Of Corners and Cobwebs…

What is that moment of truth for you as a Designer?

Is it that first enquiry, the call to engage you for a project? Or that first meeting with the client, their dreams, and briefs? Perhaps the first site visit, where you step onto the bedrock of your project and look around? Well, these are all moments when the project takes wings in our imagination. Yet, isn’t that true moment of truth when we finally sit down alone with those sheets of plain paper, stubs of soft pencils, and maybe a DND sign on the door? We go into ‘labour’ to bring forth a space where dreams and realities can live happily ever after. As we put pencil to paper, our hearts skip a beat, knowing, ‘we cannot draw a line without changing the universe’. (Adi Sankara). And often, that first line shaping the heartbeat of the space we hold, is a wall.

After two issues on 'Spaces' and 'Yards,' this third folio on 'Walls' marks our first step into the deeper realms of Design Conversation—a moment of truth for Inscape.

Drawing a wall laden with all the listed data and requirements of the project to stand tall as a spine is a toll in itself. But nothing compared to addressing the unlisted insinuations of the physical and psychic quotient walls hold with no direct answers. Taught that a circle encloses the largest space within the least perimeter, many students did round walls for the low-cost housing challenge in our first year. ‘Poor utility, precious space wasted; curved wall and the straight lines of furniture don’t align,’ said the reviews. Lessons learnt. Third year, keen on doing ‘something really different,’ I did round rooms for a prison project. Prison cells don’t have any furniture to align, right? Review: A circular wall can loom heavy on the inmates often with deep trauma and higher suicide rates! A wall can even be a choice we offer between life and death; blood on our hands?

Then there are the even more complex cases of the living dead! The lingering fragrance and unique thumbprints clients leave at our tables which refuse to go long after they depart; Memories and stories which define them. A Silicon Valley client is frustrated that his mother does not want to live in the brand-new contemporary house he just built her. What was missing from the brief was her story. At eighty, separated from her only son, she is once again that little girl orphaned at two, with no memories of an own room let alone a home. She needed corners; nooks to huddle, curl up and cry. Walls are about silent shadows, dusty corners and cobwebs too. For they need to bear loads, not just of the structure but the shifting swaying winds of life. Walls can be strong allies showing the way, versatile storyboards we mount to offer unique sanctuaries where clients can live safe and happy with their truths.

Inscape has been very fortunate to get some of the most brilliant minds to bring you their collective insight about the walls in this third Folio. We have maestro Rajeev Sethi, the ambassador who romanticises walls, opening up a whole new vista of ‘story-walling’ via arts, tradition, and culture which adapt and flow with time. We have Zaha Hadid Architects sharing the legacy of a small-town girl from Iraq who broke many walls and barriers of convention, to redefine them as pointers to freedom and fluidity. Prof Shubhrajit talks about how walls shed light to make us see, while Farah argues on how walls can listen and talk too! For Anand Sonecha, walls are as central as the inner eye for us to trust blindly, and for Vinu Daniel, a ‘Wall Maker’ he has a whole new philosophy to share. With 100 special moments and instances on walls brought to you by the Inscape Research Team and Design Tips from our power partner Nippon Paint, we hope Folio 3 on Walls will kindle your thoughts and imagination. From Stonehenge of 3000 BC, for times immemorial, walls have always been a guide navigating us with a sense of hope and direction.

If there is A Wall, there is A Way.