SHASHI : ALONE

2012-01-13T21:25:00.000-08:00

Marginality is today no longer limited to minority groups,but is rather massive and persuasive; this cultural activity of non-producersof culture, an activity that is unsigned, unreadable and unsymbolized, remainsthe only one possible for all those who nevertheless buy and pay for the showyproducts through which a productivist economy articulates itself. Marginalityis becoming universal. A marginal group has become a silent majority.”

Micel de Certteau in The Practice of everyday Life

House in the Changing Indian cities

2012-01-02T09:32:00.000-08:00

B SBhooshan

(This is the expanded/revised version of an essay in +91 Residences)

This note triesto look at the viability of a plethora of ideas and designs put forward by manyarchitects and planners in the last 30 years who very romantically looked atvirtues of collective living as in villages and old settlements.. The mostprominently, were those promoted as part of HUDCO’ s cluster housing, theAranya project by BV Doshi or the Belapur housing by CM Correa and the new projectslike Ambivalley, Lavazza and many other gated communities. The inclusive housingvs exclusive housing is a debate which never settles. There are many argumentsfor and against these, but most importantly to note from documentations is thatall these ideas failed being anything beyond as successful only in minisculeparts or as interesting photographs. There may be many reasons. I have nointentions to go into that. But I think, a closer look at the idea of dwellingitself may give some clues.

A house(1) is more than a set of spaces and features puttogether. Its physicality is formed by a set of personal preferences and socialvalues and given a physical form and setting. But, what does a house mean inIndia’s urban world today? What does it imply on its design?

The sense of place that a house offers is anextension of the meaning derived from the multilayered identity that a housealong with its environment has. It is meaningful more to the inhabitants, than toa visitor. One identifies oneself with a house and then to its surrounding ‘place’.

The structure ofpower relations influences the manifest forms of houses and their relation to aplace most fundamentally, . Power derives from vanity and fear. Vanity is thedesire to be different and evolves from the idea of one’s identity- individualor collective. Fear of many kinds, realand imaginary, generates values for protection, or defense, which also promotedcollective living, once. Protection also generates power.

Stratificationand hierarchic position is not new to Indian society. Most people always belonged to a group, often inheritingcommonalities and sharing values, living collectively sharing resources thatsuited the life styles. Most of the collective living in the past, the agraharas, the tols or the pols or therow-housing streets werebased on a social stratification on the lines of caste or a vocation or trade;a grouping dominated by‘segmentary differentiation’ ( term used by Luhmann citedin Schumacher, 2011). Modernizing urban societies are transforming towards a ‘functional differentiation’( againto use a Luhmann term)(2) breaking original social stratification andgrouping to create new ones.

Collectiveidentities based on new criteria like income or status group change the meaningof a dwelling or house. It becomes more of a value statement and life stylestatement and also is a desire statement to belong to a status group. The individualisation of dwellings hasaltered the sharing of resources even in the traditional areas like agraharas. Common social spaces are crumplingand shedding original use and therefore, meanings. The collective idea now remains moreas a dream; not an achievable nor generally desired value, except in vanity- or-social status- raising-situations like gated communities or high valueapartments. Here again, anonymity of urban life militates against a sharedcollective culture and that denote a different meaning to a dwelling, perhapsto a thing of convenience and economics.

The individualhouse with a separate compound announced a status, a position and declared apower relation with the rest of the society traditionally. A bungalow for a long time was reservedfor rich and feudal land lords or elite class who sought a different identityand a different meaning deriving out of the affordablevoluntary exclusion , though partial, from the environment. Now thatdesire of individuality runs across all seeking new status.

In the largercities, migration has been a major aspect in recent times. The proportion ofyouth with investment capabilities is also on the rise. Investors thereforelook at abodes largely as temporary and go not seek much more. A minority who thinksto settle down may seek greater meaning. They constitute what can be termed loosely as consumers of designer homesor ‘ seekers’. As per McKinsey Report this class with annual income above two lakhs rupees as is less than 2% of theurban population of India today (3). This denotesthat a significant part of urban population is struggling with day to dayliving and attaches totally different meaning to a house. The trend makingmedia moulds the values and influences this minuscule ‘seeker’ class.

However, all classes of people tend to emulate the life stylesof ‘higher’ class and consider that desirable. This along with the desire to be differentpropels the need for individual plots, however small. The resultant everdecreasing size of plots leads to an inward looking self referential architecturewith communications to the street or to the neighbor totally broken. Meaning oflife around multifunctional streets and common social spaces collapses. Dwellingbecomes a property and goal is individual identity and projection of self. Iscollective living an unachievable utopia then?

New collectiveidentities may develop, perhaps, but not in the spatial sense of the past. Theincrease of space-less, rootless, ‘ homeless’ nomads of global traveler class will assert more voicesin metropolitan landscapes. Functional and other groups defined by new lifestyles, marked by high value gated communities for example, may physically segmentsocietal spaces.

The provision ofdwelling in large cities has become a simple technical economic exercise of howto fit it physically and economically into an urban milieu. Architecture thenis a USP driven by notions of salability and economics compounded by reinventionof nostalgic spaces and features, free cross-country adaption of inventedheritage features, mindless novelty seeking shape geometries and materials. Dothey have the quality to stimulate any deep experience for the inhabitants? Ifnot, the idea of community living is only a romanticized physicality or of temporaryexperience. This problem solving approach fails to address the question ofhuman identity and ecologic meaning of dwelling in the evolutionary andvolatile urban societal context. What happened to Belapur housing or many lessknown cluster housing ideas?

Can architecture,as a discipline, search for resolving the dichotomy of self and its relations to the environment at large? When physicalspace no more defines social groups, we may have to invent a new architectureand a new idea of dwellings, housing and the city as an ecologic community. Asour social system is neither stagnant nor functionally as differentiated as inthe developed societies and still tradition coexists with the contemporary in anuneasy way, we need, perhaps, an architecture and urban design different fromthe past as well as the global. I am aware that it is a tall order, the firststep is to realise the current follies and learning from them.

Notes:

The word house used here to mean the physical expression of a home: a dwelling or an abode, which could be an independent house, apartment or a street/row house. This essay is in the context Indian cities only. It tries to understand the meaning of transforming physicality of a house in the urban social context and its implication in its design.
Luhmann cited by Patrik Schumacher (2011), The Autopoesis of Archtecture, John Wiley and sons, West Essex.
McKinsey Global Institute, (2010) India’s Urban Awakening, http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/reports/freepass_pdfs/india_urbanization/MGI_india_urbanization_fullreport.pdf

Season greetings!

