Huzur Saran Nigam

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2021

A PROFESSIONAL PROFILE

Huzur Saran Nigam

I am an IIT-Kharagpur educated, self-employed architect. I was Delhi based until November 2011, but now I am a resident of both, Delhi and Goa.

Started my career by choosing between the school of planning and architecture, Delhi and IIT-Kharagpur---graduated in 1979; thesis-design: a model-2-tier-grid for Indian inter-state-bus-terminals. Freelanced for city-architects for two years, (namely A.P.Kanvinde, Ram Sharma, Ravindra Bhan and Jasbir Sawhney) while attempting to exhibit the the working model of my thesis to the government- bureaucracy.

Drifted into designing furniture, because neither the above nor any ideas in houses found patrons. It is easier to explain today in presence of some completed works, that This is the way I wanted to build and no other!

By 1983, had a portfolio of furniture-designs: prototypes being developed in a workshop set up privately. To test their academic worth, sent them to the Ivy-league university Rhode Island school of design, United States as an application for a Masters in Furniture design. In May 1984, received a letter of admission and scholarship. Please note, that this portfolio must have competed with the design-work of people who were qualified graduates in furniture design, unlike me.

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Declined the offer, continued with furniture and turnkey office interiors in Delhi. The latter helped evolve a synthesis of furniture design and architectural space; ie. space, if imagined and constructed as SKIN AROUND FURNITURE, and in doing so if the rectangular-pattern-plan be abandoned wherever unnecessary, the result is a significant economy of space.

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By 1987, applied this to the design of a multi-storey apartment block at a site in Anand Lok, New Delhi. As a demo, offered to erect a mock-up of one typical 3-bedroom apartment and detail its interiors. The project lost momentum because the government cancelled the site allotment location.

As the photographs of the model above show, the building has a lot of outer skin. This is uneconomical, but presents excellent opportunity to create windows and terraces.

As a result, terraces in this 8 floor Apartment block are possible at any of 4 locations---the apartment-design is such. Also therefore, the terrace-location repeats only after 4 floors.

In the meantime, individual residential design started to find patronage in Delhi as a result of my designs in furniture. It had taken 10 years! But in 10 years I had gotten educated to understand that every Indian building a house, was building a Taj Mahal. Unfortunately, he lacked requisite finances.

I also realized that in the richest countries in the world, though people did not lack finances, they did not build. They lacked something more precious than money---the emotional will.

You have to be in love with your family to go through the rigours of building a house through the regular route of choosing an architect etc, which by the way, is the right way. A house is like jewelry. Men buy it, but not for themselves. Likewise, men build houses, but not really for themselves.

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Houses in Delhi

Mr Menon’s house

C-51 Soami Nagar

Mike Pandey’s house

Amod Agrawal’s house

Arun Gupta’s house

A question often put to me is why did I not accept the scholarship from Rhode Island school of design? Well, my answer usually generates a second question: Then why did I apply in the first place? Well, my answer to the first question is that there is nothing that I like more than designing houses and accepting the American scholarship would have taken me away from precisely that. My answer to the second question is, that I sent my portfolio to RISD, because I had no other way of knowing the professional worth of my furniture designs.

Details developed thru having designed furniture for almost a decade resulted in a free-flowing-windowscape becoming a feature of an architectural-style, constituting the following vital features:

1) A burglar-proof detail by way of making the removal of glass from the exterior impossible. Glass is installed from outside not because it is a requirement of glass-installation. But because beadings installed from outside alone can dispel rain water. However, as you go into depth, you realize that it is only the bottom beading that works as rain-water-dispeller; the other beadings play no role. So, if the top beading and 2 vertical beadings were installed from inside, and only the bottom one installed from outside, then both purposes would be achieved. ie. glass would be installed from inside and yet rain water would be dispelled; in the bargain making it impossible for a burglar to break in noiselessly simply by uninstalling the glass.

2) A locking mechanism which works across the sliding-path of the
shutter, not along. Along is weak. Across is strong.

3) An overlapping type shutter-design minimizing admittance of external sound-decibels

5) Minimalistic pelmets for curtains and blinds.

6) Control of blinds hanging outside from the interior without opening
the window-shutter. Externally hung blinds exercise more effective sun control.

C-51 Soami Nagar

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C-51 Soami Nagar

Pradeep Singh’s House

Rajiv Kapuria’s house

C-51 Soami Nagar

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HOW WAS C-51 REDESIGNED? C-51 is the number of my house. It used to be my father’s. I availed of the luxury of inheriting it, demolishing it and rebuilding it.

Regardless of who a house is for, in the urban format of modern architecture, more than what one (should) includes in the design-criteria, one (should) excludes. This is so because on one hand urban spaces are so small and on the other, human desires so many---thanks to consumerism, the undeniable genre of our era.

