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Jain Heritage School, Hyderabad.

With fluid designs and out-of-the-box thinking, Cadence is making waves in Bengaluru. Ar Apurva Bose Dutta checks out the young design firm.

On one of the crammed residential corners of Bengaluru, abutted by average houses and low income housing, stands an award-winning architectural marvel that has found its way into as many as six international journals. Christened ‘Out of the box’ by its designers, this house stands on a 1,200 sq ft site and presents a classic urban scenario.

A team of three young architects who call their firm Cadence (www.cadence.in) was behind this evocative piece of design.

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The house features cast-concrete external walls with perforations in the shape of big and small leaves that lets light into the courtyard, which has been moved to a corner of the house from its normal central position. Apart from housing a plant as in traditional courtyards, it has a sculptural element that could serve as an informal dining area.

Narendra Pirgal, Smaran Mallesh and Vikram Rajashekar, the Cadence trio, represent the age of passionate architects. The premise for their works has its basis in German philosopher Walter Benjamin’s thought that architecture is absorbed in a state of distraction.

They believe architecture is a ‘speculative process’ and that the spirit of speculation manifests itself into strategic processes which enable projects to evolve from conceptual ideas to finished products that are sophisticated.

The trio completed their architectural degree from the RV College of Engineering in 2002. Cadence, formed in 2005, was envisaged to operate like a studio – as a studio is associated with architectural education. “Phenomenology and the humanist project are some things that we keep discussing in office,” discloses Smaran.

The five-year-old firm is a collection of young people who have not restricted themselves to certain kinds of projects alone. Cadence has residential, commercial, industrial, hospitality and cultural projects in their portfolio; and their architectural vocabulary illustrates fluidity, dynamism in geometry of spaces and in making use of difficult spaces.

About their philosophy, Smaran Mallesh says, “Besides fluidity, we are interested in sculptural objects and articulation of spaces, which can be achieved through patterns or proliferations.” The profile of surfaces, experiences created, staging life in a certain manner are their concerns.

“Most of our projects are complex. We believe that one can produce new experiences and effects when one questions clichés; this process of identifying clichés in a certain build type and speculating on alternate solutions and formulations is fundamental to our process,” he adds.

The ‘out-of-the-box’ project is testimony to the fact that, in the absence of perfect locations or beautiful surroundings, it is feasible to attain beauty that is inward-looking. By moving the courtyard to the fourth quadrant of the square, they could magnify boundaries and make other rooms adjacent to it look bigger.