Today’s post is a feature on Moshe Safdie’s Khalsa Heritage Complex.

The Khalsa Heritage Museum, Anandpur Sahib,Punjab

I had recently been to a talk by Bani Singh on the Khalsa Heritage Complex, organised by the Goethe Institute Bangalore, as a part of the World Heritage Day lectures. Although this talk was not strictly about architecture, it gave a few incites into the design of this museum and mostly about the challenge of creating content for a community that has very few artifacts and imagery, due to a code prohibiting direct imager, may it amount to idol worship. The imagery that exist are generic ones that are symbolic and very few at the most. She also spoke about problems faced in encompassing the heritage of the actual Punjab and not the political Punjab. A large part of the complete Punjab now lies on the Pakistani side of the border.

Extent of the Cultural Punjab

This museum is the brainchild of former chief minister of Punjab (India), Parkash Singh Badal, who was inspired by Moshe’s work on a Jewish museum in Jerusalem and invited him to create this museum in Punjab. The project began in 1998, but was plagued by many hurdles which saw work on this project halting on several occasions. Nonetheless, the project is now at its finishing stages and will in most likelihood be completed in the coming months. The scale of the museum is nothing like anything seen before in India and probably closest in nature to the Getty Center, LA.

The following text and images are courtesy Moshe Safdie & Associates.

The Khalsa Heritage Memorial is a museum of the Sikh people located on a 75-acre site in the holy city of Anandpur Sahib, near Chandigarh. The museum celebrates 500 years of Sikh history and the 300th anniversary of the Khalsa, the scriptures written by the 10th and last Guru, Gobind Singh, founder of the modern Sikh faith.

View of the entire complex

In the project, two complexes straddle either side of a ravine and are connected by a ceremonial bridge. The smaller, western complex is organized around an entrance piazza and contains a 400-seat auditorium, two-story library, and temporary exhibition galleries.

View from temple, near by.

The eastern complex contains the cylindrical memorial building as well as extensive, permanent, interpretive exhibition space, consisting of two clusters of undulating galleries that evoke the fortress architecture of the region (most evident in a nearby temple) and form a dramatic silhouette against the surrounding cliff terrain.

Sketch by Moshe Safdie

The Eastern Complex from behind

The gathering of the galleries in groups of five reflects the Five Virtues, a central tenet of the Sikh faith. The buildings are constructed of poured-in-place concrete; some beams and columns will remain exposed, while the bulk of the structures will be clad in a local honey-colored stone.

View of Bridge Connecting East and West

The rooftops, to be clad in stainless steel, exhibit a double curvature; they effectively gather and reflect the sky while a series of dams in the ravine create pools that reflect the entire complex at night.

Plan of the Project Site

Total Area: 23,225 square meters (250,000 square feet)

Client: Anandpur Sahib Foundation

Architects: Moshe Safdie and Associates
Associate Architects: Ashok Dhawan, New Delhi, India

In hopes of getting myself writing more often on current affairs, here is a new feature to this blog… something on the lines of the daily quiz on architecture. Here it goes… As you may know already, Peter Zumthor was  announced the Pritzker Prize Winner 2009 on April 13th. Yet, I wouldn’t blame you if you haven’t heard his name before. Hence this post is dedicated to him. Zumthor at 65, is not a stararchitect, he doesn’t have towering skyscrapers or curving metallic buildings to his name. He is a modest and relatively obscure architect, who works out of a small studio in Switzerland. His works are characterised by its small scale and a rustic, minimalistic feel. The spaces he creates reflect the tactile and sensory qualities of space, created with the most modest of material, such as stone. What needs to be appreciated about his work is the quality of spaces he creates, taking as much time as needed to finish it from beginning to end and even rejecting projects. Quoting Zumthor from his book ‘Thinking architecture” -

I associate with attributes such as composure, self-evidence, durability, presence, and integrity, and with warmth and sensuousness as well; a building that is being itself, being a building, not representing anything, just being. The sense that I try to instill into materials is beyond all rules of composition, and their tangibility, smell, and acoustic qualities are merely elements of the language we are obliged to use. Sense emerges when I succeed in bringing out the specific meanings of certain materials in my buildings, meanings that can only be perceived in just this way in this one building.

There haven’t been too many publications on Zumthor, as he believes architecture is to be experience first hand, not viewed through books. Nevertheless here are some of his works mentioned by the Pritzker Jury.

