Hello!
I am Varsha Vadiraj, a student at the Edinburgh College of Art pursuing a post-graduate degree in Interior, Architectural, and Spatial design. Hailing from India, I completed my Bachelor’s in Interior Design from a rainy little student town called Manipal, much alike Edinburgh.
Architecture and design, for me, have always been synonymous with the progressive upliftment of society through physical and cultural mediums. The art of sourcing relevant information on a molecular level that later compounds to create something monumental is the ground of my perpetual fascination with the subject. Being mildly acquainted with the concepts of sustainability in the latter years of my undergraduate program piqued my interest in adaptive reuse and the creative restoration of buildings. I truly believe that scrupulous applications of these themes would considerably reduce the carbon footprint caused by the construction industry and pave the way for a better environment. The solemn urge to explore this spectrum that significantly influences architecture became my motivation to choose ‘Environmental Design’ as my elective.
When I started my practice as an Interior designer two years ago, fresh out of college and thrilled at the new phase I was about to embark upon, there was also a guileless disregard for the adverse nuances of the industry. It was while working on an upscale luxury residence I realized the massive amount of masonry waste that is generated at a construction site on a day-to-day basis, due to design alterations and replacements. Waste, which can be recycled but unfortunately isn’t. This brought about a sure sense of eagerness that kept augmenting inside me to understand sustainability better by learning and adapting new ways to reuse construction debris and architectural elements that are disposed to facilitate new design applications.
Delving deeper into that direction, one of the projects that intrigued me into a second glance was the ‘The Collage House’ in Mumbai, India. The residence designed to cater to modern and traditional conventions not only features a front facade with recycled city-demolished home windows and doors, but also hundred-year-old stone columns from a dismantled house. Recycled materials like old textile blocks and fabric waste also weave themselves into the formulation of the design.
Projects, such as the one above, truly illustrate that creativity and sustainable reuse can congregate to make a better environment.
(https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/sustainable-architecture/a8005-10-buildings-with-recycled-materials-you-should-know/)
gmarmont
3 November 2023 — 11:05
Thank you for this introductory post, Varsha. It’s very encouraging to hear how hands-on experience on construction sites gave you a better perspective on design’s wastefulness. I liked your example too, but I wonder if the clever reuse of discarded windows and doors is not perhaps undermined by the massive concrete structure in which they are encased, potentially turning reuse into an aesthetic gimmick…