2011-12-29T20:23:00.001-08:00

2011-12-25T18:04:00.001-08:00

every lie is true and every truth a lie
when you stare at it long enough

every fairness is unfair and every unfair deed is fair
if you look at it long enough

every man is cruel and every cruelty is manly
when you don't want to look at him or the deed long enough

Towards a paradigm shift in technology

2011-12-24T08:11:00.000-08:00

A talk delivered at the Infrastructure Conference at Trivandrum on 17 November 2011

Architecture of public Realm in Kerala: towards a ‘paradigm shift ‘ for design

Dr. B Shashi Bhooshan (1)

1. The public architecture; why is it important as messages to future?

Architecture is not technology; it is a social response to technology and its application to meet certain needs; physical, psychological, social and cultural. Architecture is neither utility alone. It mirrors culture of the time. And it should. Architecture is multivalent, multilayered; single agenda do not make good architecture. Public spaces and buildings are the symbols of major institutions of a time and therefore it reflects the time’s expressions and aspirations. Public buildings are not appropriated in the private realm and therefore are collective expressions. And it should be so. Therefore the design of public realm is important investment for/of future and the design of such spaces and buildings should be done with care.

2. The past as present :

In the past we have shown so much maturity to adapt and develop an architecture in Kerala region which was unique. But then the social and economic condition was unique too. That has undergone tremendous change. In the early last century public government works distilled the images and details from past architecture of Kerala and created a new idiom, eg. The Napier Museum, University College in Trivandrum etc. Then they also created the secretariat; a new kind of architecture for a new function. We were not stuck by stereotypes then. We adapted well. Now they are part of our heritage.

However, can we be proud of any building or spaces created in the last 50-60 year? Why did we settle for a mediocre architecture in the public realm? The public works department pioneered many a new technologies in the past. But could not make any lead in developing anything relevant to the region. Some where it got stuck. We have created inappropriate architecture all over Kerala influenced by new architecture developed in entirely different climatic and cultural regions and without investing enough thought or experiments to make them suitable. Today they dot the entire stretch of Kerala as mediocre spaces and buildings aging too ungracefully. They are today as remnants of a bad caricature. We have come to abhor these public spaces and public architecture as poor imitations badly done. It was Laurie Baker who thought of an experiment in architecture which caught the imagination of some people at least for some decades. Baker’s architecture was based on an idea of cost reduction and a philosophy of Gandhian frugalism. Yet it endeared other dimensions as well. This experiment though not irrelevant seemed to have died too soon, whatever done in the so called style of Baker has also descended to a level of caricature. Lack of a multivalent agenda.

3. Confusing trends:

The last two decades of globalisation and opening of the economy made us believe that creating images and use of certain materials produced globally is synonymous with architecture. It is creating a substantial niche today and is moving to spread. The problem of this is not in the forms and shape they take, but its misappropriation of the valance and meaning of architecture. The dissatisfaction with aping the global tendencies cries for appropriating past forms in the name of heritage. This has also created spaces and objects and material surfaces untrue to the process and technology and is making architecture a paste on extra of a scenographic surface appliqué. Architecture is understood as external surfaces and a visual media alone. The past decade also saw awareness on the great damages being done to our planet and ecology and the idea of green and sustainability is gaining ground. Though movement has a valid point to make, a plethora of different shades of green are being promoted; some masquerading rating systems and some romanticising tribal technology. In this scenario today we see that green by itself can promote any monsterism to the level of architecture. Critical evaluation of technology, heritage, green processes and their relevance is woefully lacking and architecture is becoming a name game; a labelling system; contemporary, heritage, modern, green.

4. Moving forward: an approach to design

How do we move out of this? We need a paradigm shift, certainly. First and foremost, architecture should be understood as a multi layered cultural product and a product of thought process with in the society. It is the most public art and makes permanent marks on the environment. Public debate on buildings and architecture should happen; not left to narrow political or real estate processes. Plurality in thinking is to be encouraged, but critically debated. A parametric approach to architecture need to developed defining the new developing contexts and parameters. Architecture should try to satisfy most such parameters and should not get bogged down to one or two. Architecture is to become multivalent again. We may outline the critical parameters of architecture for the future.

a. Climate: sun and rainfall, Sustainability and energy efficiency

These parameters as a group together make primary influence on the shape of any sensible architecture anywhere. But today most architecture does not start with that. Air-conditioning has made anything possible and that has made all the difference. If one does not bother about energy, anything goes. When such a thing happens, the very essence of architecture the place maker is gone. Sun has been tempered by AC, but the rain still plays havoc on buildings. We have not understood yet how to build sensibly and densely with our climate. The sun, the shadows, the rain, the breeze and many other natural elements becomes means of celebration of life in a place and a joyful architecture is created when we respond to them. Have we done it in the recent past?

b. Pressure of land / competition of uses/ depletion of resources

No more land is made, but our needs are increasing. Naturally, we have seen the fiercest encroachment on all terrains and farm lands. We know we cannot go on like that. Higher density is essential. But we need to decide how much density and building is too much. And what can go where. All this means a very scientific approach to planning for a settlement system and a settlement policy. Kerala is today one large multi nodal city. The land is being parcelled in the name of infrastructure without any idea as to how we would create a settlement and city system with limited land availability. Also not considered is how the new infrastructure development is impacting and would impact the settlement system. Why are we not investing on such studies and initiate a policy on urbanisation, regional planning and settlement system?

Our urban planning has been based on models borrowed from elsewhere on outdated processes and legal framework. Neither did we have an urban model in the state in the past. Most of our cities are accretions of organic settlements developed without much care, meant not for motorised transport. We have ruptured that system badly. Our building byelaws are creations of political and administrative expediency and not of objective scientific thinking.

