture, Ambi, Pune/ Fourth Year, B.Arch

Throughout the parallel evolution of architecture and humankind, we have seen various theories, notions, and designs adhering to society's 'ideal decent'. The technological culture's tendency to standardise one's environs and make it predictable causes severe sensory impoverishment. Thus, the user often evolves around the mundane and inanimate experiences without considering the 'realm beyond the limits'. However, we have come across great pragmatic theories that tried to break this drift and set forth a new viewpoint to perceive the world as right from its origin with the notion of 'sensuality'. Sensuality is a very intricate and fragile aspect that still tops the taboos list and oppresses society from exploring new dimensions of the surroundings. Referring to history (modern, ancient) and mythology from various cultures and religions, sensuality has been a common thread leading to the cause of creation and destruction of heroes, villains, people, wars, and civilisations. Great debates are doubting sensual encounters' subjective nature, but scientific studies prove the increasing need of sensual awareness of self and surrounding for absolute physical and intellectual satisfaction. Body inhabiting a space undergoes innumerable sensory pleasures. The elementary aspect of existence, sensuality, catapults a heightened sensory experience. Ergo, space and sensuality must share an innate bond. As the progressive nature of architecture has started to reflect the unspoken aspects of existence, through its revelating nature, architecture may again be standing at the helm of divulging selfexploratory discoveries for the human body.

This exploratory study will conduct semi-structured interviews, literature analysis and case studies (architectural & cinematic) to reveal the user's holistic physical experience in space, enriching the sensory faculties to recognise and re-explore the bidirectional relationship between body and space through appropriate lenses of nature, science, geometry, politics, art and flesh .

Keywords Architecture, society, sensuality, taboo, human body, science, geometry, politics, art

Sharayu Wadekar sharayuwadekar99@gmail.com 9067367483