..in conversation with Ar Vinod Cyriac & Ar Anita Choudhuri

Ar Vinod Cyriac and Ar Anita Choudhuri brought in in a totally different social and sensitive perspective to the discussion. The architect couple, famous for their various social initiatives, public projects and the award winning designs for good earth community housing, believes architects should take the role of a facilitator rather than dictating each and every element of a project.

Architecture design is an inclusive process, involving the architects design philosophy, clients aspirations, context and culture. When everything is done up with extreme finesse, they believe, finally only the client becomes the mis-fit in the house when they start living in. To avoid this alienation from ones own space, the process of design and constructing a house, should be a collective exercise between the architect and the client, right from formulating the brief to the selection of materials to finalizing the design elements.

Architects should be able to condition the client to receive and accept various design ideas. Client will gradually take ownership of each design solution and eventually they will feel “belonging” to the space. Architecture will attain a completely different social dimension, when the process itself becomes more important than the product.

Ar Vinod Cyriac also pointed out the importance of more social spaces in a residential design. Most of the present houses are built for satisfying ones ego or to demand a political and economic status in the immediate neighborhood. When the focus itself shifts from building a positive space to reflect on the users, to building something intimidating to have an impact on the viewers, most fundamental qualities of an idea of a house is compromised. This lateral shift in the aim of building a house has continuing negative impacts on the quality of human relationships.

Ar Anita Choudhuri recalled her childhood in Kolkata and the quality of relationships nurtured in the long corridors of the row houses she lived in. The houses were small and children celebrated the corridors, for all their needs, from playing hide and seek to cricket, chit chat and exchanging gifts. Such relationships between families are seen missing, when the idea shifted to building inward looking self sufficient large houses.

There was a general consensus in the discussion that “ compartmentalization” was a huge challenge in modern residential designs. When people start building each bedroom like a separate house, with sitting area, study area, tv and a balcony, they are also alienating each member of the family from another. When people build home theatres in house, it creates a void in their social life. This induced privacy may convert the next generation to non socializing individuals, with high risk of getting addicted to anything that can satisfy their personal psych.

To fight the challenge of “ compartmentalization” and “alienation”, resulting in the loss of quality of human relationships, the need to promote more family spaces and social spaces within a house was re-iterated. The space within the house that nurture communication and interactions should become the nucleus of design-thought in any good residential project. According to Vinod and Anita, the identity of a design lies in nurturing these relationships within the house as well as with the house and the immediate neighborhood.

When human interactions and communication take the center stage, every design will start looking outside its domain to the streets near by and facilitate positive relationships. Most of the present compound walls in our context scream at you and create a long lasting divide within the community. Design of its surroundings, landscape, relationship with streets and neighborhood and its immediate ecological environment  becomes so critical for a cohesive ecosystem to nurture.

Vertical “spirituality” which facilitates more connect between different levels also helps to increase communication within a house, and the form of the house thus  becomes secondary. The architect couple fondly remembers Ar Laure Bakers influence in their ideologies and philosophy. They admit that they deliberately tried to cut loose from the so called “Baker” design language to create a space of their own while questioning the narrowing down of a meaningful holistic design concept to just a low cost technology tag. Materials for them is secondary, while creating meaningful spaces and nurturing relationships is more important. Nature, for Vinod and Anita, is where we all belong to and where we learn and relate to and so it comes naturally in their design process.

Its all about what makes a “house” a “home”, its all about what inspires being good human beings and for that, they don’t mind being social crusaders, prioritizing the socio-cultural content of a house.