Tea Time

For an office who is at this moment putting into effect several processes and ways of working (project management, site scheduling, material calculations, drawing designation, client communication... Name it and we probably have a process or an idea of a process for it) one thing we still haven't been able to figure out is a tea schedule. The making of the tea is probably the only defined activity. Leena prepares the tea and leaves it for us in the kitchen. Exactly after that is where things go downhill. There is no fixed time for tea. The first round usually happens when someone is either feeling really generous to bring it for themselves and everyone else, or if someone is in dire need of tea and so will bring it for themselves and everyone else. That's still the part that someone or the other will volunteer for. The part that we still struggle with is the washing of the teacups. We've tried assigning this duty by day, lists have been made, people have been policed into the job and yet somehow or the other the last question you'd hear at the end of the day is "Who's turn was it to wash the cups?"

-Mannat 

Almost Perfect

Imagine a nicely designed living room. You’ve planned the space well, the furniture units are customized to fit the needs and aesthetics, there are openings bringing in natural light. Perfect right?
But wait. What if you’ve got all this and the network of beams on the ceiling is done as such that it forms the most unsightly ceiling. What now?
When faced with an issue like this on one of our sites, the best solution we could come up with was a false ceiling. But then again we didn’t want to cover up the entire ceiling, making the room look much smaller in terms of the height. After starting the design, Purva came into the office to discuss it with Sai. Before he even began, he quickly asked everyone who was interested in knowing how a false ceiling works to come sit in on the discussion. He explained the characterisitcs of the material, its joinery and how it’s fixed on site. We discussed the sizes of gypsum sheets available, how their brittle nature works and the possible materials we could use to fix it. I always thought that you necessarily had to have channels to fix it up, turns out you don’t. We then discussed how we could make the design interesting, leaving some parts open, composing it based on the existing beams and even toyed with the idea of cove lighting.
Now when I imagine the space, it really does seem perfect with the addition of this design element!

-Mannat

Inside Out

Yesterday I had mentioned that the best approach to start a design is to work from the larger picture to the details. But sometimes this approach is not a one-way street and requires a bit of a back and forth too. For one of our recent projects we worked from macro to micro. Ultimately we were happy with the end result for the spaces and interiors but the massing of the building wasn't working for us. After a while of spinning around the model on Sketchup (even the 3D model must've been dizzy the end of it), we realized that the solution didn't lie on the outside. Things started coming together when we started reworking the interior spaces, adding to them where needed, removing spaces where possible. Ultimately the exercise actually led to a better result in the massing. Thus, in this case the approach of working inside out was what was needed in the end. The whole design process is perhaps an alternation between macro to micro and micro to macro!

-Mannat 

Macro to Micro

One of the questions that is often asked in the interviews at Sandarbh is whether you like to work on the big picture or if you prefer to dwell on the details. Turns out, all of us fit into one category or the other. For those of us who are more detail oriented, it often becomes only about the details and we tend to miss out on the larger scheme of things. But over the past 3 months I've noticed that the best place to start is at a macro level and work your way inwards. Once the decisions have been taken in terms of the space planning and the overall design, then it becomes easier to detail out the spaces and resolve them. Turns out when you try going the other way around, mostly you end up with a mish-mash of well-detailed spaces that somehow don't come together cohesively. On the other hand the macro to micro design approach yields decidedly better results!

-Mannat 

Made with Love

A big part of my initial homesickness was linked with food. I am a foodie by nature and a lot of my associations with people and places are linked with food. The one thing I really miss about home are the yummy goodies my mother and grandmother have to offer. Every evening when I would get home from college, I would be pampered with bhel puri or a towering toast or a glass of cold coffee with ice cream. Even though they're miles away, these lovely ladies still make sure I'm well fed. They put in the effort and send across home food every now and then.
Yesterday my sister brought back a a whole pack of home made Rajma from Delhi. We all sat around the table after a long day in the office, with steaming rice and Rajma lying in the centre. We piled our plates with the food, enjoying the home made goodness. The smile on my face could not have been wiped by anything in that moment. In that one plate of Rajma-Rice I could feel all the love from home being sent across to me!

-Mannat

Thinking Faces

It often happens that even when I'm not doing anything, the gears in my head are constantly turning.  In moments like these my face is completely blank, eyes staring out into space. This sort of bothers people around me, especially Sai. He calls it my 'Thinking Face'. And its true too! the other day I was thinking about something and Nayana seeing my expression actually thought I was waiting to ask her a question (In my defense I was only thinking in her direction)
I might be a blank canvas on the outside but this is the exact scenario in my head...

Interestingly enough, I'm not the only one with a tell-tale face. Nayana has a 'Question Face', Clarence has an 'I think I'm going to mess this up Face' and Harshitha has a total 'Poker Face' in all situations except when confronted with bad design.

Sai too has a 'Thinking Face' of his own - but his is more of an expression of anger. One time a client was so freaked out by his thinking face on site that it almost cost him the project.
When you come to think of it that way, a blank thinking face doesn't seem so bad, does it?

-Mannat

More the Merrier

When I joined Sandarbh we were already a team of 14 people and many more joined us soon. I keep saying we have grown as an office but the extent of this growth hit me only today. With so many holidays making up the most of this week, only 6 of us were at work today. The numbers were so few that we didn't even need to spillover to the garage (where you'd find more than half the office population). The emptiness was overwhelming. We kept talking about the coming Monday when the office would be at full strength again. Harshitha was decidedly at the front of this conversation. Ananya then mentioned that there was exactly as many people in office when they joined as there were today. And that was when I realised how accustomed we have become to the number of people in office. For them the numbers have grown four-fold while for us it's been an addition of a couple of people only. I can't possibly imagine a day like today to be the average day. I for one am quite merry with more people around me...

-Mannat