deployable exhibition space

Deployable exhibition space for works of Laurie baker

Laurie Baker, known as the Gandhi of architecture, was a British born Indian architect. He is the master of bricks. He was the pioneer of sustainable and organic architecture.

He used concepts such as rain-water harvesting, minimizing usage of energy-inefficient building materials, minimizing damage to the building site and seamlessly merging with the surroundings.

CONCEPT :

5 mile radius

The concept that an ideal house should be constructed using local materials available within this radius. This encouraged the use of more natural and sustainable materials.

He further explored materials to reuse them. He took recycled materials and reused them for decorative purposes. A lot of different materials were reused in small elements in his design.

Thus the concept of using these local and sustainable and reused materials has been incorporated in the design.

Yin and yang

Baker stayed in china for 3 years, where he got introduced to their lifestyle, craftsmanship and philosophy.

He learnt that the supreme power of the world is TAO (the path flow). Tao stays complete due to yin and yang. Yin and yang together create a flow. This ideology was deeply witnessed in baker’s architecture.

Deep influence of yin and yang imaginary can always be witnessed in baker’s architecture. Using this he often created small elements in his design such as water bodies, landscape elements and most importantly for flooring.

The final form created includes a central space, curves and flow of space derived from the concept of tao .

These curves and circular space has been created on either sides of the central space which signifies symmetrical balance.

This defines interplay between spaces and no obstructions allowing free flow of movement from one space to another.

SITE

Alembic city, Vadodara

Alembic ltd is located in Vadodara. It was a chemical and a pharmaceutical industry, the alembic city township now consists of multipurpose spaces including cafes, restaurants, offices, exhibition spaces, studios , museum . It functions as an industrial borne art gallery. It was a re-adaptive project designed by karan Grover and associates. The area of the site is compact in nature and creates a linear space. Levels have been created on both the sides along with an amphitheatre which is facing towards the given site.

For the re-adaption of the project , different blocks were assigned for different functions.