Artrovert is the project to design a studio in a peri-urban artists' colony, Kaladham, in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh. The 280 sqm. studio is built on a 300 sqm trapezoidal plot which is one of 216 arranged in an octagonal grid. The client-collaborator is a multimedia artist whose politically charged works interrogate binaries, challenge representation and explore the anti-aesthetic. Equally unconventionally, her vision for her studio was not the typical introverted artist’s “cave” but rather an extroverted residency where the creation of art and the living of the artist are shared with her precinct.
Programme
The studio required accessible, large volume workspaces that would invite an immersive experience of art and yet be rugged enough to withstand its production. A mezzanine study overlooking the studio provides a vantage point to view as well as to reflect. The top floor is designed as a two room residence for artists for short duration stay while a small ground floor residence at the back houses studio helpers. While a private garden is planned at the back as a spill-out for the helpers, a sloping, faceted front lawn is opened up for theatre-style public screenings and talks. The rooftop residence is arranged around a generous terrace.
Project: Artrovert: Conversations In Grey
Location: Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India
Client: Anita Dube
Architect: Anagram Architects Design
Team: Vaibhav Dimri, Madhav Raman
Site Area: 300 Sq.Mt
Project Area: 280 Sqm
Initiation Of Project: Jan 2013
Completion Of Project: Sep 2016
Photo Credit: Suryan//Dang
Form and Materiality
The form articulates the creation of space as an unraveling rather than as a construction, revealing as much as concealing. Two materially contrasting yet filial bands (of distressed concrete and ceramic mosaic) loop and coil forming the various spaces of the program across multiple levels. These are bookended on one side by the neighbour’s wall and with a grey steel armature on the other. The armature itself is designed to act simultaneously as a gallery, working scaffolding and circulation space as well as to provide views of the exhibits within from different heights. The panels are detailed to swivel so that the finished art on them may be turn outwards and shared publicly. This also creates the possibility of an externally created mural being turned inward for viewing as a composition of individual panels and multiple permutations of such arrangements. Tall and narrow interstices are glazed against the outside while vertical slits cut through the internal volumes. Thus the design hopes to offer multiple views and varying perspectives through a multilevel space formed as a conversation between binaries.