The Theatre of the Sun

Moving through the sky, the sun is one of architecture’s few constants. Precisely predictable throughout the year, its presence and ferocity has shaped the nature of architecture throughout human history. Regional typologies around the world have developed to either welcome its warmth or shade from its heat. In India, the numerous geographical differences in the country have created a vast variety of mechanisms to control the sun and none is more remarkable than the humble courtyard. To the untrained eye, an empty void nestled in the midst of a dense built environment would seem like a waste of space. However, it is an architectural device of astounding value and simplicity. The light diffuses into the surrounding spaces and the courtyard itself can be used for a myraid of activities throughout the day and night.

As an architectural typology it has endured for millenia, yet it is completely absent from modern cities. The pressure on the land, soaring densities and archaic building bye-laws have all, but eradicated the courtyard from the urban townhouse – It simply isnt feasible to provide so much open space within each individual home. The agglomeration patterns do not permit all spaces to be naturally lit from exterior windows. So how is one to sufficiently illuminate all interior spaces? One of the more successful solutions is one that imbibes the best qualities of the courtyard and marries them to the best fenestration technologies prevalent today – Operable Skylights.

Skylights have been around long enough, but have always had a plethora of problems. They are essentially holes in the roof, so water penetration is always an issue.  The glasshouse effect, where the effect of the heat gets compounded because it cannot escape – is a boon for colder countries, but very uncomfortable for an already hot climate. It is also important to diffuse the light coming from a skylight for the same reason, the glare in the summer rendering the area useless for anything other than sunbathing.Also, a critical function of the courtyard was to draw out hot air from the centre of the house, forcing in fresh air from the periphery, thereby generating some much needed air movement.

Operable skylights address all of these concerns and more. Modern sealing systems use a multitude of neoprene gaskets and draining systems that allow for minimal water penetration. The little bit of water that does enter is drained through perforations in the profiles. Powder coated aluminum ensures a robust finish to the framework that holds the glass panels in place. The operable panels themselves can be electronically controlled, based on internal temperature and humidity levels. A high-performance glazing system will generally admit more light and less heat than a typical window, allowing for daylighting without negatively impacting the building cooling load in the summer. This is typically achieved through spectrally-selective films. These glazings are typically configured as adouble pane insulated glazing unit, with two 0.25 in. (6 mm) thick panes of glass that are separated by a 0.50 in. (12 mm) air gap. This construction gives the insulated glazing unit a relatively high insulation rating, or R-value, as compared to single pane glass. A low-emissivity coating is also often part of these high-performance glazing units, which further improves the R-value of the unit.

Many daylighting designs will employ skylights for toplighting, or admitting daylight from above. While skylights can be either passive or active, the majority of skylights are passive because they have a clear or diffusing medium that simply allows daylight to penetrate an opening in the roof. They are often comprised of a double layer of material, for increased insulation. Active skylights, by contrast, have a mirror system within the skylight that tracks the sun and are designed to increase the performance of the skylight by channeling the sunlight down into the skylight well. Some of these systems also attempt to reduce the daylight ingress in the summer months, balancing daylighting with cooling loads.

Daylight redirection devices take incoming direct beam sunlight and redirect it, generally onto the ceiling of a space. These devices serve two functions: glare control, where direct sun is redirected away from the eyes of occupants, and daylight penetration, where sunlight is distributed deeper into a space that would not be allowed otherwise. Daylight redirection devices generally take one of two forms: a large horizontal element, or louvered systems. Horizontal daylight redirection devices are often called lightshelves.Tubular daylight devices are another type of toplighting device. These devices employ a highly reflective film on the interior of a tube to channel light from a lens at the roof, to a lens at the ceiling plane. Tubular daylight devices tend to be much smaller than a typical skylight, yet still deliver sufficient daylight for the purpose of dimming the electric lighting.

As mentioned previously, the windows must be carefully designed to control the solar gains and potential glare stemming from a daylighting design. To this end, solar shading devices are often employed to minimize the amount of direct sun that enters the space. These can take the form of louvred slats, which soften the lighting by bouncing it off the dark wooden surfaces.

This article originally appeared in Fensterbau, a monthly tabloid of the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce

Brutal Shock

 A visit to the unsympathetically, but aptly named Barbican Estate means coming face to face with the Brutal. And I don’t mean only the grim English weather, but also the architectural style that this midcentury urban experiment championed so fiercely. Raised above the vibrant streets of the city of London, the experience of walking along the desolate windswept podium harks back to the barbicans of old - akin to being in a fortified outpost high above the terrain, miles from civilization. Except that you are in the middle of one of the busiest cities on the planet and yet, completely devoid of life and colour.

