Remembering Guastavino and Dieste. Maya Somaiya (Sharda) Library by Sameep Padora & Associates
27/09/2018.
[Kopergaon, Maharashtra] India
metalocus, ANA MENÉNDEZ
metalocus, ANA MENÉNDEZ
Description of project by Sameep Padora
The site chosen for this small addition of a children’s library within a school in rural Maharashtra, was a sliver between existing buildings and the school boundary, a site that almost implied a linear building footprint to adjust the program for the chosen site.
Alluding to the impetus that children have towards landscape over a building we imagined the library building to be a formal extension of the ground plane. On our first visit to the site it was interesting to see Geodesic structures built by an engineer for a few of the school buildings, we were somewhat encouraged by this to pursue a project that followed from a construction intelligence. We hence parsed through several possible material configurations ranging from concrete shells to brick vaults for building this ‘architectural landscape’. At this point we were captivated by the material efficiencies of the Catalan tile vault from the 16th century, it’s use by Guastavino in the early 19th century and finally the incredible details from the work of Eladio Dieste from the mid-twentieth century. While working with the specific site condition we used Rhino Vault developed by the Block Research Group at the ETH to articulate a pure compression form for the project.
The construction technology for the project also makes a case to reexamine the age-old binaries of the global and local as being in opposition. The regional or the local within the South Asian paradigm typically manifests within strict formal constraints of the style in memory. This is often at the expense of material efficiencies.
Our effort to search for a material and construction efficiency in brick tile looked to leverage the networks of knowledge that our practices are situated in, allowing us to enrich the regional or local through the extended capacities of the global.
In using principles ranging from the Catalan Tile Vaulting system to the compression ring detail from the work of Eladio Dieste in Uruguay, to using a form finding software plug -in made in Switzerland the library is a resultant of not only lessons learnt from various geographic locations but also various lessons through time/history.
Sameep Padora & associates' gratest interest lies in challenging through their work the formal tradition of various existing typologies, either by a re-interpretation of program or building/design processes. They are specifically interested in the socio-economic forces of change pushing embedded typologies in the context of contemporary culture in India.
They have won several international awards, as, for example, Architectural Review (AR) Emerging Architecture Commendation Award 2010 and Society Interiors Editors Award for Designer of the Year 2010.
Sameep Padora & associates centra su interés en el desarrollo de su trabajo a través de la reinterpretación de las formas tradicionales de diferentes tipologías, ya sea mediante una re-interpretación de los procesos del programa o de construcción/diseño. Se encuentran especialmente fascinado por las fuerzas socio-económicas incrustadas en el contexto de la cultura contemporánea de la India.
Han obtenido varios premios internacionales: el Architectural Review (AR) Emerging Architecture Award 2010 y el Society Interiors Editors Award for Designer 2010.