Rooflines

Good buildings give me a lot of pleasure. I was just looking at a sketch of an ordinary street in Mylapore, at the buildings' intimacy of scale and the jumble of rooflines.

That reminded me of the amazing Padmanabhapuram Palace, in southern Tamil Nadu near the Kerala border. Its style is pure Kerala; it was the seat of the Maharajas of Travancore, and was completed in 1744 on the site of a much earlier fort. It's on a grand scale, but it's made of wood and plaster, which means that it has a warm feeling; and the rooflines are so intricate that it's hard to figure out the shape of the whole; and there are a number of structures in a central courtyard, which gives the place a feeling of mystery, wondering what's around the the next corner.

Padmanabhapuram Palace

When you go inside, the light is dim, and cool -- and quiet, because it's a museum. The floors are polished black, with a soft gleam. Light filters in through latticed windows. In the domestic area there are huge clay pots which were once used for holding pickles. There are wooden columns inside, and the ceilings of the rooms follow the shapes of the roofs. It's a magical place.

I found an article on the palace, which includes sketches of elevations, and also an aerial view, so that I could see how the courtyard works: An Indian Portfolio: Padmanabhapuram Palace (in PDF) from ArchNet, which is "an online community for architects, planners, urban designers, interior designers, landscape architects, and scholars, with a special focus on the Islamic world." ArchNet has a digital library, including images and articles.

[I found another promising looking publication there too: The Adaptation and Growth of the Bungalow in India (in PDF).]

But back to the Padmanabhapuram Palace, I looked for images and found several in slideshows by people visiting India: at Khherrmann.de (lots of pictures, including the one shown above) and here and here.

And a travel article from Business Line here.