Hard shell.The Hussain-Doshi Gufa, an underground art gallery for the work of the artist M.F. Hussain, snakes away from the main university buildings towards the perimeter of the Ahmedabad environmental planning Environmental planning is a relatively new field of study that aims to merge the practice of urban planning with the concerns of environmentalism. Essentially speaking, while urban planners have traditionally factored in economic development, transportation, sanitation, and other and technology campus. The building forms a series of gleaming white shell forms with a vast black painted cobra that winds its way across the surface. The 25mm-thin shell ferrocement structure is supported by retaining boundary walls and sloping internal organically shaped columns. The shell was hand-made by families of fairly unskilled labour. The wire reinforcing formers and mesh were buttered with cement, the completed external surface covered with a compacted layer of insulating earth and the whole covered with a mosaic of small pieces of broken china. The ribs, faintly reminiscent of the connections between grp mouldings, were originally temporary handholds for the workers. Doshi liked them and decided to mosaic them as well. Round the meandering perimeter is an integral rain-water gutter In typography, the space between two columns. that resolves the junction between shells and surrounding grassed mounds. In places the gutter veers off and plunges enigmatically into the ground. Doshi explains how the form came to him in a vision of tortoises. The developed plan of the shell roof is based on a series of circular forms: two large circles separated and surrounded by smaller circles and an oval. In section most of these have an ovoid o·void or o·voi·dal n. Something that is shaped like an egg. adj. Shaped like an egg; oviform. ovoid having the oval shape of an egg. ovoid body colloid body. form. The structural engineering and three-dimensional forms were generated and tested on computer. Inside, the deliberate roughness of the hand-compacted surfaces and the amorphousness of the connections between the geometric plan forms produces a cave-like quality -- 'visual reminders of the Buddhist caves at Ajanta and Ellora,' says Doshi. Like the external ribs, some of these coumns were originally temporary construction supports that Doshi decided to leave. The floor happily undulates as a free, almost floating surface that is visually unconnected to the curving walls. An infelicity in·fe·lic·i·ty n. pl. in·fe·lic·i·ties 1. The quality or condition of being infelicitous. 2. Something inappropriate or unpleasing. is Doshi's decision to install hidden lighting around the floor edge, which is reminiscent of retail interior decoration interior decoration, adornment of the interior of a building, public or domestic, comprising interior architecture, finishing, and furnishings. Asian and classical cultures used the decorative arts to create elaborate interiors, and they originated forms extensively . The reason for this, however, is that the electrics had to be at ground floor level to maintain the integrity of the cave-like walling. The Gufa is in a playful visual counterpoint counterpoint, in music, the art of combining melodies each of which is independent though forming part of a homogeneous texture. The term derives from the Latin for "point against point," meaning note against note in referring to the notation of plainsong. to the relative formality formality, in chemistry: see chemical equilibrium; concentration. of the adjacent faculty buildings. [CHART OMITTED] |
|
||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion