Ar. Chitra Vishwanath and her Design Philosophy
Chitra Vishwanath is a Bengaluru-based Indian architect who focuses on ecological and architectural issues. Since establishing her own architectural practice in 1991, she has collaborated with other architects on numerous projects throughout India and Africa.
A company called Chitra Vishwanath Architects is situated in Bangalore, India, and it specializes in both ecology and architecture. The company was founded in 1991, and over the years, a number of architects have joined and contributed to projects in Africa and India. The guiding principles are to make the best use of available local resources, plan with the natural environment in mind both passively and actively, and make construction have a positive social impact by raising the standard of living for both the workers and the users.
“Mud” is a significant portion of the spectrum of resources employed since it is suitable for local conditions, requires little labor, and is readily available in the area.
Philosophy
Chitra works on ecologically and socially sensitive nature, along with commitment to spreading sustainable living practices far and wide, has led to our involvement in many nonprofit projects to benefit the natural environment and disadvantaged populations.
For load-bearing structures, such as arches, vaults, and domes, earth is utilised in the form of compressed stabilised blocks and stabilised rammed earth.
Along with the usage of stabilised earth, alternative methods and energies including rainwater collection, grey water recycling, wastewater treatment, and solar and wind energy generation are also used.They are created and integrated into buildings to make them fully sustainable systems on an economic, social, and ecological level
These structures can draw native flora and birds, resulting in distinctive and cosy environments.
To ensure that the final project combines the client’s ambitions for aesthetics, functionality, and budget with the vision of sustainability, we lay a strong emphasis on client interactions. Design is a highly personal process.
Approach
1.Impact on Land : Any construction process impacts and modifies local ecology. For an environmentally sensitive architect, it is crucial to analyze the nature of these impacts to take correct decisions.
2.Energy and Architecture : In the planning of an environmentally sustainable building, strong considerations are given to maximize the building’s energy efficiency and reduce the energy expended throughout the construction process.
3.Integrated Water Management : In the absence of a concerted centralized effort to manage water sustain-ably, more and more residents and institutions are taking steps toward safeguarding their own long-term water security. The critical elements of this framework include:
a. Water Conservation and Demand Management — Cutting back on water use and waste-water discharge at the individual and collective levels is at the heart of water sustainability.
b. Groundwater Management — Groundwater is acknowledged as a common property resource that must not be indiscriminately “mined”. Special consideration is given to replenishing aquifers and limiting the digging of new bore wells.
c. Wastewater Management — Wastewater should be discharged at a quality as close as possible to that of the source water. If not, the pollutants released may eventually contaminate our sources. It is also important to explore potential wastewater reuses.
4. Social Responsibility : social responsibility an imperative component of any project — “For whom and where” and “By whom and how”.
Govardhan Eco Village, Palghar, Maharashtra
- The site is located 100 kms north of Mumbai, in a rural area at the foot hills of the Sahyadris, and lies between the hill Kohoj Gad and the river Vaitarna.
Sustainable Design Approach: Water Management —
- Hydrogeological study provided us with clear recharge and discharge zones suggesting the extraction pattern with respect to quantity available. This was the basis for the overall site planning with respect to buildings, services and roads.
- With on-site treatment of waste water, nutrient rich water is now available throughout the year and food is grown even in summer months.
Preservation & Enhancement of Land Use:
- From a denuded plantation the land had to become an eco-system which while providing for human habitation also had to be bi diversity positive in the long run
Resource Management: Site as a Quarry:
- As the location was far from manufacturing base the site was mapped for availability of earth for making of buildings and through expert skill transfer the future constructions are possible.
- The ponds and water bodies were made in the areas where soil was suitable for earth construction.
Innovative Construction Technologies and skill transfer:
- Various approaches to use of earth as construction material has been tried here and different techniques are employed depending upon the use of the space and the skill of the builder.
Hamsa And Prasanna House At Bangalore
- Hamsa and Prassanna are gardening enthusiasts who had filled their balcony with plants much to the chagrin of the landlord. They are also deeply committed to ecological living.
- The requirement was kept simple — two bedrooms, a large study and maximum garden- with complete water and resource intelligence incorporated.
