Portfolio by Yashada Deshpande

works from 2015- 2023

by Yashada Deshpande

Selected

1. Metamorphosis an installation derived from the hatching process of a stick insect

2. A Collective Domesticity Research on charitable ‘Homes’ in Mumbai a design proposal for the redevelopment of The Salvation Army Complex, Byculla, Mumbai

3. Building Stories- Chakrata Measured Drawing Documentation, Chakrata, Uttarakhand

4. Cascading Terraces a granary in the hamlet of Mohana, Chakrata

5. The New Souk a market in the imaginary land of Hitchifa

6. School of Philosophy School annex to the Dargah Sharif, Ajmer, Rajasthan Professional Work

7. Conservatory of Heritage Jewellery Showroom, Ahmedabad

8. Dismantling Building: A Kit of Parts Exhibition at Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai

9. Wall House a residence in Delhi

10. The Inner Ear: School School for the hearing impaired, Bharuch, Gujrat

11. One Tree Hill an archive of a community center in the village of Byrasandrum, Banglore

12. Samples, samples

13. Writer’s Table

14. The Container Pavilion for the Kochi Biennale, 2023

Academic Work

First Year AD project

Guide- Sonal Sundararajan

Metamorphosis

Introduced by an excerpt from Franz Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis,’ we were asked to choose an insect to study further in my first semester at KRVIA. The hatching of a stiff, long stick insect from a round tiny egg is what fascinated me the most. I drew the entire process in order to understand it better as a series of sketches shown below. This helped me move seamlessly into the next stage of the project where we were asked to imagine this metamorphosis in a human body in the same way Gregor Samsa experienced it in Kafka’s novel.

Towards the end of the studio I made a 12 feet long installation which could stretch from the floor to the ceiling with the help of a small pulley. I used bendable wires as the primary structure around which hosiery fabric available in a nearby market was sewn together forming a light transluscent skin. The rings were proportionate to my body and were bent around it at different intervals.It took a week to make the final work which includes memories of my mother teaching me how to sew!

A Collective Domesticity

During the final semester at Architecture School, a design proposal in accordance to the requirements stated by the University of Mumbai has to be presented to a jury. The architectural intervention proposed is based on substantial research done on the topic addressed in the previous semester. The writing and drawing work shown below is a part of my final submission before graduation.

Abstract- The image of the home has become the bourgeois family’s retreat. The idealised heteronormative nuclear middle class family home is being mass produced. The faith in the stability of this idea of a home creates a desire to belong to a family. But what about other forms of domesticities that cannot be confined to this imagination of a home. They have particular needs depending on who the residents are and cannot be mass produced. Hence they are neglected. Can homes for other kinds of domesticities be designed?

Intent- The thesis research looked at charitable homes in particular. Another form of domesticity. Residents don’t usually have a source of income and are completely dependent on donations for their livelihood. They mostly don’t have a family. Their opinions, choices and aspirations are unheard. As they’re given the home in charity, they must be grateful. The idea of charity seems to be limited to the provision of basic needs and these homes are isolated. In such a situation the home is almost an illusion. It remains only a shelter.

What could be the form of a home for such a domesticity?

Can it provide a sense of dignity to the residents?

Can it be imagined as a neighbourhood that enables the growth and nurture of the residents as individuals?

About the Site- The Salvation Army Complex is situated in Madanpura, Byculla, Mumbai. It is characterized by its leather street markets and old chawl buildings built for the Bombay Mill Workers in the 19th Century. It also has a number of old, almost dilapidated buildings built during the British Rule, the site chosen being one of them.

Although it is located in a dense urban fabric, The Salvation Army being a religious and charitable trust has multiple public and private institutions within itself making it very challenging to plan. It has an existing Girl’s Shelter, a Men’s Hostel for the blind, an Old Age Home as well as housing for the Salvation Army staff. Around 250 residents live together. It also has various public programs like a Community Kitchen and Canteen, a Waste paper Recycling Unit, a school, and a chapel all juxtaposed together within 90,000 sq ft of plot area.

