{"id":1139,"date":"2020-10-01T09:40:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-01T05:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vserver3.auroville.com\/?p=1139"},"modified":"2021-03-29T11:29:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-29T06:59:00","slug":"being-an-architect-in-a-city-in-the-making-suhasini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adventure.auroville.com\/index.php\/2020\/10\/01\/being-an-architect-in-a-city-in-the-making-suhasini\/","title":{"rendered":"An Architect in a City in the Making: Suhasini"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Go away, you are an Aurovilian already.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI came to Auroville for the first time in 1984, by sheer chance. I was doing an undergrad in architecture with the intention to study town planning after. In the 80\u2019s, India was still a socialist country and all urban and town planning was under government control, except for a private agency that was planning the steel townships of India \u2013 this was located in Pondicherry.\u00a0So along with a couple of students from the same school, I applied to do an internship at that agency. On the second or third day at this office, we met an architect from Auroville who had dropped in to get some blueprints. Talking with him, we found out that the interns\u2019 who were to work with Poppo Pingel, another Auroville-based architect, had just dropped out. So wheels were set in motion and we transferred to Auroville.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In June 1985, after my architectural studies, I moved to Auroville. In this period the community did not have any formal structure of management or administration, so there were no real development projects or a planning office. I started working in Auromodele Atelier with Prema, who was screen printing her own fabric and starting a line of hand-painted silk scarves. She asked me to oversee the designing and production. I did this for a few months; at the end of which I knew that fashion was not my world. Andr\u00e9 Hababou had a small architecture studio in the same atelier and was designing the extension of a school in New Creation. I started to design an alternative and it was not really appreciated, as he came from a non-academic background and did not resonate with an integrated approach to design.\u00a0One day, Roger Anger dropped in and Andr\u00e9 presented both design options to him to get his opinion. I must say, I was pleasantly surprised that Roger preferred my design where the geometry, function and the proportions were rationalized. Very soon after I had to leave the atelier, as the interpersonal relationship with Andr\u00e9 deteriorated due to our divergent views on design and development.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I then had the opportunity to work with Pierre Elouard, who had projects in Pondicherry. Around the same time my interest for town planning grew, so I used my afternoons and evenings to put all the land documents\u00a0together to create an overall map of Auroville and I participated in setting up a planning group in 1986, called the \u201cAuroville Resource Center \u2013 ARC\u201d. After Roger Anger won the majority vote with the proposal for a \u201cgold\u201d Matrimandir, he took over the space of the planning office and we were shown the door. So I set up a design studio in my hut and I did a few projects, like Centre Guest House, Samasti, and Aurelec, among others, until 1987. During this period I joined Auroville Center for Scientific Research Trust and set up the Auroville Building Centre with the team there, and a design studio to undertake applied research in design and buildings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n