We also have been depleting other resources like sand and water. We boasted of plenty of water in our gods own country, but where are we heading to. And the story of sand is well known now. We need to invest urgently into developing alternate strategies of building and planning.

c. Economics/frugality

Economic growth alone does not make development. And real estate development alone does not mean growth as well. Many have been warning on that and I am not to take a side here as I am not an expert. But as an architect I feel that unbridled growth of building density everywhere is not a healthy development. We have been building more than what we need in places and less than we need elsewhere. I believe that Gandhian Frugalism, even if not achievable everything could well be a guide. There could be economic benefits from building more and consuming more space accruing to the economy, but in the resource crunch situation it is a bad model. We tend to put priority on the hardware of buildings than the soft capacities to run them. For example, we prioritise on school buildings to education and hospitals to health care and roads to mobility. However, I do not subscribe to the idea that all buildings should be frugally built. But I do believe in not being extravagant. Can we create architecture of judiciaous spending?

d. Technology /experiments/ spirit of modernity

Technology could be at the heart of architecture, provided we use it well. Technology makes impossible possible in many ways. The spirit of enquiry was the spirit of modern architecture. Technology was a means of expression. It is moulded sensibly to serve human purpose and create places. When we forget that and loose that sensibility, technology becomes a juggernaut to intimidate and overtakes the human spirit.

Technology has two components; one that of construction techniques and materials and the other of design and production management. Most often materials of glitz overtake the other. We get enamoured by the surface glitz and novelty of materials produced for different climate and places thinking that use of such materials create world class architecture. We forget that no materials per se make architecture, but only surfaces. Further a material and technology is a product of an economic philosophy and there is a social and social power structure behind that. By bringing in a technology and materials like that of excessive surface glassing and metal cladding we are not recreating the processes that made it necessary elsewhere; we are just aping. Leave alone the desirability of these in our climatic situation. We need continuous critical evaluations and experimentation.

On the other hand, technology of design and production is continually changing and that is not been used to full extend. Architectural design without research cannot produce successful innovation. Frank Lloyd Wright, Antonio Gaudi, Renzo Piano, and our own Laurie Baker have been researchers and innovators. Such innovation could happen in the ambit of large commissions largely in public domain than in profit driven real estate domain. But the design atmosphere in which architects are made to work does not help to do that. We may have to rethink of some institutional arrangements for this purpose.

Experimentation and innovations are crucial to any society. Innovation is a result of spirit of enquiry. Stressing too much on status quo, we suppress that spirit. We need to create an atmosphere of innovation and where else can we promote it except in public realm?

e. Democratic spaces and conviviality

Unique architecture of past in Kerala were produced in a feudal social situation. They have been exclusive architecture not spaces for public, be it palaces or other spaces. However, tradition has been that they were not of intimidating monumental scale or size. The public spaces we produced in the last several decades are becoming more and more exclusive and trying to be intimidating. Compound walls and barricades and surveillance are becoming the order of the day. Architecture as public art is slowly becoming undemocratic. There may be many reasons for this, but certainly contributes to an atmosphere of mistrust in humanity. The conviviality of public spaces which is desirable quality of humane space does not exist. Most public buildings and spaces are not inviting and they stand aloof.

It is not easy to reverse this in the present circumstances perhaps, but if there is will to change and general awareness for a need to create convivial public spaces and architecture, it could be done. It would require a hard design research exercise involving design disciplines, political and administrative professionals, and police.

f. Semiotics

Semiotics deals with signs and how they make and convey meaning. Architecture is a semiotic system and to that extends it a medium to communicate. Mostly, it communicates at very basic level and higher communication requires more cerebral participation. If that awareness can be raised by sensible architecture and public debates, architecture will become a public art and will contribute to the culture more than at a utilitarian level. We would be again proud of what is built.

5. What can be done: starting point?

What is said so far is not easy to do unless there is a clear ‘paradigm shift’ in thinking. To start with the Government of Kerala can think seriously of kick start a series of measures.

a. Public Architecture Commission

We need to create a public architecture commission for the entire state. I see this commission not as an authority, but an institution. This independent commission could advise government on the design of major buildings and other investments. It would not do any design, but would vet the designs of major buildings and inform architects about the parameters considered important for a proposal. It would be good if the commission could continuously sponsor and engage academics on relevant research on various aspects like building byelaws as well as conduct periodic consultancy seminars and conferences involving professionals on issues that may emerge from time to time. It should be an agency for proactive thinking and not an administrative stumbling block.

b. A policy on human settlement and urban planning

We urgently need a policy on the human settlements, cities development and regional planning linking it with transportation and infrastructure planning for the whole state. We need to search for alternatives to the existing models of urban development suited to our conditions. Architecture and urban design should become part of this policy instrument.

c. Competition for designing major public investments in building and spaces

The government’s architecture department should become facilitators, administrators and not designers especially for new major buildings of certain size. All major buildings should be designed through open competitions after a clearly defined brief. The department of architecture should work as a permanent secretariat for this purpose. Also they can liaison with construction.

We must be working to make a brand of modern Kerala architecture unique to the place and that is sensible to the land and people as well. All these are possible only if we have serious concern about the quality of architecture. That concern has to be shared not only among architects, but others and especially the powers that be. I hope some will take note of.

(1) Architect and planner, BSB Architects, Mysore and Bangalore and Adjunct Professor, BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore

my trivia are truly trivial to write about.

2011-10-20T06:52:00.000-07:00

My trivia are truly trivial to write about. And I don't know how to write about trivia interestingly and profoundly either. But then why attempt to write? It is an urge like all trivial living habits. Made more possible by the electronic media. One need not labour with pen. And there is the word editor to check spelling and grammar. And it is like electronic pornography promoting masturbation! Hardly any one reads. So it does not matter what one writes. It is for self reading and gratifying. and some times forcing the friends to read too. A lazy way the old fabulous letter writing habits in replaced. Now there is facebook and other social networking also for that. Faceless facebook. Why do we like this? I am puzzled.

chandigarh daily/ dailypost/ dated 16/10/2011

2011-10-19T07:39:00.000-07:00

A little twisted report from a Chandigarh daily. Many words and expressions are not mine. but convey the idea generally of what I spoke.

AA Visiting School Hyperthreads2011

2011-10-01T06:44:00.000-07:00

The last ties removed. The shell is complete.

AA Visiting School Hyperthreads2011

2011-09-27T21:52:00.000-07:00

This ferrocement structure was produced during the workshop Sep 2-12 at BMS College, Bangalore. Credits: Chikara inamura, Shajay Bhooshan, Abhishek Bij, John Klein, Mustafa El Sayed all tutors. The construction was put together by Muthu Kumar.M and Vishu Bhooshan of BS Bhooshan and Associates HR Deepak, structural enginner helped the fine tune of ferrocement process. Dept of Architecture of BMS College of Engineering coordinated the event.

