Nov. 10-25
A conversation with Siddharth Singh, who, along with Sukhmani Brar, leads the New Delhi–based practice Design Pendulum. He discusses traditional spatial devices, essential states of inhabitation, bold design choices, what sustainability means in practice, and more.
As part of our Indian Design in Focus series, we recently caught up with Siddharth Singh, Founding Partner at Design Pendulum, a practice led by Siddharth and Sukhmani Brar. The studio works across housing, architecture, interiors, exhibition design, landscape urbanism, and furniture design, shaped by the pair’s complementary sensibilities, which they describe as meticulousness and rawness, flair and subtlety, newness and familiarity, openness and enclosure.
Design Pendulum’s process is rooted in the joy of making: ideas expressed through drawings and models, refined through construction detailing, and realized through collaboration with engineers, craftspersons, and future inhabitants. Materials, light, and ventilation are kept as natural as possible and integrated with structure and services to create spaces defined by proportion, rhythm, texture, and the subtleties that emerge over time.
To learn more, we spoke with Siddharth, who discusses how traditional motifs and spatial devices inform his work, how essential states of inhabitation—solitude, intimacy, and congregation—guide the studio across project types, why balancing a clear brief with creative freedom matters, his advice for emerging designers, and more.
Our explicit use of traditional Indian motifs as design elements is occasional and always reinterpreted through contemporary context and techniques. The brick screen & wall articulation for the farmhouse in Punjab are hyper-extensions of the traditional articulations of parapets and wall terminations.
The figure-glass patchwork infill for doors and the white-washed engraved frieze in one of the houses in New Delhi corresponds to the client’s desire to connect with her Islamic-Gujarati roots. The partition panels for another house in Delhi consist of glass etched with traditional motifs and sandwiched fabric evoking the Tamil roots of the family.
Three essential devices are indispensable to our architecture: the courtyard, the verandah, and the layering from public to intimate.
We tend to employ traditional devices in the spatiality of our designs. Three essential devices are indispensable to our architecture: the courtyard, the verandah, and the layering from public to intimate. The three represent the integration of climate, culture, and architecture and each is not only connected to the other, but is also dynamic.
The verandah is not only a climatic buffer, but also a social threshold. The courtyard, which is usually the intimate core of a house, can become its most public domain during significant social events of celebration or grief. Even when working on interior design projects, which can be rather limiting in their scope for spatial diversity, we try to provide a strategic high volume to make for the courtyard, vestibules for the layering and window seats to mediate the inside & outside.
The specifics of a particular type of project lie in its technicalities and transactional aspects. For instance, shopping happens in a shop, teaching & learning happen in a place of education, work is carried out in an office, and so on. These are all transactional aspects, which then require their corresponding mechanical, electrical, IT, sanitary, and other services. While all these are important and take up considerable time & resources during the design development stage, there are technical consultants for each of these.
For architects & spatial designers, however, there are other critical dimensions of inhabitation that precede the transactional and technical. Solitude, intimacy, and congregation are essential states of our being that pervade all inhabitable spaces, regardless of their function, and need to be recognised and allocated for – not as an inventory, but as potentials within the same space.
For instance, nooks within a hall can bring a necessary release to an individual or a pair during a congregation, while a small green terrace or courtyard can help provide a break during an intense conversation in an intimate meeting room. Early design deliberations call for seeking two primary provisions: Spatial Diversity and Circulation Pattern.
As a studio, we are predisposed towards a democratic spatiality and try to make places with multiple access points, circulation with loops, and cul-de-sacs interesting (not dead-ends).
Spaces need to be fat, thin, long, short, high, low, etc., in varying combinations. Similarly, their relationship to the outside also needs to vary, and should be mediated through an in-between space wherever possible.
We always try to provide window seats, bring in greenery, offer a glimpse of the sky, and make inhabitants aware of the moving clouds or pouring rain to keep them from becoming comfortably numb inside.
Most efficient is not necessarily the most interesting when it comes to circulation. Movement patterns need to be identified in terms of people & material, inhabitants & visitors, purpose & chance, and so on. Distinguishing different patterns, separating them where necessary, and overlapping them where possible prevents noise, accidents and stagnation, while fostering necessary social exchange.
Nodes and pauses are necessary for perception of rhythm, and the nature & duration of pause influences the rhythm. As a studio, we are predisposed towards a democratic spatiality and try to make places with multiple access points, circulation with loops, and cul-de-sacs interesting (not dead-ends).
We prefer materials with human association – mostly natural – and the palette is harmonious either through complement or contrast.
Once the spatial conditions & relations have been established, we rely on the structure & construction to evolve the aesthetic of the project. We prefer materials with human association – mostly natural – and the palette is harmonious either through complement or contrast.
Therefore, the palettes of our works turn out restrained yet strong. We try & avoid superficial applications and cheap imitations as much as possible. We are hyper-focused on the resolution of details, making sure that no corner or junction is left indifferent.