• Brother Klaus Field Chapel Wachendorf, Eifel, Germany (2007)

The field chapel dedicated to Swiss Saint Nicholas von der Flüe (1417–1487), known as Brother Klaus, was commissioned by farmer Hermann-Josef Scheidtweiler and his wife Trudel and largely constructed by them, with the help of friends, acquaintances and craftsmen on one of their fields above the village.

Photo by Walter Mair.

The interior of the chapel room was formed out of 112 tree trunks, which were configured like a tent. In twenty four working days, layer after layer of concrete, each layer 50 cm thick, was poured and rammed around the tent like structure.

Photos by Pietro Savorelli.

In the autumn of 2006, a special smouldering fire was kept burning for three weeks inside the log tent, after which time the tree trunks were dry and could easily be removed from the concrete shell. The chapel floor was covered with lead, which was melted on site in a crucible and manually ladled onto the floor. The bronze relief figure in the chapel is by sculptor Hans Josephsohn.

• Swiss Sound Box, Swiss Pavilion, Expo 2000, Hanover, Germany (2000)

Photo by Walter Mair

We called the Swiss Pavilion for the 2000 Hanover Expo “Klangkörper Schweiz”. Instead of showing theoretical or virtual information to promote Switzerland, our basic idea was to offer something concrete to Expo visitors, who would be tired from studying all the messages in the other national pavilions: a welcoming place to rest, a place to just be, a place offering a tasty little something from Switzerland for thirsty or peckish visitors, and live music “unplugged”, moving and changing throughout the space, a relaxed atmosphere as well as beautifully dressed attendants.

Photos by Thomas Flechtner

The idea of creating a Gesamtkunstwerk had fired our imagination. Dramatic music played by musicians moving around, culinary offers, fashion and key words about Switzerland written in light on the eams and with a light hand: all this was designed to merge with the architecture, a spatial structure of wooden beams.

Taking the Expo theme of sustainability seriously, we constructed the pavilion out of 144 km of lumber with a cross-section of 20 x 10 cm, totalling 2,800 cubic metres of larch and Douglas pine from Swiss forests, assembled without glue, bolts or nails, only braced with steel cables, and with each beam being pressed down on the one below. After the closure of the Expo, the building was dismantled and the beams sold as seasoned timber.

• Luzi House, Jenaz, Graubünden, Switzerland (2002) Photos by Walter Mair

Private residence with a separate granny flat or a “Stoeckli” as it is called in Switzerland. The clients: a local couple with six small children in the centre of Jenaz.

“A spacious, expansive house with lightfilled rooms, everything constructed of solid wood; a further development of the blockhouses typical of this village, without any extra frills, with large windows and large balconies full of flowers” – as the couple specified in the brief.

• Spittelhof Estate, Biel-Benken, Baselland, Switzerland (1996)Photos by Helene Binet

The town of Biel-Benken near the Alsace border is a desirable residential area near Basel. People work in the city and live in the country, in a house with a garden. Building a small residential estate here, in a prime location at the upper edge of the village and below the historic Spittelhof farm, required special permission from the village council. The semi-private Basellandschaftliche Beamtenversicherungskasse (an organisation that insures civil servants) acted as developer/investor; their brief called for rental flats and terraced houses at a ratio of roughly 1:1. We built two rows of terraced housing with gardens on the south side and a building with rental units (which at the time we called “Kulm” Summit) at the upper edge of the central green courtyard.

The bedrooms face east towards the nearby forest, while the living rooms have a wide view to the west and the hills of the Sundgau region. The “Kulm” contains five ground-floor flats for elderly people and on the two upper floors ten lats of different sizes, all with separate access stairs and entrances from the canopied forecourt on the east side. The floor plans of all three buildings were designed to provide light-filled living roomsand bedrooms lined up – porch-like – along the facades.

• Kunsthaus Bregenz, Vorarlberger Landesgalerie Museum and Administration Buildings, Bregenz, Austria (1997)Photos by Helene Binet

The competition brief of 1989 called for a conventional provincial gallery. Step by step, the special format of the house as a Kunsthalle evolved into a four-storey building. Administration, café and museum shop were relocated to a separate structure in front of the museum proper.

Initially we planned to direct daylight into the building through obliquely placed facade slats. Tested on models, this solution proved unsatisfactory. The best results were obtained by using etched glass shingles that refract the light before it enters the building.

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No matter what direction the light is coming from, it is always transmitted horizontally into the interior. Therefore, we placed a cavity above every floor to catch the light coming in from all four sides.

