Stables for Steeds and Sapiens

2018
Architect at Enso Design
Collaborators / Chinglemba Chingtham, Chhavi Gupta, Gagandeep Singh Sabharwal
Horse riding academy
Mysore, Karnataka, India
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perspective / road level entrance

The Puravi Riding Academy is built to observe, nurture and experience the synergistic duality of its primary residents, horses. A collection of single to double-story buildings, they collectively form a series of stables around the arena. A stable for steeds and sapiens, the academy mimics the austerity and strength of stables. The architecture, materiality, and engineering coalescences opposites - air and earth, mass and tenderness, strings and percussion, the idyllic, and ethereal. The present stables are the only recently renovated structure and hence maintained on site. Additional stables include a restaurant and viewing pavilion, guest rooms, a residence of the owner, dormitories for syces, and stables for more animals including dogs, cows, and chickens. Guests are invited from the north as they may either access the restaurant or walk down to the arena and guest rooms. The owner finds his house and office in the quaint southwestern corner with a view of the west. The other animals find themselves in their own lavish stables accessible to caretakers.

contribution / project lead, conceptualization, design development, design drawings, digital modeling, research, presentation design

perspective / view from vehicular entrance

perspective / view of the guest block and animal shelter from the arena

perspective / view of the guest block, stable and arena

perspective / view of the guest block, animal shelter, stable and arena

diagram / Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Bela Bartók, spatial and conceptual driver

Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Bela Bartók
Celebrated composition by the Hungarian composer, the title itself brings out the synergistic duality of the piece of music - the strings and the percussion. Bela Bartók uses his instrumentation as front runners, in the title, stage presence, and spirit. He used to place the strings on one side and the percussion on the other side of the stage but what the audience heard was the perfect union of the warp and the weft, making a transcending fabric. The strings and the percussion, the sounds of the air and earth, respectively, their harmonious interaction during the entire piece are chosen as representations of the horse’s grace and power.