Design Portfolio

Inside Select Works Mrinalini

846 Shotwell St #5, San Francisco 94110 mrinalini.aggarwal@gmail.com | 267.638.8811 www.streetlight.space Left: The Landscape of the Brain Ink on paper, 2011

I led the research and design teams at Abaxial Architects, India for 8 years before moving to California. I served as visiting faculty for the department of Exhibition Design at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, and have facilitated workshops on public art, placemaking and community building.

In California, I have consulted on public projects for artists and organizations such as Tom Loughlin, Facebook and The Lab. I am the recipient of the graduate fellowship at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito and am also a 2018 fellow for the Emerging Arts Professionals.

My work explores the primacy of experience, using abstraction, metaphor, story and space to offer new perspectives on the sacred, the sublime and the mysterious.

Contents

2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005

Left: Projects Periods, Listing

Design Inquiries 03 Residence: Infinity (2014) 04 Interior: Tapovan (2012) 09 Commerncial: Alien Scapes (2011) 12 Masterplan (2012) 14 Research: Membrana (2009) 15 Installation: Distance (2017) 16 Exhibition: Akshara (2012) 18

Documented Selection Institutional Residential Commercial Interiors Planning Landscape Competitions Furniture Graphics Fashion Art Exhibition Curation Research Publication Teaching Consultancy Brief Building

A spatial artist and designer trained at the National Institute of Design, India, Ecole Boulle, Paris, and the San Francisco Art Institute, California I work across the intersections of architecture, art and design.

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Design Inquiries

1: Investigations “Design, in its primitive sense is a state of pure arousal. It is a state of being present, it is the capacity of the mind to filter through large packets of information using every faculty at hand to sense a danger, a change, another.

It is a state of wholeness, in the degrees to which wholeness and presence may be apprehended. It searches for signs, for ebbs and flows, for movement. It is the continuous

re-ordering of the data perceived at each instance; the doors of perception are flung wide open, and in his natural state, the designer, like the wolf, will rearrange the same signs in a million different ways, searching for that one arrangement where suddenly, a single element from the outside space will reveal itself in the foreground, as an oddity, a series of conspicuous entities, a composition.”

2: Interceptions

3: Innovations

“Is it possible to inculcate a sense of wonder through space? Beyond free will, there lives a framework of shared desire and common need. Just like a horse feels thirsty and has a natural impulse to drink, it is the natural state of man to wonder, to dream, to feel. So then, making provisions for these lakes and water bodies, this must be the imperative, ensuring we remember the feeling of thirst.”

“Some speak of great openings in the centres of forests where, basking in dappled light with arms outstretched, they are perfectly alert and perfectly awakening. Others speak of infinite oceans engulfing their meandering bodies, as they glide, safe, free, strong, rivers across the universe. And yet others share of their experiences with astonishing winds that sweep past hair and skin, past fingertips and

lips to bear the whispered murmurs of life’s fresh tidings. Secret spaces, perhaps, the mysterious mindscapes that evoke through dreams and unconscious memory, the bare acts of creation. Spaces from where design and creativity emerge - a home for a bird.”

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Above: Concept Plan, Breaking through the singular house, individual blocks, connected and yet detached.

Title: The Infinity Arrangement Typology: Residential Architecture 4

Location: Clementown, Dehradun

Ground flooring concept in marble & terrazzo

Ground plan, concept landscape

The Infinity Arrangement Typology: Residential Architecture Client: Himalaya Herbals Location: Clementown, Dehradun Role: Architectural Design, Interior & Landscape Concept Year: 2014 Area: 4,500 sft

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isiting past the Experimental Herbal Farms of Himalaya Herbals in Clementown, I arrive at the heart of this hilly 8 acre site that is an interwoven tapestry of lake, earth and life. The land was redeveloped in the 1940s by my client’s father as a series of islands interconnected through narrow bridges across shallow lakes and ponds. Today nature has reclaimed itself, growing wild over years it now brims with

migratory birds, fresh water fish and indigenous flora.