The form was generated and structurally idealised using Maya and AlGore programmes. The edge pipes were bend using a shape prints in smaller pieces and assembled and welded on site. A cloth as per the computer print was cut and stitched and stretched over to get the shell form. The rebars were bent and placed over this using the cloth surface as guide. Chicken mesh was stretched over it and tied. The cloth was removed and Cement mortar was applied on both side of the surface and then finished. All this 15 days.

AA Visiting School 2011- HYPERTHREAD 2011

2011-07-09T23:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.zha-code-education.org/

Bran Castle, Transylvania built in 14C

2011-05-21T23:53:00.000-07:00

This castle was built in 14C and was alleged to be used by the fictitios charecer of Lord Dracula created by Bram Stoker. Ther is no direct evidence of this except through myths. however, the castle has intriguing construction details and spaces which are delightful with intriguing lights and shadows, winding stairs, spires, and sitting spaces. It was used by the royal family of Romania in early 20thC.

2011-02-03T08:37:00.001-08:00

I don’t understand light. It gives me the feeling there’s something beyond me, something beyond all understanding. And I am very glad, very grateful that there is such a thing.(The Light of Things) peter Zumthor

Congrats Shajay!

2011-01-24T04:38:00.000-08:00

http://x-pnd-blog.com/?p=31

memories

2011-01-16T21:57:00.000-08:00

memories of the past are not fully our own, they are partly reconstructed by others. the early childhood memories are largely reconstructed by the parents; consciously or unconsciously.

!

2011-01-14T23:52:00.000-08:00

World is in a falling drop,
The space is in a point.

For
I am.

companion, gandhi Sangrahalay, Ahmedabad

2011-01-06T03:31:00.000-08:00

inspiration

2011-01-02T12:10:00.000-08:00

A magazine asked me :What or who inspires my work?

Certainly no single person or a single idea; I say. There may be many.

I am no worshipper of heroes and neither I follow any blindly; in architecture or in life. I appreciate and am impressed by many a thought and I look with awe towards many a great men and their idea. I constantly evaluate new thoughts in architecture from whatever sources, but have never tried to imitate those either.

If I have to talk about my inspiration and motivation for the kind of work I do, I have to talk about the chances in my life which shaped the circumstances in my career life. Those contexts and chances are my inspiration.

Like many of my colleagues in the college in the 60’s, I too was impressed by the works and ideas of Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier. They were projected to our young minds with large images. Chandigarh and Corbusier were overbearing at that time. The poor Indian media of the time also projected a few successful Indian architects and their ideas and buildings; Kanvinde, Charles Correa and BV Doshi. Frankly, having studied in an upstart college without any peers and insufficient academic environment, these presentations were swallowed without any real critical thinking. The works on these Indian and other great masters of the World , largely of US and Europe, were also absorbed mainly through secondary and vicarious superficial experiences via photographs, plans and writings without any real experience albeit fleetingly of some. My first encounter of real contemporary architecture was with Laurie Baker. As he built in Trivandrum, the experience was real. Though he was being ridiculed by the established architectural circles there, he was motivating enough. The novelty of his social concern and need for cost reduction evolving into an idea and vision of a kind of architecture impressed me. So was his idea of searching the local idiom.

The palpable mood of the sixties was that of finding an Indian architecture for the new independent India. The works and writings of Correa and Doshi with discursions, though strenuous, into the ideas of the past also kindled a need for developing an architecture without really imitating the so called west. The questions raised were impressive and made sense, but the solutions offered were not fully convincing. A realisation came to me at a later time that the questions themselves are often not appropriately framed and was a result of looking with tinted eyes. The counter arguments for an Indian scenographic architecture also ( a forceful and popular agenda that never disappeared even today) appeared faulted and too shallow. The essential core of architecture appeared nebulous and hazy to me by the time I completed more than two years work with the govt. PWD after passing out.

This confused young mind ran away from architecture for studying planning at Chennai SAP. I did not find that field exiting and satisfying either, but it opened up an opportunity to work on documenting the space shelter of the marginalised in Chennai for an year. This was a time I could come across many non-architect professionals. Further, my stint at the Institute of Development Studies at University of Mysore working with geographers, economists, sociologists, anthropologists etc. for over a decade opened up a view of architecture from outside the profession. The social content of architecture appeared important. Working on policy studies on development and shelter for over a dozen years researching and travelling, all these time keeping the essential heart of an architect, I started appreciating the side of architecture as seen by others. That has certainly made an imprint on my works after I returned to architecture with full time practice in 1987. Several men and women, of different walks, crossed my path some walking along and they all shaped my approach to architecture and life without them having any special knowledge of architecture. Some of them are my own clients; some my collaborators; some not even any professional- masons, carpenters, contractors, builders who all have a view of their own.

I find my architecture not as a vocation working towards a product, but as a process; a search to understand how it gets built in different social contexts and how people react to it and modify it while using. This is not a research interest, but a personal interest in understanding the phenomenon of architecture. To this extend, I find working on individual urban house very interesting, albeit slogging without commensurate monetary benefits for the time spent.

At a basic level, I look at architecture with the idea of constructing an outcome with a method concentrating on the technique of construction and organising it around the available skills and methods- owner built, mason dominated or contractor built, each throwing different challenges. Exploring the methods is an inspiration itself and that is where Baker has excelled and is a source of influence. So is some of the works of Jeffrey Bawa of Sri Lanka. I may call this as building up an architecture reacting to various properties of materials used and the methods and techniques used.

This leads to another area ie. that of aesthetics of construction. We start reacting to surfaces, sounds, visuals and smells on their own merits and react to them very differently than looking at as construction alone. The architecture transcends utility and function as its appeals to sense become important. This is an inspiration on its own. Geoffry Bawa’s and Alvar Aalto’s works have this quality profoundly expressed. It also raises the question of place making.

But then we don’t stop there – I did not - wondering how and why the materials and spaces and shadows etc. appeal to us. It transcends the apparent and trusted ideas of beauty and aesthetic appeal. Then it borders on pure art where we try to see if there is any communication and any meaning in the arrangements of elements; visual, haptic, olfactory and acoustic. The reading of many works of less known and better known literary (fiction as well as non-fictions) works and efforts at understanding the semiology and semiotics (study of signs) in art and architecture, interest in theatre and films and having many non-architect interactive friends, all influenced me to question and understand as well as shape my approach architecture; largely an eclectic one, though. This is discursive and not a fixed idea either.

