Page from Anthropologie India Spring Catalog

I am back in New York after a four month sojourn in Goa. If you read my last post, then you know that the project in Goa is progressing on-track and it was (somewhat) safe for me to travel across continents and get my seasonal dose of inspiration, motivation and aggression from New York. More than anything New York makes me push myself. New Yorkers are super-beings, who manage high paced jobs, families, friends while looking great all the time and being in the know on everything... it is a lot of pressure to be all that but New Yorkers do it so effortlessly and I love them for it. When I am in New York, I feel that anything is possible.. It empowers me and gives me another tiny push to continue to follow my passion.

For the past year now, I have been spending around 3-4 months in Goa working on a pilot development project and then a month or so back in New York. Lines are beginning to get blurred now about where home is, what I expect to find in my fridge, friends and conversations...

When in New York, my main agenda (apart from continuing to micro-manage the Goa project) is to see, hear and learn so I continue to get inspired, find ways to put new ideas to work and not let the little things bring me down. The idea is to think big picture, learn from innovations from around the world and absorb the energy from my favorite city.

Interestingly, in Spring I was in New York for the Festival of Ideas and this time around my trip coincides with the Urban Design Week and Climate Week but I narrowly miss the Architecture and Design month...

On my last trip in Spring, I was struck by the focus on India in several places where I typically look for inspiration. I found that more people are looking towards India with hope, attempting to unravel its complexities, blend in with India's treasures in culture, design, history and diversity. Here are a few notable encounters:

Poster for 'Jugaad Urbanism', an exhibition at Center for Architecture in New York

1. 'Jugaad Urbanism', an exhibition at the Center for Architecture

As the name suggests the exhibition and related programs highlighted the innovation in urban design, architecture and building material found in unlikely places in India often without assistance from design and construction professionals or public funding. The exhibition was interesting; I particularly remember a study on the Chawls in Mumbai, with an extensive report and a detailed graphic documentation. More here.

But to tell you honestly, I have very little patience for long studies of problems and solutions that are merely theoretical, snazzy difficult to understand design solutions, and solutions with no implementation plans. Not sure why but solutions from design professionals in India often lack thought on implementation. Most people actually do not care about that aspect at all. I am not saying that theoretical exercises are wrong but only that I have little patience for them as I feel that the time to take action is NOW.

2. Anthropologie May fashion catalog on India.

Anthropologie which is on of my favourite stores picked India as the location and inspiration for their Spring catalog and I have to tell you, the design, photography and fashion blew me away. It made me so proud of being Indian. After looking at that catalog, I bet everyone in the world wanted to be that girl in India. It was a skewed version of reality. But design is for dreamers and the Anthropologie catalog urged us to dream on. Sadly, I can’t seem to find the catalog anywhere online, but you can see some more pictures here

Cover Page of Wallpaper Magazine June 2011

3. 'Reborn in India', June issue of the Wallpaper magazine. 

Wallpaper did an entire issue solely looking at design in India. It highlighted fashion, furniture and architectural design. It was great to get the focus on an international platform but for me the compilation left a lot more to be desired. I felt that they took the easy route and covered all the established big names in the industry. I agree that the big names in the industry have earned it. But I would have personally liked to see a bit more from the new, emerging designers who are either innovating new ways of thinking, or resurrecting traditional techniques and design while working with local craftsman and artists. See more here.

Excerpt from book, 'To India with Love: From New York to Mumbai'

4. Finally, came across the book 'To India with Love: From New York to Mumbai' at a cafe in the Village. Another dreamy collection of India experiences and inspirations from global designers, travellers and revellers presented with great kitschy style. I loved reading through it. You can find some excerpts here.

The agenda for this trip is to: WATCH Spiderman on Broadway; LISTEN to speakers about Leveraging technology in the design process, Governance in Hyderabad and alleviating poverty; VISIT the Brooklyn Flea market and New Dekalb market (built with shipping containers); and SEE Public art by Sol Lewitt.

Hopefully, I will be able to blog about at least a few of these, so stay tuned.