Designed for a client who spent a happy childhood here, the architecture is a treasure hunt of vista, view and facet; seeking multiple remembrances, those that bring life to memories and perspectives at once playful and sublime. These contradictions are ever present through it’s architecture as it seeks to renegotiate the skews that colour human

life. Here the orthogonal finds solace in the organic, the human is celebrated alongside the supra human, the going is as significant as the coming and the modern, the quirky and the modest learn to co-habitate. Layering the site with these improbable balances we arrive at design, an infinite arrangement that resolves contrarians in form and use, a design of a state of mind that is ever remembering and ever new.

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Ground Floor Plan Lake

1 2 3

Pathway

4 Approach

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Existing Structure

Private Blocks (Bedrooms, Master Suite)

Deck

6 7 Semi Public Blocks (Foyer, Lounge, Kitchen, Elevator, Staircase)

Lilly Pond

8 9 10

Existing Context: 8 acre Site, 70% Lakes, Multiple Pathways, Bamboo Bridges, Existing Structure, Art Deco Style

Top: Approach Centre: Existing Bottom: Bridges

Proposed: The de-constructed house uses the narrow contours of the lakes to situate itself along a series of vistas to create private spaces with covert relationships with the outside.

Driveway Walkway Verandah Guest Bedroom Guest Bedroom Deck Entrance Foyer Living, Dining Staircase, Lift Core Kitchen

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6 3

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5

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The Infinity Arrangement, Contradictions between:

1. The Chapel and the Cove

Axis

Cove: Private Organic Textured Human Scale

2. The Stray and the Stay

3. Between the Lake and the Strait

Multiple pathways & bridges invite the user to inhabit the site, leaving the interior for the adventure of outdoor. In contradiction, the central deck is a community space, the “stay�, a coming together of the site.

The Massing of the House has been derived from the contours offered by the lakes on both faces: the house situate itself as a strait along the Lakes

4. Between Memory, Modernity, Vivid Dreams

Axis

Chapel: Semi Public Symmetry Orthogonal Glossy Glorious

The site preserves certain elements from the original structure: the multicoloured staircases, the exposed brick columns, the art Deco style; and then weaves new patterns of expe-

rience through these memorials. Scattered across the site, in railings, details, interior and landscape, the aspects of the old and new simultaneously reside.

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Rear Elevation

Ground Floor Plan

First Floor Plan

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Ground Floor Plan

Central Folly

Above, Right to Left: Driveway sketches, Model Walkway, Model Massing, Process Documents Left: Concept for Central Community Space Approach

Right: Concept for Driveway.

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Above: The Architecture of a Tree Title: Tapovan Typology: Residential Interior Location: Greater Kailash, Delhi

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Tapovan Typology: Residential Architecture Client: Tapovan, Med Spa Location: Greater Kailash, Delhi Role: Design, Interiors, Furniture

Above Left: Entrance Doorway leading into the courtyard, water fountains.

Above Right: Guest Bedroom View

Year: 2012 Area: 40,000 sft

Previous Page: Facade, Courtyard details

ntroverted, along the linear axis of the narrow street stands Tapovan, a home, a sacred grove. The architecture is that of a tree, reaching for the sky, a fortress in Dholpur and glass, not modern, nor traditional, but cyclical, living. Terraces and balconies step out to the open view of the park, and interconnected courtyards weave illusions between outside and in. Birds and bees flutter about in whimsy on door handles and across water fountains, leaves falling onto tables and chairs leave imprints as they erode.

Hand crafted screens use the modern, the

woven and the playful to alter use within the open plan. The home is sanctuary more than shelter, both calm and yet emoting the hustle of nature’s daily labours. Both the bark and the fruit, this is a home that gives: additional parking to the chaotic street, public benches and private shelter, spaces to engage with nature.

