Form Follows Feeling: Reddymade’s Suchi Reddy on the Space-Body Connection and Agency for Empathy

By Julia Gamolina

Suchi Reddy brings extensive experience in large-scale cultural, educational, healthcare, retail, commercial, and residential projects to the award-winning practice. She founded Reddymade in 2002 with a human-centric approach to design, dedicated to celebrating diversity and equality, as well as addressing the economic, social, environmental and cultural impacts of her work on both the user and the planet.

Reddy was appointed the Plym Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois School of Architecture, Champaign–Urbana for the Fall 2019 semester, where her work focused on contemporary architectural experience through the lens of neuroaesthetics, neurophenomenology, and sensory design. She sits on the board of the Design Trust for Public Space and Storefront for Art and Architecture, and is a member of the Dean’s Board of Advisors at Detroit Mercy School of Architecture. In her interview with Julia Gamolina, Suchi talks about evolving her approach to architecture, advising those just starting their careers to come to the profession with open eyes and passion.

JG: How did your interest in architecture first develop?

SR: I grew up in India, in Chennai which in the South. My father had a friend who was an autodidact and taught himself architecture. He was very influenced by Japanese architecture, and was the only person in town with a Bonsai collection [laughs]. He was amazing, and my father hired him to design our house!

The house made a huge impression on me. I think when I was ten years old, and I can’t tell you how I knew this, I just felt it in my body, but I felt that my house made me different than my friends. Just different. And this is how I knew that my space was acting on me, and that I was closely bonded with that relationship of interior and exterior, volumes, and high and low, and all of the varieties, experiences, and textures that the house offered. I knew that all of that had an impact on me as a person, and that’s what got me interested in architecture.

Hertz Residence, Venice Beach, CA. Photography by Arthur Drooker

Cherokee Residence, Beverly Hills, CA. Collaboration with Plant Prefab. Photography by John Linden.

I love that you touch on the intuitive effects that architecture has on someone.

Right, and I had gone through my education at a time when Deconstructivism and things like that were being discussed, and architecture was approached through these intellectual categories, which were fascinating from a formal perspective but not necessarily from a phenomenological perspective.

It was wonderful to be educated in architecture at the time that I was, and to go through all of these different influences, but I would always still come back to the relationship to architecture that comes from the body. I strongly believe that we build our world from our bodies – first through the clothing that we wear, then to our homes, then to our cities. It’s how we relate within these layers, and it’s all about how these layers interact together.

What were your other takeaways from architecture school?

I didn’t come to architecture necessarily seeing the discipline as a change-making tool. I saw it as an extension of the human body, as a living thing in its habitat, where it interacted with me just as much as I interacted with it. So when I first started my practice, I began designing spaces from the perspective of feeling, and that’s how my “form-follows-feeling” mantra came about. That always seemed to make more sense to me. Form of course has to follow function, but form following feeling has to mean an architecture that is much more embedded in our DNA.

I also think that this is the level on which most people actually react to design and architecture. Interior design does a very good job on actually capitalizing on that relationship and that exchange, and connecting with people on that level, whereas architects, to a certain degree, have lost that agency for empathy. As I was going through architecture, I felt like, yes, I was working on buildings that were interesting and very large, but the magic that exists when one material meets another, or when all the proportions line up to really make a difference, was so rare. This led me to believe that there had to be another way to practice architecture, and to really come at it.

“Form of course has to follow function, but form following feeling has to mean an architecture that is much more embedded in our DNA.”

— Suchi Reddy

How did you get your start in the industry?

I came to the States from India when I was eighteen and went to school in Detroit – and my first start was an internship at an all-Black firm. That was also my first experience with prejudice and racism and all these things that I didn’t know even existed. I had a wonderful education there, and in Detroit, and in general my entry into the profession was through internships.

How did you get to New York, from Detroit?

Oh, I had a long journey of traveling around the country. Someday I want to write a diary about my American life, because I’ve lived in some of the most unusual places for an immigrant. I didn’t go to the big cities as one might expect – I lived in Birmingham, Alabama, then Florida, then West Virginia, and I find them all to be very unique and different. I just worked in different places in those cities, was in different relationships, and those factors took me all over.

A Space for Being, Milan, IT. Photography by Emanuel Hahn.

How did Reddymade come about?

The process was pretty organic – I was working for a firm and they had to downsize, and this was the same day that I got a request to design a house from someone that knew someone that I knew. That was it! Starting my own practice wasn’t premeditated for me, I didn’t have it in my head that that’s something that I wanted to do, and things just evolved into that. That project never actually got built, but it led to another project, and now Reddymade is nineteen years old.

