We would like to take this opportunity to introduce you with "Ravisha Rathore and Devesh Uniyal", from India - The Second winner of Tiny Library 2023 Architecture Competition. These two young practitioners passionately examining and questioning about everything in their surroundings and within themselves. They aspire to improve both aspects, seizing each opportunity that crosses their path.
They believe the need to create something is innate in every person and design and art simply become the conscious and rigorous practice of it.
They devised the age-old idea of establishing a "library" or "pustakaalay" or "gyaan aashray", specifically for the women of Thapli. This initiative seeks to establish a space that brings about significant change, challenging the conventional idea of progress, which is often linked solely to urban development. Instead, it emphasizes the inherent worth of self-sustaining village communities and their ability to pave the way for a more environmentally sustainable and inclusive future.
Come and take a look at what the second winner "Ravisha Rathore and Devesh Uniyal" of Tiny Library 2023 with their proposal "Reclaiming Progress" have to say about their experience and journey throughout the competition. For the purpose of this interview they would be referred as R&D to responses, however Volume Zero referred as VZ.
Ravisha Rathore and Devesh Uniyal
VZ- How would you introduce yourself / Team /Firm?
R&D- We are two young practitioners, in the sea of many. Passionately examining and questioning everything around and within, hoping we can make something better out of both, with every opportunity that comes our way.
VZ- Give us brief information of your previous projects/ works/ research/achievements?
R&D- Although many of our serious achievements are internal - a robust moral compass, an empathetic eye, a free and ordered mind and a growing network of like minded friends - and very few external events until now have been valuable in themselves, but two such would be:
Ravisha Rathore : “FutureWorks 2100” a speculative design done on the future of design and humanity, at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, UK.
Devesh Uniyal : “Decolonization & Decarbonization” a short discursive workshop on the future of architectural practice & education, at the Biennale College Architettura, Venice.
VZ- What advice would you give to individuals who struggle to decide whether it would be beneficial for them to participate in architecture vision competitions?
R&D- Competitions can be great unadulterated spaces to test out all those opinions, ideas, agitation, propaganda that we all carry in our head with us and see for ourselves how far we can stretch them without losing its credibility in the judging eyes of experienced professionals. If validated then one wins a possible passion project to pursue, if not then at least some space gets freed in one's mind.
VZ- What were the challenges you faced while designing for such an architectural space?
R&D- With the given brief stating “a tiny library in a rural context” - We had questions popping over every word. Why tiny for a rural context? What can a village do with a library? Who runs it and who goes to it? What is the role of a library in the current context? Hence, the foremost challenge was to develop a brief for ourselves that could satisfy these questions, so that more potent ones could be posed, through the design.
VZ- What was your thought process while designing for the Tiny Library Architecture Competition 2023?
R&D- Just like the majority of urban India, we too are first-generation to be brought up in cities, while still having an active/nostalgic tie intact with the villages our families come from. So, with the personal experiences and the research coming together, it wasn't very difficult to catch the changing pulse of the city and the village - cities losing its allure to its socio-ecological unsustainability while villages having lost their identity as an ecosystem capable of charting its own path. So, the library for us had to sit in the midst of these shifts. In an urge to change things for the better, it would then have to assist the ones kept out of the city-economy, who remained to be some of the most active members of the village ecology, the women. Thus, to be effective the library could not afford to be another institution but rather many tiny excuses spread-out through villages, tracing the everyday routine of these women. The design of these individual excuses was each guided by the opportunities of its location and the aim to not only gain, but also create, claim and disseminate knowledge.
VZ- What attracted you to this competition?
R&D- Having worked together multiple times before and being in constant discussions about various topics, this competition gave us an opportunity to test out those ideas and of course the prize money is always attractive to young professionals.
VZ- Where does your interest in design come from?
R&D- We believe the need to create something is innate in every person and design and art simply become the conscious and rigorous practice of it. Thus, design-interest seems very universal, although if we had to pick something specific within the process, it would be the excitement of that particular moment when an intangible feeling/thought takes the first leap into becoming something real.
VZ- What design fundamentals do you believe in?
R&D- “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all” Peter Drucker wrote it, but Anupama Kundoo repeats it very often, and rightly so. This is fundamental because it urges one to take the time to have a rigorous enquiry that can set the most relevant stage for any design to begin or to never begin.
VZ- What were your references/ inspiration?
R&D- We are constantly surprised time and again, by how interconnected all aspects of life are. Our true references for this are also of many kinds, to name a few : the fiction and non-fiction writings of Arundhati Roy, Virginia Woolf, the movies of Miyazaki, the stories and people from our villages and cities we've lived in, questions posed by philosophers throughout history, and the projects of Field Office Architects and Rural Urban Framework (RUF).
VZ- Which aspects of a design do you focus more during designing?
R&D- The relevance and the need of a design and to what degree, the politics of who it affects and how it affects them is the most crucial aspect of the design process for us. Hence it takes as much time as it needs to reach a solid conclusion.
VZ- What according to you is the key to making your design a success?
R&D- We would like to believe it’s the questions it raises through its location, the brief, the scale of design, as well as the material choices we made.
VZ- Which tools do you use during design? What is inside your toolbox? Such as software, applications, hardware, books, sources of inspiration, etc.?
R&D- It always starts with books and readings for and beyond the project. Several of the emerging ideas and field research are discussed through sketches and notes. The idea of the final representation gets fixed with storyboarding and eventually Photoshop. The documentation moves into the digital through Rhino and AutoCAD, where the design resolution takes place. This whole process flickers several times between different stages, slowly getting consolidated and channeled with time, going back and forth to our readings and other research. Eventually, all comes back together in the final representation on Photoshop and Illustrator.
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