The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art’s fourth exhibition in the series The Architect’s Studio, dedicated to Indian architect Anupama Kundoo, opens this week at the acclaimed Danish cultural hub. The show is set to focus and explore Kundoo’s fascinating body of work to-date, ‘opening the door’ to the architect’s workshop and archives.
A keen advocate of sustainability in architecture – a concept that stretches several layers in the field, and touches from environmental to social concerns – Kundoo started her career from a base in the experimental city of Auroville in south-eastern India upon her graduation from architecture school – even building there her first home in 1990, Hut Petite Ferme. She is now based in Berlin and works internationally practicing, teaching and speaking about her approach and key issues in architecture today.
The show at Louisiana aims to take the visitor on a journey through various Kundoo realisations through the studio’s archives, investigating key interests and fascinations, such as the nature of materials and Indian building traditions. Models, drawings, sketches and photography mix to offer an engaging experience.
One of the show’s centrepieces is a 1:1 construction of Kundoo’s single cell module that forms the basis of her co-housing project envisaged for Auroville. Using this method, ‘a single house can be built in seven days by the homeowner-to-be using simple crates cast in ferrocement,’ explains the architect.
One of her most recent and biggest projects, the town and housing development project Line of Goodwill for the city of Auroville, is also a key display in the show, which elaborates on the union between craft traditions and contemporary forms, the now and the before, the local and the international. §
