This is about my personal experience working in an Architectural Company in Florida, United States and already gaining experience in India while travelling to a few other countries to explore and read their stories.
Architecture is such a subjective matter to talk about. Every county, in a state, in a country, in a continent has its own identity and we as architects need to understand the authenticity of the location, the culture, the climate in order to contribute to it. As I travelled across Europe, Middle East and North America I realized the change in skins, the change in building language and the utmost important is the story which every building is trying to tell. We need to get closer and try to read it. Architecture is beyond ‘just a building’. It is trying to teach us something. The windmills of Netherlands tell us about their history with floods and how the country is below sea level. The stone buildings in Italy convey the abundance of stone presence in their country. Bright colorful patterns can be observed along the coast of Florida and steep slopes of English houses in Massachusetts portraying British existence in the past. Skyscrapers in Chicago and New York while monuments and museums in the capital city of Washington D.C. An American taste in the newly developed cities in Middle East with Downtown and Block Planning.
Back in India, we mostly use bricks and concrete blocks for building construction. Buildings do not need to have an inbuilt mechanical system. Here, in United States I work with metal studs, gypboard, insulation panels and stucco. Every building must be built with certain norms of a packed concept and an inbuilt mechanical system. Even the ratio of slopes differs if you design in New Hampshire or Texas. The skin differs in the thickness or the width of insulation boards varies from state to state. These little details can be read and learnt from.
Every building should speak for itself in terms of identity, location, climate and culture. One should be able to identify the building’s location without any knowledge about its presence. That’s how I aim for my designs to be. Building is nothing but an emotion. An emotion of long-lasting history, an emotion of a nation’s strength or an emotion of a tribe’s cultural values. That’s how I want the world to see through my eyes. I urge them to go see “Beyond the Visible”.
Add comment