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Above Left: Courtyard, Ground Floor, Bamboos rustle, humming birds & mynahs gather around the watering hole.

Above Centre: A winding staircase brings context to the interior lounge, its treads broken by horizontal beams of light that change with the course of the west sun.

Above Right: Crafted Screens create a new vocabulary of interior: traditional hand woven baskets used as art both abstract and modern.

Below, Left to Right: Facade Photograph, Sketches, Screens, Door Handle Details.

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Above: Ceiling Photograph Title: Alien Scapes Typology: Commercial Interior Location: Manesar 12

Area - 7000 sft

Alien Landscapes Typology - Atrium Interior, World Trade Centre Client - A.N. Buildwell Pl. Location - Manesar Role - Concept, Design, Supervision Year - 2011 Area - 7000 sft

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he ground is parched. Searing light.

A desert. There in the distance, the hum of a lone bulldozer. Earth being shifted and lifted. And the rest, an omnipresent white sky. Here, in the new city, habitation is scarce yet. We are without past, and without memory. We imagine the future. Buildings will dot this open skyline. People will come. Their children will

play here, in this fabricated urbanity. Fusing into site and program, we will tell the story of how it felt to stand here. How once upon a time the ground emerged upwards as the white sky collapsed. Rugged textures.

Flawed land. Thorny. Dry. Yet strong as steel.

The atrium at the World Trade Centre, Manesar remembers. It is that witness. A tipping point

between the past and the future. Evoking in a manner abstract and emotive, the alien scape that lives both in memory and in aspiration, in that which lay before, and that which is yet to come.

Top Row: Columns narrate the stories of evolutionary fossils. The metamorphosis of form emerges through backlit screens and stark evening campus lights.

Above: Rugged lines, jagged contours, rustic textures. Yellow grasses, white terrazzo floors and wooden decks make real the imagined and the dreamed.

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Typology: Masterplan Client: SpireTec Park Pl. Location: Greater Noida Role: Concept, Brief, Narrative, Design Year: 2012, Phase 1 Complete Area: 27,00,000 sft

IT blocks 1-4 Caterpillar IT blocks 5-6 Chrysalis

Cultural Blocks Butterfly

Soho Block The Reprise

Metamorphosis & Otherwise

Hotel Moth Image Summary

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ituated along the banks of the Yamuna, amidst field, sky and wind, the site provided a rich backdrop for imaginative ponderings and contextual layerings. Based on collective insights that ranged from investigations into the river, overlays of a new urbanity, and then learnings derived from India’s largest design competition organised within the private realm, the master plan revealed itself both in brief and in image as a metamorphosis of architecture and use. Here, the built acquired organic life through a series of values and identities that were then conceived in both form and function - each building unique and yet each interconnected.

Architecture

The Architecture of a Caterpillar, Built Form Metamorphosis and Otherwise

Greater Noida, WTC Site, Floodplain, River developments System

The site as a membrane between the city and the river

Reviving the Sky Bridge ecosystems of Ideation Spaces the Yamuna Wind Tunnels floodplains

River System, Catchment, City

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Eco-Systemic Hybrid

Anti Gravity

Vigorous Urbanity Zone of Ideas

Personal Space Opaque Introverted Fractal

Imagine Amorphous Breathe Break out

City Space Movement Reflective Open

Water - Feel Wind - Think Light - Sense Earth - Touch Farmers’ Markets Signature Bio-engineered Landscape, Berms, screening systems on-site farming

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Memorials (DDA 1962) Historical Sites Parks (DDA 1965) Power Plants

Approximately 10% of the floodplain consists of unauthorised or illegal constructions.

Desert

5.85% of the GDP of India is spent on public health issues caused by environmental degradation.

The floodplain covers 7% of the NCR area, with the land valued at Rs. 5760 crores.

