CORB DAY- Destination 1: Sarabhai House
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Ahmedabad,
India
Thursday, April 17, 2008
For an easy 500 rupees Anand Sarabhai welcomes all and sundry to his abode on nearly every day of the year. In January and February this sometimes means up to 20 people a day. On January the 18th this year, says the guest book, Architects Trent Woods and Jenny Officer of Perth also made the visit.
There is something about entering and being inspired by someone's own home which is then very hard to translate. It is a rare thing to be given an invitation as a complete stranger to walk in and survey with great intensity else's home, someone else's life. To be in Anand Sarabhai's home, one designed by Corbusier, is a proposition even more out of proportion.
On approaching the building I was shocked out how 'brutal' the reality of the building was. But, the building from the outside encourages assumptions of the interior which are subsequently and playfully broken. The strongest elements of the building's exterior are a deep concrete beam/fascia spanning across the top of regular brick blade walls. Bays between the walls are shrouded in basic bamboo curtains. When you pass beneath the massive concrete bulkhead to enter (less of a door and more a threshold) the rectilinear frame is replaced with a catalan vault. The vault is open at both ends without glazing but it is very cool and soothing. From such a humble exterior the inner space expands organically. A cut in the blade wall leads you into a collection of vaults emancipated from the blade wall by off-form concrete beams which as, it is now evident, are holding up the brick vaults rather than the walls (An inversion of the exterior: brick walls hold up concrete fascia). This space would notionally be the 'living room' and it is the first time you could say you were truly inside, the first vaulted chamber being merely a climatic prelude.
There are little timber edged nooks built in to the walls, and timber panels at the end of each vault. On further investigation these panels open as two doors, a 'human' scale door and wonderful swiveling Corbusien door which offers the light and breeze inside. On a nearby table lay a yellow A4 envelope addressed to Anand Sarabhai himself. I was almost tempted to pick it up. I wondered what would be inside. I wanted to go to the guest wing of the house (where Mr Sarabhai lays low while architectural perverts climb over his furniture) and hand it to him personally so he could open it.
Elsewhere are various paintings, prints by Lichtenstein and many sculptures strewn around the room, the pick of which is a Greco-roman figure carved out of a stack of Amhedabad Yellow Pages. The overwhelming feeling of being in the Sarabhai house is that it is well loved by its owner and well respected by all those who visit. Unfortunately, price of the ticket is no license to take photo's which is understandable given it is still very much lived in.
Lastly, it is impossible not to mention the Sarabhai textile collection in Calico Textile Museum. I mentioned it very briefly in the last blog. We decided to see it for a second time. It has the reputation for being the best in India and must be one of the great textile collections in the world. Certainly to see it within the Sarabhai Palace itself is a situation more impressive than comparable collections like that of the V&A in London.
