The inside-outside thing at work

IF YOU LOOK CLOSELY FROM A CERTAIN angle, you can see WallÉ,¹ read into the east, street-facing elevation, behind a large pin oak tree on a narrow central-city site. His head and eyes the top floor, his pivoting waist at mid-level and, below, the engine room of the small, waste-collecting robot, made famous by Pixar in 2008.

But you can also see a building where sculpted cut-out slots let in light and life above the concrete boundary walls, not dissimilar in concept to Matra Architects’ Kaleka House in Delhi. In his Essay froma, architect Jeremy Smith points to the concrete house as one with an interest in boundaries, in a country that has long been testing boundary relationships.