Seasonal Fluctuation

Natural Landscape Delhi Cross section

Ridge Bangar Riverine belt

Low-lying Lands

Firozabad

Site of Public Toilets (YAP 1993) Public Cremation Grounds

Lawns Authorized Parks Vegetation Agriculture BioWaste Medical Waste Plastic Waste Primary Roads Secondary Roads Transport Nodes Tracks

99% of all infants that die before the age of 3 are thrown directly into the river.

References This publication is a part of an ongoing process of investigation and interaction with Abhilasha Srivastava, Dhanya Elias. the river in our city for over 8 years.

Interns - Sehaj, Ishita.

Mapping - 2003-2004 batch of the Urban Design Studio of the Sushant School of Architecture Guide - Ashish Bhalla Credits - Suptendu Biswas, Suparna Bhalla, Saurabh Popli, Refer to complete document at www.mrin.in for extensive bibliography.

Chandgi Ram Akhada Ladakh Budh Vihar Rajghat Power Plant Delhi Stock Exchange Delhi Secretariat

Tughlaqabad Qila Rai Pithora

Fly Ashes Rajiv Smriti Van

River Yamuna In Delhi

Lal Kot

Rajiv Nagar Sonia Vihar Rajiv Nagar Shree Ram Colony

Traces and Historical Spaces

Encroachments Land Status

Authorized Unauthorized Regularized Unauthorized Acquired Disputed On Lease Land Use

Commercial Hospital Industrial Institutional Open Green Recreational Religious Residential

Park, Landfills

Sewage Treatment Plants (YAP 1993)

Commercial Encroachments

Shergarh Siri Jahanpanah

Water Addition and Abstractions

Water Abstraction Uses Irrigation 94%

Yamunotri

Road & Rail 25% of Delhi does not have piped water supply, 20% does not have a toilet.

Bal Nirikshan Grih Tibetan School Baba Gopaldas Darwesh Majnu Ka Tila

Parks, Landfills, Bridges, Canals

And Waste Disposal System

Temples

Slums

In the last 4 decades over Rs. 70 crore have been spent in cleaning each km of the river in Delhi.

Arid

1807 1952 1980 1985 2008

City’s sole Freshwater Resource

Water recharge zone (MPD 1962)

Livelihood

River Shifting

Forested Tract Shahjahanabad Jama Masjid Salimgargh Fort R. Yamuna

1% of the entire NCR is a landfill sited next to the river.

25 year 50 year 100 year River Yamuna

Canal

20% of Delhi is under green cover. Delhi houses 15,000 parks and over 250 species of trees.

Bridges

Festivals

Shahjahanabad

Delhi Floodplains

Revisiting the Intersections between Nature and Urbanity

Present Scenario, Floodplain, Delhi

Ridge Lutyen’s Delhi

Cultivated Land

Membrana

Ecology, History, Land Use

The Yamuna in Delhi

Tihar village

Typology: Research Client: The Viridian Foundation Location: Delhi Year: 2009

Hathnikund

Water Flow Estimation

Dak Pathar

Monsoon Flow July - Sept 80%

Delhi

Wastewater Drains

Bridges

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Ironically the emphasis of commute is across and not along the length of the river.

Of all the roads that line the banks of the Yamuna, such as the Outer Ring road or the Noida link, not one forms a promenade to the river, no opportunities exist to sit outside on walkways, no boats or water transport services allow the curious passenger a ride amidst its contours, and overgrown thickets of trees form forbidding boundary lines between the city and river.

Mathura Allahabad

Wastewater entering Freshwater entering Freshwater withdrawn

15 large drains discharge waste water directly into the river in Delhi

Wazirabad Barrage Shahadara Drain Okhla Barrage Najafgarh Drain Barapullah Drain

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Above: Art Installation Title: Distance Typology: Public Exhibition Location: Courtyard of the old Mint Building, San Francisco Area: 150 sft

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Mint Courtyard View

Distance Typology: Public Exhibition Location: Mint Building, San Francisco Year: 2017 Area: 150 sft

Diego Rivera Gallery installation view

Distance is an installation that considers the relationships between interior and exterior spaces. Using autostereograms, a technology made famous by the Magic Eye book series, the work examines how far apart things appear and how deeply entangled they can be.

