Normally when we design a space,
say a dining room, with a height of 3 m or above, there’s always a whole lot of
things that we ignore, or we are unaware of. In a typical room, have you ever
thought of the space which is left unutilised, yet always in front of us? In a
typical room of 3m height, the 1.2 m that is left vacant above us, what is the role
of that space? How can such spaces be made more efficient? I always had this
though in mind. And if this problem can be solved, or if this model can be made
efficient then the same can also be applied to a whole city or on a much bigger
scale.
Nature teaches us a lot of
things. Trees can be considered similar to buildings. They don’t move, but they
provide for us. The trees are also really dynamic in a certain sense. In nature
all the flora follows a special hierarchy.
In the image shown here, a
typical plant hierarchy in terms of space occupancy is represented. Here some plants
fill the spaces between the other plants. The floor between couple of trees is
always filled in by grass or some other kind of plant life. The space above a grass
or a small bush or plant is never left un-occupied. Bigger trees always cover
up these vacancies and thus the voids are always filled by one plant or the
other.
That
means plants will never grow in the way shown here:
The
space above a particular plant is not left dedicated to that plant and I always
filled in by bigger plants or vice versa. This represents efficiency and to an
extent it tells us how to make even architecture spaces follow modularity. Unlike
this our mane made world I full of inefficiency.
Like
in the image shown here, the area above a particular building is always left
vacant, no matter how small or big the building is. If the buildings are to
follow the nature’s model, the same would have looked completely different.. May
the inspiration for a better world, or a more efficient world could come from
nature herself. I always looked in to nature for answers and the nature did
always provide. A simple cob web or hummingbirds nest is the answer to this
situation according to me. Let me show you an example:
This is demonstration of a
spider web in the wild and here what I’m trying to show is way nature spins her
fabric. The simple dwelling (in this case a spider web) uses the existing trees
as pier or support columns and hangs or suspends the structure from there. This
thus ensures that the area or the space in between is also rightly utilised.
If
this is applied our architecture model then the above thing can be transformed
to something like this:
This
might seem like a total blue sky ideation at this point, but I really feel this
is the future and it’s not going to be long for this to become a reality. Of
course feasibility issues and other technical and legal issues might strike you
at first but, just for the time being let’s think beyond that. I believe this
ain’t going to take much time now. Design should always break boundaries;
design should think the unthinkable and take the path of glorious and sublime
dreams without the constraints of human fear and prejudice.
This is where the theory of
diagonal growth comes to the picture, I would name in INFECTIONISM. People have
visualised or predicted much kind of development plans for the future. Some say
hour cities will grow more horizontally and horizontal skyscrapers are the
future, and then came the vertical growth predictions. Vertical cities and skyscraper
and towers started filling the world, but it just doesn’t seem to hold much
future. One of the major reasons is the huge investments and they are not
feasible everywhere and where will you build once all the land is gone? The
climatic and legal factors are also there. Construction and civil developments
over water and thus contaminating or polluting them for ever and ever have also
been part of the plans. Puncturing the globe and building inwards, space
dwellings and what not. Well but I tell you for real what is going be the case
with future cities. Once the cities will have more skyscrapers than they can
possibly chew, then the cities will grow diagonally. Means the people will
start fillings the voids in between the cities and the rules will all change
for ever. For the first time instead of selling land, void space or simply
plots of air will be on sale. Infectionism will be explained in detail in the
coming posts. But all this is drawing inspirations from nature herself like I
mentioned before.
The next thing to learn from
nature is her strategy for an open ended growth. It’s like the foundation is
there by default for all the plants to grow (in this case fertile soil), except
the hot and cold deserts. Now this actually means a plant can grow anywhere and
everywhere if conditions are right. This also tells us about the ambiguity and predictability
and the invisible grid in the nature that holds the answer to all the questions
man can ever raise. We will discuss this in detail in the future, but for now
let me tell you, the open ended growth can also be implemented in buildings if
the proper sense of modularity is incorporated. Imagine, buildings that can
grow vertically, and diagonally and in any other direction it may wish to,
depending upon the demand and need. To cut brief, the idea is to grow denser
and efficiently with opportunities for the generations to come.
Another major thing is to
improve the life of architecture, and here I’m not talking about prolonging the
life of all the buildings unnecessarily. The character of the building and its
efficiency and all other factors should evolve and improve according to the
requirements of the time. Now what generally happens is an architect or more aptly
a sculptor sculpt his so called building and users and all the other things
just adapt to it. Should it be left like that? Is this how architecture is supposed
to work? The arrogance and selfishness of a sculptor should be given so much
attention and care? I don’t think so. When we look at trees, if you have noticed
while you cut a tree trunk in to sections, there you will come across annual
rings. With every growing year the tree itself will have a lot of changes not
often noted by people and then there is an internal and more specific change,
which is the addition of annual rings. This is a very interesting feature and
that can be adapted in to architecture. Wonder how? Let me tell you something,
the place I’m from used to be a good old fashioned village until very recent,
and something I have seen or noticed around here is the way poor people around
here built there houses. These houses start with a single or a couple of rooms
at the centre, mostly a kitchen and a common room that could be transformed to
a bedroom or any other room at will. Then in course of time whenever they find
the money and chance to expand, they expand this nano house to become a full fledge
house with all the room required but yet, the powder room won’t find a place
inside and will be housed in a separate room somewhere outside. My own parental
house was built this way, at least that’s what my dad told me. Now, the thing
I’m referring to here is the annual ring model of the trees is unknowingly
inherited in our architecture from the time in history and is something which
we completely failed to notice. Well this to me looks like the most efficient
way of open ended planning. This will ensure efficiency like never before.
It’s a general tendency in
Kerala, India people built there houses so big for no obvious reason and would
answer if asked that it’s for the future convenience of theirs kids and their
kid’s kids. Well what such idiots fail to notice is that their overly worked
upon houses will be some 35 years old by the time the younger generation will
be at age to know anything about this out-dated building. And honestly
speaking, with the kind of cheap and substandard construction in this place, no
building will stand for more than 25years even with extensive renovations and
maintenance. It just seems people are so stupid to do such things. A modular
approach like I mentioned in earlier posts is the answer. A building that can
add on new layers or rooms as per requirements; something that will never
hesitate to update or grow. The future generations or the future users just got
to change the components (wall panels, floor and roof panels, wire harness or
utility grid etc.) which will all be modular thus easy to replace. This house
or the building then will be as good as new. This is also how you can prevent a
building from aging, by following an idea that will never wither. A house is a machine to live in, said Le Corbusier
more than 80 years ago, apart from endurance, was he looking at the efficiency
of the spaces and design itself, not sure. But when I look at machines, what I
find is efficiency of the model and purpose associated with each and everything
inside. I haven’t seen a machine with things in it that doesn’t do anything and
the space is efficiently planned inside with no voids. But architecture as we
know is just so loosely planned and executed. Almost everything we see around
is pure shit. The space wastage is sometimes intentional and mostly not noticed
or not understood. Evolution of architecture is long due and I’m sure of the
path it is going to take.
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