Ar Saurav Shrestha-Architect Extraordinaire
“If u want change Architecture practice in Nepal go to Architecture college!” -Ar. Saurav Shrestha
1. How did you start your architecture journey and how did it transition to today?
The area I am currently living in was developed during 1990’s and was suburb before. When I was six years old, my father showed me the blueprints of our new house. After that, I was able to see the whole construction process based on these few drawings. This was very fascinating for me so later, I decided to become an engineer who designs homes! I had no plan B except for going to architecture. This was essentially my goal. I feel that in life we are always discovering things about ourselves. In the initial days, there was no one really to guide me so we went on our ways. In student life whatever we did seem to be the best. Naikap house was one of the first projects I completed. Then I was basically implementing the stuff learned from SketchUp. At the same time in 2011, I had started a page called vernacular architecture of Nepal.
The transition started after gaining experiences from different offices. I did my intern and first job at Prajwal Hada and Associates. The trend there was more into modern architecture; the box styles and geometric manipulations. Working on such designs, I felt very unhappy with the architecture style. It did not interest me much. After that, I joined Prabal Thapa architects. The reason I liked it was because of its rural environment projects. The rural and organic building style as if had grown on the site were very fascinating to me. After working for two and half years there, I was able to work on the Kopila valley school; The first rammed earth project of my life which was again a very rewarding experience. Later on, I joined NeedleWeave architects. There I again felt the same heaviness of not finding any joy in my designs which were mostly commercial. I started to introspect; I was so happy in PTA but why am I feeling low here? Why did I not enjoy work as much as before? After the earthquake, a lot of projects were cancelled. At this time, I got the opportunity to go to Solukhumbu, where a lot of monasteries had collapsed. There I did a few projects related to dry stone masonry which again invigorated my spirits. I find that during you youth stumbling, falling and finding yourself and what you want is very important and that is what I was doing.
But we always cannot compete with fate as after completing these projects, came the economic blockade. All works were into a complete halt and I decided to study Masters in the UK. During this time there was a NEA design competition called rural housing, where we won the second prize. After which I left to join University. Even then, what I studied in my masters was not sustainable architecture but more building and urban design in development.
When I returned to Nepal, the work I got was not related to what I had studied so I was planning to go to Africa to work in such related fields. My turning point was in 2018. In this year I started to teach and also got the first rammed earth project. It was for the director of ICIMOD who wanted a rammed earth structure for his home. A client of PTA, Hemendra Bohra had recommended my name as Prabal sir already had his hands full. Hemendra dai had a company called ‘mato ghar’ and has once approached me to join his company before leaving to the UK. Now looking back at things, everything seems to circle around. It feels like maybe rammed earth had been calling me for a while now, but I was too oblivious to it. After that I started getting continuous projects related to rammed earth. Almost a series has been developed and currently mato ghar. no.18 is being done. In mato ghar, I wanted translate our vernacular architecture to a contemporary form. Not to mimic or copy the decorative details but to translate it via its proportion and scale.
As I was teaching design studio at that time these things really helped me. To prepare for class, I started studying a lot of form and proportion ideas to help the students which in turn was also very helpful to me. As a self-practicing architect, the sad thing is that you won’t have any mentor guiding you thus you need to create your own mentors. I started following Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa, Austrian architect Bernando Badar and their works in rural architecture. With the mentorship of Prabal Thapa sir, I have slowly started to feel that my design has started to go in a particular direction now.
2. You have taken part in a number of competitions and even won the resilient homes challenge in the earthquake category. Your words ‘a village should look like a village and not like a mass housing’ were very impactful. Could you elaborate on that?
The first competition we took was the JARS Nepal China earth reconstruction project, after that came the 2016 Rural housing design competition where we 2nd place. The resilient homes project was further developed from the ideas of the previous two competitions.
In my Fourth year when we studied neighborhood planning, I did a case study of Aranya housing by BV Doshi. I was very impressed with his style of work. From his ideas, we stood by in our project that housing is a process where we enable users to design themselves. It was best to give them a structural model to work with such that, user can use it to expand and adapt to their own needs rather than adapt to what we design.
Our aim to take part in this competition was to challenge the status quo. For whatever that is happening right now in the name of reconstruction, we wanted to show that there is an alternative for so. In BV Doshi’s Aranya, the owner could decide the stye of house they wanted. and had the power in decision making. Even today I feel for a housing we should not be providing same style modular houses but rather giving them options for the same so that they can choose at will. This will omit the condition of row housing and take the shape of a settlement. The idea of this was while studying in the UK, I lived in a sub urban area. Everyday watching the same styled same colored, quiet, row housing; what we might find very systematic and sophisticated is quite depressing to live in. There, I was constantly looking for variation, that feel of a settlement rather than an orderly civilization. I believe we gravitate towards such chaos and the feeling of liveliness than total order in our environments. We need the controlled chaos purely from a psychological point of view. In architecture it means a controlled irregularity. So, in the competition our idea was to retain that character.