This work offers the viewer an experience that is both of the moment and nostalgic for the 90s - a decade of technological, spiritual and political convergences. The cultural touchstones and images of this time still resonate today.

Depth map detail for stereographic image.

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Above: Installation in 28 Scripts Title: Akshara Typology: Public Exhibition Location: UNESCO, PAris 18

Area: 4000 sft

Akshara The Theatre under the Table

Typology: Public Exhibition Client: The Dastkari Haat Samiti Location: Delhi, Cairo, Paris Role: Concept, Narrative, Design Year: 2012 Area: 4000 sft

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n October 2011, the Dastkari Haat Samiti, a Delhi based NGO that is involved in the promotion of equity through craft, invited over 200 artisans from across the country for a series of design workshops centred around the use of Indian scripts within traditional craft products. The campaign, designed to promote literacy within the vocation based industry, resulted in a 150 stunning hand crafted products in a variety of mediums, with styles spanning the breadth of the subcontinent. Each product used calligraphic elements from local scripts to decorate and innovate on traditional craft forms.

Challenging conventional notions of craft, a ground-breaking exhibition narrative was designed and presented at a week-long show at Delhi’s premier art gallery at the India Habitat Centre. This exhibition was supplemented with day long workshops that encouraged visitors to participate in traditional Indian Arts. Blurring the boundaries between Art and Craft and establishing new ways in which craft is exhibited and perceived, the exhibition was thereafter selected to travel to Mumbai, Cairo, and Paris, where it was installed at the UNESCO headquarters in 2013.

‘How do we understand words? As children, what are the associations that allow us to engage with languages, concepts and constructs? What is the process by which sound is attached to meaning, image with word? What play is at the core of all creativity?’

Right: Akshara at the Visual Arts Gallery Left: Akshara at UNESCO, Paris Below & Left: Akshara at Cairo

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The Theatre Under the Table & The Words in Flight “Words like birds In thickets In meandering gullies Skipping past memory and then Flooding my present.

Alphabets astound admiring eyes.

Hey babe Looking delighted A laugh with limericks littering Her lines and lanes Swinging along the circumference Of songs spoken Dancing discovering Why is grass green?

Why is the sky?

A forest of leaves and now The blank spaces In the hollows between the shifting lines Are clearings where I gasp in rapture.”

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nder the table everything seemed infinitely interesting. Grown-ups’ toes, patterns on carpets, leg posts that turned from roaring monsters to invisible barriers to spinning poles in a jiffy. Anybody who scurried around under the table would automatically be transformed into another Alice, as you would call her. Under the table we were fairies, puppies, astronauts and superheroes.

Twisting scale, meanings and dictionaries blurred and obscured. The rules of gravity did not apply, nor the rules of time.

Yellow turned to gold. Thoughts into arrows,

words into truths. A square meter under the table was worth a galaxy in the sky.

And we heard them speak, in their parallel universe. Their mundane chatter refracted through alternate dimensions, and arriving with distorted amplitudes and accents. A sentence seemed now a star. An exclamation was the sun’s rays.

Left to Right: The Theatre Under the Table, live installation.

Facets: Plays in form, circles, squares, triangles and their abstractions.

Centre: A child plays amidst the audio installation.

Above: Jewellery display, facial form emerges from the wall. Plaster of Paris.

Below: Language as Construct. Projection installation over bird-like words that are in the process of creation - Metal & fibreglass.

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Inside Select Works Mrinalini

846 Shotwell St #5, San Francisco 94110 mrinalini.aggarwal@gmail.com | 267.638.8811 www.streetlight.space Above: The Landscape of the Brain Render Detail, 2011

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