Matharoo Associates (Gurjit Singh Matharoo)

The recent work of Ahmedabad-based Matharoo Associates reinvigorates the concrete language of Le Corbusier and Kahn,
and the early works of Indian Modernists, but is rendered with a more slender and lighter disposition. Projects from private
residences to public facilities brandish a rough, impenetrable shell that conceals a cocoon of animated space; a difference
of materiality also amplifies the contrast. Gurjit Singh Matharoo brings to his practice his earlier experiences in Bhutan,
Dubai and Locarno. He is also passionate about product design, especially automobiles, having designed mobile blood-
donation vans and carried out research in advanced motorcycle design.

Prathama Blood Center, Ahmedabad, 2000

The design for India’s most modern and largest blood centre, the
clients for which are pioneers in the field of blood transfusion and
processing, required a new building type that is more of a playful
programme than a service-intensive functional entity, and which
removes the repulsion associated with medical facilities by
transforming it into a receptive public domain. Working with limited
space and a low budget, Matharoo thus opted for a solid, concrete
exterior that houses an animated, light-filled and transparent interior.

Cattiva mobile blood-donation van, 2005

As an extension to the Prathama Blood Centre, Matharoo designed
a mobile blood-donation van in an effort to reach out to those parts
of the population still reeling under the compulsions of family
blood ties. The van has four automatic donor chairs, a medical
examination cubicle, furnished pantry, chemical toilet and a
refreshment area and lounge, and is constructed on a 1616 Tata
chassis. With a capacity of 100 donations a day, it is projected that
each Cattiva van, connected to blood banks throughout India, will
bring about a silent revolution by making the stigma that currently
surrounds donating blood a thing of the past.

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 House for Ashok Patel, Ahmedabad, 2006
Located in a fast-growing suburb of Ahmedabad, the house was
designed for a family consisting of a socially active couple, their
teenage son and frequently visiting parents and relatives. It
addresses the paradox of the increasingly reclusive modern
suburban house by referring to the inward-looking traditional
houses (the ‘pols’) of the area on the one hand, and the ‘open plot
dwelling’ best exemplified by Le Corbusier’s Shodan House, also in
Ahmedabad, on the other.
A central void is framed by two blocks on the long side and
compound walls on the shorter side. While the house turns its back
on the street and the anonymous neighbourhood, it still manages
to draw in the breeze, greenery, rain, sun and sky through varying
degrees of openness. The columns, walls and beams appear to be
woven into an intricate lattice which becomes animated when the
strong sun falls on it. The epitome of the filigree is a 50-millimetre
(2-inch) thick stair entirely cantilevered on its risers and composed
as a square helix.

Ashwinikumar Crematorium, Surat, Gujarat, 1999

The crematorium was the result of a national competition that was necessary after plague and communal riots
left the city in a condition of filth and squalor. Located next to the Tapi River, the plan of the crematorium is the
outcome of a detailed study of Hindu rituals and their architectural interpretation. Within its Brutalist concrete
shell, the structure accommodates all the processional and ritual elements associated with the cremation
service, including the sacred dip into the river. However, the vocabulary of the building is kept secular in
nature, opening the place to all, irrespective of their religious beliefs.

Text ©© 2007 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: p 62(tl) © Gurjit Singh, Matharoo Associates; pp 62(r&b) © Matharoo
Associates; p 62(cl) © Chandan, S, Matharoo Associates; p 63(t) © Joginder Singh; p 63(b) Dinesh Mehta

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Anupama Kundoo
Informed by research into and experimentation with eco-friendly construction methods, the work of Anupama Kundoo
adheres to the fundamentals of Indian tectonics in forming its architectural language. In this respect her work is
influenced by the experimental environment of Auroville, and the construction innovations of Balkrishna Doshi and
Laurie Baker. In 1990 she started her architecture practice in Auroville, a place she describes as an international city in
the making in southeast India (see her essay in this issue). From 1992 to 1996 she lived in Berlin and worked in
social housing, before returning to Auroville.

