Rahul Mehrotra; Nondita Correa Mehrotra; Robert Stephens; Payal Patel
The largest democracy on Earth, India is the seventh-largest country in the world, with the second-highest population on the planet, consisting of over 1.2 billion people. We are intrigued by how contemporary Indian architects view their own country and what their ideas might be in relation to an optimistic future. Rahul Mehrotra is a practicing architect and academic, whose wide experience involves cultural heritage conservation projects in highly sensitive historic areas, strategies relating to the development of cities, as well as building contemporary buildings.
In this exhibition, to explain his aspirations, he presents three projects. One identifies a method of spatial layering in an office complex where new overlaps are created, where the world of the office worker and the world of the gardener become intertwined. Hierarchical divisions created by class differences in India may somehow be adjusted by this architectural layering.
In the second project, low-cost housing structures the landscape of a former sand quarry, creating a series of water bodies to harvest rainwater.
The third project is a new library, where trainee architects experience the impact of architecture, where they can activate responses to local climatic conditions.
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