The Complex will soon be redeveloped as the building is dilapidated in parts making it possible to re-imagine the Charitable Home as a Collective Living with the staff family housing than in isolation.

1-BMC Clinic 2-Marathi Church around the corner

3-The Night School

4-Jhula Maidan

Elevation of the Old Age Home, which has been adaptively reused in the new proposal

Entrance to the Girl’s Shelter Dense city fabric in Madanpura 5-Masjid

6-Salvation Army Church

8-Shed for sorting waste paper

7-Rear area between The Salvation Army Complex and Night School

9-Family Housing for The Salvation Army staff

10-School

Research- Stories of the lives of people living inside The Salvation Army Complex currently are collected in the form of a series of interviews conducted on multiple site visits. They are represented as narrative drawings to get a sense of the resident’s livelihoods. Two examples of the same are mentioned below. The residents opened up to me about their aspirations of a home in detail. I tried to cater to those in the design strategy which follows.

I am Sara. I am 9 years old. I have lived here since I was three. My mother lives four lanes away. She works in the red light area. My mother comes to visit me once a month since those are the rules. There are rules everywhere. Rule to keep only a few lights on to save on the electricity bill. Rule to not go out of the compound beyond the rooms. It’s fenced. Rule to not visit the blind men in the dormitory on the first floor. This rule I’m glad about though. Once we had sneaked in and realised how scary the place was. I wish we had bigger windows, a dining table, bigger than the one that the blind men have. A that I can share with only one other person, Saniya, my best friend here. I wish there was a canteen and a variety of foods on the platter. I wish we had a hole in the kitchen wall so that it was convenient to pass the food, a study room with a black board where we can study late into the night, a water tap that gives warm water as I turn it around at my will, and yes, a bathtub! I want to become a doctor when I grow older. It’ll gain me some respect. My family will be happy. I don’t miss them. I’m used to staying away. It doesn’t matter anymore. But yes, I do hope I can go out, see the world one day.

Umesh

I am 67. I have no family. I was 55 when I lost my job. All our work was suddenly computerized and I was removed as I didn’t know how to operate one. Now I have this smart-phone a family donated to us last Diwali. I struggle with it too.

There are many donations. But I don’t know why they don’t reach us. The facilities here are bad. The bathroom is dirty. Nobody cared when I had malaria. The staff here never know what’s going on. I prefer staying here because I am allowed to go wherever I like. We aren’t locked up in here like other Old Age Homes though they have much better facilities. My freedom is the most important to me. I came here in 2011. I go to Nair hospital every month. I get my diabetes checked, then I visit my psychiatrist. Many here are distressed, dealing with the fact that they were thrown out of their homes.

I don’t know whether all of them paid the deposit but I did, 30,000 rupees. I bought my own fan here from my savings. Food is free but they make sure each of us gets only one piece of chicken when it’s cooked. Although nothing seems to bother me anymore.

Design Strategy- The intervention tries to createprivate, semi-private and public spaces within the group of buildings of the

This is done by creating various courtyards and common areas of different scales. There are many different kinds of domesticities and age groups of residents having different needs. These areas help in creating spaces that are more or less private even within the semipublic zones.

It allows the residents to choose their own comfortable space within many options rather than one large awkward space that nobody ends up using.

Sara

Men’s Hostel

B-Old Age Home

Shed Old Age Home

Girl’s Shelter

Home.

Creating a pedestrian bypass through the complex

Breaking the existing compound wall on the back

The role of the ‘neighbourhood,’ is found to be key. It is the thoroughfare between the home and the city. To enable the opportunities that the city offers to the residents of the Home it has to be designed carefully, to open into the city while maintaining the security of the residents at the same time.

Creating a Public edge

Adding a layer of Semipublic functions

The Home, A Private space is imagined to gradually open into the neighbourhood through the semipublic belt, ensuring the safety of the residents.