Designing a residence for someone other than a king or knight or nobleman started with the implementation of the institution of democracy, which is roughly one hundred years ago, when the technology to satisfy one’s wants was NOT available, the space was.

Today the technology to satisfy ones wants is available, but the space is not.

And consumerism is inflating the list of wants resulting in people forgetting their priorities.

Mr Kalra’s House

Mr Kalra’s house [ABOVE] and Mr. Kapuria’s house [NEXT PAGE] swap sides on which the premises are entered. So the building entrance-doors are straight upfront on arrival, while the other side---the open side becomes good for greenery and lawn, entered into from within the house.

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Sides swapped, as explained at the end of the previous page.

Lawn and greenery due to the swap.

Entrance upfront on arrival, due to the swap.

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An Office Building

An Office Building

Building Entrance

Typical Floor Plan

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The 6th IIT.

Indian Institute of Technology, Gauhati was the 6th IIT. And I had been in the profession for 15 years when an architectural competition was floated by the government to create a design for it in 1994.

A 4 square mile site on the bank of the Brahmaputra, it had a small hill towards the end close to the river while the site could be entered only at the opposite end. So, to enter and then close in on to the foot of the hill by road, happened naturally.

I placed the library at the foot of this hill, stretched its bottom two floors horizontally to juxtapose into the 2 main floors and entrance of the institute, but in the vertical direction, stretched it upto the top of the hill and placed the humanities departments there---on the hill, right on top of everything in the campus.

So, if one took the lift within the library, one could go up all the floors and exit into the humanities block at the top end.

This feature would state itself further by virtue of a bridge visible from far along with the library as the only tall building on the campus, the idea being to underline yet again that technology is meant to serve mankind and not vice versa. See where Monument to Humanities is located.

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Unfortunatley, what I just said has been said many many times in the decades following. But in 1994, I was still smarting by the memory of what a 10 year old had seen in 1968 in just the trailer of 2001: A Space Odessy---the Stanley Cubric film. The 10 year old was me. I could never forget that Douglas Rain refused to open the door!

Today, when you are forced to change your phone, change your laptop, upgrade your operating system, Douglas Rain is refusing to open the door or maybe forcibly closing one. My job as an architect is to ask whether the design of one institute of Technology will be able to stop Douglas? The answer on a sober note is that we should all do what is within our power to steer life in the right direction. And the answer on an inspirational note is Why Not!--- Architecture is frozen music. Music does have the power to change your mood. So does architecture.

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GOA: Villas in gated communities, Apartments in gated communities, and Stand Alone Villas---I spent the last decade designing.

For Vianaar Homes at Anjuna

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For Vianaar Homes at Nerul

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For Vianaar Homes at Nerul

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For Vianaar Homes at Alibaug

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For Vianaar Homes at Asagaon

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The Disappearing Villa

A 2 bedroom villa, that looks like emerging from undulating landscape and then disappearing back into undulating landscape...... more than once, even twice, thrice.

All visible parts of the villa would be white and hard in contrast to the soft green scape, and parts of the roof laden with green scape..... a single storey height difference easy to trance through without realizing that one has during a leisurely walk!

A curving drive that slopes up and terminates under a portico large enough to turn a car around, the house entered at this very level of the drawing-dining, kitchen, verandah and swimming pool with a paragola above.

A solitary flight of stairs leads down to a bedroom below and a bedroom above, the lower one opening into a lower lawn...... I’m searching for land to suit this design.

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How much land does a man require REDUX?

This is to bring the reader’s attention to an architectural design which if implemented at the national level, has the scope to benefit the lower middle class immensely.

THE SCHEME IN A NUTSHELL:

EVERYTHING THAT THE PICTURES ON THE FOLLOWING 8 PAGES SHOW, TO BE DELIVERED TO A FAMILY OF 4 PERSONS OVER A CARPET AREA OF JUST 35 SQUARE METRES (376 SQUARE FEET).

A 2-PART SCHEME: IN WHICH AS PER PART-1: THE GOVERNMENT COMPLETES ALL ASPECTS OF CONSTRUCTION AND DONATES / LOANS / SELLS EACH UNIT IN THE BUILDING TO AN ELLIGIBLE INDIVIDUAL.

PART-2: THE INDIVIDUAL THEN FURNISHES THE 35 SQM. UNIT AS PER THE FURNITURE-ARRANGEMENT-PLAN AND PROTOTYPE-DETAILS MADE AVAILABLE THROUGH AGENCIES / VENDORS / AND EVEN INDIVIDUALS DIRECTLY.

Each individual can therefore control how fast or slow he chooses to furnish, or which part he chooses to furnish first, because he will most probably not have the money to be able to complete all tasks in one go.

