Auroville has its own magic and I am definitely spell bound by it. I learnt a lot and saw even more. Here is a stupid poem I wrote about the fun I had being there.


Stay at auroville was surely
a different experience,
it was a bliss majorly
in all the tense.

Of our love and hate relationships
and the crazy adventures.
Of noongu's juicy sips,
rosella n kambuj were the quenchers.

Gaping at the silly crocodiles
and cycling to the miles
to look at fairy tale-ish houses
with flamboyant building styles.

Warped were their spaces
and french were the windows.
Amazed were our faces
to see strange fellows.

Beautiful music concerts
were a fodder for our senses.
And elaborate makeup n skirts
of kathakali with all its pretences.

Lovely were the crafts
that women patiently did
be it paper,seeds,flowers or tufts,

Laughing so uncontrollably
while the fish pedicures.

Haggling in all the medley
and falling for all the lures.

Kick the archaic moped
kick it!! till it starts.

Beware!!the arrows of the cupid,
lets see how long it lasts.

Fresh flowers set in a bowl
were a visual treat for sure.

Rejuvenating our heart and soul
while eating veggies organic n pure!!

And those colorful chases,
eating mangoes tangy and sour
Catching the sun at the beaches
yet ye dil maange more!!

Thanks to Prerna and Prachi for the photoshoot and also to Rinyo, Shivangi, Consu, Tahir, Pierre, Natasha and Suman. 

New baby

Second stage

After a lot of explorations and wanderings, I decided on this form. Truly speaking, I chanced upon it while fiddling with paper. I love working with paper and this one is made by simple folding it on two curved lines. The initial model looked quite different. After series of refinement and putting ergonomics in it, it looked like this. This form will work well in ferrocement, as it uses a shell sort of a structure and is based on arches. 

While translating it from paper to ferrocement, we had to make some changes but the essential remained the same. 

Lets move on

A lot has been realised after the first prototype. People are more confident about ferrocement furniture (though not fully, but yes a bit more). Now I am ready to try something more adventurous and challenging. Something which works with the material and asks it what it wants to do.

For the next prototype, I have chosen fluidity as my inspiration. After making the first proto with fairly straight lines, now I want to explore curves, twists and turns in the material. (or maybe after restricted movement for many weeks, now I want to dance around literally and in work as well). Lets see how ferrocement reacts to this dance. So here are some of the inspiration pictures that I googled that match my idea of fluidity, organic, movement etc.

Catching up

The blog has been dead for quite some time now. A lot has happened. Expected and unexpected. Expected that happened and that didn’t happen. And unexpected that happened.

I had met with a minor accident while on my way to solar kitchen. I crashed into a bike from the opposite direction (rather we both crashed into each other). And the stupid thing about it is that it was gentle crash, nothing really violent like the ones in comics where the bikers are thrown at some distance with a crashing, screeching sound and all the drama. Yet, it managed to give me an injury that made me depend on others for the next few weeks. That part (depending on others) is worse than the injury itself. Now I can truly understand the pain of the elderly who have to depend on others for fairly simple tasks. Also, I had a first hand experience of being manoeuvred in a wheel chair at the airport and realise the efficiency of the airports at being wheel chair friendly.

I made these two illustrations illustrating first my frustration and then my amusement at peoples reactions and advices. 

 After the plaster, it felt so rigid and bound, like the pharaohs drawn in Egyptian art. 

The reaction of people who came to enquire was really amusing. Each one had a generous piece of advice to give, and an urge to know the exact details of how, when , where it happened. 

Ok enough of gaining of self pity and trying to hog on sympathy.

On the work front. Yes, I promised more to come for the prototyping process for the bench but nothing much has really happened to it. It still awaits finishing. I missed witnessing a major part of demoulding the piece and overturning it. I hope it will be finished soon.

A lot has been realised after the first prototype. People are more confident about ferrocement furniture (though not fully, but yes a bit more). Now I am ready to try something more adventurous and challenging. Something which works with the material and asks it what it wants to do.

Prototyping

So the much awaited prototyping of the bench is done. Its can not be said done though because curing  for 20 days remains to be done. 

More coming soon

Concert by Bombay Jayashri

Triangle Bench

I would start prototyping soon. After discussions with Tency and Meera, we decided to go with most simplest of designs to start with. So the triangle bench is the chosen one. It had started with exploring arrangements using tessellations. The initial forms, though visually pleasing they were not manufacturing friendly. So had to modify it a lot to allow easy construction. Being the first experiment, it has to be simplified and be a bit straightforward.

My starting point was interaction among people in public spaces. Also I was exploring modularity. I observed patterns in which people arrange themselves while in groups and interacting in absence of any furniture at different places.

A huge chameleon at the beach. I dont know if it really was a chameleon.
If anyone knows what is it, please do tell me. But it was really beautiful.