For instance, the Adaptive House in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, employs a composite structure with load-bearing walls in exposed bricks with controlled apertures on the south & west and an RCC frame allowing more generous windows on the east & north faces, opening into the courtyard.
As your question itself suggests, the answer, balance is important: there is no freedom without constraint. Without a brief, the creative process could perpetually float in digressions. Without the scope for digressions in the brief, there can be no creative interpretations and we could be left to occupy lifeless boxes. The spatial process – moving through continual negotiation between aesthetic aspirations and the limitations of resources – is guided by the program.
The program is not only an elaboration of the brief into a relationship map of its constituent parts, but it also establishes the spatial conditions for each space – size, volume, shape – and its position with respect to the ground, the sky, light, rain and the breeze. The construction techniques could vary depending upon resources – including timeline and available skill set – available for the project – from steel to timber to RCC to brick or stone, and from load-bearing to frame to composite.
Similarly, material too can be chosen as per budgets, availability or personal inclination. However, notwithstanding the impact of construction techniques and materials, the spatial conditions & relationships imagined at the onset, need to be sustained.
In India, design is largely still not considered a necessity. At one end of the spectrum, most design media still can’t talk about design without the mention of ‘luxury’ or ‘bespoke’, while on the other hand, there are corporate design houses peddling catalogues in their pursuit of business in volumes. So, for someone to hire a designer itself is a bold choice. Instances of this boldness, I feel, have increased.
There are clients who trust your word for everything, there are others who engage in a conversation and try to understand that there is no design without innovations, and then there are also those who do not appreciate improvisation, no matter how much you encourage or plead.
Following this initiation, everything is a matter of trust. There are clients who trust your word for everything, there are others who engage in a conversation and try to understand that there is no design without innovations, and then there are also those who do not appreciate improvisation, no matter how much you encourage or plead.
We need to keep reminding ourselves that, regardless of our creative spirit and exuberance in the best interests for the project, we are service providers; that the clients are autonomous adults who are paying for the project and will live in what is built. In this context, any design decision – bold or otherwise – is a matter of collective choice and one of making the most of the situation. Of course, easier said than done, this is a gruelling dimension of design practice and calls for vast energy resources and timely replenishments from us.
It is important to be aware of the fact that, unlike graphics, communication and other visual design mediums we mostly engage with our built environment from the corners of our eyes. We only focus on our physical surroundings when in a hostile environment or an amusement park (metaphorically speaking). Neither of which are healthy environments for day-to-day life because of the sensory stress that they create on inhabitants. It is critical to assess the boldness in spatial design within this context. Even simple acts of adding colours & textures, or of creating high volumes, or opening up walls in apartments, or just building less can be bold design choices.
Almost all our architecture clients approach us with an emphasis on “eco-friendly building”. I attribute this to the propagation of the idea of sustainability all across the media, which somehow manages to pin the responsibility on individual action, without necessarily connecting to, or questioning, the hurtling expansion of fast-fashion, online shopping, or instant food & grocery delivery services.
Of course, as it is said, ‘the most sustainable building is the one which isn’t built’; so our approach towards sustainability is pragmatic. Most of the old-time sustainable building practices were intertwined with community life, which has metamorphosed with the advent of industrialisation.
For the same reason, mass-produced/ extracted/ processed materials are much cheaper than sustainable options. Although we emphasize the need to be sustainable in practice, we present the clients with facts along with costs to help them make an informed choice. So, usually zero-RCC is not viable, and we limit its use; or, regardless of costs, the use of mild steel for structure or aluminium for doors & windows becomes inevitable for reasons of longevity.
Although our primary approach is one of building less, the apparent absence of this concern in interior design & other spatial design projects throws up a lot of questions regarding these design practices.
I encourage youngsters to protect & nurture their sensitivity, empathy & curiosity. Although the thrust of technological advancement may want us to believe otherwise, this can’t be done alone. To find themselves and perhaps create a better world, youngsters need to find their tribes to practice compassion through conversations and questioning – both involving deep listening.
I encourage youngsters to protect & nurture their sensitivity, empathy & curiosity. Although the thrust of technological advancement may want us to believe otherwise, this can’t be done alone
Specifically for young design professionals, not only is it necessary to draw and to make objects with their hands, but it is equally important to move, to read and to be aware of their emotional upheavals. Again, all of this has to be done not just alone, but in small groups, at least at regular intervals.
Numerous visual, performing & literary artists, as well as designers from various disciplines who are doing wonderful work and whom, given a chance, I’d love to work with.
Here’s our attempt at connecting with some of them. There are far too many names to be listed here.
To learn more, visit www.designpendulum.com
All images provided by Design Pendulum
To see more from Studio Noughts & Crosses, go here;
from Barath Ramamrutham, go here;
from Saurabh Suryan, go here.
