So What Goes Above Them?

Pallets used as cladding for Stryker House - DesignBuildBluff

Off weeks in Bluff are awesome. Lay back, read, paint, cook, and try finding the missing parts of life. The property is totally transformed from a building ground to what the rest of the town is known for - retreat! With not much to do day long after five tiring restful days in a row, I decided to work for a while. I hence picked the safest and enjoyable job where you need only music as your companion – Sanding the pallets. I was working for a while with Bollywood music when a couple walked in. They were looking at the four half-finished blocks on the property with anxious eyes. I walked up to them, introduced myself and took them around the houses with few details on how they go together. The guy introduced himself as Dwayne (possibly-I am bad at names), a friend of Mitch. Two events reminded me of studio along this walk. The couple saw the pallets hanging up against the aluminum sheets - sanded, polished and ready to go, and ended up asking, “So what goes above them?” Awkwardly I answered, “That is our finish material, nothing goes above it.” I had to take a couple of minutes to make them apparently understand that all the pallets are salvaged and free, they seem unusual but are sturdy enough to use as exterior finish and beautiful enough to be appreciated. The guy nodded, but the lady seemed indifferent. Secondly, we entered the living module. With her first step, the lady commented that she loved the flooring. The laminate flooring apparently, is the only commonly used commercial material we have used in the house. I don’t hate it, but it just gave a clear idea of stereotypic likes and dislikes we have as a society and as consumers. I really appreciate the couple being curious enough to walk in and take a look at the houses. I think it is part of the issues DesignBuildBluff tries to tackle by embracing reuse of materials with houses, which seem weird at the first look but end up blending well in the context. They reflect the reality behind their existence. After all, all what is used to make these houses is all that is around us, all what we have discarded and all what has come back to us with a new interpretation.

DesignbuildBluff

DesignBuildBluff I feel has not only been a program I did to achieve my masters of architecture. It has done a lot more. Rediscovering myself, the way I look at life, the responsibility I  feel towards my commitment, the sense of equality, trust in self and others around, breakage of social taboos and many such things which are partly commonplace and partly radical to life. The house started from nothing but a pile of dirt cleared for it to be placed. And today it stands tall in front of us, demands to be completed. Things which are looked at as piece of shit stare back into your eye reclaiming  their existence as beautiful things which have a right to exist. Sustainability not seen as green solar panels but as a fight against issues which a common man faces to exist in the society. Like a paper boat made from trash notebooks from last year, which sails in the rainwater along the streets and makes kids scream with joy, piles of reclaimed, reused and salvaged materials have come together to make it a house. Gravity, structure, ratios and quantities, proportions and aesthetics are not stories in books but principles of life. The house is not the best design or the coolest looking or perfectly working solution. But it surely is a collage of events, materials, thoughts, conversations, arguments and ambitions. It is not ordinary for the only reason that everything that brought it into existence was extremely ordinary. I think it is one thing the program thrives to make you realize- the beauty of ordinary things, simple living and the fact that it takes a perfect setting for making sense out of nonsense and art out of imperfection.