Rathin Goghari is an Architect and he is the designer of Algaari range.
Born and brought up in Mumbai, Rathin settled in Ahmedabad around 1980. After getting a bachelor’s degree in physics, he shifted to architecture and graduated with a degree in Architecture from the prestigious CEPT University in Ahmedabad.
His undergraduate Thesis document, “The Role of the Un-built Spaces in clustered Organisations - A study of Indian Palace Complexes”, was written under the guidance of Architect P S Rajan in 1989-90. It was published as a book by the Vastu-Shilp Foundation and CEPT in 1990.
After working at Stien Doshi and Bhalla for three years, he established his own firm, RATHIN GOGHARI ARCHITECTS in Ahmedabad in the year 1993 – a design consultancy studio including both architectural and Interior design projects. He has designed Schools, Office Buildings, Industrial buildings, Clinics, Private Residences, farm houses. He has also done Interior Design for same buildings and many other. He has been involved with furniture design along with the Interiors.
He teaches design at CEPT University, in both the School of Architecture and School of Interior Design as a visiting faculty, since 2000.
His wife Falguni is also an Architect, closely involved with the firm. Falguni also runs a wooden toy company called Woodtoys, since 1998, within the same premises. In fact, it was from the Woodtoys workshop that Falguni and Rathin got involved in furniture design and so the idea for Algaari evolved in 2014 and has now emerged as a separate entity.
Where Rathin got his inspiration for Algaari:
“Visiting sawmills and looking at trunks of trees getting cut is intriguing,” he says. “One is humbled by the scale of the operations and the thought of the precious and renewable resources of nature being used. Just the cutting process, leaves one overwhelmed by the sizes and quantities of wood produced from large trunks. But, together with that awe, the question emerged: what happens to the waste wood. In the scale of things at a saw mill, the side trimmings are negligible and "collateral damage" is not given much thought. And yet, here it is: substantially large quantities of resource material from the peripheral trunks that almost go waste or neglected.”
Having sourced wood from sawmill leftovers, Rathin says his design inspiration initially was the work Nakashima, a famous wood-maker architect from Japan. But working with wood, brought its own inspirations, ideas and influences. From the outset, Rathin was keen to contrast and complement these raw offcuts of timber with other elements like glass and metal. This fusion of sleek materials like glass and metal with natural wood appealed.
“It spoke of the contrast and composition of natural with man-made, how the two come together creating sculptural and functional possibilities. These are explorations and careful visualisations from random yet wonderful logs and planks of wood. They absorb me like a puzzle for days till a feasible object emerges. There is always a dialogue with the craftsman who works on it that evolves the design and satisfies the appetite to resolve and create. These have turned out to be a side activity from the routine and rigour of projects. It has become a vital hobby and a compulsion to satisfy an inventive desire,” he says.
Rathin also prefers regional wood available around the place of work like Neem wood. Exploiting the unique quality of natural pieces of timber in different forms makes some the furniture one of a kind yet possible to reproduce in similar design. Hence this range allows a basic design concept repetition, relatively easy to manufacture in numbers, but it is not mass-produced. Other pieces made from “found” wood are unique and one of a kind.
Rathin Goghari Architects : www.rgadesign.space