Concept. Anupama Kundoo 'Feel the Ground' Venice Biennale 2012

Auroville. 1996. The Wall House. Fired clay. In bewildering array. Textured and
tactile. Inviting intimacy. Red orange, the color of Auroville soil, complement of
the forest green. We see the village pot as filler in a concrete slab, guna tiles for
vaulted roofs and jack-arches in extruded hollow clay segments. Bricks. Handmade.
Not the standard European size, but achakal, 18 × 10 × 2.5 cm used in vaults,
sprung low, and in walls where Anupama plays with scale, at once emphasizing
and subordinating the brick size in a massive fayade rendered delicate by the
rhythm of broad, deeply raked joints, off-white, the color of the lime mortar. Making
a bold and quite literal statement by coming to a point in an acute angle at
the northeast corner, the wall is introduced as the pivotal conceptual element of
this house.
Living between the lines. Wall House is a redefinition of borders and transitional
spaces in response to local climate and culture. The first-floor living corridor;
verging on the vaulted atrium, opens into nothing. This is a cliff house, a
sort of shallow cave dwelling on the edge of a cavern of cool interior air. Through
carefully orchestrated overlays of brickwork, punctuated by openings to the
forest and the sky beyond, outside and inside reverberate—unite—transparent
yet texturally rich, a spirited dialogue of density and depth, like a Zen painting,
where a few strokes of the brush offer space between the lines which I can enter
into—become a part of.
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