Here it begins; I'm already a few days into the project, and well, almost a couple of years into my family buying a plot of land on the outskirts of Chennai and planning to build a farmhouse there so in the next few posts and this one, I'm gonna go over what's been taking place so far.
Anyhow, like I said, in 2007, my family, i.e. my grandfather (dad's dad) invested in a 10 acre property on the outskirts of Chennai to be shared by my dad, his brother, his sister and their families. We visited the farm a few times in a year, though nothing of the land has been developed yet. Its covered with stout mango trees, that my cousins and I would enjoy climbing. There's a small shed for the caretakers to keep their belongings. On most of our visits, we would get out packed lunch and enjoy it in the open, play badminton and get wet in the "pump set", an activity that rural kids enjoy in their farming land.
Since some of us lived in other countries, were studying, working, busy with other things etc, we never really gave the farm much thought or effort. We had always intended to build a small house there, so as to make our stays there more comfortable and fun, but over the years, there were dilemmas about what to do with the place. Whether to build big or small, luxurious or simple, how to build, what to build with et cetera, et cetera.
A couple of months ago, my dad had appointed a young self-employed architect to come up with a few ideas for a farm house. Though, I didn't really understand much of the design, all I knew was that though the ideas were good, and my dad was happy with it, they didn't fly too well with my grandpa who's idea of a farm house was different from the architect's more imaginative approach to the whole thing. While the architect designed something fun and original, my grandfather (as is his routine) wanted something stable and generic. Since the rest of us wanted an exciting holiday home as well, this was to be our biggest challenges in building the farm house.
Fast forward to now, I'm about to finish 2 and a half years in architecture school. Now that I've learned quite a bit about design, broken my head and learned from every mistake possible about designing small dwelling units, and am more experienced with 3D modelling and computer generated drawings, I thought I would give the farm house a shot. I took the idea to the rest of my family members, they seemed to be happy with it and things were smooth. If everything does goes well, this would be my first actual project, my first building and so, I decided I wanted to document every step of the process on this blog.
I remember, years ago, waaayy before I had even thought about architecture school, when we were still deciding what to do with a farm, my dad wanted to assign an architect to design the house, while my cousin Sarah machi, who had just discovered Google Sketchup wanted to go about it DIY. I argued for my dad (because in my mind, by default my dad is always right.) and said we would need an architect. Little did I know, that I would (possibly) be the architect designing the house.
I remember, years ago, waaayy before I had even thought about architecture school, when we were still deciding what to do with a farm, my dad wanted to assign an architect to design the house, while my cousin Sarah machi, who had just discovered Google Sketchup wanted to go about it DIY. I argued for my dad (because in my mind, by default my dad is always right.) and said we would need an architect. Little did I know, that I would (possibly) be the architect designing the house.