In another competition Co Design Milan Urban design, we proposed a design statement; Building that lives grows and dies. The them was an agile building or building that lasts forever. We still chose to challenge that statement by questioning why does a building need to last for ever why doesn’t it just live grow and die. Our design was such that when the building is at its last stage, it can be dismantled to form a park. We took the honorary mentions for this project.
3. With almost 50+ certifications in online class of Linkedin, are you very focused in self growth? How does your personality trait help in your field?
I am a person who constantly tries to self-improve. My favorite pass time is to read, I don’t socialize a lot. I dislike dealing with a lot of people. I like working on myself more. I take a lot of business-related courses, as I run my own firm. I take course related to teaching as well. To live according to your own, you can’t work under others, but to survive on your own you need skills to keep you afloat. To take your fees from your clients is not easy, especially for young architects, you will wake up to reality once you enter society. You have to be very careful especially with the big clients as they will really round you up. A lot of negotiations, financial thinking is required. To not compromise your values, you need learn practicality.
4. As a teacher don’t you think students should be taught these early on?
I personally feel this should not be included in the initial phases. To be too practical is still a problem because we become too commercial then. This should rather be included either during the internship or added in the licensing exams. The responsibility of academia is to teach a core set of skills. The practical part is to be learnt in internship and in practice. We should rather be rigorous in the design discipline. Our challenge is to learn the design in the real life.
5. What exactly is this real world design?
Design is always divided into academic design and real-world design. Academic design should always be 20-30 years ahead of the real-world design. Academia must be the one pushing the boundaries rather than learning from the real-world designs. It should outside think outside the box while real world design should be more problem solving to the need, requirement and aspiration of clients. Just like how Bauhaus pushed a whole movement, if we see throughout history, it has always been the academia that has pushed and brought forth new ideas and trends that shape the architecture of the decade.
Our problem is that, we are so much under the shadow of our heritage that we have been unable to get out of it. By keeping our heritage as a benchmark, we are trapped in a situation where anything below it seems unacceptable, but to live in the heritage of our past is also difficult. In the west, they are trying new trends, accepting it flaws then changing and evolving themselves. But we are stuck. Neither able to completely let go nor able to embrace and move forward. 6. What is the core problem in our academic field according to you? If we look at our own history, our academia was fueled by teachers studying in two different ideologies. From the Soviet Union and the from regional ideology. The technique of study, of both these places are totally different. The Soviet Union study’s philosophy is that design has to be rational, it is a problem-solving tool but the teachers who studied in more regional nations believe that the design should be more artistic. The concept of abstract, philosophy of aesthetics come from here. My criticism is that everyone who followed these concepts did not try to read further up on them and understand the pros and cons of each. There is book called design methods which shows many methods of design out of which we have learned only three. Response to site, Rational method and Abstract method. We have missed out on all other methods of design thinking. The cause for this is we don’t read enough, as students and as teachers as well.
The main problem is that the syllabus has not been revised, there is no vision in the syllabus to show the type of architects we want to produce. By the end of the semester what should be expected is very vague. When I first started to teach school design to the 2nd years, written in the syllabus as goal was to introduce bubble diagram! That is the goal for a whole semester? A bubble diagram? I feel in academia, goals should be semester wise. In the third semester maybe, the goal should be problem solving of a family, how to address the need of a family etc in residence design. Then the goal in school design maybe sustainable architecture, in commercial the goal maybe effective ways of circulation, in stadium design perhaps the goal should be learning structure to relate in architecture. In this way when each semester has a different useful goal, the design methods are properly understood by students. \
7. How do you see yourself as a teacher?
As a student, we had a teacher named Jayendra Dosh Sunwar, where he taught us design. He always focused more on process more than result. He was so influential that, I have always felt that if I teach, I want to follow him. To be the person we wanted, when we were young is my teaching philosophy. I find academia very fulfilling when you want to go back to your core values and reassess yourself. In design studio I feel alive. A generation changes in 3 years, so I have also vowed to keep changing my teaching methods every three years to be more relevant. This is called pedagogical experiment i.e. to experiment on the methods of teaching. For the first three batch I followed the theme, ‘learning from masters.’ We gave each student two contradictory architects to study and follow one in their design while understanding the criticism of the other. This showed them multiple ways of thinking in design. The next batch followed elementalism in design. Taking the five elements and understanding their characteristics, students were to design based on so. For example, stable heavy structures for earth, dynamic forms for fire etc. I am now thinking the theme for the three next batches. This gives me the sense of fulfillment. As a junior teacher I had the opportunity to be paired with personals who listened to my ideas, and criticism. Who allowed me to set a new direction to the class and steer away from the traditional styles for which I am very grateful towards them. A collaborative environment is very necessary for academia to move forward.
8. Any concluding remarks for readers?
I feel it is necessary to make the life of others easy. Draw such that is easy on the contractor, design such that it simplifies the life of the client and teach such that it is not complicated for the student.
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