The urban revolution made possible by reinforced concrete is one of the pivotal moments in human history. Cities were low-rise agglomerations of buildings, never more than a few storeys tall until the steel reinforced frame came into being at the turn of the last century. Quickly catching on as the fashionable material to build in, it remained cloaked under historic facing materials for almost half a century till innovative & daring architects like Corbusier started using concrete as both structure and façade. Needless to say, it spawned an entire genre of architecture styles, with some architects like Tadao Ando using it as a pristine cuboidal form and some using it as they saw it – as a raw, rough and plastic material. From this second subset of architects emerged the Brutalists, famous for making their buildings almost entirely of only two materials - rough concrete and smooth polished glass.

In the UK, Brutalism caught on as the need for low-cost functional architecture in the post-war era was compounded by the need for reconstructive urban planning. Firms like Alison & Peter Smithson, Erno Goldfinger & Chamberlin, Powell & Bon created iconic structures with dynamic silhouettes and bold planning strategies. Amongst these, the Barbican Estate was arguably the most radical, albeit not the most successful reconstructive urban design of its time. Built during the late 60’s and early 70’s, it reimagined a 15ha site that had been irreparably damaged during the war. Much has been written about the social problems associated with the barren pedestrian plazas and the empty, unsafe peripheral streets, but the sharpest criticism was reserved for the treatment of the façade. The entire complex was rendered in a concrete so rough that merely brushing against it would ensure torn fabric and scratched skin. It was also an especially melancholy shade of grey, which would eventually stain irreversibly in the perpetually rainy weather and take on sinister dark streaks. To compound the problems, the rough surface was prone to vandalism by way of graffiti and for some of its early life, the approximately 2000 apartments had few takers.

Today, the Barbican Estate is Grade II listed and the ambition of the project is lauded as being visionary in its time. A quick search on a real estate website reveals that the apartments in the tall towers are worth around 1M GBP, the ones with no alterations being worth a little more. This suggests that not only are these desirable for their location and views, their thoughtful interior architecture is being appreciated as well. The Barbican Centre, an arts hub, is also undergoing a revival of sorts, after a sympathetic 2006 refurbishment that allowed better pedestrian access from the neighborhood. Yet the façade remains as uninviting as ever, devoid of any color save for the railings and planters. On a rainy September morning, the buildings seemingly merge into the gloomy sky, the weather doing its best to match tones with the beton-brut, the glass somberly reflecting the atmospheric mood.

It comes then, as quite a shock, to see the difference that a little colour can make. Simply by replacing the sky with flat neon tones leads to a dramatic re-perception of form. The skyline acquires clarity and the planar juxtaposition of the volumes and textures holds attention. Even the apparent disconnect between the 3 towers and the podium level blocks gets understood as a way of ordering movement along the plaza by creating urban walls. Rather than try and upstage the buildings, the intent is to provide a shocking contrast to the dramatic silhouette and bring the architecture itself into focus. To hope for vivid backgrounds to stolid buildings to enhance appreciation might be seen as wishful

For the complete photo essay, see our website www.akda.in

 © AKDA | Amit Khanna Design Associates

Photography by Amit Khanna

Triveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi

The Triveni Kala Sangam is a cultural and architectural landmark in the city of Delhi. Designed by Joseph Allen Stein in 1957 in the part of Lutyens’ New Delhi dedicated to cultural activities, it has remains as one of the icons of post-independence architecture in the city. Stein, an architect and urban planner, was trained in California, but produced the bulk of his remarkable oeuvre of buildings in India. Known for his sensitivity to form and climate, his architecture has inspired an entire generation of architectural practices.

 Of this building, Mr. Stein said “I have sought forms and a vocabulary that would express a rational, effective reconciliation of advanced techniques of modern engineering and twentieth century architectural attitudes, with the ancient, yet enduringly vital, aesthetic and cultural values of India, in particular those of the Delhi region… At the same time, the character of the building was evolved with regard and respect for Indian sensibilities and Indian conditions.”

The existing building can be read almost as a campus of individual blocks, each specifically designed for a specific purpose and that is reflected in the nature of their respective elevations. A four-storey classroom block is joined by a wall-less entry foyer to the art gallery and the open air auditorium. A three storey extension to the north was built in 1977 which accommodates additional classrooms, artists’ residences and a 200 seat auditorium. 

