BetweenSpaces ® is an architecture and interior design firm founded in 2010. We operate from our own studio in Bangalore, which has won us the IA&B Young Designers Award 2016 in the Architecture category, NDTV Design and Architecture Awards 2015 for office interior category and IIID Anchor Awards 2015 for small office category.
On Philosophy for practice:
We have realized that our work gets hugely influenced by our own personality and so in a way our work is an expression of our beliefs.
The practice concerns itself with contextually relevant design, understand the local condition, the traditional method of construction and design a building which celebrates the spirit of the place and time with a contemporary undertone. As much as the practice is concerned about innovation, it gives equal importance to specificity of the projects. The more specific we make a building, the more they communicate about the place, people and the culture.
Physical, economic, social and cultural contexts define the generative tools for design that give clues to transform an ordinary space into a distinctive experience.
In all our works, irrespective of the size and nature, we endeavor to achieve a balance between ever changing, pluralistic milieu and the rich traditions we are rooted to.
We love complex spaces. We enjoy working with natural materials but most importantly we like to keep it simple.
On Process :
Design is a nonlinear process. We go back and forth on our ideas. We keep questioning our intent until we strip down our own notion of built spaces to its bare bones, which could have been influenced by an idea or a project we might have come across. It’s important to shed all our preconceived notion and keep removing inessentials till we are left with something very fundamental.
During this process, we reach moments of frustration and complete emptiness and then we revisit our initial sketches to look for ques. We sketch over them again and again till we find that one line that would make all the difference. As much as it is to do with common sense or our repository of construction knowledge, it is really our intuition that tells us when we are ready to move to the next stage or next part of the space. We look at smallest part of the building that forms the whole and then the whole that comes out of the parts and if either of it doesn’t make sense, or compliments each other then we start all over again. This entire process takes place through sketches, discussion, 3d views and physical models. Sometimes this bruises our ego but we are learning to let go of it and start working all over again to get a solution that really makes sense.
