What are unique homes?

Each home is unique. So what qualifies the uniqueness? It better be the way life is conducted and nourished inside it by the family that lives within. The display of craft of the architect needs to come second and never dominate the first.

Works of architects these days tends to reflect the exigencies of his practise, an acrobatic display of prowess, as if to prove his ability to be imaginative. Was that ability contested by the client or did he simply need to prove  it to himself ?
IMAGE is a necessary evil in the process of communicating (architectural) design, especially before its built. Necessary, of course, for otherwise the project would never be understood by both parties. And evil, for a host of reasons. The need to sell the image comes in to play a role in the development of the design itself. It takes on the purpose of defining the content, makes the architect commit on elements that are superficial otherwise to the design, in short, distorts the very design it was only meant to convey. Very much like the role of media in our society!

Two decades of changes!!

What is it like being an architect in Kerala? I've been an architect for over two decades now and 17 years of that has been as a practising architect in Cochin.

Peoples' needs have evolved, access to materials have exploded, architectural design aspirations have matured, construction techniques have leap-frogged, Building Rules have lagged behind, Town Planning has failed us, social distances have crumbled a wee bit, Builders have risen, and fallen and risen again, public place design oppurtunities have been squandered and lost, architects have won many battles, earned a spot in the society by sheer will and determination, the list of changes is endless. Yes, and that march would continue.

Design is a commitment to people (to their culture, to their habitat, to their strengths and weaknesses, their aspirations and their well-being), to the site (its potential, its SWOT strength/weakness/oppurtunity/threats), to the context (the site is just its one physical manifestation, the others being, the Time we live in, the technological prowess of our society, the rules that govern our construction industry, the ecology of our larger physical context etc).

Malayali is a hybrid, caught between winds of his ancient history and the aspirations of a Scandinavian Design aesthetics! The challenge for the Kerala architect is to decipher this and translate the story into a new design on a new site.