Padmanabhapuram Palace

Padmanabhapuram.

Sloped roofs finish at gabled ends, their clay tiles moss-textured red against the backdrop of green and sky. Sheltering, a respite from the unrelenting tropical sun. Under their timber-braced expanse, space is given over to the texture and pattern of shade and shadow.

No other ornament seems necessary in these spaces, touched as they are by the magic of comfort and changing light. Yet, in the cool gloom, intricate timber detailing can be made out, defining the dark ceilings.

The system of brackets and louvres that connects the roof to the wall, minimal in its detailing, opulent in its rhythm, casts sharp shadows on the floor and walls.

Almost before the light of the central courtyards is seen, streaming into the gloom, the quickening in the air is felt, drawing a mimicking quickening in the step. Air flows, from the spaces around, into the courtyard, drawn to the light. The columns around are picked out, each differently, by the light streaming in from the roof.

The outside is strung together with the inside, one building to another, by this connecting thread of manipulated light and air. The spaces and experiences created by this magical coming together, sits gently on the senses, inviting, timeless.

Three Chapels

Chapel 1: The Chapel of Saint Mary of the Angels, Cappella Santa Maria degli Angeli, sweeps out of the top of Mount Tamaro, Switzerland, in an straight, unerring line, straining for the horizon. 

In attempting to bridge the interval between the temporal and the eternal, it creates its own reality, where time and space stand still.

Chapel 2: The Chapel of Our Lady of the Heights, Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut, rises from the gently undulating greens of Ronchamp, France, as a sculptural mass, folding and unfolding in compositions that dramatically defy planar reality.

Chapel 3: The Chapel of St. Benedict, Caplutta Sogn Benedetg, clings to a steep hillside in Smutvig, Switzerland, a carefully crafted jewel. Gentle, evocative detailing, poetic in its precision, elevates it to another reality. It stands like a hand-wrought dew drop, or a tear drop, transcending beyond its celebration of materiality, by its finely honed craft. 

Pauses: All three are Pauses. 

Pauses in time and space. Pauses in the repertoire of work of the Master architects behind each of them - Mario Botta, Le Corbusier and Peter Zumthor.

It is not surprising that these three Pauses in the creative journey of the three masters are all Chapels. 

A Pause happens when a creation transcends reality, becoming timeless. Religion attempts the same. To bridge the gap between the temporal and the eternal. Designing the Chapels provided opportunities for the Masters to push creative boundaries, and reach for the Pause. 

Mario Botta: Mario Botta pushed boundaries on Mount Tamaro, with an open walkway at entry level, celebrating the beautiful setting. Using a plain cross as marker, the walkway takes the visitor on the straight and narrow, off the mountain top, to hover above the breathtaking sight of the valley below. Movement becomes a design device.









The Chapel itself is at the lower level, an introverted space, enhanced by directed light and the black, white and teal artwork of Enzo Cucchi.










The open hand of nature above gives way to the hand of the artist below. 

Botta has used textured stone for the building, instead of his trademark brick. The perfect colouring for the setting, the stonework is oddly primitive, yet sophisticated in its detailing. 









Botta builds upon his repertoire, using his preferred simple geometric shapes. Circles, rectangles. By intersecting them, he creates an interplay of volumes that retain the solidity of Platonic geometry, infused by the delicacy of openings and light. 















Le Corbusier: The Chapel at Ronchamp was a Master's Pause in more ways than one. The artist took over the pragmatic functionalist in the architect. Le Corbusier stepped away from his "machine aesthetics" to play with the Visual - composition, scale, massing and light. 





While the plan of the Chapel retains a frugal functionality, the massing seems to burst at the seams with exuberance. Lines and planes are defied, broken. Dimensions are created where none are thought to exist. Like a cubist sculpture, faces of the building fold, unfold, curve, straighten. 





As with every great design, restraint is also a characteristic of the exuberance. Solid and void interplay, with not a single line out of place or superfluous. At every turn, the compositional complexity and sophistication awes. 

The dramatic roof, fluid in its solidity, has a drain spout at the lowest point that feeds a tank below, creating a composition within a composition. 



Inside, the space is given over to light. Directed, not direct, light is manipulated, filling the space with the glow of timelessness.







Peter Zumthor: Phenomenology is a "return to things", maneuvering away from the abstractions of science and its neutral objectivity. Zumthor explores this in his gentle emphasis on materials and craft in St. Benedict's. 

The Chapel, drawing from the form of an ark, but more like a dew drop, is solid faced on the outside, covered in dark, bark-like, textured wooden scales, with no openings. Inside, the solidness surprisingly gives way to a flood of natural light. The band of glazing just below the roof lets in the light, that streams down, emphasising the verticality of the wooden members along the white wall. The contrast causes a Pause. 

The delicacy of the detailing adds to the ambiguous, even ethereal nature of the Chapel, which is in plan, not round, not elliptical, but almost leaf-like, finely crafted, lit from above.

Setting: The three Chapels have one thing in common. The sheer splendour of the sites upon which they stand. All three are a sensitive handling of raw nature. 

Monte Tamaro is accessed by cable car. Mario Botta takes the actual Chapel a level below in order to make the open walkway and breathtaking view the focus.

Ronchamp is a idyllic village off the beaten track. The siting of the Chapel is such that that from every side, the view completes the composition. Corbusier played with the plasticity of concrete, creating a massing that complements the ponderous rural setting. 

