Architecture BRIO is one of the most versatile amongst emerging practices in India. Working from Mumbai, their studio has been able to create works of finesse with a refreshing sense of newness and surprise. This piece is an attempt to understand the key ingredients of their design process with an emphasis on the act of drawing as a negotiator of ideas.
In 2006, Shefali Balwani and Robert Verrijt established their practice – Architecture BRIO, after returning from Sri Lanka where they worked with Channa Daswatte. Their initial projects were designed for Magic Bus – a non-profit organisation and entailed very efficiently resolved simple structures that enable ideas of play and interaction to manifest. Since then, their practice has engaged with works of various scales and typologies with sites in the peri-urban region of Mumbai, across India and South-East Asia. The portfolio is significantly diverse with the common themes that concern tectonics of site, formal and spatial explorations of architecture, critical reading of the program, systems thinking, and clarity of material and detail that have characterised their work.
POTENTIAL OF THE SITE
Being an urban practice, the work of BRIO draws keenly from the specific context of each project. The site plays a critical role in informing the course of design. The projects emphasise on the potential of the site and are constantly informed by the terrain, the qualities of the land, the vegetation, the opportunity for vistas, and the nature of the building processes that are connected with the site.
“…through asking the right questions, formulating ideas on the project, conversations with the office, understanding the site. One by one the endless possibilities of ideas and concepts are filtered down and a few potential approaches appear.”
Robert Verrjit
It is important to observe the constant presence of the site in the architectural process. One can realise the emphasis on sometimes mundane elements found on the site in the initial drawings and it is these elements (a tree, a stream, a rock) that become pivotal moments of the eventual buildings. The buildings also respond to more abstract and experiential ideas – the climate, the material, the landscape and the sky.
DRAWINGS
The consistent process of drawing forms the core of the Architecture BRIO design process. Sometimes sporadic and sometimes planned, the pencil drawings sketched from the last page to the first in a tracing-pad sketchbook evidence the sequential resolution of design. “Sketching starts with procrastination” says Robert.
“Sketching starts with procrastination.”
Robert Verrjit
As the thoughts on a project become clearer, the pencil is employed. The process of intuition resembles important moves and exploration of ideas that may or may-not work and the process of strategic planning that forms a conceptual underlay. The design evolution concerns itself with the negation of the built form against the site conditions. Once in a while, the process drawings represent a breakthrough – a point of clarity and perhaps the defining moment in the design process where the scheme and the trajectory of the architecture becomes apparent.
While design development drawings have their specific role in the process, the presentation drawings of the project have a distinct purpose and therefore, an independent language. Mostly monochrome, these drawings make explicit the design and to a certain extent – its materiality. Once the scheme is clear, the resolution of detail happens at a much larger scale and in this shifting of scale, the drawings become more intricate revealing the complexity of detail in material junctions, structural joints, water-proofing, roofing etc.
MODELS
The role of a model in the process of design is to add clarity to a resolved design. The slowness of the model-making process, for Architecture BRIO, goes against the purpose of using them as design-aids. Rather, a model makes the design much more accessible to the clients and collaborators on a project. They depend more on their ability to visualise three-dimensional space in a two-dimensional drawing for design development as drawings are immediate, quick and more intuitive modes to access ideas.
“A construction detail that is being discussed on the meeting table can immediately be referenced to its location and interrelation to the other components of the project with the sectional model next to it.”
Shefali Balwani
Nonetheless, the models do serve a larger purpose. From the perspective of an outsider, they present a quick insight into the work of Architecture BRIO as one can appreciate the complexity of space and detail in their models. The ability of a model to open and dismantle enables one to quickly realise the intent of design.
SITE
In India, sites can be places where one can ‘improvise’. Owing to immediately accessible skill and a certain degree of craftsmanship on construction sites in India, an often-romantic notion of being able to ‘collaborate’ with the people on the site takes over imaginations of many architects working in the tropics. For Architecture BRIO, this approach is not an ideal one. “In the best scenario, this encourages collaboration with highly skilled craftsman and workers and uses the principles and logic of ‘the process making’ to inform the design itself” says Robert. BRIO argue that while some experiments on the site are serendipitous, one cannot resolve ideas on the site. For a clear, workable detail, while one may collaborate with contractor or skilled workers on the site, in Architecture BRIO’s view, there has to be “great emphasis in the resolution of our construction details” in the studio.
PROCESS
The works of Architecture BRIO hinge on design development in the studio. This method seems un-negotiable and renders much clarity to the sophisticated buildings that they make. Both Shefali Balwani and Robert Verrijt acknowledge the potential of working in the tropics and in a landscape like India where skill and construction knowledge are both accessible. Nonetheless, by keeping a certain distance from the processes on the site, the architects are able to articulate a certain formality and direction to the design process that is not interrupted. For BRIO, collaborations are “only potentially as successful as the geographic location of a project (that allows one to work with these skilled craftsman), and the budgets and time to do so” – a luxury seldom accessible in mainstream practice.
A layer of anxiety, conflict, friction forms the underlay for the finely resolved projects of Architecture BRIO. It is this constant cycle of exploration, refinement, rejection and re-imagination that enriches the work of Shefali and Robert. Their architecture rejects the image in favour of a process that leads to powerful spatial articulations. One can read the concerns of scale, materiality and detail in their drawings while the built work represents their command on more abstract ideas and finer elements – light, volume, texture, contrast, proximity, intimacy, temperature and sound ⊗
ARCHITECTURE BRIO was set up by Shefali Balwani (C.E.P.T, India) and Robert Verrijt (TUDelft, the Netherlands) in 2006. Located in Mumbai, the practice is invested in finding contemporary ways of working with urban and peri-urban landscape often experimenting with approaches that deviate from the mainstream and yet, resist being in a niche. With their background of working with Channa Daswatte, and studying Geoffrey Bawa’s architecture, Shefali and Robert’s work is influenced by both – an appropriate way of building in the tropics and spatial ideas that refer to the architecture encountered then.
The work of the studio addresses new ways of understanding the often-contradictory interrelations between the city, architecture, landscape, and the world of interiors. Architecture BRIO is actively engaged in the creation of contextually appropriate, sustainable design solutions within an increasingly changing world.