View of the entrance courtyard, part of deck and pool pavilion

We have a small milestone to celebrate this week. We are completing 32 weeks into construction at our project site. With a projected total of 12-14 months as our construction timeline, we are close to the 60% milestone. The real reason to celebrate is that we have completed 60% of construction on-site and are almost on-track to finish within our projected schedule. For anyone who has built in India, this is quite a considerable feat. Projects in India are ridden with unexpected and often unexplained delays mainly due to the unorganized construction industry, loose legal frameworks and maybe skewed priorities among builders and contractors. While design is all glamorous and intellectual, the construction process is where one needs to get down and dirty with all kinds of details of sourcing the right materials, controlling quality on-site, meeting deadlines and coordinating with the various professionals involved. Our team deserves a lot of credit, they are working hard and have a common unique trait (that is central to our hiring process but sadly not that easy to find), they all "take pride in their work".

Last month, we had the privilege of a visit from two prominent architects from Delhi to our site. They left with two comments. First - "Finishing a project in India in 12 months is only possible if it is regular building, it is very difficult to finish a project in that time while building the way you are building". I guess they were referring to our load bearing stone wall structure that require much longer to build than a typical concrete structure, plus the large size of our rooms with high ceilings and possibly to the fact that we have very large openings and not little pigeon hole windows and doors. Their second comment was, "If the talent exists then how come we do not see buildings in Goa built in even half as conscientious manner as you are building." This is the best compliment we have received so far and I was joyous to hear this observation.

At our 60% milestone, we have completed nearly 90% of our civil works, electrical and internal plaster. Civil works for external landscaping is almost 50% complete. We are now busying ourselves with the internal and external door frames, plumbing and flooring.

Sketch rendering of our elevations and opening design

Since, we keep talking about our extra large openings, it is clearly evident that they are critical to our design proposition. We have gone back to our drawing boards many times in order to perfect the design of the fixed and movable doors and windows. The final design looks like the rendering above. All openings will comprise of fixed glass windows on top with wood louvers and movable sliding door panels below. The movable panels will all have a fixed shutter on one corner with wood louvers. All the remaining sliding doors when opened will stack behind this fixed frame. The louvers are designed such that they provide an interesting play of light and shadow within the room at different times of day. Louvers reduce direct sunlight and glare into the rooms. On the other hand, louvers also reduce the visibility to the outside. Keeping this in mind, the openings have been carefully designed with a balance of louvered panels and ones with clear glass.

Sample of a fixed louvered section of the opening built on-site for review

Another interesting functional design feature in our external opening design is that the fixed louver panels will actually be fitted with mosquito nets and have a sliding glass door behind them. This is our proposed solution after various design iterations to address the following conflicting factors that influence living in Goa:

- the ability to keep the doors open for as long as one can to connect with nature

- the insurgence of mosquitoes at dusk specially during monsoons

- the ability to allow for cross ventilation at all times of day even when there are mosquitoes, or if it is raining, or for any other reason the doors need to be kept closed

- the need to make the space air-tight if the use of mechanical air-conditioning is needed

Attention to details such as this comes only from living in a place through the seasons to know peculiarities in climate and livability. Trust me, I wish I had mosquito nets in the openings in my house that allowed cross ventilation, did not block my view, were easy to clean, not stuck with velcro, did not obstruct my ability to open and close my windows and most importantly kept the mosquitoes out but the breeze in.

Another key success of adding nets to the openings is enabling cross ventilation at all times and reducing the need for mechanical air-conditioning at all times of the day throughout the year. This reduces the energy requirement of the house and the pressure of added development on the land.

As a result of our opening design, 100% of our living spaces are daylit. This is based on the math that shows that 100% of our living area has a daylight factor of at least 2%. (Daylight Factor = Window Area/ Floor Area X Actual Visible Transmittance X Constant)

In addition, 100% of our living spaces have access to fresh air ventilation. This calculation is based on the area of openable windows as a proportion of the living area of each room.

Both these statistics far exceed the standards for Indoor Air Quality as mandated by leading green guidelines as being critical to healthy living.

So far so good. looking forward to more happy discoveries and experiments in the remaining 40%. 

