Category: In The Mix

Stone is not Fashion

The other day I visited an acquaintance’s house. In their drawing room, I noticed a wall fully covered with shiny glossy marble. Looked Italian to me. I guess it wasn’t back-lit, may be in the evenings it could be.

In my conversations with Dad, I often remark, “It has become a fashion market” and its variations.

Even as I write, I am meditating on the meaning of ‘It’ in the above remark.

What is ‘It’?

It = The entire category of Stone Industry?

That doesn’t sound and feel right. And yet, house-design does follow certain styles, fads and fashion, and making choices related to stone is a part of the designing process. So it may not be wrong to call it fashion.

Typically fashion has been linked to garments and clothing. In which other areas, do we see ‘fashion’? Cars? Automobiles in general. Furniture design, typically sofas and beds. I see that in ceiling-design too.

Coming back to stone, well it can’t be fashion. Stone, unless crushed, has a timeless sort of, almost an unchanging presence and look.

Think about it. Garments, one changes almost every day or every other day; some folks do have an unchanging look and they have multiples of the same garments to keep that unchanging look.

You can’t change stone. I mean, theoretically you can but in terms of possibilities and probabilities, you don’t. Stone changes its hues ever so slowly, but that’s that. Nothing radical.

And yet, since stone (I include marble and granite also in stone for the purpose of this post) appears in different colors, it does lend itself to some sort of fashion.

At some point, white marble was a craze. Some time back grey granite and stone was in greater demand. For a couple of years and continuing, brown granite and stone looks to be more popular.

Just as a wardrobe tends towards a palette, colors in the house would tend towards a palette too if you observe and make notes carefully. It would be worthwhile to think in terms of color palettes for your house or interior design and then look at colors of individual elements like sofa color, wall color, floor color et al.

Get in touch with Mr. G S Soni
Mobile: +91 98250 15546

0

Size of Stone

What should be the size of the stone you use for floors or for walls?

Answer: It depends on the surface area of the floors or walls in consideration.

Answer # 2: It also depends on how much do the eyes see in one go. Now that is a difficult thing to figure.

Answer # 3: It depends on how patient you are with a process of making a beautiful floor or a beautiful wall.

Generally speaking, smaller stones would serve better and look lovelier for a long period time.

0

Is Uniformity = Perfection?

Builders and building contractors give us orders for supply of truck-load of granite and marble and natural stone. The give us orders based on ‘samples’ that we show them. They approve the sample. By approval of sample, it means that the supplier has to supply the same quality in every slab of granite. What is quality?

What is quality? Is it uniformity?

Can a certain quantity of natural stone be represented through ‘a sample’? How can anyone in the world guarantee adherence of different slabs of granite to one ‘approved sample’?

Is ‘approved sample’ a perfect piece of granite or stone?

In natural stone and granite, you won’t be able to come to any great understanding of quality. Because of its very nature it is impossible to standardize the quality beyond the physical dimensions of slabs or stone. No matter the sample, you are not going to get identical looking granite or stone.

Even if one assumes that slabs and pieces of stone can be sorted and grouped strictly based on certain parameters, the cost of sorting is prohibitive.

Based on the purchase order, when the material ordered reaches the site, the builders and building contractors and their employees at the site engage in ‘quality checking’. The understanding of ‘quality’ is at best vague, unspecified and unclear, but since there is an ‘approved sample’, these clients offer all kinds of reasons to ‘reject’ the material that’s delivered.

Costs of handling natural stone are so high that all such rejections crush the supplier financially.

0

Rock Face as Name Plate

Preparing this substantial and considerably thick block of granite for a name plate. It’s solid and heavy. This will be installed at the entrance of a project. The name may be written in brass and fixed on to this. Can you visualize? Can you guess the size of this block? Looks good?

0

Granite Waterfall

A granite waterfall feature made from Black Granite, showcasing a textured wall with a water spout, awaiting the flow of water.

It’s a granite waterfall created using Black Granite, at a bungalow project. Actually you can create such waterfalls in a variety of ways, using a variety of granite. Red, White, Brown… Can be multi-hued too.

You can’t see the water yet. It will start falling soon. 🙂 Actually we’ll update with a picture of water falling. Soon!

Get in touch with Mr. G S Soni
Mobile: +91 98250 15546

0

Do these builders of Ahmedabad know?

We are the children of our landscape; it dictates behaviour and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it.

Lawrence Durrell in “JUSTINE”

What response do those vitrified tiles generate?

What response does that interior design generate?

Do they even generate anything? Anything worthwhile?

0

Will the funny vitrified tiles age like this?

Just look at this bungalow! I often pass by this house on my walks, mostly in the evenings.