Despite being built to Mr. Stein’s fastidious attention to quality, the building has started showing its age, both by being non-compliant to new safety norms and by general deterioration under the ravages of the climate, where temperatures swing by almost 50ºC through the year. The highly polluted air in the city doesn't help either, especially as the building is situated in proximity to the central business district of Connaught Place.

In 2013, AKDA began the process of upgrading the building, first to comply with more stringent fire-safety regulations and then to preserve the building’s façade, including the signature screen, or jaali. The first physical manifestation of this process is an external metal stair, providing an additional egress point from the auditorium. Rather than try to design something that would blend in with the subdued character of the building, the stair was designed to be a departure from the old, retaining the spirit of what Stein sought, as opposed to the physicality. Fabricated entirely from steel, with minimal vertical supports, the stair is attached to the side of the building on a largely blank façade. Rendered in bright orange, the addition enlivens the sculpture court into which it descends.

Location

Mandi House,New Delhi

Client  

Triveni Kala Sangam

Typology

Institutional

Climate

Composite

Built-Up Area              

7000 Sq.Ft.

Completion

2014

© AKDA | Amit Khanna Design Associates

Photography by Amit Khanna

House 1

House 1 is a modern Indian home with a contemporary interior completed recently by our firm. Located in South Delhi, this house brings an elegant simplicity to the design of the façade and interiors.

The homeowners’ specific requirement of reducing the bedrooms from four to three  extended the leeway to experiment with the area, but the load bearing walls of the 1960 home meant there were constraints in making modifications to the structure. 

The house was north-facing and there was minimal light percolating in to the interiors. The whole house was jacked up, exterior walls were broken and additional steel beams and columns were added to strengthen the building from the core. This made way for larger windows and a new floor plan. A family lounge was created in the centre of the house & was connected with the external facade by an angled roof over a part of an existing courtyard.

A design feature that presented itself by accident has been incorporated in the living room - Stacked glass and stone create a brilliant light pattern, so instead of using only glass blocks, glass slabs were used these with cut up waste pieces of stone. Eight-inch gaps were built into the walls and fitted with these stacks that now stream in light, yet lend privacy to the room.

The new floor plan relocated the bedrooms to areas where these could get more natural light. The kitchen was moved to the centre, bringing light to the courtyard. Custom-designed furniture has been placed in the living and lounging spaces. Local materials form the basic fabric of the house - Natural Kota stone was used for the flooring while laminated jute sheets were applied on the wardrobe fronts.

In collaboration with Ms. Preeti Harit

Location
New Friends Colony, New Delhi
Client
Undisclosed
Typology
Residential
Climate
Composite
Built-Up Area
4500 Sq.Ft.
Completion
2006

© AKDA | Amit Khanna Design Associates
Photography by Amit Khanna & Andre Fanthome

Transformation

Transformation is a modern Indian home with a contemporary interior completed recently by our firm. Located in South Delhi, this house brings an elegant simplicity to the design of the façade and interiors.

The challenge of this project lay in transforming the dated house created by the previous owner into a modern residence for a growing family, while they continued to inhabit the space. A small addition was also required on the upper floor to accommodate an extra bedroom suite.

Located in an upscale neighbourhood which has gradually been overrun with apartments created by builders, this was a single storey residence. By only adding area where necessary, the living spaces on the lower floor fit into the old shell and maintain the residential scale crucial to the notion of a “house”. 

A dense mango tree at the front of the property had grown substantially over the years and its shadow was not permitting the evolution and maintenance of the ground floor garden. Rather than risk excessive pruning by the owners, the garden on the ground was sacrificed to create a large patio and the garden was shifted to the first floor terrace where it occupies the open area to the front of the property. Not only does this insulate the living areas below, it also creates a view for the upper lounge areas.

A large part of the furniture for this project was designed & manufactured by AKDA.

Location
Sukhdev Vihar, New Delhi
Client
Undisclosed
Typology
Residential
Climate
Composite
Built-Up Area
3500 Sq.Ft.
Completion
2010

© AKDA | Amit Khanna Design Associates
Photography by Amit Khanna & Akshat Jain

Happy Diwali

Here's wishing everyone a very Happy Diwali.

 At AKDA, we have had a great year, getting to work with some wonderful clients and been given the opportunity to design some thoughtful buildings and for that we are thankful. We hope to do better this coming year than we did before and wish everybody a joyous festive season. 

So time to feast on goodies, exchange presents and brighten up your home with lights. And please, no crackers, they are awful. 