These are pictures from my recent walk through Panjim's historic Fontainhas district. Love the colors, textures, and feel of tiny bylanes that are a reminder of the Portuguese era in Goa.

I am writing this post as an addendum to the previous post on 'dreaming up a life lived outdoors'. The following are a collection of rooms that have been an inspiration in the design of indoor-outdoor spaces in our house in Goa. 

The first picture is of the famous 'loo with a view' at the Neemrana Fort Palace. Some 15 years back, I had interned with an architect on a design job at the Neemrana Fort Palace. Along with the gorgeousness of the palace hotel, the super attention to every detail in design, construction and finishes, the 'loo with the view' left a deep impression on my mind. It represents the fun in architecture and represents the luxury of living away from the swarming crowds and making everyday moments grander, exciting, liberating and inspiring. 

Another space that has been a recent inspiration is

Leti 360

, a beautiful hotel nestled in the Himalayas. The hotel is designed by one of my favorite contemporary Indian architect

Bijoy Jain

. I love the way he has succeeded in using local materials in a very contemporary design and blurring the boundaries between indoors and outdoors.

Two images below are from the

'house on the ridge'

near Pune designed by Opolis Architects. This is a truly inspiring space. Notice the size and proportions of the interior space and how it flows into the outdoors through a completely movable wall. Also, note the windows in the top that keep the space filled with light making it look big and airy.

Then there is the following house in Denmark that was recently

featured in NYTimes

. I can't get enough of the uncluttered large spaces with clean lines, minimal furniture and color. There is nothing to distract you from the most important aesthetic of bringing the outdoors into the indoors. Notice the use of textured stone in the bathroom where one would walk bare feet, a little detail that will probably go unnoticed but adds so much to the experience of living in the house.

These last set of pictures are from a heavenly resort called

Verana in Mexico

. They have a bunch of houses. The design for all of them prioritizes reconnecting with nature above all else. My favorite is the

Tea house

. See pictures below.

Then there is the

V-House at Verana

that totally out of this world.

Outdoor space at Villa Aashyana in Candolim in Goa

Last week began as an exciting week. We issued the landscaping drawings and began work outside. Miraculously this year the monsoons have pretty much subsided by the beginning of August. Even though this means that the temperature is rising (and I never want to say goodbye to the lovely monsoons), this is good news for our construction crew who can now work outdoors.

This week, we built the verandahs that wrap around the bedrooms and designated courtyard spaces for the bathrooms. As I have mentioned before, in our design concept, we have designed each bedroom to be like an individual pavilion that sits within its own series of open spaces. The ground floor bedrooms are wrapped around by covered verandahs. These verandahs are designed to be an intermediate layer that connects the indoors with the outdoors. The covered verandahs and balconies are designed to be the extend the bedrooms outdoors.

For our project, the outdoors are as important as the indoors.

The core design concept is to design a house that allows one to ‘reconnect with nature’. In response, all our indoor spaces are designed to have a progression of open spaces that maximize interaction between the indoor and outdoor. First, each indoor space is designed with two out of four walls that completely open to the outdoors. These openings then connect the indoor spaces with the covered outdoor vernadahs and balconies. These intermediate spaces then connect to the central deck space and surrounding gardens. The garden spaces are significant as this house sits on a large 1000 sq.m. land parcel. In our design, we have tried to minimize hard space. Over 40% of the site has been preserved as natural landscape. This does not include the driveway, parking and parts of the deck that have been designed with permeable paving.

(On a side note, permeable paving allows rainwater to percolate back into earth. Hard paving creates non-permeable surfaces that increases the storm water run-off from land, which in turn reduces percolation back into earth thus reducing the recharge of underground aquifers and potentially overloading the storm water run-off drainage system in the area)

Sketch showing the west-side bedroom designed like a pavilion with two walls out of four being large openable wood and glass doors.