How beautifully charmingly it ages! An interestingly done facade with natural stone. Can any of the artificially contrived surface materials, that folks and interior designs use so often, match this beauty?

One of the things about this is also that this stone is glossy like glass. Glass means maintenance, at some point, will be a pain.

Bungalow facade with natural stone

0

Which building in Ahmedabad…

Which building in Ahmedabad would attract you enough to spend a good part of your day in its presence?

That sounds like a contrived question. Let me re-attempt.

Is there any built space in Ahmedabad that you may want to spend all your day in?

At one point, when I was a child, the garden in Gandhinagar offered that space. But then children have fascinating ways of turning their surroundings into entertaining spaces.

Now, a member would immediately say, Karnavati Club.

Recall more such spaces? We are building more buildings. But those buildings can’t seem to hold us, accommodate us. In fact, the more time we spend among such buildings, the greater is the feeling to go away somewhere far, somewhere where the memory and sights of these buildings can be obliterated.

Such is the city we’ve built and continue to build.

0

Stone & Deficit of Patience

What we witness in our age is a serious serious deficit of patience. Gurus tell us and we acknowledge, and then we fall back to rectangulism as soon as we come to interior design and such matters.

In the background you see a gate made about 600 years back in Lucknow. 600 years! What would it take to make something as beautiful right now? Don’t tell me money!

A man smiling while standing in front of an ornate historic gate in Lucknow, India, surrounded by lush greenery and colorful flowers.

Which project are you working on? Using classic natural Indian stone and finishes?

Get in touch with Mr. G S Soni
Mobile: +91 98250 15546

0

Judging Flooring

Your choice of flooring for your house depends on quite a few factors. One of the factors is how does it feel to the soles of your feet. Repeat:

HOW DOES IT FEEL TO THE SOLES OF YOUR FEET?

But then now so many of us wear slippers most of the times when we are indoors. And so the feeling to the soles is kind of lost. And then flooring becomes just a matter of visual pleasure.

This looks good, that looks good.

I am confused.

Oh this color is not so good. Let’s check some more colors.

Oh this doesn’t match the color of the table!

Oh, but we chose that laminate. And so this color will look good.

Our senses have gone for a toss and so has our sense of designing. But some small reminders may help. But then who reminds whom… When? After the interior design is horribly done, it’s all a matter of criticisms, odd expressions and jealousies.

0

How many types of material for interior design?

There’s this semi-fraud-acquaintance who took a lot of assistance from my Dad in getting stone and design related work for his big house project. I am compelled to call it house coz it’s hard to call it bungalow.

One of the features of this man’s project is the numerous kinds of stone and surface material he has used to garnish his house with, both inside and outside.

Needless to say, I was appalled at the way it all felt when I got a chance to visit this site once, more than a year back. The work’s still going on I hear.

Taj Mahal is primarily a one stone work.

Kailash Temple, they say, is not just one stone, it is one-rock work. Incredible, isn’t it.

Now, for the sake of funny arguments, a professional like an architect or an interior designer or a status-symbol-maker may say but these are public monuments, not houses for living. So let me ask another question.

Would you want a house that looks as gorgeous as a monument or a house that looks like a hodge-podge of materials?

Funny argumenter may even say, “But monuments require more money and space to make.” Really? Is that so?

The practitioners and house-makers of today’s age seem to earn a lot from the use of materials instead of the use of imagination. Bitter and easier said and true wherever I see.

0

Pyramid full of Flats

In Ahmedabad, you can witness the architectural obscenities in the form of flats almost everywhere you go. Especially the newly developed or developing areas.

Contrast Ahmedabad’s flats with these, built somewhere in China. Out here wonky urban planners and funny builders are trying to extract every little penny out of the FSI allowances and policies by making cubic and cuboidal blocks typically painted in horrible greys and browns.

We are looking for a builder to work with who attempts something like this.

Distinct and charming in its own way! You may want to check some more pictures here.

Please forgive them, the folks at Mail Online (dailymail.co.uk) who have written the linked article and bizarrely titled it Bizarre ‘pyramid-shaped’ building in China becomes an internet sensation.

0

Pattern in Granite

Even if you try, you can’t get something like this in vitrified tiles. That feeling, that earthiness, that coarseness is only possible with Indian granite like this.

Get in touch with Mr. G S Soni
Mobile: +91 98250 15546

0

They can’t make like it anymore?!

That’s the Chicken Church of Indonesia. You can’t make such lovely spaces with vitrified tiles. In fact, no lovely spaces deserve vitrified tiles. But you can trust natural stone and marble and granite to help build lovely spaces and lovely places.

