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A Home Around a Pool
Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan
Interior Renovation, Built
30,000 Sq. Ft.
This home is for a ceramist and a painter. The couple wished to have spaces in which they could each create their art in a specific and solitary way. As a design strategy, the home is divided into a studio and living unit. A screened courtyard in the middle allows for ample light and cross ventilation. It serves as an interstitial space that separates but also connects the two sections of the home.
Our Practice
In the everyday work we do, we repeatedly ask ourselves certain questions - as a way to revisit the values that are essential to us:
Who is this for?
Why are we doing this? Why does this matter?
What does the “site” ask of us? How can something sit lightly or quietly on this land?
How can a space bring joy and calm to people’s lives? How can we practice with empathy?
How can we evoke a sense of beauty?
Often the answers to such questions are difficult - our process involves wandering between these questions, drawing and making.
For any project, we move between site plans, details, material studies and (ir)relevant out-of-studio conversations to understand the full depth and breath of a project. We work around a large table, with projects and conversations spilling into one another, informing and creating the fullness of a project..
We want to continually understand what it means to “listen” to a site. It's air, light quality, the birds that surround it, it's water-table - all of these things inform the design of a project. The site of a project often becomes a drawing board. The way in which a railing folds, or the proportion of a window may be determined as a space comes to life. A building in construction serves as a guide for the design and the completion of a project.
We strive to nurture good relationships. We often ask ourselves - how can something be “good”? How can things be done in a “good way”? We see architecture as not only the practice of design and building, but also a parallel practice of forging and nurturing good relationships.
To Make and Play
To make is to design. By using our hands, we understand the richness and possibilities of a material.
Often, we find ourselves playing with materials and things with little direction. We find play as an essential means of discovery. Play teaches us. It opens us up to possibilities which in turn enriches the work we do. Spending time to play in the workshop, or even in conversation allows for a fresh and wholesome understanding of a space or a thing.
To Travel
Every year we try to travel together as way of reminding ourselves of that which is important to us. We travel to places that we have imagined and longed to know. Walking streets and glaciers allow us to experience the earth, its physicality and its peoples. These experiences nourish us, our work and our collective lives. They keep us connected to the larger “site”, that is our world.
Through travel, we also strive to connect with designers (late and present) and their work as a way of learning. We travel like students of architecture and of life.
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