View from the inside of ground floor east-side bedroom to the outside minus the pile of debris. The two openings will have sliding wood and glass panels that leads to a wrap around covered verandah

According to Geoffery Bawa, ‘life in the tropics is about living outdoors’. Along with the living spaces in the house, the bathrooms are also designed to connect seamlessly with the outdoors. One full wall in each bathroom is designed to be built with openable glass. This transparent glass wall and opening will lead each bathroom to a dedicated courtyard space. The courtyard spaces are designed to be more than just little outdoor showers tucked away in the backyard. The bathroom courtyards are carefully designed around existing trees. They are spacious garden spaces that are designed to be private escapes possibly with relaxing arm chairs, day beds, maybe a hammock, a bird bath or two and of course the outdoor shower and bath..

This space will be the master bathroom with a picture window above the wash basin counter and a terrace with a built-in outdoor bath-tub.

The reason for this mad chase behind the indoor-outdoor space concept lies in the fact that we are building in Goa. It is common sense that building construction in Goa should be different from building in urban cities in India or coastal areas around the world. Reconnecting with nature is central to one’s choice to live in Goa and it is a luxury few can afford. This makes it essential to pay special emphasis to the relationship between the indoor-outdoor while building that dream country home in the beautiful tropical paradise of Goa.

I had to buy this gorgeous flower when I saw it in the market even though I had no idea how to cook it. Regardless, the bright purple hue and the little flowers delicately placed the petals was enough reason for me to bring three of these home !

After some research online and with some local intel, my cook and I found that cooking Kelful is a long process that involves pealing the flower petal by petal and then removing the smaller flowers from within. These small flowers are super cute and are arranged like tiny bananas (as they would eventually turn into bananas). The Kelful bhaji is made with these flowers. From the flower, two different parts are removed as they are bitter and not eaten. One is the long dark color stem inside the flower and second is a part of the small petal called 'feather'. Below is a video that describes the cleaning of Kelful.

After cleaning, some cooks recommend soaking the usable flowers in water with lemon. This prevents the delicate flowers from oxidizing in air. Next we chopped the flowers and cooked them as regular bhaji with coconut.

The flowers are very delicate, but I felt that cooking them as bhaji does not do justice to their texture. For next time, I am looking for a recipe that will require minimum or no cooking of the flower. Suggestions ?

The flowers are 'champak' and they are blooming in Goa right now. You can find them by following their sweet smell in the markets or on road-sides where village women have strung them into gorgeous 'venis', little garlands designed to decorate one's hair.

The botanical name of the plant is 'Michelia champaca' and it is a variety of the Magnolia family. 

Interestingly, I found a

video

that shows how to string flowers together in a veni using two long threads and stringing each flower using special knots. I don't think the video explains enough for one to try this on their own but clearly shows how delicate the process is.

Click here for link

.

The strong sweet smell, vibrant yellow color and delicate shape are a treat for all senses.

And did I tell you that they smell like heaven... the entire house smells like a perfume factory !

So much is happening on-site that I do not know where to begin our update. Fortunately, our contractors are good at multi-tasking and can execute separate items of work simultaneously.

An important milestone last week was the completion of all the major planned concrete work on-site. The last item on the list was a small roof slab for the pump room located below the deck. This therefore seems to be an appropriate time for us to talk about the use of concrete in our project.

As I mentioned in my last post, we have tried to reduce the use of concrete to the minimum in our project. The reason is the inherent negative environmental impact of cement use. The production of Portland cement is known to account for 5 - 8% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions which are the major cause of climate change. The high emissions are due to the chemical process that produces cement and as a by-product generates large amounts of carbon dioxide. There is little that can be changed in the cement producing chemical process and hence the resulting emissions. This puts the cement industry at the forefront of global environmental and climate change debate. Link to a NYTimes article on the topic.

View of the living room with 40cm wide basalt load bearing walls and two corner columns to allow for extra-large front and back openings

In India, most buildings are built with a structural frame of concrete beams and columns. After this, the walls are filed in with brick or other building blocks. In our mission to reduce the amount of cement use, we decided very early on to design our structure with load bearing walls.This strategy is more feasible (and actually the more obvious and practical solution) for a building like ours that is mostly built on the ground plus one floor (as a result the primary load on the structure is the roof and not multiple floors above). All our external walls are built with basalt or laterite stone, both locally sourced natural materials that take the weight of the structure above. The only need for concrete columns, total six in number, was to allow for the extra large openings designed in all our rooms.