And now, once again, we exploited the ability of the etched glass to diffuse the light; it strikes the glass ceiling and is deflected down into each exhibition gallery. To encourage a special form of concentration on the four stacked exhibition floors, the building was designed without windows. And yet daylight is everywhere.

• Thermal Bath Vals, Graubünden, Switzerland (1996)Photos by Helene Binet.

In 1983 the commune of Vals acquired the bankrupt hotel complex, built in the 1960s, for very little money, but without much enthusiasm. But something had to be done in order to rescue existing jobs. When a larger new building with integrated thermal baths and new guest rooms proved too costly, the authorities opted for the thermal baths as a first step.

We were told it should be something special, unique. It should fit in with Vals and attract new guests. In 1991 the project was presented at a village meeting with a water-filled stone model. Construction started in 1994, and the thermal baths were opened in 1996. Since then, over 40,000 people have visited them every year. Since completion, the overnight stays in the village and in the Hotel Therme have increased by about 45 per cent.

The load-bearing composite structure of the baths consists of solid walls of concrete and thin slabs of Vals gneiss broken and cut to size in the quarry just behind the village.

The thermal water which comes from the mountain just behind the baths has a temperature of 30°C.

• Truog House, Gugalun, Versam Graubünden, Switzerland (extension and renovation) (1994)Photo by Helene Binet

Relatives of the present owner lived in and ran the small Gugalun farm in Arezen at the entrance to the Safien Valley. The small manor house looks north, facing the moon (luna), as the name of the estate indicates.

To make the simple wooden house habitable in future, an extension was built. It contains a kitchen, bathroom and bedroom and a modern hypocaust heating system.  To create the space for the annex, the late 19th-century kitchen at the back of the house, on the side of the mountain slope, was demolished, while the entire 17th-century living-room section was preserved. A new roof connects the old and the new.

The twenty-two flats of the residential development for the elderly in Masans near Chur are occupied by senior citizens still able to run their own households, but happy to use the services offered by the nursing home behind their own building.

Many of the residents grew up in mountain villages around the area. They have always lived in the country and feel at home with the traditional building materials used here – tuff, larch, pine, maple, solid wood flooring and wooden panelling.

The residents are welcome to furnish as they please their section of the large entrance porch to the east, which they overlook from their kitchen windows, and they make ample use of this opportunity. The sheltered balcony niches and the living room bow (bay) windows on the other side face west, up the valley, towards the setting sun.

In 1984 an avalanche destroyed the baroque chapel in front of the village of Sogn Benedetg (St. Benedict). A recently built parking lot had acted like a ramp pushing the snow from the avalanche up against the chapel. Photo by Helene Binet.

The new site on the original path to the Alp above the small village is protected from avalanches by a forest. The new wooden chapel, faced with larch wood shingles, was inaugurated in 1988.

The village authorities sent us the building permit with the comment “senza perschuasiun” (without conviction). Yet the abbot and monks of the Disentis Monastery and the then village priest Bearth wanted to build something new and contemporary for future generations.

• Protective Housing for Roman Excavations, Chur, Graubünden, Switzerland (1986)Photo by Helene Binet

In the 4th century AD, Chur was the Roman capital of the province of Curia – hence the name “Chur”. The Romans inhabited the area now called the “Welschdörfli” (French-speaking Swiss village), Chur’s small amusement strip just off the historic town centre, where, it is said, people still spoke “Churerwelsch” though the people in town were already speaking German.

Archaeological excavations in this area have uncovered a complete Roman quarter. The protective structures – wind-permeable wooden enclosures – follow the outer walls of three adjacent Roman buildings (only a small part of one of these was excavated). The site’s display cases along the street skirt the protruding foundations of the former house entrances.

A wall painting was found lying on the floor of the larger building. Restored and returned to its original position, it gives an impression of the probable height of the single-storey houses. The charred remains of a wooden floor at the back of the larger building are from Roman times.

• Zumthor Studio, Haldenstein, Graubünden, Switzerland (1986)Photo by Helene Binet

In the early 1980s we were able to buy an old farmhouse with some land right next to the farmhouse in the Süsswinkel in Haldenstein which we had converted in 1971 into our family home. Unfortunately the newly acquired house received very little sunlight, having been built onto the north side of a neighbouring house. We drew up many conversion plans in order to lure the sun into the house, without much success.

Finally we decided to take the leap: we pulled down the old house and replaced it with a new studio house and garden.  The new wooden building – a reference to the barns, stables and workshops in the village, and a salute to the few fellow architects in the Vorarlberg region who had begun building good new houses of wood – now occupies the northern, and the garden the southern section of the site, as is proper. The studio contains two south-facing rooms: the upper one for working, the ground-floor one with a fireplace, a view of the garden and a small kitchen for entertaining.

