Charu Gandhi
WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST MEMORY OF SOMETHING YOU DESIGNED? From a young age I had a fascination with origami and the complexities it offered. My father travelled a great deal around Asia and he would visit places like Japan in search of more challenging origami books for me. I was very inventive so I used to take techniques that I’d learned and create new designs. When I was 10 years old I created a paper architectural city. I’ve always really liked the idea of taking something flat and building it up into a multidimensional design. I enjoyed Lego but that sense of something being so predetermined limits the possibilities. I love giving form to something and origami is all about form from the simplest idea. I still occasionally do it; I guess it’s my own version of doodling!
WHICH DESIGN SCHOOL DID YOU TRAIN AT AND HOW HAVE DESIGN SCHOOLS EVOLVED SINCE YOU WERE STUDYING? I studied at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, moving from Foundation Course to the AA Diploma. I followed this with my RIBA/ARB registration training at the Architecture School at Westminster. My first two years at the AA, I had a big drawing board and we were constantly at art shops or model making shops looking for drawing devices such as rotring pens and charcoals. Then I had to buy a computer and incorporate it into my creative
process. It really is a tool of exploration and to design with a computer has completely changed the way we work. This has really synthesised since I left education. We now have new geometries, new possibilities; it is controlled randomness, it is animation of ideas. I think people are now more interested in drawing as a starting point to feed into the technology we have available to us.
WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST EVER PROFESSIONAL DESIGN COMMISSION? One of my foremost design commissions was a competition for the Kielder Observatory, which we won via a RIBA open competition in 2005. RIBA Kielder's lack of light pollution makes it an excellent place for astronomers to view the night sky. This was all part of the brief that had been created for the competition. The observatory is in the form of an all- timber 'land pier', jutting out over the rough landscape of Black Fell. Designed specifically for amateur astronomers and outreach work, the accessible pier form includes an observation deck for private telescopes at night and for looking over Kielder Forest by day. The observatory is oriented south east towards its sister project, the nearby Kielder Sky Space by James Turrell. I have always had an interest in follies set within the landscape, and while the observatory is very much a functional intervention, there is something pavilion like and whimsical about it that I am very proud of. I love this interplay and combination of those things.
This is serious design for real life functions but has been morphed into something that moves beyond that and becomes somewhat playful again. My earliest interior design project was for Candy & Candy, the apartment at One Hyde Park. This did however come a little later in my career.
WHO ARE YOUR DESIGN INSPIRATIONS? Well, I studied at the AA where there was an incredible amount of inspiration, so many luminaries who have all influenced my design creations. Professionally I’d say David Collins. He very cleverly combines this British sensibility with luxury, style and panache. Kelly Wearstler is another incredible inspiration. So courageous in her use of colour, she inspires bravery in her work and dares to mix it up. Isay Weinfeld, the contemporary Brazilian architect is an inspiration of mine for his recent residential works that are an interpretation of what it is to build post modernist homes in a tropical setting. Furthermore, Oscar Neimeyer, the Brazilian modernist architect for his amazing exploration of space and materiality and Shaun Leane for exquisite jewellery. There is intricacy in jewellery design, a geometry to it that I love. Design is all encompassing, take for instance a surface designer I met once who used something as small and seemingly insignificant as a ribbon to create a colour match for a project. Sometimes you just see something that has to be infused in your own design. On a more emotive note, there are many personal
July 2014 Interior Design Today 39
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