Ground Floor Plan

Second Floor Plan

The roofs of the existing building strip have been adaptively reused to retain the visual characteristics of the older buildings in Madanpura

Longitudinal section through the Library, Girl’s Home, central courtyard and the Children’s Day Care Center

Section through the School

Longitudinal section through the Library below and Girl’s Home on the top

Central Courtyard Courtyard

Back Garden

Library and Girl’s Home

section through the Library and Girl’s Home

Cross

Views of the proposal for The Salvation Army

Adaptively reusing the old building strip

Section through the Home for the Elderly and the housing block for the families of The Salvation Army staff

Second Year AD Studio

Guide- Rohan Shivkumar

Team- Aayush Vira, Rutu Gala

Building Stories: Chakrata

A set of hand drawn measured drawings depicting the narratives from four small hamlets in Chakrata, Uttarakhand were made by a batch of 80 students as a part of the fourth semester. They were displayed in the form of an exhibition a month after returning from the study trip. The drawing below is one such story.

Stories were collected from the villagers while documenting the local construction techniques on site, giving an insight into the socio- cultural practices and traditions which governed their livelihoods.

Role- I was the student coordinator in charge of managing the exhibition work for the hamlet of Mohana.

It is situated on a mountain top, which faces extreme climatic conditions and heavy snowfall every winter.

It is a cluster of 20 houses situated on a steep slope strung by winding pathways. I was a part of the survey and leveling team on site which had to map the complex contours accurately. I drew up the site plan, worked on the story line and curation of the exhibition as well.

Sisodia

Cascading Terraces

On an open, relatively flat ground at the entrance of Mohana was the site allotted for my design project. Since farming is the primary occupation of the villagers and barley grows in abundance on the terraces below, I chose to design a granary for them. Although each house has a separate store room on the lower floor it is mostly for their personal consumption. The addition of a common storehouse will reinforce Mohana’s economic identity in Chakrata ensuring a systematic and steady sale of their harvest every summer.

The granary is divided into two buildings, between which the flat open area at the entrance is retained. It can be used for celebrating weddings and the annual harvest festival which are two special occasions for the villagers. The building is imagined to sit silently along the natural contours present on site. It has a heavy yet gently sloping roof and an open floor plan to enable a mixed use of space throughout the year.

Neelkanth Chayya, Ami Gokani

Institution of Exchange

The studio began with the introduction of an anonymous map having certain geographical features. It looked as large as a small country and we were able to identify broad geological zones- deserts, inlands, highlands, coastal regions and islands based on the contour levels and location of water bodies.

A human civilization had to be developed on any one of the land forms mentioned above. I drew up a small settlement and called it Hitchifa on one of the inlands over a timeline of a thousand years. This included the making of a series of settlement plans from 500 BC to 1500 AD, at intervals of a few hundred years, two of which are shown on the right.

We were then asked to strategically locate and build any one of the following human institutions of- Dwelling, Exchange, Knowledge and Transcendence in Hitchifa. I chose to imagine the Institution of Exchange growing on a river island, a few kilometers away from the settlement. It seemed like a good location for a market to thrive in order to establish trade with other settlements across the river. Questions about the materials used to build the market, the form of the shops and the goods sold were catered to while designing the intervention. Natural phenomenons like earthquakes which involved tearing up one of the initial plans of the market were executed in the studio. A new design had to be proposed by drawing over the same.

The two hand drawn plans shown below are a part of six that were drawn before the final presentation. Although the section gives a glimpse of what the market finally looked like the studio focused more on the weekly developments in design.

The Earthquake

A few hundred years

School of Philosophy

The design studio was based on the study trip to Ajmer, a city in Rajasthan. It is known for the Dargah Complex of Hazrat Khwaja Ghareeb Nawaz, which was the site at study.