For a long time a concert piano stood there under a wall painting by Matias Spescha and, in front of the fireplace, a group of easy chairs with the sofa that Alvar Aalto designed for Wohnbedarf in Zurich. Today the room is used as a drawing studio.

Tags: PeterZumthor, Today’s ArchiPalance

When I was studying Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture, an issue arose in my mind that had been unresolved up until today. Having been familiarised with the planning theories, I found that nobody had thought of integrating settlements and nature in a seamless unified theory. Probably with the exception of Ebenizer Howard’s Garden City theory but then Parks are not what I was interested in.

The need for such a design…

When Sir Howard was coming up with his theory, there were just 1.66 billion human occupants on this planet. Most of who lived in non urban settlements, living a relatively sustainable life.

Today, the population has grown 6 times over and Urbanisation has become the new mantra. Yet with the growing exodus of people to the city, somebody was still responsible to grow all that food in the hinterlands. Yet all this was coming at a cost.

This growing demand added with unscientific methods of cultivation, turned most of the land barren. To meet the need for fertile land more forest was cut and the process continues. This is exemplified in the poorer regions of Africa and Asia, where the higher population demands more and the unscientific methods of cultivation yields less.

So what has happened to the planet since…

All this was alright until about 50 years back, when we understood the implication of our actions, rainforest depletion, endangered wildlife, droughts due to a changes in micro climate and the all so famous Global Warming phenomenon.

Our cities are ever expanding, growing endlessly without control bringing a stark contrast to how things were up until a couple of centuries back, when our settlements were like islands surrounded by forests, but now we have to put a fence around the forests. Reminds me of what Agent Smith tells Neo, about how humans are like viruses.

What may be the solution to this problem…

More recently I read that the Kerala government has made the study of agriculture compulsory in all state run schools. The intension of which is to motivate more people to take up agriculture despite the risks, hopefully with better knowledge. Simultaneously, they have made it compulsory for all owners of agricultural land to use their land for cultivation, since many left their former occupations for more profitable ones. Although this maybe a good initiative, wouldn’t it be better to leave the old, possibly flawed system and move to a newer more inclusive and more profitable one.

And then I wondered if we could in fact regrow all the forest around us, and put ourselves into cities, possibly with tall skyscrapers, put a fence around ourselves this time around hoping that this would reverses the changes we have made to the climate. I might not have had all the information to contest any critics of this idea until I saw this video of Willie Smits and his project.
Although my thoughts remained thoughts, Willie Smits seemed to have acted upon his thoughts a good 20 years ago. In the following video he talks about how he started off looking for a place to rehabilitate an orphaned orangutan to how he came up with a thoroughly remarkable system to regrow the rainforest. 

I would also like you to take a look at a project by Dr. Dickson Despommier, of who I have had the privilege to meet at Natcon 08. His idea of vertical farming was featured by the Discovery Channel recently. (Click here to view the video) If at all we could somehow integrate the two ideas we may be on the path of reversing the damage to this planet. Throw out the ideas of blocking the sun or dumping tons of iron into the sea, we may after all just have to hug the tree.

Posted in Sustainability, Urban Design/Planning Tagged: Dr. Dickson Despommier, Rainforest regeneration, Vertical Farming, Willie Smits ]]> http://archiparlance.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/willie-smits-and-dr-dickson-despommier-what-geniuses/feed/ 2 Vivek M. Chandran http://archiparlance.wordpress.com/2008/11/21/doshi-the-movie/ http://archiparlance.wordpress.com/2008/11/21/doshi-the-movie/#comments Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:42:00 +0000 vivekchandran http://archiparlance.wordpress.com/2008/11/21/doshi-the-movie/ ]]>

Doshi is a documentary by Bangalore based Ar. Bijoy Ramachandran and his film-maker brother Premjit Ramachandran. The subject of the movie is the greatest Modern Architect of Indian origin, Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi.

Here is a trailor and the link to the movies home page

The movie was screened at various Cities in India and has lately been doing the rounds in International locations. If the movie’s blog is anything to go by, people have rated the movie higher than “My Architect”, a movie on another legendary architect, Louis Kahn.

I’m not sure how the brothers intend to distribute the movie post the initial world screening. But I sure hope they have some plans of getting it to hundreds of studends and architects who’ve missed the screening, and are eagerly waiting to get their hands on a copy of the movie.

