Ar. Sanjay Mohe One of the principal of Mindspace architects Sanjay Mohe has over 20 years of extensive professional practice and has worked together in various positions with the two other principals Vasuki Prakash and Suryanarayanan. Their work has resulted in several National and International award winning creations. Here he shares with us some stories of his early days, his views about life, learning architecture and some of his creations in a conversation with Subham Malpani second year B.Arch student
Q. What inspired you to become an architect ? When I was born an elder cousin of mine was pursuing his Bachelors in Architecture from RIBA. To a certain extent he had become an inspiration for me. This was seconded by the fact that I was good at sketching and was complimented by many. From the very beginning when my teachers asked me what I wanted to become, I would promptly reply "Architect�. So that's how I got inspired.
Q. Do you believe in the thought that every creation should reflect a particular ideology or philosophy? Yes, during our practice over the years we follow a set of principles, which later gets transformed into our ideology. This ideology gets rooted within us and therefore gets reflected in our work.
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How comfortable were your clients with the use of new ideas, innovation of materials like in designing a house or a new classroom complex? Designing has always been a learning process for both the architect and the client. I personally feel that it is not that
difficult a task to convince a client about a new idea. It is only in the beginning that we are reluctant about our ability to convince the client. So initially it is an epical problem, but then as we go on doing more and more projects we become confident about our abilities to convince the client. Most of the clients come to you after seeing what you have done. So they already have a kind of a mindset to know what you are going to expect. So then it's a question of going to accept further, and trying to explain them better.
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More about Budigere house, things like you try to minimize the number of walls to bring openness, and all... These are certain things we try to follow in every building, not just in Budigere house. We try to work on that a lot whether it is a smaller building or a larger institution. Then we try to sort of bring porosity into the built form- Porosity in terms of perforation to make a building breathe. In western countries the temperature goes as low as minus five, so you cannot allow the cold breeze to come into that building. So they have to create a glass box in order to counter the climate. On the other hand, in our country, we are blessed with a much more comfortable climate. So in a Sthapati | 2012 | 17