0

Is there anything more depressing than…

The other day I was at PVR Acropolis to watch Tapsee Pannu starrer Thappad. While the movie felt great, PVR’s renovation felt classic and plastic at the same time. When you visit there you’ll notice. The space feels spacious, the floor feels all plastic (courtesy the famed vitrified tiles).

Somewhere in the initial pages of Gavin McCrea’s Mrs Engels, there’s this exchange between Jenny and Lizzie, I can’t forget to share.

In her book, there’s naught worse than a new house that looks new. She said so just now before we left. ‘So long as the thirst for novelty exists independently of all aesthetics considerations,’ she went, ‘the aim of Manchester and Sheffield and Birmingham will be to produce objects which shall always appear new. And, Lizzie, is there anything more depressing than that lustre of newness?’

The lustre of newness is depressing indeed on most occasions. And in the case of copy-paste vitrified tiles, plastic too.

0

And there are folks who tile (funny vitrified tiles are in fashion these days) the space that they are going to spend their life in coz of lack of time! Funny!

Reminder.

Architecture is not about space but about time.
– Vito Acconci

That is Teakwood Sandstone! Gorgeous for outdoors, or wall-cladding.

0

At Kensville Golf Club

Work in progress at Kensville Golf Club. There’s no match to the square cobble when it comes to paving outdoors or landscaping. Actually cobble-like stones with smooth surfaces would make amazing indoor flooring too. But then, so many are fooled by the convenience of vitrified tiles.

0

How they look!

All those work-in-progress pics posted earlier lead to this… Look beautiful. Adhunik Brown 75mm thick granite benches. That cavity serves as a planter. A few years hence, there’ll be trees, and lot of shade, god willing, and the promenade may just become a lovely place to hang out…

0

Hill-shaped building

Transamerica Pyramid San Francisco

We are not ‘architects’. But since we supply material to building projects, it isn’t hard to keep wondering about the shapes these buildings take.

Of course, we don’t have a say in anything related to shapes whatsoever. We are mere suppliers of flooring material. At best, we may have a say in ‘quality’ of the flooring material we supply.

Why must a building always feel like a cuboid block? An efficiency-based answer is the best I can muster. That’s it. No more.

I would like buildings that are hill-shaped. We like hills, right? We love hills. If not hill-like they can at least turn out triangle-shaped if they have to be skyscrapers.

These guys in San Francisco named it Pyramid! Alright, let’s bear with it.

0

Is flooring a part of the furniture? If you say ‘obviously not’, what happens or changes if you treat it as part of furniture?

0

Work in Progress

A glimpse of the under-contruction open-air theater at a reputed educational institute near Ahmedabad. We are supplying Cera Grey granite in flamed finish and Kota Stone.

0

Granite Benches

Preparing these 75mm thick granite slabs for granite benches. The benches will stand rock solid, of course, and may be for eternity. It’s tough handling such stone. Guys tough it out. Thankfully the weather has relented too in the last 2 days. Courtesy, the Vayu cyclone near the coast of Gujarat.

0

Crazy Horse & Zalzala

You may be pardoned to think of these as names of movies. In fact, Bollywood surely made a multi-starrer blockbuster Zalzala decades back. Crazy names for granite but I am sure you are gonna like what you see for Crazy Horse.

Doesn’t that look like a pattern of an Appaloosa?

I remember Zalzala featured Dharmendra and Karan Kapoor and a couple of other famous actors!

We may help with some lovely crazy patterns in granite in Ahmedabad. Elsewhere too, if you like.

Get in touch with Mr. G S Soni
Mobile: +91 98250 15546

0

Ever compared a scratch on natural stone with a scratch on vitrified tile, timeline and space almost remaining the same?

Just because a vitrified tile is easy to lay doesn’t mean it is easy to enjoy. Oh the gloss, that’s so TV-like.

0

First they demand big big natural stone slabs, granite slabs, and then they demand ‘top’ quality, and then they funnily get down to bargaining for the lowest prices. Understandable since the quantities are often huge. But the thing is it is natural stone.

Big slabs
Should be top quality
Should be lowest priced!
What poetry!

‘Big building business’ has an issue. They behave like government purchase departments. Lowest quote, highest quality. Now where have you found that? And they themselves often struggle to lay down the parameters or even develop the ‘eye’ to judge whether some piece of stone is great or not.

Taj Mahal doesn’t have the greatest quality of white stone. What it does have is the highest quality of craftsmanship.

0

Intriguing Intersection

When colors and repetition and irregularity intersect

And since I find irregular natural stone magical, I think this is a great idea. Have a block of irregular looking granite paving stones with different colors and then repeat that block over and over. Fair amount of intrigue and fair bit of ease in laying. Very very doable.

Get in touch with Mr. G S Soni
Mobile: +91 98250 15546

0

Up ↑