As a result, while some individuals will make use of all design-details within a few years, some will take longer. The design by virtue of its almost mathematical certainties, will simply become a pleasure to adhere to, rather than a compulsion.

The photographs attached are of actual construction which can be visited. Thereby the documented-design can be assessed in reality.

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It takes time for one to believe, but it is true that the cost-difference between good design and bad design is more or less zero.

Let us understand the just said in bits and pieces, because of its importance: Architectural design is a direct result of the positioning of walls and “no-walls.” A “no-wall” is a window, a door.

So what I am saying is that in architectural design either a wall exists or does not. If in the opinion of the user, there exists a wall where there should have been a window, or there exists a window where there should have been a wall, or if both exist such that they don’t serve their intended purposes, then design has undoubtedly failed.

But the cost of this failed-design = the cost of an immensely successful design, a design in which the place for not only the wall and the window, even every small or large function of the interior, is ideally suited and synchronized.

Imagine an area of 35 sqm. This could be [1] (Below) a perfect square measuring 5.9m x 5.9m, or [2] a rectangle measuring 4m x 8.75m, or [3] 3m x 11.66m, or [4] a many-sided figure of 35 sqm. The material costs of all including [4] would be equal; the labour cost of [4] understandably higher, but not hugely higher.

Also imagine that [4] is the wall pattern of the design of a dwelling unit ideal for 4 persons---dividable by louvered sliding doors into 2 night-time bedrooms---has worked out to be 35 sqm and has been constructed and can be visited. Thereby all claims being made by its documented design here on this website, can be assessed in reality.

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In a nutshell, if the government constructs sets of dwelling units of [4] and donates them or loans them or sells them to people and then the people who are in possession of them furnish them as per designs of prototypes made available through agencies and vendors, then it may well be upto an individual owner, how long one takes to furnish upto the fullest scope of the design from [A] to [F]

The fact of the matter is that [4] and various prototypes, fit in sync---that is an architectural guarantee.

The prototypes consist of:

[A] A double box-bed with 4 storage compartments operable without having to lift the mattress; this is possible as the mattress folds and unfolds like a book within the confines of the bed.

An overhead multipurpose storage rack, concealed tube-lights and a concealed cabinet fan are part of this low ceiling area; low ceiling as there is a loft-compartment also accommodated in this region.

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[B] A wardrobe 0.55 m deep X 1 m wide X 2.1 m tall with carved out bedside table space. (Both pictures, below) The entry to the kitchen lit up in the picture. (Right, below)

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[C] The kitchen can close if required. This refrigerator- door-style 7 feet tall bottle rack, slides (Right). In combination with doors sliding from a perpendicular direction, ie. from between the fridge and the wardrobe, this kitchen with a huge window can shut itself from the rest of the house (Far right). All the storages shown in the pictures work within the kitchen-space with the efficiency of an aircraft-cockpit. An under the counter water purifier, a microwave, 2 toasters, an 180 litre fridge, a 2 burner gas-hob, a dimensionally synchronized drip-rack and sink, hot water from the toilet-geezer,.... its all part of the check list!

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As said in the beginning, the space (35 sqm) divides into two at the sliding of louvered doors. Pages 19-22 described all on one side of the louvers---A double bed, a wardrobe, a kitchen, a toilet. On the other side of the louvers, which is also the side from which the unit is entered and exited, there are 2 single beds cum 2 double-seater sofas (Below and on Pg 25).

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[D] Imagine the two seater sofas (Below) fitting into spaces measuring 2.15m x 0.775m each. These would then be 2 single-bedspaces for 2 siblings of a family of 4 (2 parents + 2 grown-up children) or overnight guests and during the day function like sofas.

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[E] The only requirement remaining to be fulfilled is wardrobe space for the users of the single beds of this house. 0.55 m deep X 1.6 m wide X 1. m tall is provided for behind the 1.5m x 0.75m table (Above) which doubles up as a dining table and study table. Likewise, as per the requirements of a the family living in the unit, the wardrobe space can be modified into a study-cabinet partly or wholly.

[F] An 8 litre washing machine cum dryer with a table top to iron clothes and rack-space behind sliding louvers to dry clothes naturally, (Right) further lends dignity to human existence. To have to scramble to put up a presentable front to unannounced visitors, does lack dignity.

“These people just spend the day working and night sleeping. So how would the details of their houses, such as the ones I

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had attempted, matter?”---I wonder how those who said this would react to what this design presents! “A waste of human resource ?” or “Maintenance of Human dignity ?”

Well, frankly I don’t care to know their answer, because I know mine..... And having maintained this truth for 42 years in itself is rewarding enough. Yes, that Low Cost Housing Proposal was made 42 years ago, in 1980.

(In reference to the context of these comments---“These people just spend the day working”---refer to Page 2B of this website)

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