Adaptive and Intelligent Homes.Holding the past….while embracing the future.

What: Adaptive and Intelligent Homes: Holding the past….while embracing the future.
Tradition must be interpreted and be integrated with Modernism.

The population of the urban cities is growing at a rapid rate across India like in some other parts of the world. Families migrate from their rural homes to the urban cities and begin to make an effort to find comfort in the new environment through the built, un-built and day to day interactions between neighbors and the surrounding community. Subsequently they feel the need to shift from their initial small urban residence to a large one and then to a larger residence due to need of more space and improvement in the quality of life through the built environment. This is a continuous process and at every step one has to leave behind whatever comforts he has build for him-self in the present house and the surroundings to move to the new one.
This process of change seems inevitable and is an ongoing process. The requirements of the occupants, their needs in terms of the space available and the nature of the spaces, configuration of these spaces, etc keep on changing over a period of time.
Sustainability and response to the climatic needs and the environment are factors which are absolutely the need of time and its importance will keep on increasing.

I wish to propose a technological solution to the residence of an Indian family from central India which resonates with the lifestyle and traditional beliefs of 4 generations of the family.
I wish to explore the design of a residence which is scalable, flexible, re-configuring, intelligent, responsive to the climatic needs and adaptive to the ever changing needs of the occupants.

Why:

In any town aiming to be a metropolis, unfortunately the old must give way to the new.
Such is the case of the city of Pune and the neighboring regions in the state of Maharashtra, India like a lot of cities across the world. The city is changing fast into a commercial, industrial and IT hub.

The rapid growth and increasing land values due to the increasing demand is making it easier and lucrative for the rural, agriculture based population to get buyers and better values for their land holding. This prompts them to take the decision to sell their land and migrate to the urban cities for various reasons like access to better education for children, better health facilities for the family members amongst others to name a few.

It is one thing to feel nostalgic about your childhood or previous vernacular, rural home and the smells, sounds and activities associated with it and another to leave it all behind and shifting from it to a new environment:- the urban dwelling.
Every person who has stayed in a rural environment for a number of years before moving to an urban city finds that it upsets the rational, emotive and social base that one has built for oneself over the past number of years. It not only disturbs this base but it seriously questions the process and experience of the shift.
After this shift each such individual tries to retain, re-interpret or find ways to re-establish this link in their own way to keep the memories alive and tries to be as comfortable as one can in the new environment.

Humans respond to challenges from his/her knowledge, either from what they have learnt from past experience, which is registered within consciously or sub-consciously.
If they are uprooted from one socio-cultural environment and put into another, then they carry the baggage of the past experience and what they are familiar with visually, intellectually, by way of skills and day to day living. They find it safest to re-create the same for themselves in the new environment that they are now in. Their response may address the issues of the situation they are in, to the environment, conditions which are physical and identifiable visually or to the problems that they may encounter metaphysically, spiritually and those which affect their sensibilities and way of life.

I think we humans are all conditioned to converting our experiences towards making a comfortable life around us. We want to strain it of all its complexities and want to streamline it all over again.

The urban house one wishes to build for oneself is a hybrid of various layers like intentions, aspirations, ambitions, visions, simplicity, intricate articulations of forms and relations, installations that are flexible or used flexibly contributing and resulting in a living and performing culture which is so resonates with the vernacular, traditional and cultural values of the past.

The contemporary urban psyche deep down wants to discover the dormant connections with the vernacular and traditional past. This I feel is an ongoing process which we go through consciously and/or sub-consciously and is an important process of evolution.

The mix of the home along with the neighboring homes and the community around must be seen as a mix of the built and the un-built, the individual and the collective perception which intersect, overlap and is a complex relationship which is both physical and psychological.

I want to explore the relations of all these various hybrid issues and the effort of individual humans and families to relate and find their comfort in the new environment through the built, un-built and the day to day activities and interactions between them.
I wish to explore this through the needs and traditional values of an Indian joint family with 4 generations staying together and the issues they face and the response to the various issues through the design of an adaptive residence.

How:

In India a large number of families to live together in a joint family system.
There are advantages and disadvantages of this system especially in today’s times of constant change. Change is a phenomenon which will remain constant whatever the context may be and flexibility and adaptability should be an intrinsic component of every design.

Narrrative to describe the structure and nature of one particular Indian joint family with 4 generations having different lifestyles staying together. I am using this narrative as a base for my project to find a technological design solution for the house.

Proposition:

A technological solution to the future of the urban house of a family from Maharashtra in Central India with strong traditional values and cultural beliefs - an effort to hold on to the past and embrace its future. Through the design i wish to explore how technology can contribute to the design of practicalities of buildings in an ever changing world, the essential and ever changing human spatial need and the nature of these spaces to create meaningful and responsive architecture.



Why do I feel the need for such architecture in the Indian context?

In India a large number of families to live together in a joint family system.
There are advantages and disadvantages of this system especially in today’s times of constant change. Change is a phenomenon which will remain constant whatever the context may be and flexibility and adaptability should be an intrinsic component of every design.

In India the cost of construction can reach up-to 40% of the entire cost of the project. Land cost is dependent on various factors which I do not want to take into consideration for my scope of study.

Economic pressures require a solution with minimum dependency on factors like availability of skilled labor, quality and variable cost of materials.
The use of prefabricated and component based construction can reduce time, site work and dependence on various factors involved in the conventional construction practices and it is possible to exercise control on the quality and the cost of the output.

A house should be able to perform, function and provide all the conveniences according to the needs, wants and ambitions of the various individuals and to suit the varied lifestyles of the members of a large family.

Evolution is an ongoing process and so an ideal long term solution to this issue could be a house capable of changing, configuring and adapting at times as per the requirements of the family members. Flexibility, scalability and the functioning of all the spaces independently as well as collectively are important issues which need to be addressed if a house has to perform its desired role for a long duration of time. Traditional beliefs and cultural values are the binding forces between all the generations. Few of the daily activities, rituals and some elements of vernacular architecture could play an important role in strengthening this bond.