SPACE & INHABITATION

The room is not only the beginning of architecture: it is an extension of the self. If you think about it, you will realize that you don’t say the same thing in a small room that you say in a large room. If I were to speak in a great hall, I would have to pick one person who smiles at me in order to be able to speak at all.

The large room and the small room, the tall room and the low room, the room with a fireplace and the room without, all become great events in your mind. You begin to think, not what the requirements are, but rather what are the elements of architecture that you can employ to make an environment in which it is good to learn, good to live, or good to work.

Also marvelous in a room is the light that comes through the windows of that room and that belongs to the room. The sun does not realize how wonderful it is until after the room is made. A man’s creation, the making of a room, is nothing short of a miracle. Just think, that a man can claim a slice of the sun.

Louis Kahn
The Garden and the Room
Between Silence and Light

INTENT

The first of the three modules of the studio unit aims to relocate the architectural process at the fundamentals of our relationships with space. Our body is our primary medium of engaging with the world and we build an accretive knowledge of the world and our selves by embodying our experiences into memories. We will address the question, ‘How do we inhabit a space?’ by observing the conditions of the proposed essential states of inhabitation: solitude, intimacy & congregation.

TEACHING-LEARNING STRATEGIES

There are two intuitive exercises scheduled for the week. My Body & My Room are dependent on an individual’s representation of memories, associations & imagination with respect to inhabited spaces.
The process will be interspersed with conversations with tutors and peers and iterations of the work as per feedback and insights.

The Peer Review on the Monday of the second week will form the closure of the brief.

Regular update of the Reflective Blog is a mandatory requirement of the studio. You may choose to blog daily or weekly or with respect to briefs or exercises; however, stick to a chosen schedule for at least 4 weeks or through a module.

DELIVERABLES

1. My Room
   Format: A4; Medium: Monochromatic in Graphite, Charcoal, Pen/ Brush & Ink etc.

A. Render three spaces from memory, one each for solitude, intimacy and congregation. Choose spaces as far back in time as possible and one’s which have moved you deeply or you have strong emotional association with. These can also be spaces that you have visited and not necessarily lived in.

Reference outputs shared in the brief are only suggestive.

B. Render three spaces from observation one each for solitude, intimacy and congregation. These are spaces that you visit or live in. Choose spaces within your home or neighborhood and one’s which move you deeply or you have strong emotional association with. Draw plan(s) & section(s) of the three spaces. Render views of the respective spaces with appropriate representation of nature of light, scale, texture etc.

2. My Body
   Format: A3; Medium: Assorted

Represent your body & its relationship to the world vis-à-vis the most critical dimensions, ideas, aspirations, anxieties etc. through a collage

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The exercises defined in this brief are intended to elicit responses to the following questions:

• How is the creative process informed by experiences and memories?
• What is the relationship between body, memory, emotion and space?
• How do we inhabit a space?

Besides documenting the processes and recording its highs & lows, it’s necessary to reflect on these aspects and note the consequent deliberations in the Studio Blog.