Bringing back those lost moments
Samira Rathod
Meeting Samira Rathod, elegant in an understated manner in blue and black, you see that within her a woman’s imagination blends in a firm head for the technical and the nitty gritty: the perfect recipe for the architect. Her voice is rich with a passion for her work, and to hear her, even in those clipped tones, is to inhale the poetry of architecture.
“Making buildings is a passion, so I am deeply interested in details. I really worry about how the doorknob feels in my hand: do I get excited about pulling the doorknob?
“The daily grind of life today has taken away that whole sense of slowness we used to savour. People used to savour that cup of tea while the rain beat outside, sitting on a verandah and watching. Those moments are lost. Whether it is a skyscraper, a building, a housing or a school- I think it these moments that, as an architect and a firm, we try to bring back.”
She is talking about Iconic Galaxy, the slowly rising 33-storey tower in Rajagiriya that is redefining luxury condominiums in Sri Lanka. Pranab Desai, Executive Director of Iconic Developments Private Limited, based in India, Singapore, Muscat and Sri Lanka, wants to share why they handpicked Samira as the architect, who has vast international exposure, and began her own design atelier in 2000 which has become a great success.
Samira has the intuitive ‘magic’ to feel the deep lying pulse of a city- sense what the end user desires, all the while maintaining the aesthetics, the quality, caring for the environment and keeping the cultural needs of that particular space in mind. With Iconic Galaxy, Rajagiriya, she began with research that tapped into the climate, the culture of the people, and most importantly their aspirations.
Central to Iconic Galaxy is that residents share a community feeling, so they enjoy living within to the maximum. While you are on the ground, there is a connection with the city, but up in the air it tends to disintegrate, so the sense of community has to be injected. This has been ingeniously solved by maximizing amenities, keeping in mind every type of person: women, children, nuclear families, young business persons, and senior citizens.
The sports facilities in Iconic Galaxy include squash, table tennis, a kids’ swimming pool and a large swimming pool, while there is also a library, a parlour, a massage parlour, and a business centre. There is a mini supermarket, a club in six levels, a rooftop terrace, a children’s play area; a tree house, a fragrance garden, an amphitheatre, a topiary maze as well as the rooftop observatory (which gives the skyscraper its name, Galaxy).
One of the most thoughtful additions is the guest rooms, where residents can let their overnight visitors stay, paying only a nominal fee. Greenery too had to be incorporated into the skyscraper. To Samira, her first vision of Colombo was the pleasant presence of so much greenery. She has allowed the soothing presence to invade the complex as much as possible. The building seems to rise from a green oasis while the rooftop is also lushly verdant.
However, one thing that Galaxy gives absolute priority to is the stout safety measures. Recalling the London fires that wrecked havoc in the great capital, Samira and Pranab point out that many major buildings do get away without primary measures like more than one staircase and refugee floors.
Galaxy is equipped with two staircases, four elevators, and fire safety norms are maintained in all the refugee floors. Though flooding would be a rare contingency, a large stilt area, which is out of sight, is maintained in case of an emergency.