How ‘symbolic’ the house be? Does your house be a reflection of culture/religion/occupation?


“symbolism” as an idea need to be introspected with our own experiences. Each house need to reflect upon the owner, his family, their culture, the site, the climate and its context. This can only happen as the result of a very inclusive process of design, well informed with local technology and craftsmanship. When you truly reflect the family and culture, a certain degree of symbolism may be a natural outcome. Solutions  will largely reflect their habits or their comfortability to a certain visual element, which they have carried through their life and generations. These elements will connect the owner and their family to their memories, and this collective consciousness unknowingly keep them together and start inspiring the next generations. They realize their roots and start respecting the values and beliefs.
While we don’t advocate explicit symbolism to represent different religions, there are elements which naturally come when you respond sensitively to the cultural beliefs and habits of each. Kerala, earlier had a very defined set of built language for different caste and different trade, while now, the idea has become obsolete, considering the economic equity that our state boasts of.
However, a sensitive and inclusive design process, may result in very interesting set of articulations of entrances, courtyards, facades, kitchens and spatial proximities. These elements of design will have strong relationships with the culture, context, religion and can be argued as the derivate of a symbolism we had in our past. These design articulations, with respect to each house, will be unique and meaningful, if one respect its true values and evolutions.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

De Earth , a philosophy in the making

Image
Philosophy of our practice has evolved over time. Each project, each client, each context is a new learning. As your journey progress, you will find cliffs, valleys, sharp turns, junctions and sometimes even roadblocks. But more you travel, more you learn to negotiate these, appreciating your little experiences, continuing your journey in the right path. Your philosophy get nurtured along. When we realised the potential of having a philosophical body in practice, we renamed our firm, to “de earth”, with a tagline, “nurture, create, belong”. This was around 10 years before. It helped us to conceive projects not just as professional assignment, but as an extension of our life. When we agree to take up an assignment, we were just not signing an agreement, but then sharing dreams, ideas, concerns, habits, potentials and limitations of our client. We nurtured these as if it’s ours. Being sensible to the actual need of the client, was one of our most important baseline. The idea o...
Read more

My journey in architecture ..

Image
I want to talk more about the philosophy of our practice and why we think architecture is beyond its physical form. But before that, it seems equally exciting for me, to travel back to my memories, and to uncover a journey which made me realise the need of a philosophical body of work. I remember receiving a very strange toy, as a birthday gift, from my maternal grandfather, probably when I was not more than 7-8 years old. The memories are so vivid, as the ‘toy’ was with me for long. It was a house, inside a glass box, and when you switch it on, there will be dancing lights. It wasn’t meant to be a toy. But he chose to give me that. My mother use to later tell me, he wished I build beautiful houses like that and one for her, rather than wishing my birthday. my journey with architecture begin there. By the time I finished matriculation, I had this feeling, that I need to be an architect, without knowing what actually it means to be. May be, since everybody else told I can d...
Read more

How does a house influence its neighborhood?

Human beings are social animals. We cannot exist in isolation, so our house. Each of our life is so dependent on the context, the immediate neighborhood, ecology and society. Its hard to alienate a house from its neighborhood and vice versa. While physical boundaries give a certain level of clarity on ownership, there are several natural and social factors which are beyond these physical boundaries. Huge compound walls and gates, isolate a particular land from the rest of neighborhood and this can result in alienation of people and loss of quality relationships. We cannot deny our neighbors right for path, right for view, right for air, right for wind and right for light. Its very important each of our design reflect positively on all boundaries, rather than looking at the street edge alone. Character of a house, its visual significance, size and the way the mass responds to the streets, etc will largely influence the comfortability factor of using the street and hence the behav...
Read more