I question the notion that only hands are involved in craft, and that it has to be low tech. Craft is about taking a given set of things and assembling them in new ways. At one of my projects in Pondicherry, the Volontariat Home for Homeless Children [developed with ceramicist Ray Meeker in 2008], I designed a series of mud brick homes that were fired in situ to make them durable and water resistant. Bricks by local makers were baked inside simultaneously, to make use of the heat.
Many might associate homes made of kiln-fired mud with being low tech, but creating these was a highly technical process.
I’ve never been nostalgic. Instead, I’m attracted to people who express what they imagine for the future. I admire the early modernist architects, the designers of the Bauhaus and of Black Mountain, and the Indian architect Charles Correa. I’m interested in ideas even if they remain unbuilt.
Straight out of school I went to Auroville, an experimental community in southern India, where I stayed for years practically in solitude. Now, I’m travelling and learning about the world. I’ve lived, taught, lectured and exhibited around Europe, America and Australia – wherever I go, I see the same human emotions that drive us and connect us.
The unbuilt potential of Auroville still excites me – but I see it as a laboratory, not a utopia. When you utopianise ideas, it’s easy to act like they are never reachable and then you remain in the banal.
I paid a big price by refusing to conform to societal expectation. But looking back today, I think I would have happily paid double. I’ve learned that when you take alternative decisions, it encourages others to follow.’