I also started learning and looking at postmodern architecture since the start of my practice. Not for its surface glitch and shapes, but for the ideas behind, the questions raised. However, I find architecture hard to discuss easily in public because there is a general misunderstanding of it. This is where I find architecture is political in nature and has a profound impact by the way the society develops. The question of relevance in a particular context only is understood from architecture and taken valid by most people. The surface is understood more easily than what lies beneath. In this context, I tried to do two things together. Create an architecture which is understood at one level, as it meets the functional demands and the uncritical eye, succumbing to even to the spurious ( to me) demands of vastu fears and then surreptitiously pursuing/ subterfuging another idea beneath. It is not easy. This often has led to conflicts also; and further misunderstanding as well.

The idea of communicating an idea or thought beyond being just interesting or novel, leads to the idea of politics and social dynamics in architecture. For a time, architecture gained popularity as simple arithmetic to reduce cost as popularised by Baker. Some time a reinvention of a past (heritage and ethnicity) finds many takers often resulting poor surface imitations of the past. It seemed to me that we always needed an alibi for architecture, be it cost reduction, structural safety, functionality, ease of construction or recently, the elusive sustainability or heritage.

Architecture is generally not understood as a celebration of life and should include all those aspects. This multi-dimensionality (or multi-valence as Charles Jencks calls it) of architecture is its strength as well as limitation. The architecture does not get the intellectual attention today and has not developed as a significant medium on its own right, precisely because the essence of architecture is not communicated to be politically and socially significant except in these fragments. So we have to get into kind of labels, like low cost, high tech, sustainable, ethnic. However important those labels may be, architecture is not made of any one of them alone, I believe. So I tend to question the notions in which we get entrenched and become short sighted.

My belief is in the celebration of life, not in the vulgar ways, but living wholly in the context which goes beyond the immediate physical setting or its historical setting. Stepped wells of Gujarat for example was a celebration of the resolve connected with storing and collecting much needed and scarce drinking water. Architecture is also about a positive approach to future which should not be pre-empted by the past or current limitations. Modernity- or any similar notion- is not to be understood in parts but as a whole. ‘Drama of history will have to coexist with the banality of everyday life’ ( Milan Kundera) looking forward to a possible future. That hope should inspire architecture. It has many ways perhaps.

This informs my work, and is my inspiration, though I could not live up to my own ideals always. I believe in hybrid solutions as a bridge, geographically and temporally.

2010-12-27T01:20:00.000-08:00

"..at that time art had already lost its appeal; the professors and connoissuers were no longer interested in either paintings or books, only in the people who had made them; in their lives.

In the age of persecutors what does a life mean?

A long succession of events whose deceptive surface is meant to hide Sin." Milan Kundera about Europe of 1999. Does it not apply to us too?

Encounter Essays by Milan Kundera

2010-12-25T08:53:00.000-08:00

"the formal innovations of great masters always have a certain discreetness about them; such is true perfecion; only among small masters does novelty seek to call attention to itself." Milan Kundera I add: Still lesser ones shout for attention

Globalization, building technology and architecture

2010-12-10T21:57:00.000-08:00

B.S. Bhooshan

(Something I wrote 3-4 years ago. Just dug out of junks,)

Introduction

Are we losing control over our architecture, technology and sense of identity? Or are we developing ourselves to be masters of a postmodern global culture? Are we slowly succumbing to the pressures of an economic and cultural globalization or are we developing skills to inflect the global juggernaut to our ends?

This paper is an attempt to evaluate the current scenario of trends and changes taking place in architecture and construction industry and technology in India largely as a result of the ongoing globalization of its economy. The hypothesis here is that technological changes are never neutral and is prompted not so much by economic compulsions alone, but more by external influences and cultural incursions of a global phenomenon. This I believe is first manifested in developing taste cultures and style in the name of superiority of a mythical ‘world class’ and creation of a sign system and myth supposed to be denoting world class and progress. It will be argued that by its very nature, the process, at least in the short run - I think, a fairly long short run even if that be so, will heighten the dichotomies with in the industry and social consumption of architecture as the cost of construction will be rising with out commensurate increase in the affordability of large proportion of people. As a cultural phenomenon, if this will create a postmodern society, a la USA, or will it create social tensions in India is something which require investigation and debate. For the purposes of this paper, we will restrict the arguments only to the building industry.

Globalization means increasing movement of capital, ideas, technology men, products, services across the globe not deterred by the boundaries. It is being legitimized as a phenomenon offering greatest common goods and is being promoted as to have no alternative. Of course no proof is offered. It is like myths, it is a myth; which have its own rational; a modern myth at that.

Globalisation’s legitimization is like that of modernism. Modernism developed challenging the growth of global capitalism, legitimizing itself on the brave new world of science and rational thinking. Capitalism absorbed it and modernism lost its legitimizing power. The failure of modernism is largely due to its failure of its promises; the unlimited progress which will finally eliminate poverty. It did not happen. The globalisation has a similar professed aim, but has been more practical as not to claim any possibility of economic equality or even a reducing inequality. However, it tries to level cultural differences in consumption preferences as much as possible. That perhaps is not an intention but inevitable part of the process.

There may be many routes and agents of globalization, Bretton woods institutions, IMF, World Bank, WTO etc. The goal of the process is same. Triumph of the global capital. Integration of all markets. Finally hegemonic control by transnational corporations, beyond the control of governments and countries. And even political processes. Attempting to level cultural differences and pluralism, much the same way as attempted unsuccessfully by modernism and international style in architecture.

The realms

The building industry in India has been a curious mixture having characteristics of agriculture, manufacturing and service sectors. It had been largely informal, and partly formal, offering easy entry for small entrepreneurs and high absorption of unskilled labor. It has high urban and metropolitan concentration .It has also been slow to change, clumsy, partially advanced, having most shrewd and enterprising people, very competitive and even speculative. It is also one of forerunner signs of economic growth – perhaps dubiously so. Its multiplier effect on the economy is among the highest, perhaps. In India govt. spending has been a prime mover of construction in its formal sector. That is changing drastically though.

Building industry as we know has three realms or segments.

1. Sustenance / organic construction - primitive/ traditional/ informally produced/ user involved/ construction as a process largely in rural areas and small towns and also lower sections of metros and cities. Slums. Low income housing. Basically need based.

