What: Adaptive and Intelligent Homes
The population of the urban cities is growing at a rapid rate across India. Families migrate from their rural homes to the urban dwellings 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 better 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 move to the new one.
This process of change seems inevitable and 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 change and keep on changing over a period of time.
Sustainability and response to 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 which can be scalable, flexible, intelligent, adaptive to the ever changing needs of the occupants,be responsive to the environment and will resonate with the traditional values,beliefs and practices one has grown up with.
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 form, 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 interactions between them.
I wish to explore this through the needs of a family which faces these issues and the possible response to the various issues through the design of a contemporary residence.
How:
Narrrative describing a family with 4 generations staying together in one house.
Proposition: A technological solution to the future of the urban house of an Indian family, considering the traditional values and practices followed by the family.
Through the design i wish to explore how technology can contribute to the design of practicalities of buildings in a changing world but also the essential and ever changing human spatial need and the nature of these spaces to create meaningful and responsive architecture.
‘A House is a machine to live in’, Le Corbusier.
’24-hour Living Toy’, Cedric Price.
I take inspiration for my work from the works of the architects like:
The Fun Palace – Cedric Price
The work of Wes Jones
The Dyamxion house by Buckminister Fuller,
The projects designed by Glenn Murcutt
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