A Long Journey Home To America
In January 1938, Antonin, Noémi and their son left Tokyo bound for America. This six-month journey took them initially to the Indian subcontinent and then on to Europe, including a trip to Prague.
In 1935, Raymond's office had accepted a commission to design a dormitory for the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry in southeast India. A preliminary site visit was made by George Nakashima and the schematic design was completed in 1936. Although Raymond had envisioned that the dormitory would be completed in six months, Sri Aurobindo was concerned that the noise of construction would disturb the ashram, so he decided that the building would be constructed by its residents.
Initially, Nakashima, Francois Sammer (a Czech architect who had worked for Le Corbusier in Russia) and Chandulal (a devotee who had trained as an engineer), built a full scale model of the dormitory in order to test the feasibility of the design, and then used it as a laboratory to further refine the construction methods. Nakashima's duties included doing very explicit detail drawings showing, for example, the design of the concrete formwork. Devotees even donated brass utensils so that they could be melted down to make door handles and hinges.
Raymond sought to mitigate the effects of the Puducherry climate and oriented the Golconde dormitory (as it became known), so that its main facades faced north and south to make use of the prevailing breeze. A combination of moveable louvres on the exterior skin and woven teak sliding doors permitted ventilation without compromising on privacy. The building is still in use as an ashram today.
Read more about this topic: Antonin Raymond
Famous quotes containing the words long, journey, home and/or america:
“The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counterauthority to the law.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
“Our journey had advanced;”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
“Juggling produces both practical and psychological benefits.... A woman’s involvement in one role can enhance her functioning in another. Being a wife can make it easier to work outside the home. Being a mother can facilitate the activities and foster the skills of the efficient wife or of the effective worker. And employment outside the home can contribute in substantial, practical ways to how one works within the home, as a spouse and as a parent.”
—Faye J. Crosby (20th century)
“Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country—and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.”
—Charles Krauthammer (b. 1950)