2. Quasi professional- / professional / Hybrid This segment includes small time builders and contractors operating in small towns and unorganized small project segment of metropolitan cities. At the moment , it is by far the largest segment. There is relative autonomy in this segment today.

3. Professional / Formal/ organized/ industry. This segment is basically profit motivated builder financier related. This segment picks up changes fast. Partly trying to be world class/ global. Capitalist

This segment has developers/ builders, contractors/bui;ders, professionals, semi organized labour, skilled or unskilled.

Building Industry represents a wide spectrum ; land and real estate development. urban development; Infrastructure, roads, rail, airports etc. housing, house building, commercial development,. We are concerned here more with building sector which constitute architecture.

Architecture

It represents among other things the cultural adaptation of building technology for social and personal space programming. Architecture is cultural expression and expresses social values and ethos. It is a way of putting spaces together and building according to means. It is also a representation of social symbols of status and vanity and power. Architecture have never been dissociated from elite and powerful and the rich. But as cultural text, and as a symbol of status and also because the buildings are needed for human activities, architecture has high influence on the development of our attitudes towards built environment and also as to how cities and towns evolve. Though it is never a one-way influence.

Cultural symbolism of architecture is unfortunately connected to materials, size and myths of the society. It is influenced today more by values for foreign goods and ideas, for fashions and trends, consumerism and the market. Far from satisfying a need for shelter, as built environment, architecture is becoming more of a commodity for conspicuous consumption announcing social class. Different classes have different built environments; houses, markets, hospitals, shops, schools, etc. Objects of consumption have been always objects for conspicuous consumption.

Urbanization.

Indian economy has been evolving from a spread out agrarian to an urban and metropolitan centered one. This process has been throwing up challenging pattern of excessively concentrated urbanization. With advent of service sector domination as a result of global influence and IT, this process has further strengthened. IT could have been footloose and need not be tied by physical spatial ties for movement of goods, but it has concentrated more and more in metro centers. It is not the compulsions of the industry or even the lack of basic infrastructure like roads, and power that made IT sector to be concentrated on metro regions, but the social compulsions of the human capital manning the industry to be in places of consumer excitement and perhaps the need for higher social infrastructure, technological interface and connectivity that made it so. One can certainly expect this process to continue with more vigour with the globalization and more integration of the economies globally. More so with higher proportions of transnationals arriving here.

Impact on technology and architecture

This process of globalization, and the resulting service sector centered urbanization which evolves unabatedly is leading to a systemic changes in the industry and architecture as part of the evolving conundrum of social and cultural hiatus. Architecture and technology plays a significant role.

The process of commodification of culture and heritage is the forerunner. No heritage or cultural artifact will be preserved or continue to evolve unless they fit in the global economics or can be globally sold. That itself pre empts any lasting preservation of a local tradition or heritage, except as a curious museum piece. Cultural artifacts, which include architecture, have meaning per se only in a place context. If projected on a global scale it can survive only as a commodity. That is what is happening to architecture. It is becoming a commodity at local individual building level and at the global cultural artifact level as well. At the local level it is connected with the creation and consumption of spaces for individuals and groups and status symbols for classes and at the global level creating cultural values and therefore economic values as well for certain materials and styles of dubious global class.

Defining an obfuscating “World Class” of architecture and building ( what is it?) as being done today is difficult task. Yet it is being talked about as a goal. World class in manufacturing goods actually means fitting industrial processes and products into global standards set by developed countries especially the EU and US. Its professed purpose is to create competence to sell at global markets. Similar conditions could apply to service sectors as well. But what it means to architecture and environment? The question has muddled answer because built environment is always meant for local consumption and not for exports. Therefore it s consumption is [predetermined by local taste culture. World class in architecture and building in practical terms is a projection of manufacturing and service norms to a cultural practice. It could mean precision of joints, low tolerance, and finer finishes and therefore lesser dependence on human skill, more and more mechanization and automation. This is opposed to the aesthetic value for the handcrafted products which has a different levels and value system for finishes and geometry. Creation of an aesthetic value for the” world class”, which has been slowly developing over a century or more, is a precondition. The process leads to less and less dependence on labour and time-consuming construction techniques. Technology evolved for labor scarce economies/ capital-intensive construction similar to making of a product and to be marketed.. This suits the formal segment of industry which has higher capitalist mode of production What values inform the aesthetics of “global architecture” . in India except the acceptance of superiority of mass production by machine or the implied superiority of the cultural context of a developed country where from architectural and technological values today originate?

The process is exacerbated by few other things that happens simultaneously. From process to product: Impersonalisation of the process and product is the one. Changing the value of architecture and buildings is influenced more and more by extraneous factors and not intrinsic factors. This is already so. But will heighten further. For example: Value of construction especially of buildings, like other products are not always determined by the cost of production. It is invariably linked to the site and place because the products of construction industry are tied to a place or site. Use value of a constructed building would be more or less same everywhere but the exchange value depends largely on other factors. The place land value, the control systems of the industry, the mythical values of vanity, fear, concerns of status and safety etc. and land values determine the FAR and later the FAR determines the land value in a vicious cycle. All this controlled by real estate market forces and advertisements and marketing promotions, which promise and inflate values on certain aspects of status and vanity.

More and more global capital would move into the building industry. Construction then would be more professionally managed introducing international controls like ISO and other agencies so as to safeguard and institutionalize corporate and professional interests. With 100 percent FDI participation in real estate work hungry firms from abroad are sure to get in in a large scale. This would also require smaller construction and design firms getting eliminated from certain segments. Construction projects are becoming bigger and bigger and with global competition possible with GATS the level playing field gets eliminated for a large number of intermediate and smaller firms and companies. They have to become subsidiaries or ancillaries and will have to be subservient to the international capital. Arrival of the global capital brings its own preferences and tastes in architecture brought in by international consultants and accepted by the supporters of ‘mythical world class’.

Higher professionalisation in more and more specializations tends to make construction cost increasing with management and service cost spiraling in formal sectors. The free movement of materials, ideas and persons also makes cost attaining global levels slowly and surely. This will make economic and social sense only if the income levels of the majority will match that. That is doubtful as all pundits agree that it will take a long time for growth to disseminate. Initially it may exacerbate the existing hiatus.

Three scenario:

However the economy of India cannot be changing in short run to make this scenario possible through out the political and economic space. At least three levels are possible to coexist for a long time.

