CHACOL– Chinmaya + Apurva COLLABORATIVE, Los Angeles
"CHACOL" is an association between Apurva Pande and Chinmaya Misra who have "COLLABORATED" on several architectural, art, design and photography projects.Apurva Pande graduated with a masters in architecture at UCLA in 2002 and worked till recently at the office of Frank Gehry. Chinmaya Misra graduated with a masters in architecture at SCI_Arc in 2001 and worked till recently at the Jerde Partnership.
Studio Works & Competitions
1. LO_RES LIVING
2. (IN) SECURITY COMPETITION , UCLA 2002 (Winning Entry)
3. SHINKENCHIKU RESIDENTIAL DESIGN COMPETITION 2001 (JAPAN ARCHITECT)
4. E2 CONTEST 2002
LO_RES LIVING
The project submitted is a single family residence. It was undertaken by us as a design-build project as both designer and client. Remodeling was completed in May 2004. Located in Los Angeles, in the West Adams district, it has a built-up area of approximately 1600 sqf on a 6700 sqf lot. It is situated at the end of a cul de sac abutting Ballona Creek.
They scoped the city thoroughly for affordable yet distinct neighborhoods. It was important for us to break into the housing market under $400,000 and to finance our construction entirely on credit and home equity. The budget for construction was $100,000 and the entire process averaged $70 sqf. No financial help was sought from others.
They purchased the property as a tear-down in a near total state of dilapidation. The existing 3 bed, 2 bath residential structure, built 1950, (a stylistic variant of the prevailing 50s Desert Modern homes) was a load-bearing concrete brick wall shell with a slab on grade. All interior walls were gutted for remodeling and additional construction. The exterior structural concrete block walls were retained and the roof restored.
They were keen to break the stereotypical architect career path. Accepted prevailing wisdom renders inconceivable the possibility of young architects and recent graduates using their design education to build for themselves. They were inspired by the ideals of the 60s case study modernists who attempted to make modern design a way of life rather than a wealthy aspiration of the few. They gambled on their abilities as architects, clients and contractors handling simultaneous issues of design, funding and construction.
Lo_Res Living and the process behind it has been an attempt at a prototype that can demonstrate architecture as a plausible option for others like them.
They named their house Lo_Res Living from a curious file naming mistake. It describes rather appropriately how the house was built within a messy intersection of design intentions, time constraints and mounting debt.
(IN) SECURITY COMPETITION , UCLA 2002 (Winning Entry)
CREATING INSECURITY
The competiton was conceived post 9/11.
It aimed to test and question basic notions of security and comfort.
TERRA NOVA VOIDED GROUND-GROUNDED VOID
They attempted to see if the historically understood condition of ground-void could be inverted?
Can the ground be a mutable, ethereal orientation device lacking solidity?
Can the act of walking be a negotiation through density?
Can the ground be dark with luminous patches anonymising the experience of space?
Can the installation serve as a spatial negotiation using anxiety rather than comfort?
In a study on orientation, they designed a space where space was inverted and "tactile ground would replace the optical sky". The floor was covered by a reflective, rubbery, and foam filled cushion while the space above contained ceiling to waist high black foam tubes. Elsewhere, sheets of transparent film stretched to enclose photographs dealt with the idea of viewing and obfuscation..
SHINKENCHIKU RESIDENTIAL DESIGN COMPETITION 2001
SURROUND DATAHOME
The competition wanted to investigate the reaction of the city and the individual with the upcoming demand for densified mixed use zones on the globe.
How does, in the case of this competition, the house play a role in city planning? How does city planning influence the planning of the small house? What data interfere?
This ambition reacts on the classical western position and therefore very definition of the house: its solitude position in the landscape, that has been the ultimate dream for many families, architects and magazines, has brought designs that are derived only from highly private and exclusive parameters.
What houses or homes will be made under super dense circumstances?
At what moment does the house start to react, to resist?
What happens to the house when it is directly surrounded by others?
What data intrude on the domestic?
EXPLORING THE URBAN CONDITION
CHOOSE an in-between zone of a town or city.
CARRY out a reading of the town with regard to the in-between zone.
CONCEIVE an approach to the in-between zone that will impact the urban scale.
CREATE a project that illustrates this approach.
The competition focuses on the ‘urban blur’.
INBETWEEN SPACE
They chose a section of the Los Angeles River as our ‘urban blur’. The LA River is not a river in the traditional sense. Downtown Los Angels is a diverse urban hub largely oblivious to the river. The river thus lies in an un-classifiable situational extremity.
They studied the interruptions, voids and ruptures through this dense urban fabric and generated a surface typology informed from the solid-void ratio.
The blur was seen not as a suppressive force, but as a generative one.
They created an urban-prosthetic, one that was conceived as a varying shell that changed as the distance from the river increased. The hybrid urban development included public landscape, residential, and live-work uses.