For those looking for some interesting and low impact ways to light up their home, stick candles in brown paper bags. Not only do they last longer, the glow is very festive.

House 8

House 8 is a modern Indian home with a contemporary interior completed recently by our firm. Located in South Delhi, this house brings an elegant simplicity to the design of the façade and interiors.

The existing house had been designed to maximise cross ventilation and embodied some of our trademark restraint in the materials and exterior form. Rather than try and upstage the existing character of the house, the attempt was to seamlessly blend the large addition required by the growing family.

The brief was to add 2000 sq.ft. of living spaces, an elevator and design a general upgradation of the entire house. Instead of putting the elevator in the tall courtyard space as originally intended, it was inserted into the core of the house, necessitating structural changes, but hiding the elevator from view. The addition on the top floor was set back from the main façade with multiple benefits: the 10 foot overhang shades the glass wall from the west sun, creates a large covered deck and prevents the house from looking top heavy.

Despite the tight construction schedule of just 5 months, the house incorporates many custom details, including a virtually frameless insulated glass wall and a hand beaten copper sheet main door.

Location

Sukhdev Vihar, New Delhi

Client

Undisclosed

Typology

Residential

Climate

Composite

Built-Up Area                 

8000 Sq.Ft.

Completion

2012

© AKDA | Amit Khanna Design Associates
Photography by Amit Khanna

Happy Independence Day!!

Since tomorrow is our Independence day, I thought of making a list of things that architects (and mostly me) would love freedom from.

1. Those *$#%#$%% Byelaws!

I understand why municipal authorities make building byelaws. They want to maintain a certain minimum quality of buildings and having some basic guidelines is usually a great idea. Sadly, these have mutated into a monstrosity that nobody has had the foresight to change with the changing times. They are archaic, unreasonable, non-contextual, non site-specific and do not take into account a million technological innovations that have taken place since they were first written on papyrus. My pet hate - setbacks! Why the hell do we need to leave setbacks? Some of us architects are smart enough to decide how much space we need to leave around a building and possibly the best judge of that on a particular site.

2. Irresponsible Contractors

If you ask me, the biggest hurdle to making a great building is not having a great client(although it is a prerequisite) and not being the best designer(i am sure other people have this problem) but getting it built to a certain quality! Anyone who has tried even the smallest of home projects will agree that the toughest issue is trying to make people understand the notion of quality - It requires a shift in attitude and cant be done overnight. Good contractors understand that quality matters and Great contractors have people at site who understand that quality matters. It is definitely top-down approach and like i said, the attitude of the actual person working at site is the most critical component of getting the job done right.

3. The CAD Monkey Approach

I often say this in college(I teach at my alma mater) that designing & drafting are two very different things. There are so many times during a day when I sketch out something only for it to be handed back to me as a print with a thousand things wrong. The problem is not that there is a lack of drafting skill or a lack of comprehension of what was required. The problem is that the importance of the end result was lost in the translation of the medium. While the discussion was happening on paper, there are ideas and mutual understanding. The moment the CAD screen comes up, the lines are simply an abstraction of the issue and take precedence. The reason of why the drawing has to be made gets lost in the actual making of the drawing. I struggle with this in office occasionally  but as employees slowly understand what is required from the drawing, their design skills improve to match their drafting skills. Drawing is only what is required to communicate design.

4. Delhi's Unbelievable Traffic

Do you live in Delhi? If not, then you simply won't understand. Let me tell you what I did today. I started off in Vasant Vihar, went to Anand Niketan(1km), then ITO(18km), Sunder Nagar(6km), Defence Colony(3km), Kailash Colony(4km), Panchsheel Park(6km) and back to Vasant Vihar(8km). One of our senior site supervisors is off for the week and I thought I might have a look at some of the ongoing projects in the city. I actually thought I could cover some more, but by the time we reached mid-way, I cancelled some of them. Let me give you a summary of the distance travelled, time actually spent in site review and total time spent from start to finish. I travelled all of 46km, spent a sum total of 4hours 40minutes in meetings(of which 2hours and 45minutes were in one long one) and was out for 7hours and 30minutes. That's a 2hours and 50minutes on the road to travel 46km. Admittedly, I was driven around, so it wasn't personally stressful and I did get some sketching done in the back, but really! What a colossal waste of everyone's time.  