The boundary of the Dargah marks the distinction between the ‘sacred’, and the ‘secular’. Today this dichotomy exists with economic and spatial interdependency between the Dargah and its immediate surroundings bustling with markets.

The design intervention is placed along the boundary of the Dargah behind the Madarsa, around a small pocket of trees in an otherwise impermeable city fabric. The location of the Madarsa is a point where the dichotomy between the ‘sacred,’ and ‘profane,’ is mild as it is a School where Urdu is taught. Being an institution of knowledge, it enables a smooth transition from the Dargah into its surroundings. The addition of A School of Philosophy as an annex to the Dargah complex will enhance this transition even further. It will be a focal point for discussions revolving around the ‘idea of faith,’ which draws hundreds of people to the Dargah every year with a longing for their desires to be fulfilled, to take place.

It offers a space for new ideas to evolve. The school has a great potential to create a collection of rare manuscripts and books for the reference of future generations. It will help in preserving the local culture and give rise to a critical dialogue about its relevance today.

The built form moves along the periphery of the site and allows people to gather within the courtyard in the center. The entrances to the school and the Dargah shrine are aligned at either ends of an axis passing through it. An old tomb is retained here and some space is created around its plinth such that it becomes a part of the school. The building strip has studios, workshops, galleries, lecture halls and a large dome that houses the library. The library is a crucial part of the school and is imagined to hold a large volume of books in the circumference of its drum. With a monumental dome on its top, the design tries to create a spiritual experience similar to the proportions of the dome on the Dargah Shrine.

Sections through the central courtyard

Ground Floor Plan Academic

Shrine Tomb Proposed Library

First Floor Plan

Sections through the Dargah Shrine and the Library

Professional Work

Interior Design Project

Conservatory of Heritage

A very different mandate for Samira Rathod Design Atelier, was to accommodate the idea of ‘bling,’ which was the client’s brief in this project. The client is a jewellery designer who works with local craftsmen from Rajasthan and combines their skill and traditional knowledge to make new jewellery designs. She had a long list of requirements pertaining to the particular needs of the jewellery display and lighting which we catered to. Although the design process primarily focused on questioning the idea of a ‘showroom’. We wanted to break away from the standard image of a bright space with continuous shelves along the walls to maximize storage and display. The focus was to create a sense of intrigue with different kinds of seating and display that would enable an interesting conversation over a cup of coffee while seeing the jewellery. Multiple iterations were drawn out and a series of rendered elevations were made to explore tangible material possibilities of the space.

Role- I worked on the conception, ideation, design development and made a complete set of working drawings for site execution. I primarily worked with Samira herself as other architects working on the project unfortunately left during the initial stages. I also worked with the team of carpenters at The Big Piano and managed an orderly delivery and handover on site.

Team- Samira Rathod, Miloni Patel, Priya Chauhan Site Supervisor- Jaimin Upadhayay

The ground floor walls were finished in cold grey plaster with a rough texture and silver polish. The false ceiling has arches inspired from the steep vaults in old palaces of Rajasthan, that have been stretched, flattened and elongated in the new design.

Polishing Wood

Designing Table Tops

Terrazo

Designing Doors

Folding thin sheets of Copper Detailing Door Handles

Design Team- Samira Rathod, Jay Shah

Execution Team- Neha Sawant, Neethu Lakshmi Carpenters- Rakesh Kumar Rana, Santosh Kumar Rana

Dismantling Building: A Kit of Parts

Samira was approached by Chemould Prescott Road to put up an exhibition on her 20 year old practice at SRDA in April 2021. The question was how to exhibit the philosophy of an architectural practice in an Art Space. From this question began the five month long journey of the exhibition.