A shell that looked like a peacock feather to me.

I see it is possible to enjoy on the beach even within the confines of  a burqa.

textures

Ferrocement has been used widely in architectural purposes. Products thus made were not for direct human interaction. Whereas a piece of furniture is a more human scale object. Its more intimate in nature in the sense that it comes in contact of human body on a regular basis and the body is bound to respond to it. A few millimetres change can also be felt and appreciated. A small difference in the tilt of the back of the chair is enough to give a stiff back and inappropriate height of table will surely give you discomfort at the end of the day.

Therefore it is essential to keep in mind how you want the body and mind interpret and react to it. A silk upholstery invites your touch while a coir mat repels you. But each serves its purpose. We can decide whether the material feels pleasant or unpleasant to evoke certain reactions and behaviour from people.

Therefore I want to explore textures and finishes in cement to make the product more appealing to human senses. A good texture might invite you to touch it, sit on it and maybe stay a bit longer.

After all these are just assumptions and I might be expecting too much out of a simple object but still its worth a try. 

Garden and public parks

How I see gardens and public parks is as gathering points. They are often placed in residential areas or small communities. They serve as green lungs to the area. They are the points where everyone comes out to sit, relax, enjoy nature, exercise etc. I feel such a meeting point is an excellent place to know what the community is like. These places reflect the people using it which gives it identity and in return people are able to form associations with it and connect with it.

Today everyone is pre occupied with themselves. In this digital age, we don’t even know who our next door neighbour is? A close knit community is the one where people feel more secure.  While on the other hand, unknown people breed a sense of insecurity. There is no trust and reliance on each other.

In such cases I feel the need of strengthening common places like the parks and the gardens, where most of the people gather. If even at such places, people seclude and cut off from others then that’s indeed a problem. A small but significant difference can be made with slight changes in the seating at these places. I feel sitting allows you to start conversations. You talk over coffee while sitting, most meetings are held with people sitting around tables, significant deals and agreements are sealed across the table, panchayats who took important decisions were held sitting under the tree, friends chill out sitting on the college stairs after the class.  So I feel sitting and interacting go a long way and to strike good conversations, right seating is absolutely essential.

In public parks, benches and seats are placed linearly. This is quite opposite to the way we sit and interact. In absence of any furniture, the patterns formed while sitting together in a group are usually ellipses and more organic forms. Linearly placed furniture allows you to sit secluded without bothering to see the people around you. Of course that is a situation that might be desirable sometimes but at other times the benches should encourage you sit facing each other or start a conversation. Rather than people being forced to adapt , it should be the other way round.

I would like to know your opinion on this.

looking around

I will be looking at public spaces. I listed down a few points. These are filters through which i have to view the spaces and analyse them.

ferro to cement

 First the basic skeleton is prepared with iron rods.

The mason then wraps hexagonal chicken mesh on the basic skeleton. He binds the mesh to the frame with by tying it unto the frame with thin wires. There is no welding required. The mesh can be overlapped if required.

The helper mixes sand ,cement and water. The mason puts it unto the steel mesh frame. He keeps a piece of cardboard at the back to avoid mortar from falling from other side.

So, a layer of mortar is evenly put on the frame. But now it needs finishing.

He marks the centre of the bowl visually. Being a skilled mason its very precise.

Now for finishing he starts from the top edge. Taking the centre as a refrence he levels the edge with the help of a metal rectangular section.

After basic levelling, he checks the edges with a levellin ruler and levels again.

Without the sophisticated machines and tools, one has to devise creative methods to solve problems. Here mason uses the measuring tape as his compass and marks a perfect circle on the edge.

After the markings, the mason cuts the edges with his tool to get a perfect circle.

To get perfect thicknesses and edges, he uses a simple template.

Finishing on the inner side of the bowl is almost done.

Then, very interestingly, he uses a small round pebble to rub on the slightly dry mortar, to give a better finish.

.

Very carefully the bowl is overturned and mortar is applied onto it

The levelling is very important as he has to keep in mind the shape and symmetry.

for the final finish he pours a thin paste of sand and cement over the mortar and gives the final touch.

After this process, the object has to be cured for about 21 days to be strong and have a long life.
In this case curing is done by filling water in it.
Curing can be done in many ways. Either the article can be covered with a plastic or coconut husk after splashing water on it, so that it remains moist for a longer duration. Then there are curing chambers as well, which have water filled to a ceratin level and the obeject is kept inside. With heat the water keeps circulating the closed chamber with evaporation and condensation and keeps the object moist. The water to be used for curing can not be dirty water.

With similiar process the top cover of the bowl is also made. After the curing period, holes are drilled in it and metal pegs are fixed with araldite.

The flow of the water is being tested.