- A basement study opening to a basement garden provided the earth for earth blocks. The basement garden also has a well recharging the ground. The basement thus moves away from being a dark dingy space to a light filled well ventilated living area. The ground floor has living areas, kitchen , common toilet an done bedroom surrounded on all sides by gardens and further connected visually to the basement garden too.
- Space is celebrated through minimal interventions and making it languidly relaxing .The stairs are bare, floors are monocolour and walls are brown with just a large yellow tiled wall in the kitchen giving the burst of energy within. Terrace is utilized as a smart space in mnemonic sense. It is the space to grow food, harvest the rainwater, use it for thermal and photo voltaic solar panels and treat the grey water all because it is the space which gets the maximum endowment of sun and air.
Projects- The Atelier, Bangalore
Inspired by an effectual educational approach, The Atelier by Bengaluru-based Biome Environmental Solutions embodies a conscious architecture which stems from the understanding that, “The permanence of a building may no longer be a prerequisite in its design.……it is necessary to allow material recovery and recycling, or reconstruct the same building elsewhere — anything but create debris that will occupy landfills.”
- Situated on a leased land in close proximity to a warehouse and a construction activity site, the building aspires to create an architectural experience that mutes all external noise, focalizing attention internally.
- Owing to the visible conditions and the invisible experiential constraints around the site, the architects lead the design in this direction. The essence of this project lies in its transposability.
- •Completed in 2016, it sits compactly on a 1955 square meter site that is accessible from the northeast.
- •The building is conceived as one large volume of 985 square meters with its plinth extending into outdoor play areas on the northern, southern and north-eastern sides.
- •A light galvanized metal roof sloping from the south to north shelters the entire school.
- •On entering the building, the individual spaces eloquently dissociate from the whole.
- •With an unassuming permeable external and an understated interior, the architects have tactfully managed to unite the inside to the outside.
- •A subdued earthen interior palette permits the gaze of the eye to penetrate its surface convincing one of the veracity of its materials.
•No building is an end in itself- it frames, relates, separates and unites, facilitates and prohibits. When viewed from the outside, the school resembles an art workshop/studio space.
•The external envelope is a composition of fixed panels of perforated metal sheet, reflective glass and pinewood.
•A continuous band of perforations wraps the building below the standard sill height facilitating a visual connect with the outside world, while ensuring safety of the children.
•In addition, operable louvers and sliding windows are suitably positioned to enable adequate daylight and airflow.
•Often, a uniform intensity of light across a homogeneous space does not engage an occupant as much as a variable, either in its palette or its luminescence engages through tactility.
•This project explores innate construction techniques including a local chappadi granite stone slab foundation, tactile flooring with paver blocks and CSEB’s made of soil from different sites, a false ceiling from bamboo mats and a bolted steel support structure.
•Together, they sustain a continuum in space perception from the outside to inside.
•The motility in the perceived space is heightened by the curvilinear shape of the classrooms enclosed with paper-tube ‘walls’ of appropriately varying heights.
Rooted in a cognitive learning approach, the school engages children under a diverse mentorship — a place realised for parents, teachers and volunteers to contribute to the process of education; a place where the resulting nourishing environment encourages a child’s mind to explore endlessly.
•Throughout the scheme, the architects have retained the fundamentals of sustainable building practice ensuring that rainwater is harvested from the entire roof area and solid waste from the school is disposed off in twin leach pits which are effective in returning nutrients to the soil.
•When one speaks of sustainability as a phenomenon (a state or process that is made known through the senses rather than by intuition or reasoning ) that is part of an architectural language, often we forget that architecture is itself composed as much of the intangible as it is of the tangible.
•In the Atelier, it is in the use of natural materials that the building possesses an innate ability to eventually become expressive of its purpose.
•The architects have approached educational design with a balanced understanding of the physical and metaphysical elements of the site and the end-user respectively. To quote Juhani Pallasmaa, we feel pleasure and protection only when the body discovers its resonance in space. The architecture of The Atelier partakes in one of such sublime delights of ergonomic proportions that engage the senses. It embraces the fluidity of the internal spaces and yet, is mindful of the simple geometry that it is enclosed within.
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