Architecture Portfolio

Selected Works 2019-2022 Tanuja Vartak School of environment and architecture

P O R T F O L I O

Education 2006-2017: Ashoka Universal School Grade 1-10 2017-2019: HPT Arts and RYK Science College 11th-12th 2019-ongoing: School of Environment and Architecture

Publications (SEA Press Publications) SEA Newsletter 2019 Several Blogs on SEA Archives Writes for the school blog

Languages

TANUJA VARTAK Email Address: tanuja.vartak12@gmail.com Contact No: 7030963133 Address: Parijaat Nagar,Nashik, India

English Hindi Marathi French (Basic)

Volunteering Member of the Content Committee (2019-Present) Contributed to the SEA annual exhibition 2021 Contributed to SEA Newsletter -2019 Covid Glossary

Workshops 2019: Material Workshop- working with Ferrocement (part of Semester 2 Technology Module) 2020: Visual Storytelling / Sunil Thakkar Idiosyncrasies of Home spaces/ Komal Gopwani Drawing Nature, Science & Illustration/Online course offered by EdX 2021:

Creative Writing / Snehal Vadher Housing in India’s second cities /Shreyank Khemalapure Marketecture / Devashish Guruji 2022: Identity and Storytelling through Illustrations / Sadhna Prasad The Bricoleur : Bricolage as method /Rupali Gupte What the Folly! / Lorenzo Fernandes

Skills Autocad Photoshop InDesign Sketchup Rhino Illustrator

Interests Painting Watching Sunsets Reading Fiction Phone Photography

01.

BUOYANT GARDEN 2021 | Sem 5

02.

HOME AS A PALIMPSEST 2021 | Sem 4

C O N T E N T S

03.

WETLAND OBSERVATORY AT SEWRI 2022 | Sem 6

04.

TEXTILE MUSEUM AT PAITHAN 2022 | Sem 6

05.

RE-THINKING REDEVELOPMENT IN MUMBAI 2022 | Sem 7

06.

INTERVENING THE IN-BETWEEN 2020 | Sem 3

07.

UNCANNY LIBRARY 2022 | Sem 7

08.

WORKING WITH FERROCEMENT 2019 | Sem 2

09.

PERSONAL INTERESTS 2019 | Sem 2

Initial working Principle

Details

Pavilion in process

01. TECHNOLOGICAL SENSORIUMS SEMESTER 5

Buoyant Garden Collaborative Project By- Tanuja Vartak and Krisha Kothari

The studio aimed at exploring the possibilities of designing built-forms that are able to alter the environment, through altering of a specific phenomenon in the environment.

The environment includes natural and non-natural phenomena which shape the rhythms of our lives and second, buildings are able to alter these environments and their experiences.

The two phenomenons identified through Tarkovsky’s movie Mirror were- one- that of the feeling of floating mid air and another- motion influenced by an external force.

The process began with attempts towards the amalgamation of the two phenomena through several initial experiments spanning Magnetism, Buoyancy and then eventually the principle of compression and recoil by a spring or any surface that is under tension.

The principle on which our pavilion works- is spring action as a result of compression due to human weight and the consequential recoiling.

Initial idea for the pavilion

Plan showing pavilion spread out on site

Elevation

The nets are composed such that they provide gradation of intimate spaces by facilitating tunnels as alternative of circulations, warps with holes to move from one space to another and also a central slide to add the tinge of playfulness.

The overall idea was Elevating normalised experience by simply shifting the perspective as in this case the garden is experienced from a higher level also considering its sensorium interacting with the sky and the ground.

Axonometric of Pavilion on Site

Current images of the wada

02. WHAT IS A HOME? Semester 4

HOME AS A PALIMPSEST The studio aimed to identify patterns of living and related built-form in a neighbourhood precinct through identification of an architectural type and elements that come together to constitute a type to identify different forces (climatic, economic, social, behavioural) that shape type.

The garud wada is a century old wada in a lane of Saraf Bazaar in the inner city of Nashik where five generations of the Garud family have been living.