In those nineteen years, what did you have to do to make Reddymade into what it is today?

Work my ass off, if I can say that on record [laughs]. I worked so hard, and I continue to do so. A practice needs so much fostering, and one of the things that’s hardest about growing a practice, especially for someone like me – an immigrant, a woman of color – is finding opportunities. I had to work very hard to have the work speak for itself. Then the work came through word of mouth and still does.

“We come out as these poets of space that we think society knows it needs, but we don’t learn how to communicate or prove the need.”

— Suchi Reddy

Everyone speaks about finding work being the most difficult. What did you do to recognize the right opportunities when they came along?

My clients were usually people who knew people that I had already worked with. My clients were my referral pool, and once I started with one client, I ended up getting another, and then another, and then another. That’s how the practice grew.

Talk to me about scaling, in all the ways! Hiring staff, finding new projects, there is so much involved.

Really I’m still walking in the dark and learning as I go along. I will say that one of the drawbacks of starting your own practice, besides seeking the opportunities yourself, is understanding – and this is something that I think architectural education is really lacking in – business development. We come out as these poets of space that we think society knows it needs, but we don’t learn how to communicate or prove the need. We have to support that need, and understand how best to develop our presence inside our networks. I learned very late how important it is to simply speak to people and let them know about the work that we’re doing.

Where do you feel like you’re in your career today?

I don’t even know if I would say I’m mid-career – architects bloom so late in their career. I don’t quite feel like I’m “emerging”, though maybe in some ways I am, but I do feel like I’m just about to embark on a legacy.

X, Times Square, NY. Courtesy of Ka-Man Tse for Times Square Arts.

X, Times Square, NY. Photography by Emanuel Hahn.

What does that mean to you? And how does that make you feel?

None of this was very clear to me until maybe last year, to tell you the truth. The pandemic certainly makes you rethink everything and really take a look at your values. I have to say that 9/11 was a similar moment. I remember working when everything happened, having to evacuate my construction team, and asking myself afterwards if my skills as an architect were really the contribution that I wanted to bring to the world. After much thought, I did decide that it’s through architecture that I know how to make a change, and from that point I really settled into my practice and my drive as a change-maker.

Also through the years, I’ve found that I’ve become really sensitive to the position that architects put themselves in within culture. I don’t like the fact that most of the time we look at ourselves as creators of containers. We can be more attune to what actually happens within those containers. And the way to do that, and the way that I’ve been able to keep my interest in this work, is learning more about the intersection of neuroscience and architecture, and learning about how feeling and emotion have a scientific side to them in the way that they interact with our environments.

Especially when you see the differences and the tendencies towards polarization in the world, and the devaluation of architecture within our culture, I think that we bring it back to the body as a democratic space. If we can continue to bring the relationship back to the body, we can value architecture from a different place.

What have been the biggest challenges in your career?

Developing the business skills in order to grow the practice was a challenge. You don’t always realize the need for that. If I were to start a tech company for example, I wouldn’t start it without a CFO, a COO, and CTO. As architects, we instead think, “Oh, I can just do everything.” And to be fair, we are natural collaborators, and we understand a lot of different kinds of people, so these things come naturally for us, but at the same time, there is a lot of value that people in those kinds of organizational roles bring.

“You have to be a passionate person because architecture gives you as much as you give it. Architecture is an act – it is an active engagement.”

— Suchi Reddy

Who are you admiring right now, that’s doing work that you want everyone to know about?

There’s a Bangladeshi female artist whose work I really love, Dilara Begum Jolly. She’s really interesting. I’m also admiring a young colleague of mine who I just met, Sumayya Vally, who is designing the Serpentine Pavilion this year. She’s wonderful. My inspirations tend to transcend all kinds of ages and boundaries [laughs].

We touched on this earlier, but how would you articulate your mission? What is it that you want to do for the field?

My mission is to continue to communicate the value of architectural practice, and for people to start thinking with their bodies.

Finally, what is your advice to those starting out in the field? Would your advice be any different for women?

My advice would be to really go into the profession with open eyes and to aim to understand all of the different aspects that you will need to be trained in, all in order to truly understand what architecture is. You have to be a passionate person because architecture gives you as much as you give it. Architecture is an act – it is an active engagement.

My advice to women would be to not let any kind of gendering affect your point of view, but to let it catalyze your point of view. You can’t ignore the fact that being a woman in the field is a different experience, but the trick with that is to not let it define you – let you define it.