The Artist as an Architect

The past decade has been a fruitful one for 36 year old Sarosh Pradhan.. This year the young architect will be celebrating his 10th wedding anniversary. His marriage to Ranchi born Rajshree was the culmination of a sweet period of romance under the shadow of the Supreme Court building where she used to practice law. Sarosh was still a student then, studying in Delhi School of Planning and Architecture, the same school that boasted alumni like Arundhati Roy of ‘God of Small Things’ fame and Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, probably the most well known man in Nepal today.

Rajshree left her career in law to study interior designing and today is not only the better half in Sarosh’s personal life, but professionally too. Their firm, Sarosh Pradhan and Associates, located at Krishna Kunj in Chauni, has shown rapid progress in the last decade. As a pair they have also produced two sweet little girls, Shreya and Sarah, 7 and 4 years old respectively.

To my query about the reason for having an office at home, this is what Sarosh says, ‘Our profession is of a creative nature, and so I want to think of it more as a hobby. Having an office somewhere else would be more like a 9 to 5 office job. Here work doesn’t feel typically like work since I’m always in a homely atmosphere.’

The firm has four architects and a civil engineer besides Sarosh and Rajshree themselves. His tastefully done office is next to the main house and is surrounded by a lot of greenery. ‘This office used to be a dirty garage,’ says Sarosh, ‘The first thing I did was to convert it into my office.’

A brooding watercolor of Vincent Van Gogh’s self portrait is hung on the wall behind his desk. It is only one among the dozens of paintings done by the young architect. He has designed a small gallery in the house showcasing his paintings. Two large sized paintings, one depicting a shipwreck and one of a ship in rough seas, occupy places of pride in the living room. His work has been exhibited at the Nepal-Bharat Sanskritik Kendra.

‘I have painted since my schoolboy days in St. Paul’s, Darjeeling,’ he reveals, ‘This artistic streak has helped tremendously in my profession. In fact I like to do freehand abstracts to develop a particular concept before I start designing projects.’

One certainly has to agree with the artist/architect if one realizes that his firm has won a couple of important design assignments through open competitions. One is the TEWA project in Dhapakhel and the other is the Saibu Community Project in Saibu. Sarosh Pradhan’s creative flair is apparent in all the projects he has designed, notable among them, the Club Platinum discotheque and the Farakpa Village Resort in Lukla,

‘It was challenging and fun to do these projects,’ he reminisces,’ For the disco we went all out to create a fun atmosphere, one in which modernism is very apparent. As for the Lukla project, I had a tough time convincing people that the natural stone available could be sculpted and used for the arches that support the buildings. Today many local people visit just to see the stone arches.’

One of his earliest projects was the K@mandu Cyber Café and Art Gallery in Kantipath. In fact Sarosh ran this cyber café cum art gallery cum café for two years with support from Sanjib Bhandari of Mercantile Communications. He worked at promoting Nepali artists by holding regular exhibitions and symposia. He even managed to corral Manisha Koirala to inaugurate a photo exhibition in his art gallery. Most of the eminent artists of the country have been involved in his endeavors for the promotion of Nepalese art.

Although he has fond memories of all his projects, his favorite project is the TEWA project, not least because of the wonderful feeling of camaraderie he found in the client group. Sarosh was also involved in the Dwarika’s Hotel renovation and went about his task by firstly compiling on his computer all the different types of artifacts available so that he had a neatly filed inventory for later use. Sarosh’s special ability, as commended by many colleagues, is his expertise in the use of the computer for designing.

He believes that no house is complete without a satisfactory interior. ‘Rajshree looks after the finer details after I am done with the overall concept,’ he informs.

At the beginning of his career he worked for some time with John Sandy, the famous architect who headed the Hanuman Dhoka Conservation Project. He later visited him at Angkor Wat in Laos where John was working.

‘Angkor Wat amazed me,’ he recalls, ‘ How on earth did they make such grand sandstone monuments in those days?’

He feels that most clients are reasonable and give due respect to the architect’s advice, but at the same time he suggests that a client/ designer relationship can be better if the architect is himself clear in his concept and can get his message across clearly. Besides, he strongly believes that a client/ designer relationship should be transparent and that an architect should work in a systematic manner.

While on a working stint in Europe he found that he had to work according to rigid guidelines whereas in Nepal because of the laxity in building bye laws, he gets more freedom to use his creativity. Sarosh has been invited to give presentations at many symposia and student workshops.

His advice to the students is, ‘Look at every problem as an opportunity to use your creativity.’