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

is imagined to create a harmonious balance and sense of quietude within the
exhibition space. Instead of imposing an autonomous object within the Corderie,
it is intended that the insertion will melt into its context and reveal to the senses
the genius loci of the space.
Brick, the unit of common ground in architecture
Materially speaking, brick could be considered the unit of common
ground in architecture. Brick is the first manufactured material and continues
to be developed to sophistication. Made of the earth itself brick has survived
all transitions in building technologies. It is the bridge between the past and
the future, between the developing countries and the developed countries,
between the high-tech and low-tech manufacturing processes. Yet the brick is
not to be taken for granted. There is much to be discovered and learnt from it.
The building showcases a range of technologies using fired clay, in walls and
roofing systems.
In bewildering array. Textured and tactile.
“
Inviting touch, intimacy. Red orange.
The colour of Auroville earth, complement of
the forest. As a potter and maker of brick and
tile, this is a material to which I readily respond.
In Anupama’s new house, still under construction
we see the village pots as filler in a concrete
slab. Again, guna tiles for vaulted roofs and jack
arches in extruded hollow clay segments. Bricks,
not the standard European size, but achakul,
18 × 10 × 2.5 cm used in vaults, sprung low, and
in walls where Anupama plays with scale, at
once emphasising and subordinating the brick
size in a massive façade rendered delicate by the
rhythm of broad, deeply raked joints, off-white,
the colour of the lime mortar. Making a bold and
quite literal statement by coming to a point in
an acute angle at the north-east corner, the ‘wall’
is introduced as the pivotal conceptual element
of the structure.
”
From Ray Meeker: The Interior of Being, Inside
Outside, January 2000
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