As a second step, we decided to use fly-ash cement in place of regular Portland cement in our concrete mixes. Fly-ash cement is sometimes called green cement as it replaces between 15-25% of cement with fly-ash. Fly-ash is the by-product from burning coal. Therefore, fly-ash cement reuses industrial waste. The performance of fly-ash cement is also completely structurally safe, as it must follow the national codes for design and construction of concrete, as per IS codes 456-2000. In addition, fly-ash in concrete is known to improve the long-term strength of concrete, reduce corrosion and permeability. Here is some more reading material on Fly-ash cement.

After using fly-ash cement in our concrete mixes, the only difference that we found is that a fly-ash concrete mix takes slightly longer to set, so contractors prefer to use the quick drying Portland cement. Other than that the performance and workability has been comparable to regular Portland cement.

While laying the RCC slabs using filler blocks and fly-ash cement

Another construction innovation employed by us in our quest to reduce the amount of cement used in the project was the use of filler slabs in place of conventional reinforced concrete (RCC) slabs. The science behind filler slabs allows for a replacement of up to 30% concrete in a RCC roof slab with lightweight filler and non-structural material such as bricks, tiles or earthenware. The idea is that in a RCC slab, the upper part is subjected to compressive forces while the lower part experiences tensile forces. The concrete in RCC is good at supporting compressive forces and steel good at tensile strength. Hence, there is no structural need for concrete in the lower part of an RCC slab. As a result, the gaps between steel reinforcement can be filled in with lighter material (even waste material such as bottles, old roof tiles or broken bricks). Filler slabs also contribute in reducing the load of the slab itself therefore reducing the amount of weight that falls on the vertical structural members (load bearing walls, or columns) and foundations. Read more about filler slabs.

For use as filler material in our project, we made simple mud blocks on site from the earth excavated from foundations. These blocks were sun-dried. As a result, we used no new material or spent any additional energy in making them or transporting them to site.

Filler blocks made with excavated earth from site being sun-dried

Filler blocks that were made on-site ready to be used

View of filler slab from below after removing the shuttering

In our experience, a big deterrent against the reduction of concrete in building construction is the unwillingness of structural engineers to work with any structural solutions other than the conventional concrete frame structure. The calculation models used by structural engineers don’t seem to be designed to incorporate load bearing capacity of walls and reduction of the slab’s weight by using lightweight filler material. Along with creative architects, the building industry also desperately needs creative engineers who understand the long-term implications of their work and input on the environment.

Finally, I guess the follow-up question is why more people are not building with load bearing walls, fly-ash cement and filler slabs. The only reason that comes to my mind is the inertia to adopt new ideas or perhaps laziness. The building industry fails to educate their clients and together adopt obvious and simple steps towards building a greener building, reducing the pressure on existing resources and ensure the long-term sustainability of our planet.

Because they can look like this. 

A country house in Formentera, Spain courtesy '

the style files

'. 

I firmly believe that country homes is a unique architectural genre and building them to look like five-star hotels is the easiest way out. Country homes should celebrate their location and be a part of the surrounding countryside by using local materials, local traditional construction techniques and rustic interiors/ furniture. 

Another key element for cozy country homes is their relationship to the outside. In the most enjoyed homes in the country, the outdoor spaces are as important if not more than indoor spaces. After all, the reason to be out in the country is to reconnect with nature, to de-stress and inspire, all in an effort to enrich the patron's quality of lives. Outdoor spaces are also important to entertain while spreading the joy to family and friends.

Country homes provide the perfect backdrop to indulge in the simple rustic country life with its treasures of exotic fruits, fresh farm produce, tropical drinks, and traditional robust recipes.

Why build a house in the country if at best it feels just like an expensive apartment in the chaotic city? when there is the opportunity to build and enjoy something like this ...

This is the silvery-white landscape of Karmal Ghat, a forest area that one passes while on their way to the southern tip of Goa before the Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary.

There are deep Eucalyptus forests with rows of ghostly white tree trunks that make the air heady with the smell of herbal eucalyptus oil.. a real treasured experience...