5. Technology that Acts Up

As architects we spend a whole lot of time in trying to make things better. We  take time to design spaces well, even going so far as to simplify construction details so that things are easier to build. Why can't everybody do their job properly? I hate it when technology that is working just fine for 6 months suddenly decides that some TLC is required. Printers, Phones, Networks, Software - you name it and something related to it is going wrong as I type this (Ctrl+S) Why cant things simply work the way they are supposed to? I understand that things grow old and malfunction from use/abuse, but then we must establish a reasonable period of how long a product is supposed to last when we buy it. If HP told me that the printer is going to be tip-top for the first year(the warranty period, how ironic), may act up from year 2 to year 4 and thereafter may simply pack up without warning, I probably wouldn't be very upset when it happens. Be predictable please.

That's enough of a wishlist for now. Have a good weekend(those of you who are deviously going to take Friday off) and Happy Independence Day!

Ak

p.s. I made that graphic from a pictures of our projects and was pleasantly surprised with the result so its going on the home page of our website for the day.

De Stijl House, New Delhi

The legacy of early modern domestic architecture in Delhi is hard to fathom. Apart from the odd home built by the master architects post-independence, houses in the capital follow a distinct pattern, almost like a vernacular tradition was at work. The stately houses of Sunder Nagar & Golf Links in the Lutyens Bungalow Zone (LBZ) were designed, it seems in retrospect, all at once and the ones that have not been replaced by stacked apartments betray their mid century European roots. Long horizontal lines of projections shade ribbon windows and are interspersed with large blank volumes. The structural slab is not expressed on the elevation and there is always a strong horizontal balcony thrust out, testing the limits of the concrete. The parapet line runs unbroken around the buildings and even the staircase is visually tucked behind it; this line visually connects all the houses along the street.

The contemporary situation is very different. Developer-driven apartment blocks have completely overtaken most of urban Delhi as well as the local context. These apartment blocks typically occupy the complete permissible envelope and then embellish the peripheral walls with whatever is currently most fashionable, whether it be unsustainable wooden panelling or florid mouldings and cornices. The resulting urban condition is one dominated by forced facades that are 50ft/15m tall, punctuated only with unusable, authority mandated three feet balconies and large expanses of inoperable glass with little or no protection from the climate.

The hallmark of the original De Stijl House, the Rietveld-Schröder House (Utrecht) was to make a building that seemed to be composed entirely of surfaces and volumes that were gliding past each other, dissolving the boundaries of inside and outside. It was inspired by the early 20th century art movement, which helped spawn the modern movement in architecture. The early houses in Delhi were an offshoot of the same movement, albeit a little customized to local conditions. This is the modernist legacy that is referred to in this house.

The owners were originally residents in the LBZ and wanted to incorporate their large art collection in their new home along with the requirement of additional living arrangements for a family of two generations. Situated directly opposite an earlier project designed by AKDA (Transformation, 2010), they chose to frame the views to the same mango tree that shades the earlier house. The project was designed with three distinct zones- a ground floor apartment, a basement gallery space for the daughter’s art collection and a duplex apartment on the upper floors for the owners. The terrace is partially enclosed to provide a small studio space and an alfresco dining area and the rest is left open as a garden. Landlocked by party walls on 2 sides, large skylights punctuate the terrace, bringing light to the floors below. There is a large courtyard that can be looked into from the formal living areas and a smaller one brings light to an internal stair for the upper apartment. A stepped arrangement of verandahs on the north corner brings light and green views to the lounge areas on all floors.

The interiors are finished in muted tones of white. The regular dark tones of local wood finishes were eschewed in favour of the blonde, honey coloured quality of oak wood and a similarly light cream coloured stone has been used to create a neutral, yet domestic backdrop to the art on display. A structural wood stair, dramatically lit from below, descends to the basement from within the house. On the terrace, a deep verandah opening onto the garden makes a relaxing space for evening dining. The walls are raised to avoid the unsightly views and the only thing that can be seen is the sky.

The facade is the most important element in trying to create a reference to the original De Stijl House. The brick box is established as a primary volume which is then punctuated with openings. These continue the same theme, with various elements first being designed as a composition of horizontal and vertical rectangles and then given contrasting material finishes. A long window is designed in the vein of Mondrian’s paintings, a composition of rectangles and squares in various proportions and colours. A large horizontal balcony thrusts out of the centre of the building on the upper floor, shading the large ground floor window and providing an outdoor space for entertaining. The parapet line is reinforced with a thick grey band that also projects from the facade to disconnect the stair volume from the rest of the building. A round column on the corner, detached from the wall behind, supports this projection as a structural expression. Holding the entire composition together is the large square window of the master bedroom on the top floor. Brick, Grey Granite and Exposed Concrete were chosen for their longevity and colour.