NIKOLSONS KOH SAMUI

Haute Architecture: concepts to reality..

There is fashion business and there is haute couture.. there is real estate business and there is haute architecture.. Haute couture is more of a known phenomena, although vague and hard to define - yet evasive magic of it feels so familiar to many..
What about architectural "haute creations"?.. What phenomena is it? Where does the magic lie?

As in all things in life, parallels abound.. in both fashion and architecture it all starts with an idea and a concept. Design starts with a sketch.. All both fashion and architect designers do sketches. You can start with a sketch and then you have to follow the sketch.. This is the dress, this is the front, the back of it, this is the fabric, the colour.. you do it! Boom! Same in architecture: this is the house, this is the facade, the living and sleeping quarters, these are the materials, the colours, the spec.. Boom!.. Job's finished!.. or is it?.. For any mass production process, be it in fashion or in real estate that is where the design and creativity usually ends.. design drawings get produced to every little detail and get implemented by production. End of story!

Well now, welcome to the next level: In both haute couture or architecture, sketch and design drawing is only the beginning of the process of creation, not the end. Life is not the facade, front and the back. Life is everything in between the front and the back.. In fashion, the creator has to listen to the body and the fabric, listen to the colour, have to look in the mirror and see the reflections.. In architecture likewise, the creator has to listen to the nature and the body alike, feel the energies of elements, listen to textures and colours, listen and look at the reflections of one's feeling while immersed within a certain habitat in the process of creation..

The whole process is existential and holistic. One can never achieve it from sketching and drawing only. When you sketch - you produce conceptually! When you start to create and play with elements, spaces, textures, fabrics, colours, a long and tedious process of change, of trial and error - then you and your creations become desirable and outstanding! Of course, the process of creating a house is a long and multilayered one. The ideas keep getting sketched, drawn and tested, get drawn again, and tested again.. plans and drawings get modified a lot of times again and again.

Now I have a reputation for changing my mind a lot. And I thought that I was kind of crazy at first. How come I am so indecisive?.. It took me a while to understand that changes are the crayons of design! It takes many crayons to create a perfectly balanced piece of work. In contemporary art, when does the painter know that his painting is finished? It can be endless! But the moment the painting doesn't ask to be changed and the moment a house doesn't ask to be changed, I know it's finished.

I don't duplicate anything, because even with one completely finished successful property I would do the next one differently. Even though they would be designed by the same architect using the similar materials, textures and other elements. It is in the process of implementation that the final look and feel of each property takes shape and it acquires its soul! So I think that giving the attention, the passion, the love to details, to proportions, to finishes and their combinations, to the volume, - you work with the people who are making it - you feel their energy and perfume in the final product of creation.. All, that is not tangible contributes and counts: the skills, the personal touch, the warmth of hands who shape and mold the architectural creation into finished reality! We are a small team so I need to have a personal touch with the people I work with, be it designer architects, consultants, suppliers, contractors or working craftsmen. It's all about dialogue. It's all about the process.

At all stages of a project I bring in the team and we work on pieces. I keep trying, keep reflecting and keep changing until the piece asks for change no more. It's a living process and it's magic. This is the time when everyone brings and contributes something. Someone brings an idea or a solution, someone brings new materials, someone suggests a new colour combination.. This is the way we work. It is like composing a symphony I guess.. To me that is the only intuitively known way of creating something truly outstanding and timeless.. be it an haute couture dress or a haute architecture piece.

Is Art an aim or a means?.. thoughts on objective art

Quoted: ...Present day art is not necessarily creative.. Ancient art has a certain inner content. In the past, art served the same purpose as is served today by books - the pupose of preserving and transmitting certain knowledge. In ancient times they did not write books, but expressed knowledge in works of art. We shall find many ideas in the ancient art which has reached us, if we know how to read it. Every art was like that then, including music. And people of ancient times looked at art in this way.

Western art has much that is external, sometimes a great deal of philosophy; but Eastern art is precise, mathematical, without manipulation. It is a form of script...

...For instance, take architecture. I saw some examples of architecture in Persia and Turkey - for instance, one building of two rooms. Everyone who entered these rooms, whether old or young, whether English or Persian, wept. This happened with people of different backgrounds and education. We continued this experiment for two or three weeks and observed everyone's reaction. The result was always the same. We specially chose cheerful people. With these architectural combinations, the mathimatically calculated vibrations contained in the building could not produce any other effect. We are under certain laws and cannot withstand external influences. Because the architect of this building had a different understanding and built mathematically, the result was always the same.

We made another experiment. We tuned our musical instruments in a special way and so combined the sounds that even by bringing in casual passerby from the street we obtained the result we wanted. The only difference was that one felt more, the other less.

You come to a monastery. You are not a religious man, but what is played and sung there evokes in you a desire to pray. Later you will be surprised by this. And so it is with everyone. The objective art is based on laws, whereas modern music is entirely subjective. It is possible to prove where everything in this subjective art comes from...

...Art is knowledge. Talent is relative. I could teach you to sing well in a week, even without a voice...

All knowledge is one. The mathematical law is the same for everyone. All mathematically constructed music is the result of movements. At one time I conceived the idea of observing movements, so while travelling and collecting material about art I observed only movements. Coming back home, I played music in accordance with movements I had observed and it proved identical with the actual music, that the man who wrote it - wrote mathematically. Yet while observing the movements I did not listen to the music, for I had no time...

...Then could anyone who knew the formula build a perfect form like a cathedral, producing the same emotion? .. Yes, and get the same reactions too...

Quoted from Views from the Real World, early talks of G.I. Gurdjieff

My personal note: We have talked few times about underlying principles and laws of architectural design with the architect on early stages of conceptualizing our projects designs.. we talked about laws of proportion, of geometry of space, of psycological and even healing effect of different geomertrical shapes, textures and colors, of different chemical elements' recorded effects on environment, well being and growth of life forms..

Well, for sure, much knowledge has been lost through the ages from the ancient times.. yet our aspirations and deep intention as design and development team, clearly lie in that direction - experimenting with objective laws to produce the desired effect of harmony, balance and well being on anyone who ever enters our properties..

On the surface Villa Rubia is beautiful and magical, as acclaimed by all visitors with no exception.. yet there is much more to the matter of creating such effect than can be witnessed on the surface..