I looked up all the past projects done by SRDA, and a standard format for each was tried to be established. Since there was a variety of projects from different decades it was impossible to do so. Although one thing I noticed that was common amongst all was the initial process used to derive a building footprint- a nolli diagram. We used this as the primary idea and soon began the process of dismantling each building into its different parts from roofs, walls and floor plates to windows and skylights, without any structural distinction. We then looked at these parts in isolation as pure forms. Shapes and outlines were further distilled and a series of black and white compositions were made using them which were later exhibited as artworks on the wall. The compositions inspired us to design new pieces of furniture at The Big Piano. Shapes could transcend the true building scale and become new planes that were laser cut in MDF to make an installation at the entrance of the gallery. New pieces of furniture derived from the ‘Kit of Parts,’ were eventually displayed in the gallery.

Role- I worked on the conception and curation of the exhibition with Samira Rathod and Jay Shah and designed a few lamps which are shown below. I also worked on the segregation of data, made a series of compositions, photo montages, posters and edited the exhibition text. I would go to the workshop as well to work with the carpenters on final touch ups and polishing in the last few weeks before the exhibition.

Exhibition at Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai

Installation of Parts- Lasercut MDF pieces painted in black and a few wooden pieces

Floor Lamps inspired by the 2D compositions, are designed by assembling the shapes and outlines from the ‘Kit of Parts,’ into long narrow figures. They are fabricated in mild steel with boxes and wooden projections attached to them that can be opened, rotated and moved. The design evolved according to the properties and restrictions of the materials used during the making. The drawings shown below were made after the exhibition and the lamps were truly made with an intuitive and hands on design approach.

Kit of Parts- Lamp 2

Kit of Parts- Lamp 1

Flying Bird Lights- These small lights were first designed to light up the two storey stairwell of Kekee Manzil, an old stone building along the sea shore in Bandra, Mumbai. It is the house of Shireen Gandhy, the owner of Chemould Prescott Road.

The lights were carved in wood and attached to hollow thin brass rods through which the electrical wires passed. These rods- arms, were attached to a single hollow pipe section in brass, fixed to the ground and roof in the void of the stairwell. They can be adjusted and rotated to throw light wherever required and light up the artworks on the walls.

The bird lights were made again as floor lamps attached to individual long MS pipe sections and displayed at the exhibition.

Wall House

The Wall House is an ongoing project in Delhi. It is a private residence for a family of 3, to be built on a plot area of 7200 sqft. The client, an art collector, introduced herself as a member of an elite social group. She wants her house to be a hub for meetings and parties, with artists and designers to discuss current issues and enjoy her collection of art.

The 20’ tall column free space in the living rooms offers a possibility to do so. A verandah in the middle leads to a small sit out gallery overlooking the garden at one end while a staircase and mezzanine floor cuts the length of the living room to create a hierarchy of different spatial volumes within. A large model shown below was recently made to be able to get a sense of the internal spaces before issuing drawings for construction.

The west side wall and the roof are the main features of the house. Delhi is extremely hot in summers and cold during the winter months. A thick wall provides natural heat insulation and at the same time increases the possibilities of filtering light into the house in many ways. We are working with the idea of ‘window as space,’ and treating each opening in the wall as a separate frame at first. Once this is done, the elevation as a whole composition is studied in order to attain an inexplicable harmony and balance.

The roof is broken into different parts- one large sloping roof over the family room, a gentle pitched roof over the gym and a set of different skylights clustered over the spa in order to create program specific experiences to the fullest.

Role- I have worked on the conception, design and made a complete set of tender drawings for this project since last summer. The construction of the basement will start anytime soon. I have been in charge of managing this project at SRDA which included making presentations, attending client meetings, coordination with all consultants on board, 3Dmodelling during design development and working with a team of interns to make big process models.