Wall House, Auroville, 2000

Kundoo’s own residence embodies her research and
experimentation in three primary areas: eco-friendly building
materials and technology as alternatives to current building trends,
energy efficiency, and a climate-responsive building language. An
eco-friendly infrastructure for the management of water, waste and
energy was also part of her exploration here.
The house, oriented to the southeast for maximum air circulation,
is basically a narrow 2.2-metre (7.2-foot) long vaulted space within
brick masonry, with the various activities arranged in a row, as in a
train. Each activity spills over on the northeast side in the form of
alcoves and projections, and on the southwest under the large 4-
metre (13-foot) overhang provided by the main vaulted roof.
The structure is organised by insulated roofs and modular
materials: the exposed brick walls revive the use of traditional
bricks (achakal) set in lime mortar with raked joints, and catenary
vaults using hollow clay tubes have been used for climatic
insulation as well as for reducing the unnecessary use of steel in
‘pucca’ (permanent) roofs. Some of the flat roofs have been
constructed using hollow burnt-clay trapezoidal extruded modules,
specially manufactured locally as a solution for flat-roof insulation,
over part-precast beams. In the intermediate floor, terracotta pots
were used as fillers to increase the effective depth of concrete
while minimising the volume of concrete and steel in the slabs.
The house is defined by clear lines and masses, yet the inside
and outside spaces are blurred. The southwest facade is a
transparent wooden structure with a mesh to allow a full view of
the sunset, while the vault overhang provides adequate shade and
ensures that the heat and the glare of the direct sun do not reach
the cool interiors.

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Creativity, Auroville, 2003
Creativity is the first part of a larger housing development,
Harmony, in one of Auroville’s residential zones. The Creativity
development will provide accommodation for approximately 360
residents along with common spaces on a 2.17-hectare (5.4-acre)
site. The residents are grouped in smaller, independently managed
communities of 50 to 60 people sharing common facilities. The
project also aims to achieve cost-effective, attractive, functional
housing of low environmental impact against the background of the
acute shortage of housing in the area.
Auroville replicates the issues of many urban centres where
people of diverse backgrounds come to live and work together. The
Creativity housing project is intended to be a model of how
Auroville’s aims can be reflected in the details of home life.

Pierre’s House, Auroville, 1992

Pierre’s House displays a climatic modulation, with vaulted roofs made of terracotta tubes, cavity walls at the
exteriors, and ferrocement fins that regulate the glare and yet allow the free movement of prevailing winds.

Text © 2007 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 64, 65(b) © Andreas
Deffner; p 65(t) © Aurovici Sarcomanens

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Vastu Shilpa Consultants (Rajeev Kathpalia)
As a partner in Vastu Shilpa Consultants in Ahmedabad, established by the master architect Balkrishna Doshi,
Rajeev Kathpalia makes his own commentary on the cosmic and mythological dimension of architecture and
thus continues the larger-than-building imperatives of the practice. Besides being an intersection of the seen
and the unseen, and the current and archaic, his buildings and projects are deeply imbued with a landscape
and territorial dimension of architecture.

Arjun Machan, Ahmedabad, 2004

The structure here is almost non-existent – ‘only a verandah’, and
hence a machan (platform) – but it implies the world near and far.
Designed as a weekend retreat on an agricultural land outside
Ahmedabad, the machan was conceived as a viewing machine that
takes in the full panorama of the landscape: the rising of the sun
and moon and the movement of the stars, as well as the diverse
animal and botanical vignettes towards the distant horizon.
A verandah is traditionally attached to a house, but in this case
there is no house. From inside, the machan is an informal,
uninterrupted living space. On the outside it is a latticework of steel
and glass attached to a brick wall. In addition, nothing in the
machan is at right-angles and nothing is symmetrical. The structure
extends itself into the landscape in myriad ways: thick brick walls
stand without supporting anything, grassy mounds enclose a
vegetable garden within shallow ridges and valleys, strategically
located seats offer unexpected gatherings and views. There is also
a series of lily ponds, an open-to-sky kitchen and dining area, and
two tall brick piers holding a spout that pours water from up high
into a long swimming pool.
On a clear winter’s night when Orion charts his course through
the heavens, this ensemble of natural brick walls, stand-alone brick
columns and the curved form of the verandah seem, like the Jantar
Mantar observatory, to track his movement.

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Imax Theatre, Ahmedabad, 2002
Part of the 100-hectare (247-acre) ‘Science City’, the Imax Theatre
is a crucial node for both the emergent mediatisation of the country
and the shadows of ancient mythologies. The core of the complex
includes two theatres – a 651-seat 2-D theatre and a 556-seat 3-D
theatre – as well as a speciality restaurant, a 3-D visual-reality
video-game parlour and a cyber café. The visitor experience is
intended to oscillate between the ‘Natural and Manmade, Virtuality
and Reality while moving through the site’. The technological nature
of the theatre is dialogically counterbalanced by the mythopoeic
elements of the civic plaza with its lotus and water symbolism.
The plaza provides a civic space for the citizens of Ahmedabad
where one is sorely lacking, with its aquatic elements and a
demonstration of the ecologically sustainable performance of the
complex (including the production of vegetables by hydroponics for
consumption in the cafeteria and restaurant). The plaza is also the
fulcrum around which the sequence of entering and exiting the
complex revolves, an itinerary that includes an exhibition on nature
and technology and culminates in the theatre. Its subterranean
disposition is also both technical and mythopoeic.