It is a G+2 structure where the first floor is inhabited by a family of 8. The linear arrangement of spaces facilitates a constant interaction between family members as one room leads only to the next. The observation of the home lead to an imagination of it being a palimpsest where a modern family lived in an older structure which does not conform to the concepts of BHK. The spatial imagination for the home in charkop would be such that the empty shell be overwritten by the principles that were observed in the wada. The design process was initiated by applying some of the observed patterns on the courtyard facing house, constricted by houses on both sides.

The wada house had a lot of inbuilt storage and majority of their belongings were kept in deeply recessed niches in the walls. This was the main observed pattern where the wall could potentially inhabit the entire home. The process involved experimenting to see if the wall could also afford resting spaces or seating spaces.

Narrative drawing of the existing

The street elevation opens up to show the shorter house section-which depicts the thicknesses of the concrete wall in varying capacities. The longer section shows the functions each thickness holds- one becomes a sleeping space while the other serves as the dining seating.

Section showing inhabited thicknesses

Plan at Ground Level

Plan at second Level

Plan at third Level

The home has four levels to it which merge into one another. The ground level is the most public space and as one goes higher the degree of publicness reduces. The external facade has recessed seating and as one enters there are multiple niches forming raincoat racks , a mandir and shoe storage. A dining space is carved within the wall. A visual connection is established between the person sitting on the staircase and people passing in the courtyard. The second level becomes a private space and consists of two sleeping spaces divided by a semi transparent screen.

03. ENVIRONMENTAL THRESHOLDS Wetland conservatory at Sewri Semester 6

Explorations for walling materials: Four different types of screens with Bamboo as the primary material are used throughout the center. The screen depends on the direction in which it is located and nature of program.

The project aimed to create a wetland awareness and conservation center in the Sewri-Wadala ecotone-a region where flora and fauna of two distinct natural habitats co-exist.

The brief specified programs of distinct natures- Research zones, Laboratories for testing, Administrative zones and Education and Training facilities. The site is a contoured slope close to the Sewri Fort and it tapers down toward the mudflats.

Site analysis helped me to understand the direction of winds, sunlight and seasonal changes that occured.

The need for excavation or fill-as well as increasing costs, large scale earthworks, increases the risk of erosion by 1.Altering soil stability and water run-off patterns.

2. Increases sediment run-off during construction 3.Significantly affects natural biodiversity by removing soils and plants.

Since my intent was to be as light as possible on the ground, I chose bamboo as the main structural as well as infill material.

The buildings footprint would be reduced by raising it on stilts and hence minimal excavation of the site would occur.

Sections reflect the slope of site and construction of each space on the contours.

Site Development Plan

04. DESIGN TO DETAIL Semester 6

TEXTILE MUSEUM AT PAITHAN Details are thought through articulation of surface and junctions of materiality to acquire the desired essence of space and experience. They display immediate expressions of the structure, language, system and function of the built form. Each detail thus narrates the story of its making, placing, proportioning and positioning at various stages.

The Working Drawing exercise focused on designing for a Textile Museum at Paithan,Aurangabad.

Frame structure with brick walls was chosen as the system and materiallity and the design features arched entrances and openings. The form of the Museum was inspired by the Mesopotamian ziggurats that taper as the floors go higher.

One of the main design features is external single flight staircases on each floor that hilight the facade instead of simply being hidden, service spaces.

Toilet Plan

Toilet Section

End Wall Section

Partial Redevelopment and partial Retrofit model

05. MASS INHABITATION Semester 7

RE-THINKING REDEVELOPMENT IN BORIVALI The sudio questioned What new and relevant formal and spatial imaginations could be articulated for mass inhabitations in the emerging contexts of urbanization in India’s metro cities. The idea comes from keeping in mind the future of the society over the next 15-20 years where it is speculated to be largely populated by the elderly.

Bhaktiyog -the site for intervention is a G+3 storeyed, chawl like housing society built by Baburao Paranjape in the 1970s in Borivali west. The plot area is of 6513 sq m and the society consists of 208 apartments with houses of 3 configurations of area 240sqft, 270sqft and 310sqft.

