When seen from a distance, Hampi Artwork Labs might go for a spectacular riverbank – if a riverbank did such a factor as levitate. Positioned in southern India close to the Unesco World Heritage Web site of Hampi, the construction is a sleight of hand by main Indian architect Sameep Padora (behind quite a few Indian homes, reminiscent of Lattice Home, in addition to Wallpaper* Design Awards Greatest Public Constructing 2021 Temple of Steps).
Hampi Artwork Labs undulates with the panorama, echoing the close by Tungabhadra River and exuding a lightness of being that belies its sculptural proportions. Unfold throughout 18 acres of virgin land, the lately opened arts centre, based by Sangita Jindal and Tarini Jindal Handa of Indian powerhouse JSW, performs host to exhibition areas, studios, ceramic and printmaking workshops, gardens, flats for residencies, and a café.
(Picture credit score: Hampi Artwork Labs, 2024, courtesy of JSW Basis)
Hampi Artwork Labs: a contemporary constructing for a storied web site
For Padora, the founder and principal of his eponymous Mumbai-based apply, it was vital to tread flippantly. In spite of everything, town has a storied previous. Between the 14th and early seventeenth centuries, the land at this time often known as Hampi was the roaring capital of the Vijayanagara empire, the final nice Hindu kingdom. Its rulers constructed forts, royal complexes, temples, pillared concourses, memorial buildings and waterways, making certain an architectural legacy that might outlive their reign.
The trouble proved fruitful even within the face of invasion, when many buildings have been ravaged past redemption. Those that survived sit shoulder to shoulder at this time with the ragged hills and hundreds of naturally occurring granite boulders for which Hampi is equally famed.
(Picture credit score: Hampi Artwork Labs, 2024, courtesy of JSW Basis)
For a land so distinctive, the structure needed to be equally so, though Padora admits that the purpose of departure wasn’t instantly clear. ‘We deliberated over whether or not to reference the historic structure or the barren panorama it sat on, and in the end selected the latter. It was vital to contextualise the brand new construct to what had endured over the centuries, not what hadn’t,’ says Padora.
(Picture credit score: Hampi Artwork Labs, 2024, courtesy of JSW Basis)
Nodding to the pure context, every area was designed to carry a mirror to the topography. A living proof is the edifice housing the gallery and studios. Formed like a meandering river, it echoes the ebb and stream of the exercise round. In figuring out its curvature, Padora took a leaf from city sociologist Manuel Castells’s ‘area of flows’ idea. ‘The time period, on this case, encapsulates all method of pure occurrences: gravity, percolation, mountainous want paths. I imagined the folks inside in a lot the identical means. The thought was to allow them to get swept deeper and deeper,’ he says.
(Picture credit score: Hampi Artwork Labs, 2024, courtesy of JSW Basis)
Padora envisaged the panorama not as a backdrop for artwork, however as a murals itself. This meant treating the roof no in another way from the bottom, even merging the 2 with steps that problem the place, or whether or not, one ends and the opposite begins. Likewise, your complete exterior, together with the roof, is characterised by domestically sourced terracotta, and the rooftop strolling path is flanked by backyard beds that can, in time, develop to cowl the hardscape and camouflage it in opposition to the encircling verdure.
(Picture credit score: Hampi Artwork Labs, 2024, courtesy of JSW Basis)
Padora and his group – which included architects Aparna Dhareshwar, Vami Koticha, Kunal Sharma and Aum Gohil – took the same strategy with the artist residences, imagining them as pebbles in a stream amidst courtyards emblematic of water. Every residence is outfitted with a kitchenette, a eating room, a walk-in closet and toilet, and a lounge with a megalithic granite couch that seemingly grows out of the bottom. ‘We exercised each a neighborhood sensitivity and a worldwide sensitivity, with native supplies variously reimagined in fashionable types,’ says Handa, Hampi Artwork Labs’ artistic director.
(Picture credit score: Hampi Artwork Labs, 2024, courtesy of JSW Basis)
Padora’s ethos of fluidity went hand in hand with Handa’s, who was agency in her perception that Hampi Artwork Labs’ world-class residency programme needs to be open to anybody from wherever, and certainly it welcomes artists from throughout the globe. Its inaugural cycle consists of Bhasha Chakrabarti of the USA, Promiti Hossain of Bangladesh, and Sharbendu De, Madhavi Gore and Anirudh Singh Shaktawat of India.
(Picture credit score: Hampi Artwork Labs, 2024, courtesy of JSW Basis)
Hampi Artwork Labs’ maiden exhibition, ‘Proper Foot First’, curated by impartial curator Phalguni Guliani, is of particular observe. Borrowing works from the prized Jindal Assortment, it presents ensembles of artworks that without delay distinction and complement one another, transcending varied disciplines, generations and eras. Featured artists embody Andy Warhol, Atul Dodiya, Annie Morris, Atul Dodiya, Ai Weiwei, Bharti Kher, BV Doshi, Dayanita Singh, Lubna Chowdhary, Manish Nai, Manu Parekh, Praneet Soi, Reena Saini Kallat, Rohini Devasher, Sayan Chanda, Sheba Chhacchi, Shilpa Gupta, Suhasini Kejriwal, Tushar Joag and Zarina Hashmi.
(Picture credit score: Hampi Artwork Labs, 2024, courtesy of JSW Basis)
The present exhibition is designed to echo the overarching structure by means of curvilinear walkways that symbolize the philosophical concept that ‘no man can ever step in the identical river twice’. It’s a metaphor completely apt for an arts centre ever evolving, and one anticipated to be ever in spate.
(Picture credit score: Hampi Artwork Labs, 2024, courtesy of JSW Basis)
Hampi Artwork Labs opens on 6 February 2024 Hampi, India
sp-arc.internet
hampiartlabs.com
Supply: Wallpaper