Text © 2007 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images © Rajeev Kathpalia, Vastu Shilpa
Consultants, Ahmedabad, photos Rajeev Kathpalia

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Architecture Autonomous (Gerard da Cunha)
Gerard da Cunha maintains his practice from the old Portuguese colony of Goa, which he considers has a novel
history in that it was the site of the ‘first sustained encounter between the East and the West’. This encounter has
engendered a unique culture and architecture that is evident in da Cunha’s lively and rather Gaudíesque work.

Nrityagram Dance Village, Bangalore, 1994

Established by dancer and teacher Protima Gauri as a model
residential ‘dance village’, this was the first of its kind for Indian
classical dancing. The architectural project derives its inspiration
and construction methodology from the local vernacular of a
region rich in materials and building practice. The methodology of
design was an evolutionary one, with many on-site additions and
modifications creating buildings of a lyrical nature often arranged
to enclose space or as backdrops for dance.
‘I dream of building a community of dancers in a forsaken place
amidst nature,’ says Gauri, ‘a place where nothing exists except
dance. A place where you breathe, eat, sleep, dream, talk, imagine
– dance. A place where all the five senses can be refined to
perfection … A place called Nrityagram.’

Museum of Traditional Goan Architecture,

near Panjim, Goa, 2004
The building of a small museum as a ‘traffic island’ here became an
occasion for affecting the larger setting by creating something that
‘had to look “crazy” enough in the tradition of museum buildings
(Bilbao and Guggenheim) which would seduce the local vegetable
seller into buying a ticket.’ Though situated 7 kilometres (4.3 miles)
from the town of Panjim and 2 kilometres (1.2 miles) from a national
highway, the setting of the acute-angled site is an enchanted valley
and a genuine sacred grove. The architectural brief included creating
a village core with urban design considerations, and controlling the
traffic to a neighbouring playschool and organising the parking.
In the triangulated building there is a reception at one corner
and a café at the other, with the two ends supported on giant
grinding stones. Da Cunha turned the corners using a corbel (the
most basic of traditional structural systems), and added a verandah
to the south and part of the auditorium to the north, both of which
are simply supported and resting on props.
According to da Cunha: ‘Coming down the road on the east, the
building looks like the Titanic, which is what the villagers call it. It
could also pass for a fish waiting to swallow you up. From the south
it looks like the set of a play … I’m sometimes asked why the
Text © 2007 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images © Gerard da Cunha
metaphor of a ship. Well the honest truth is that this was quite
accidental, but when I noticed it, I played along and added the waves.’

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Urbana
Based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and originally formed by Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury and Marina Tabassum,
the work of Urbana displays a heightened sense of material crafting within an invigorated Modernist ethos
that has earned awards for the practice and been featured in many international publications.

A5 architects’ residence, Dhaka,

Bangladesh, 2002
For architects Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury and Marina Tabassum,
planning the space on the sixth and topmost floor of an apartment
building that they also designed offered an opportunity to create a
‘pavilion in the air’ in a 111-square-metre (1,200-square-foot) area.
While conceived of as an interiorised refuge within Dhaka’s
notorious urbanity, the apartment opens out to the environment in
poetically calculated ways to repossess the delights of rain, sun
and the rarer tropical breeze.
The locus of the apartment is the ‘room for rain’, an open-air
space where the gentle sound of fountain water (if it is not raining),
the sweet smell of jasmine or the flickering of the niched candles
at night imbue the architectural space with choreographed sound,
smell and mood.
Throughout the apartment, a palette of colours and textures
display the architects’ Modernist mastery of materials and crafting.
The list of materials is long: brick, teak, travertine, porcelain chips,
glass, copper, steel, offset plates, gun metal, recycled materials
(such as bricks recycled from a demolished building site), operable
window panels (kharkhari ), and an entire door of brick that swings
out towards the bathroom.

NEK10, Dhaka, 2001

A two-storeyed residence for two brothers, each occupying his own
floor, this low-budget project simply resorted to addressing the
challenge of having a busy street to the front and the need for a
functional layout with enough light and ventilation.

Text © 2007 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images © Kashef/Urbana

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