Trip to Alibaug

A 45-minute ferry and at least one, maybe two or three worlds away from Bombay, sits Alibaug, home to world-class architect and Avasara designer, Bijoy Jain (google this guy and check out the "India by Design" article on him).   Jungle canopy not skyscrapers, small plots of rice not slum shanty towns, women drying shrimp on the pavement or carrying bundles of firewood on their heads not scurrying to work in saris and sneakers--we sure aren't in Kansas anymore!   Our rickshaw veers onto a dirt path driveway lined with banyan trees to a compound of peace, where Bijoy lives.  

He invites us to join a communal lunch and spends some time hearing our thoughts about school design, before taking us on a tour of his open-air studio.  Under a single tin shed roof, a couple of architects tap on their Macbooks,  a carpenter planes a 8’ square rosewood coffee table,  one caner weaves a reed seat for a Danish chair while another carves the wood frame for a custom chaise, and nearby metal workers forge locks and hinges.  

On one side sits a full-scale mock ups of a window and a teak bathtub, and everywhere are models on all different scales.  

Sam, Bijoy’s right-hand man and friend of Roopa & Cubas, explains that the workmen are the real designers.  Some of the workers are skilled in traditional crafts from generations back, others arrive knowing only that it’s a great place to work, and they learn.  Bijoy says he’s cut back on architects because they can’t keep up with the workmen who finish whole projects before the drawings are even done. The architects stay an average of 2-3 years, the workmen spend their lives.   As Sam notes, designing isn’t drawing, it’s seeing, and these workers see everything.  Their untutored drawing skills are phenomenal!  Bijoy describes a rich symbiosis that's keeping history alive; he says he's learned a ton about traditional craftsmanship from his workers, and in turn, he and his architects have engaged in some pretty sophisticated research to uncover lost techniques which they, in turn, teach to the workers. 

We’ve laughed with many of you about Bijoy's design which involves his constructing progressively larger models until a full house appears, but we saw him take this to a new extreme.  He and his crew spent a week on a site, setting up poles for supports and mesh fabric for walls to design a house compound that worked for the site-specific topography, light, existing trees and rocks.  The clients joined them there for lunch, walked through their prospective home and talked out some of their questions and concerns. Bijoy insists there was no better way to deal with a complex site, the careful measuring needed, and confused clients in such a time-efficient manner without a full-scale model in place from which to work.   This process may prove a challenge for their next project, a sky scraper, but just imagine the possibilities for any upcoming developments where you live!   And while we spend a lot of our time noting the surprising juxtapositions and quirky contradictions we're seeing, the one consistency we continue to encounter has been the unrivaled generosity of the people we meet--from those who give up whole afternoons to be with us or invite us to a meal or offer us directions or a ride or useful advice, we have found the warmth and kindness of the Indian people we have met most humbling.  Bijoy and Sam were certainly no exception.