1. Global tech level:

This level will dominate large projects which are on the increase and metropolitan real estate. The major players will be the MNCs and large Indian companies in the formal sector and also by local companies, and firms aspiring to compete in the global market or the local space of the global market adapt the technological and material preferences. This segment has to be part of a global system of patronage, network and therefore adapt what is perceived and promoted as good internationally with out looking into the repercussions on the local society or economy and more so the cultural traits and the architecture.

Creation of a new elite class of individuals, firms with the impact of glitz and glitter changes the technological and architectural programs and representations. First in the builder commercial industrial segment and later in housing segments as well through real estate marketing.

Promotion of a universal building culture opposed to the evolution of plural and culturally different practices. Design development and architecture of this will continue to be controlled from global centers which will produce cultural artifacts for dissemination world wide through media and pulp and sop. This happens through the metropolitan centers. The myths and icons of new brave world scrounging the elite surface. Aestheticisation with out connection to deep structure of culture, like the language we use, will be of surface twists or outright aping.

2. intermediate level

Alternatively, the localized labour intensive informal market will continue in segments which cannot afford to be part of the international or organized formal segment. This segment with its innovativeness and improvisation drastically changing the expected industry standards and blatant violations of property rights and legal and safety standards will thrive on the gullies besides highways of globalization. As it already does. Cheap improvisations of structural glazing and aluminium cladding are already in place. This segment will spatially coexist with the first one patronized by smaller and intermediate size projects. But as already seen its architecture is also influenced by the high tech level.

3. The Folk level:

At the lower level, the traditional folk techniques that will have to continue to exist for the marginalized majority. The totally informal sector which is not going to vanish. This will still continue in rural areas, smaller towns or in housing segments of the lower and middle classes in the metropolitan suburbia as well.

On can lament about this loss of traditional building practices and skills and impersonlising architecture and commodification or one can just shrug the shoulders about the inevitable. One can try to resist and chose to operate in the bare foot economy at level 3 . Or one can resist the juggernaut by trying to inflect it to local conditions at level one. A kind of making the global forces mend ways for local issues. The loss of identities is beginning to kindle nostalgia and therefore the clamor for heritage and conservation. But heritage conservation efforts are also today based on economics; the idea of commerce and profits. It is also ironically a product of international tourism. Heritage is USP. Replicating form with out regard for the process or inherent quality of material used. Kolapuri Chappals in plastics.

Organizationally for the profession of design, globalization and higher international integration is likely to change at various levels. As the trend is projects are getting bigger and bigger and the design is no more a personalized single person dominated affair. It is going to be more of teamwork across related professions. The kind of design structure we have been used are changing. If one opts out of this design corporate approach, one has to be content with smaller works at the second or third level of architectural scenarios.

The question is whether it will be possible to integrate all the levels or will they work on different wavelengths.

We are arriving at post modern condition in parts with out even fully going through a developed modern condition. Dichotomous condition has been with us. The hiatus further gets manifested in the architectural and building scene. Shoulkd we be bothered about it? Shound we not?

concepts in architecture: webinar

2010-09-29T10:46:00.000-07:00

Constructionguru will arrange a webinar by me on 13 October 2010. See the link:
http://www.constructionguru.in/news_detail.php?news_id=148

published in trendsideas

2010-08-23T22:46:00.001-07:00

See the link: the magazine is published by Times: both hard copies and on net

http://trendsideas.com/ViewArticle.aspx?article=14218®ion=72&topic=14

AA School workshop comes Bangalore

2010-06-06T09:14:00.000-07:00

Hyper-threads

A 10 day workshop and 1 day symposium conducted by AA School of architecture, London and BMS College of Engineering , Bangalore.

This August the AA School of Architecture, London, Zaha Hadid Architects Computation and Research group (ZHACDRG), Autodesk Inc and Department of Architecture, BMS College of Engineering , Bangalore will bring a unique architectural workshop and 1 day symposium to Bangalore. The workshop as represented by the diversity of the collaborators, will explore the relations between contemporary software technology, design techniques, creative expression and its manifestation within India’s emergent economy and ancient built traditions. The intention is to look beyond Computer Aided Design (CAD ) as simple design automation to CAD as enabling architectural creativity whilst still responding to complex spatial and material performance constraints of our times.

Objectives.

The workshop will focus on exploring connections between architecture, New Media and fabrication. The aim will be to provide the participants conceptual and programming framework for advanced digital methods within collaborative architectural design. Towards this, the workshop intends to make available a rich, varied and international talent pool from institutions such as Zaha Hadid Architects London, AA School of Architecture , London, Southern California institute of architecture ( SCI-Arc ), Los Angeles apart from local partners including BMS college, Bangalore. Further, the workshop expects to tap into expertise of Autodesk, who are on-board as software-development / training collaborators of the workshop.

The workshop will initiate participants into a compressed version of design to production cycles in contemporary architectural practices. The design brief for the workshop will centre on the design of a canopy/shelter and the emphasis in the teaching will be placed on emergent computational design-production tools and techniques. Aiming to extend the knowledge base of the participants, the workshop will use production-proven design methods, and software platforms – both for concept development and material articulation. It looks to build on previously successful workshops at the AA and elsewhere, and generate a platform to show case India’s architectural design talent.

Certification.

AA School of Architecture and BMSCE will individually certify participation in the workshop as part of their design curricula.

Autodesk Inc will certify participation as part of their Autodesk training certification for specific software used / taught during the course.

Applications

The deadline for applications for both the workshop and participation in the symposium is 15 July , 2010 .

Workshop - 10 days

Generative structures : Emerging design technology and contemporary architectural practise.

02 -12 August 2010 , BMSCE , Bangalore

Symposium - 1 day

Emergent design technology, design intelligence and creative expression.

12 August 2010 , BMSCE , Bangalore

Tutors - workshop

Chikara Inamura .

Researcher - design delivery, Zaha Hadid Architects ;

Advanced computational design tutor, and AA Design Research Lab (AADRL)

Shajay Bhooshan ,

Lead researcher, Computation and Design Group, Zaha Hadid Architects.

Advanced computational design tutor, AA & AADRL

John Klein

Technical tutor , Southern California Institute-Architecture

Mostafa El Sayed

Researcher , AA Alumni , Computation and Design Group , Zaha Hadid Architects

MadhuChand

Asst Professor, Architect, BMS College of Engg, Bangalore , Local Coordinator

Symposium – probable speakers

Patrik Schumacher, Partner, Zaha Hadid Architects

Brett Steele, Director of AA ,

Christopher Pierce, Director of AA Visiting School, AA Unit Master

Nils Fischer, Associate , Zaha Hadid Architects , London.

