Design, craftsmanship, aesthetics, liveability. Architect Bijoy Jain’s belief in synergy is paying off with a show at the Victoria and Albert Museum and an opening at the 2010 Venice Biennale.
Sometimes architects have to go beyond architecture to explore ideas that cannot be pursued in most building projects. Bijoy Jain got to do that recently when his Alibag and Mumbai-based firm Studio Mumbai was invited to produce an installation for the exhibition titled ‘1:1 — Architects Build Small Spaces’, at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. One of 19 studios worldwide invited to present a full-scale ‘slice’ of their city, Studio Mumbai (with collaborators Michael Anastassiades and Kate Dineen) did not have to look far for its installation titled ‘In-between Architecture’: it reinterpreted, in plaster, a tiny makeshift dwelling in old barracks just behind its Byculla office. While working on the installation, the firm was also invited to showcase its unusual way of running an architecture practice at the Venice Biennale, which opens on August 26.
More than a lifestyle service
Jain and his team have built exquisitely designed and detailed weekend homes and resorts, largely for wealthy clients, over the last 15 years. Jain returned to Mumbai in 1995 after living and working in different parts of the West — undergraduate and postgraduate training in the US and a short stint as an independent practitioner in England. He says he began to miss ‘being in touch with the rain’, and in 1996, moved to Alibag where he has been stationed ever since.
Much of Studio Mumbai’s work has been built in and around Alibag (a coastal village that is a preferred getaway for the South Mumbai wealthy) though the firm has built as far away as Uttaranchal. Jain has also designed interior spaces in Mumbai, including Indigo, a pioneering standalone gourmet restaurant.
Images of Studio Mumbai’s design work might make it look like just another design firm with design skills that support the lifestyle needs of an elite clientele. However, Jain’s unusual way of working with carpenters, masons, and plumbers offers one indication that he genuinely thinks differently about the process of dwelling, designing and building.
The way it works
Studio Mumbai is not the usual architectural office with a chief designer and many assistant architects glued to computers, LCD projectors and phones. Apart from Jain himself, the team that develops a design includes Samuel Barclay (an American architect who has been with Studio Mumbai for five years); Jivaram Sutar, a carpenter; Pandurang Malekar, a mason from Alibag who has been part of the team for 14 years; and Bhaskar Raut, another traditional mason who knows carpentry and other skills.
The studio space is unlike an ordinary architect’s office. Jain calls it a workshop. Except during the four months of the monsoon, much of the work happens in an open space under the canopy of a coconut and supari grove. There are manual drafting tables on which some of the artisans make their own drawings for design development or for construction. The place is littered with mock-ups and models in plywood.
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Together with craftsmen
Jain believes that the constant back and forth between the architects and craftspeople makes the firm’s work what it is. This works in different ways. Take visualisation of spaces. Most architecture offices develop a design well before turning it into a model. By contrast, Jain says, “We find it cheaper and more effective to make a small plywood model of a part of a building as it is being designed, than to get a proper section drawn. In a model, we see most implications of a design idea very early.”
This structure has evolved spontaneously. Says Jain, “I tried to set up practice with trained architects but found that their turnover is too high — they are ready to leave just when they are finally trained. On the other hand, artisans come with inbuilt knowledge which they carry within them. They also learn fast. In our studio, they now make sketches, models, mock-ups, and they also build them. We often don’t make drawings, because we build directly from the model.”
This hands-on way of working, which is rare in India and even rarer internationally, is what the firm has been invited to showcase at the upcoming Venice Biennale.
Collaboration is key
The craftsmen working with Jain are full-time employees and some get a percentage of project in addition. So Jain is obviously not being radical on the organisational front in terms of economics. At the same time, Jain is conscious of how much he has learnt about building from craftsmen. At least in terms of knowledge and skill, he considers them his collaborators, not his employees.
“I think about how the mason or carpenter will inhabit a space we are designing, how they will think of building it and I try to follow up on that logic in my design,” says Jain. “I think they too do that in return. So even though our lives and backgrounds are different we move towards each other’s point of view in developing a building bringing our very different strengths together.” The firm is now developing a small housing project for the firm’s veterans to be built near Alibag.
God of small things
Two key commitments appear to underlie Studio Mumbai’s approach. First, the firm attends closely to the total experience of dwelling. This is important as architecture and design are often trapped in the visual aspect alone. Studio Mumbai attends to the sense of touch and the long memories of some materials. In a simple and sophisticated house in Alibag, Jain and his team finished the courtyard in mud, not grass or paving. A softness to the touch of the feet, modesty of demeanour, and a connection to traditional courtyards in Maharashtra were all invoked in this single gesture.
The other commitment is to a spirit of craftsmanship. In a time when new, shiny and quickly made things sell well only to come loose at the joints very soon, Jain pursues an ideal of building well. “The important thing is to keep doing the small things right day in and day out,’ he says. ‘It is a slow process.”
‘1:1 — Architects Build Small Spaces’ will show at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, till August 30