Team- Samira Rathod, Tanay Patel

Process model made with each of the floors as a separate piece in order to study the internal spaces in detail

Front View

Rear View

Professional Work

Architectural Design Project

The Inner Ear: School

The Dhwani Badhir School in Bharuch is a special school for kids with hearing imparity. Set on a piece of undulating land, next to a river called ‘Kotar” in Gujarati, the school takes from the landscape a scalloped form for its semantic. Envisioned like a tight home for children, the form of the school is like the insides of the ear, winding with a small courtyard in the center that is always under shade by the virtue of the design of the building. The school is designed to be tactile since children with hearing disabilities have a heightened sense of sight and touch. There is a sunken verandah which shades the classes from the scorching Gujarat heat. The remaining classrooms have dipped roofs made by sinuously stringing bricks with metal wires cutting down on construction costs. The dips in the roofs hold water and vegetation for thermal cooling inside. It is a special school sensitively designed to offer conducive learning environments for children who need special care. Many design iterations were drawn carefully before starting the execution. The project is ongoing and currently on hold due to lack of funding.

Role- I worked on this project during my internship and later as an architect in the year 2021. I worked on the design development and drew up a set of plans and elevations for the building. I also sketched iterations of plans like the one shown here during my internship.

Team- Samira Rathod, Jay Shah

Team- Samira Rathod, Priya Chauhan

One Tree Hill:

SRDA began work to build this community center in Byrasandrum, Hosur, near Bengaluru city in 2015. It was built for a patron who lovingly wished to dedicate a building to his land and people. Built on a granite hill it rests amidst the beautiful landscape of Hosur in the memory of its patron, MR. HRS Rao.

One Tree Hill is a book that has a collection of photographs and drawings of the building. It gives a glimpse of the firms design ideologies through the archival of this building.

Role- I worked on the final publication, 10 copies of which were printed and displayed at Chemould Prescott Road during the exhibition on the ‘Kit of Parts’. I also worked on the model with another architect in my first year at SRDA and a few drawings including the one below for the book.

One Tree Hill:

Composition and physical model sent for the annual show at the Royal Institute of British Architects, 2021

Building clad in granite stone which was readily available in the surrounding granite quarries.

Samira Rathod Design Atelier

Samples, samples

These are a few images of finishing materials that I have captured. They include samples which I drew up and issued to site in my tenure at SRDA while working on interior design projects.

With a combination of cementatious materials and natural wood, the palette ranges from different coloured terrazzos, sand and lime plasters, cement tiles and stone slabs to plain metals like brass and copper. New trials with concrete cast in acrylic tubes to get a transluscent surface as well as rough plasters with stone inlay are tested with the help of contractors on board before a final selection.

Flooring concept and working drawings like the ones shown here are made simultaneously with the process of sampling. The drawings shown here are made by me for one of our interior projects in Mumbai.

Flooring Concept

Flooring drawing rendered with the final selection of materials chosen

Writer’s Table

Designed as a gift for my uncle on his birthday in Jan 2022, the study table has a deep drawer for books and a small one just enough to store pens and pencils as my uncle is a playwright.

A thick top clad in Burma teak is supported on a thin plank of plywood and two very thick wooden legs huddled together on one side. The hollow bent pipe in mild steel is not a support and doesn’t touch the floor, casting a complete shadow. A wire can pass through it in order to light a table lamp in the evening or make a ball light attached to it in future.

Professional Work

Architectural Design Project

Design Team- Samira Rathod, Jay Shah

Execution Team- Neethu Lakshmi, Fenil Soni, Ankita Badwal, Ali Ranapur, Santosh Kumar Rana

The Container

Pavilion for the Kochi Biennale, 2022-2023

In light of colossal demolitions and subsequent debris that fill our cities, and architecture that continues to be an indispensable commodity, this pavilion is conceived as a container. It unfolds a large singular space under a large singular roof that touches the ground, made from terracotta debris, inspired from the many roofs of Kochi. It was built over the span of a month preceded by a month of rigorous design work.

Role- I worked on the conception and design of the Pavilion with Samira. Different options for the Auditorium were drawn and modelled on 3D software to finally arrive at the one shown here.

Wall filled with debris collected from construction sites in Fort Kochi and coconut coir which is available in abundance in the region.