The Chapel in Smutvig is delicately shaped and sited to follow the undulating lines of the hills around it. The textured, rough wood surface of the exterior, and the crafted wood detailing in the interior make up the ideal palette for the setting.

The bridge is crossed at the Pause. Three pauses at three Chapels. Where space and light, movement and materiality conspire to create architecture so brilliant, "heaven came down and glory filled the earth", at Mount Tamaro, Ronchamp and Smutvig.  

Berlin

Berlin 

There was a bite in the air in Berlin. In the shadow of the Wall, towering façades line the streets, military-like. Berlin is scaled big, with large urban gestures stamped across it. In its bigness, it retains its comprehensibility, with an efficient radiating plan and transport system. 

Eric Mendelsohn's Einstein Tower was our first introduction to Berlin on a drizzly, windy morning. Inadequately equipped for the weather, we began our architectural pilgrimage, picking our way through the vast, wooded park in which the building stood in solitary expressionistic splendour. 

The 1920s tower is rounded, sculptural, expressing its function as an observatory through the pared down aesthetics that characterised the time. Wet and chilled to the bone, we shook hands with modernism in Berlin. 

The Reichstag is Berlin's parliament building, the center of the city's politics, symbolising all associated with its turbulent history. The original building was commissioned in the time of Bismarck, and was destroyed during the bombings of World War II. 

In 1999, Foster and Partners won a competition for its redesign. The new Reichstag was to symbolise the reunification of Germany.

Foster's transparent glass dome for the Reichstag offers views of the historic landmarks of the city, from walkways along the inner surface of the dome that take the visitor on a spiralling panoramic journey. 












At the centre of the dome, a conical mirrored form drops down from the top to the floor, relaying sunlight to the parliament hall below. Its surface throws back fragmented images at the visitor on the spiralling ramp. 






The imploded nature of the reflective form is disturbing, in contrast with the now calm, peaceable, even bleak view of the city outside. 

The reflected images are distorted, multiplied, broken, shifted. On the ramp, the visitor is caught in a spiral. Of the historic city unfolding outside, and fragmented images imploding inside. 

Inward and outward reflections. The futuristic design has a symbolic effect that is both distressing and mesmerising.









The Bauhaus Archives in Berlin tell the tale of the art and design movement that brought about the elements and vocabulary of modern styling. The movement began in Germany, spearheaded by Walter Gropius, and influenced generations through its architecture and design school. 

Bauhaus showed the world how ordinary things could be made exquisite through simplicity and craft. Craft training formed the basis of all instruction at the Bauhaus.

"Architects, sculptors, painters, we all must return to the crafts! For art is not a 'profession'. There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman. In rare moments of inspiration, transcending the consciousness of his will, the grace of heaven may cause his work to blossom into art. But proficiency in a craft is essential to every artist. Therein lies the prime source of creative imagination..."

Walter Gropius, “Bauhaus Manifesto and Program” (1919) 

The rightness of an art-driven, craft based approach to design and architectural instruction is manifest in displays at the archives. The work of the weaving workshop particularly stands out. Helene Börner's stunning tapestries borrowed from the colours and formal vocabulary of the artist Paul Klee, both instructors at the Bauhaus. 

The visit to the archives put the importance of craft training into focus, while sadly, highlighting the lack of it in our own educational system. 

"German and Jewish at the same time."  
The Jewish Museum in Berlin showcases Daniel Libeskind's brilliant concept for a museum format, tracing the troubled history of the German Jews through three themed axes: continuity, emigration and the holocaust. 












"Movement" is a key element of design in this museum, with stories unfolding along the axes, and visitors being directed through varied spatial and sensory experiences.

The first axis ends at a long staircase "The Stair of Continuity", that breaks into the permanent exhibition areas. 



The second axis ends at the "Garden of Exile", where tall, tilted pillars form a labyrinth. The plants of the garden are out of reach, growing out of the top of the pillars. As one wanders, disoriented through the maze, the simple, poetic brilliance with which the theme of exile is handled by Libeskind in this small space amazes.





The third axis leads to the "Holocaust Void", a tall, empty tower with a small slit in its roof, a space that embodies absence. 

The space called the "Memory Void", tall, narrow, with bare concrete walls lit from above, is complemented and enhanced by Menashe Kadishman's installation, Shalekhet (Fallen Leaves). 

A hollow metal clanging can be heard from the space before one enters it. In the void, people walk over what appears to be thousands of thick, coarse metal discs, scattered on the floor. They are rough cut outs of faces with gaping eyes and mouths. 

Fallen leaves under hurrying feet. Not crackling softly when trod upon, but clanging and echoing through the void, causing one to look down and stare. 

Empty faces stare back, screams frozen in metal.  









A deconstructed star of David, the plan of the museum is a twisted zig-zag, a gash on the ground, like a thunderbolt. 



The building is clad in zinc, silvery grey. Narrow slits are slashed haphazardly on its surface. Inside the museum, the slits take on a new meaning, bringing continuity and a thread of connectivity as one passes through the spaces.

The "movement" implicit in the design and the axial themes and voids in the buildings are dramatic in their clarity of concept. 

The museum experience goes beyond the exhibits, and becomes the architecture. A strong, emotional statement, architecture as installation. 

If architecture is to be taken to an experiential level, if it is to be a response to an idea, if it is to flow from a theme and embody it with clarity, if it is to evoke not just sensory perceptions, but also emotional and intellectual ones, the Jewish Museum at Berlin is architecture. On the face of it, an exalted stage set with haphazard lines. But once experienced, not forgotten. 
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