IDEA OF A MUSEUM

DESIGN INTENT

Paithan is a small town known for its textiles (Paithani Sarees) and temples. Due to these two major activities, it attracts a lot of tourists throughout the year. This causes the locals there to be heavily connected and engaged into these activities.

Also, the context of Paithan has a lot of streets i.e., shops and houses are along the periphery of streets and the streets opening into larger chowks which make them interactive spaces.

The museum that is then designed should not become an intimidating space that closes off entry to a large network of people, rather it should be a space that invites people in thereby making it an interactive space with both the art pieces (handlooms and textiles) and the people around (new relations get developed).

The act of textile weaving is a very intimate process in relation to the thread, the body and the loom. Since the process of weaving is devoted, the act of seeing these textiles and looms should also be intimate such that it allows people to interact closely with these loom artefacts.

Merging the ideas of the interactive streets and intimate spaces together brings the thought of creating a series of paths that open up to larger courtyards on the inside. The courtyard starts inhabiting the qualities of a chowk from where one can see at a glance the various newer spaces and activities taking place. These courtyards also become open and semi open spaces to inhabit. The programs and spaces then start placing themselves along the periphery of the various paths and chowk.

At the same time, the service spaces don’t become separate entities placed at the back ends but start blending into the space and being a part of it in various ways.

When working with the idea of people as a collective, and creating social spaces for interaction with the artefacts, the materiality of the building and how the material then shapes the built form becomes very important. Also, the climate of Paithan and the context of the current housing and institutional building types also contributes to the selection of the material.

The climate of Paithan is characterized by a hot summer and general dryness throughout the year expect for sometimes in monsoons.

However, the monsoon reaching the place is generally not regular and thus inadequate. The most rainfall is experienced in the month of July (average - 772.5 mm) which is also very less in comparison to Mumbai (average - 2205.8mm)

Winters in Paithan have maximum mean temperature of 28.9°C and minimum mean temperature is 10.3°C.

Bricks are known for their qualities of thermal mass which is the ability of a heavy, dense material to store heat and then slowly release it. It means cooler in summers and warmer in winters.

I choose brick as a primary material along with concrete as a secondary material.

The major reasons to choose brick are:

1. It responds to the climate

2. It responds to the context around it

3. It is a familiar material to the people around

The idea is to create a play with semi-transparent and opaque spaces through brick patterns, etc., ranging according to the spatial and experiential requirement which also responds to light according to the idea of a museum.

The spaces which then get generated are a clubbed effort of using the possibilities of brick as a material and the idea of the street scape which is generated by creating mass and void diagrams.

With these, I start creating three-dimensional massing to understand its volumetric working. The concrete columns allow me to create a play in the spaces such that it starts generating in between terraces and double height stilts.

If you see, the volumetric massing includes very large spaces. I thus start breaking down these spaces using stairs and ramps where the large program spaces get broken down into levels to work with and the path also responds to these levels and alters itself with the stairs wherever needed.

The staircase at the center gives a person an overall view of the space while climbing on it.