Tarsem Singh of The Cell fame, released yet another fantastic movie in May 2008, The Fall. The movie is set in a hospital in 1915, where an LA stuntman, bedridden by a stunt gone wrong, narrates a fantastic story to a young girl with a broken arm.

This movie finds mention here, due to the sheer brilliance of Tarsem’s art direction and the exotic locations the movie is shot in. Shot in more than a dozen countries of which I’d like to bring attention to some of the Indian location that have blown my mind.

Agra, Fatehpur Sikri and Jodhpur.

Having seen Agra and Fatehpur Sikri once before, I was surprised at how Tarsem’s use of costumes, colours and the lack tourists in those locales, transports us into believing that what we see was infact a page out of his fantasy and not something that has existed for a few centuries.

The movie in its entirity seems wanting in the real substance of a movie, a story. At times, where the story is lacking, the director seizes the moment to dazzle us with his amazing art. Another notable aspect of the movie is the excelent acting by a cute little 9 year old, Catinca Untaru. Over all its a great movie to watch and feel amazed.

• Safety
• Affordability
• Sustainability
• High design quality

Adjaye Architects London, England

Concordia

Morphosis

Trahan

MVRDV
Wah?!! Is that before or after Katrina? I guess that was the idea.

One of the concerns that the residents raised was that many of the designs are on stilts. The stilts are provided for obvious reasons, but it also drives the cost of the building up by a lot, making it, lets say, not so affordable. But then hey, you dont get to rebuild a town everyday, make it good when you have the chance. “Make it RIght”. So long as its done quickly.
Right now as I right this blog, 27 of the 150 houses have been sponsered for.

BlobWall by Greg Lynn

This is Blob Wall. A modular wall system made of lightweight honeycomb material, designed by architect Greg Lynn. Its a free standing wall that has Interior/Exterior applications.
Blob Wall, made by Panelite was initially designed for Greg Lynn’s home. The material is a low-density, impact resistant polymer. The weird shape was achieved with the use of a CNC machine. A machine which has a 6 axis Robot arm!

Each piece fits into each other like a jigsaw blocks, to achieve a whole range of 3d configurations.

Grey Lynn with Robot arm

Grey Lynn with Robot arm(behind) of Machineous.

Single Unit

Bolb Wall as seen in MOCA Skin + Bones Exhibition, now travels to Miami. It will be on display at the T-Concepts showroom at Design Miami, through the 6th to 9th Dec, ‘07.

With the depletion of fossil fuels and the search for a alternative, Hydrogen was hailed as the savior. Abundant in nature as water. The only issue is that the scientists haven’t figured a way of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen in a relatively cheap manner.
Its turns out, a primitive life form, seems to have succeeded in doing just that. The solution it seems lies with Algae. Yes algae. Primitive chlorophyll-containing mainly aquatic eukaryotic organisms lacking true stems and roots and leaves.

This is a project originally intended for a design competition. It calls itself Icelandic New Energy.

The designers say :
It has long been known that algae produce small amounts of hydrogen as a byproduct of photosynthesis. In 1999, researchers in Berkeley observed that algae alternate between hydrogen production and normal photosynthesis depending on the chemical environment. Depriving algae of oxygen and sulfur, the researchers greatly increased the hydrogen production and triggered the algae to produce hydrogen for an extended period of time. Another research group also discovered that algae will sustain simultaneous production of hydrogen and oxygen from water by illuminating the algae and depriving it of carbon dioxide and oxygen. Researchers estimate that a small pond (1.5 acre or 10 meter diameter) will produce enough hydrogen on a weekly basis to fuel 12 cars.

You can find out more about this project on the still under construction site of the 202 Collaborative

BusinessWeek recently ran an article that seconds this view point. Algae can potentially deliver 10 to 100 times the energy as current energy crop, it says. As it grows, it sops up green house gases and leaves behind small globules of fat, that can be used as oil.

At the Think Tomorrow Today conference held this year, GreenFuel CFO Guillermo Espiga says that algae grows rapidly and grows constantly, which means that algae ponds can produce more oil per hectare in a year than traditional plant crops. He gave some figures that where quite amazing – A hectare pond filled with algae can produce 15,000 to 80,000 liters of vegetable oil a year. Only about 6,000 liters of palm oil can be squeezed out of a hectare a year. Corn is only good for 120 liters per hectares of oil a year.

Some of the companies that have started up algae business units include – Boeing, Chevron and Honeywell.
There are also companies that are working to genetically engineer algae for much better productivity.
Green Future indeed.