We say, Live projects are one solid way to test your commitment to any of your interests. In her first CoVersity term, Aparna has chosen ‘art’ and ‘natural building’ as the domains to explore.
As part of her project for the campus term, Aparna discussed with her guides to look at various construction ideas. Finally, she decided to build a shower at the campus, using natural building techniques.
The first step was to identify client needs and requirements. Since this was a community project, I went about asking members of varying age groups their idea of a ‘cool shower area’. I got many wacky ideas.
Next step was to observe the space of construction and determine what was feasible. My guides poked me to think out of the box and take inspiration from different elements for ideating the design. The question was – ‘why should a bathroom be only square and boring?’
The next step was to start sketching and this was extremely tough since I was struggling to come up with new ways to imagine a shower area. I started with basic sketches. I went about researching various techniques that I can explore for this project. I saw a video about building a room from scratch. Looked at the work of 3 architects on Instagram who are into wattle and daub construction. I looked at the existing construction models at the campus for more inspiration. Gradually, I ended up discovering many shapes that could be considered.
Eventually, it looked I was very drawn to the spiral shape. I worked out the measurements and the roofing model. I learnt new things like scale, how to calculate area of hexagon, reciprocal roof, how to make hexagon from circle etc. I also created miniature models which helped me visualise the structure better.