I experimented with Partial Redevelopment and Partial Retrofit of the existing builtform where each house would get an additional 30% area in order to accomodate a WC each.

Individual units for Retrofitted flats

Individual units for Rethab flats

The secion shows the voids- terraces which are intended to be social spaces which directs my idea of amenities. From the 6th floor till the terrace, the builtform has been slightly shifted behind in order to create a visual connection between the mid-level terrace and the ground.

06. WHAT IS A FACTORY? Semester 3

INTERVENING THE IN-BETWEEN The studio aimed to understand the genealogy of the factory, the relations it has shaped, its contemporary condition in our own context and through a critical reading of these ask the ontological question What is a Factory?

The process of production recast the material and moral life of people into new relationships. The crafted was replaced by the readymade, the leisurely was taken over by spaces of entertainment, the circadian life got reframed into strict timetables. The shift-regime conceived in the invent of industrial time divided days and weeks into portions of labour and rest.

As assembly lines got organised for efficiency, in factories, bodies and machines became extensions of each other. The factory became a large non space where different actions, organs and sounds fused into each other reducing a living subject into a worker.

Drawing mapping the existing in- between spaces of the factory

Referencing from Bernard Tschumi’s follies at Parc de la Villette, my project was an attempt to create smaller spaces of interaction and rest for the workers of the factory.

These occured in the ‘in-between spaces’ on the large industrial land.

Through my observation, spaces such as the parking lot, the security cabin , the space outside the unloading sheds and so on, were appropriated by the workers to relax, interact and take a pause amid shifts which encouraged me to intervene in these six specific spots.

The key was to design very light programs for these forms because these are primarily spaces of release.

It was an iterative process of breaking away from the pre-existing idea of what a space affords and how the way I design these follies can affect the programs as well as the way they are eventually appropriated by the workers.

The prosthetic of Aam-peti added on an old wooden chair converts to a seating for two.

Each piece of furniture that you see lying stray on the street has its own social life and evolution of being used and re-paired by multiple users.

In shops, people have their own ways of making and re-making chairs, stools with whatever is available at hand.

We mended and repaired old, discarded chairs and a stool by adding on prosthetic pieces that completely changed the nature of the furniture thus giving them a new life.

A prosthetic arm-rest with a handle added to an existing stool

07. BRICOLAGE AS A METHOD

Semester 7 UNCANNY LIBRARY

Radhika Choksi and Tanuja Vartak Bricolage is the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available. We looked at the aesthetics, mechanics, politics and spatiality of bricoleur’s practices through examples in Art and architecture. As bricoleurs we went on derives through the city, identifying other bricoleurs and documenting their practices and forms of inhabitation in our diaries. Building one’s own practice of bricolage we developed this idea of an exquisite corpse coming together in the form of a garden through 5 tropes.

The trope i worked on was the uncanny Library.

The idea of hanging books from the clothesline comes from our observations in the cityhow a small raddi shop displays its old magazines and books

Bench-chair repurposing an old steel chair and a wooden chair

Wireframe diagram of hyperbolic-paraboloid

Experimenting with Ferrocement helped improve it’s understanding as a building material and we realised the importance of formwork required for it. The hyperbolic-paraboloid that we were initially working on failed to take the weight of cement-concrete mixture and we proceeded to make a different form that cured well.

08. MATERIALITY WORKSHOP Semester 2 Working with Ferrocement

We followed a slightly different method for the new formthe structural formwork was overturned and the concrete mixture was applied over the chicken mesh in this upside-down position.

This helped the structure to sustain the weight of the wet mixture and on curing, the formwork was returned to its original position and the external wooden supports removed.

09.INTERESTS

I’ve often turned to Watercolor as a medium of artistic expression and painting encourages me to look at the finer details of a setting. I am often inspired by my surroundings or reference from pictures from my travels.

C O N T A C T D E T A I L S

7030963133 tanuja.vartak12@gmail.com