Vijay Sohni, President , Council of Architecture, India.

BS Bhooshan , BSB Architects, Professor, BMS College, Bangalore, India.

Kiran Venkatesh , Inform Architects, Bangalore ,

MadhuChand KR, Assst. Professor, BMS College ofArchitecture, Co-ordinator

Eligibility and target Audience.

There is not a pre-requisite to know any of the software that will be used during the course. The workshop is open to current architecture and design students, recent graduates, young professionals, and design teachers looking to augment their digital skills from India and elsewhere. The workshop will benefit students looking to pursue post graduate studies / research in architecture as also architectural firms looking to train their staff.

Accommodation & Costs

Workshop.

. The AA Global School requires a fee of 500 Euros per participant which includes a 50 Euro Visiting Student Membership, made payable to the AA School of Architecture. Fees do not include flights or accommodation. Accommodation is not provided, but advice on affordable hotel can be given. Students need to bring their own laptops, digital equipments and model-making tools.

Early bird discounts : 400 Euros per participant for those registering before 15 June 2010 .

Symposium.

Participation in workshop automatically qualifies for participation in symposium. Fees for symposium alone is 25 Euros.

Early bird discounts : 10 Euros per participant for those registering before 15 June 2010 .

Website and more information :

http://bangalore.aaschool.ac.uk/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/AA-Bangalore-Summer-School-2010/128450967170498?v=wall&ref=search

Chamundi hills, Mysore

2010-04-07T05:36:00.000-07:00

All these pictures were taken on way up the Chamundi hills in Mysore in the beginning of summer 2010. The 1000 steps stairway always hold interesting views and episodes.You are likely to meet some most unexpected people there.

Kolkata Urbanism: Coexistence of glitter and litter:

2010-04-01T07:12:00.000-07:00

December 2009

It was almost my first personal encounter with Kolkata. I have been here on short visits before, but never encountered it like now. I did it alone walking around and exploring. I have heard a lot of stories and not-so-good epithets about the city and I expected a chaotic hell. I did see a ‘hell’ all right, but it was not dissimilar to many other ‘metropolitan hells’ in India. What it displayed was a quite ease and predilection with its disposition than the usual uneasy grumpy rashness of metropolitan India elsewhere.

On the morning of December 26, I reached the Dalhousie square; the epicenter of Kolkata; the seat of its political power. Compared to the pompous aloofness of Bangalore’s Vidhansoudha and its pretentious facade, this red building looked more like a huge distinguished but ravaged old man standing by the roadside. The pompousness of arcades and barricades and also the battalions of police and other vehicles around made it seem formidable and powerful though. The bamboo scaffolding put up for painting made it look precarious as well.

I walked across and strolled into the side streets. And the city really punched me hard.

Frying masala. The smell of it and the hiss of cooking on kerosene stoves and make shift fireplaces on the sidewalks hit me. It is on and on endless in all the streets. Smell of food and the sound of it being served and eaten by people sitting on wooden benches and tables, the clutter of plates and tumblers, the smell of dirt and filth mixed with water, the sound of rushing water from hoses and hydrants, the sound of chattering men and women bathing and washing clothes on the road from those hydrants, the sound of tinkering and welding , the men repairing small electrical machines on the side lines, the shout of rickshaw pullers with their shameful burden of yore, the bells of cycles and horns of cars, the clickety-clackety relics of trams, laugh of happy looking men and women, the tactility of walking on rough broken pavements, the slush of mud, the colorful clothes hung on steel barricades separating the road and sidewalks, the thud of things thrown down from roofs , colourful ads of digital cameras and laptop computers, and the mosaic of clothes and mobile phones and electronic goods on the elegant shop windows of rundown buildings, men and women in soiled working clothes, babus in their best attire, puppies, street dogs and cats, dying flower plants on broken planters, food gadis under colourful cloth umbrellas …Ah a rioting attack on all of one’s senses.

That was my first sensual phenomenological adventure in and around Dalhousie square. Later I found that this mixture is not just in one street but in all streets of old Kolkata; Chowranghee, MG Road, Esplanade, everywhere. Nowhere in India, I experienced this real boiling cauldron of urbanization unabashedly mixed. No attempt here to separate the glitters and litters by barriers of law and semblance of westernized order. The rickshawala blissfully sleeps on his vehicle on the side of a street. So do many on paved surfaces and benches and even on the balustrades around the tranquil yet filthy central lake in front of the Writers building- the secretariat. The migrant worker families live on huts around the large unkempt maidan with its unclean pond, like they do in the villages. Men and women bathe in those waters, the embankments are misused, dumped with waste and dirt, and growth of wild plants abounds and there are many huts. No manicured lawns and plants as one would expect on the side of a lake which reflects the Secretariat. Across the road that is full of yellow couloured ambassador taxi cabs, there stands the remnants of the Raj, the majestic white postal building; the red bricked others with Corinthian and Ionic columns. A real contrast of life situations, a miniature of life in India.

One may find this coexistence of various strata of society, luxury, middle class and poverty in all our cities, in Mumbai, Chennai or Bangalore, but not the way they ‘peacefully ‘ occupy the same urban space. Am I imagining? I checked again, no it is real. Right in front of the seat of power, the Writers building, it is there, the chaotic disorganized unsightly yet peaceful coexistence. Visual poverty and ugliness is not pushed out of the main roads. Not to be visible for the upper class and powerful elites. Is the ‘Bhadralok’ tamed enough? The streets, all of them, do have a side walk wide enough for people to walk, but occupied by venders of all kinds of goods and road side eateries (a poor man cousin of fashionable food courts, a distant cousin of roadside restaurants of Europe) yet leaving enough space for people to walk and shop from the upper class outlets in the adjoining buildings. Three decades of communist democracy made poverty as visible as luxury. Decadence of edifice is not apologized nor covered up. I wonder, is it by design?

The centre and old part of Kolkata presents no evidence of glittering sheen of consumerism dominant in new urban spaces and in central part of other cities. It does not mean consumerism is not there. One look at Park Street tells a lot. However, hardly one finds any new buildings there. All old ones have seen paints decades ago, no new aluminum windows or structural glazing covering the facades. All these are reserved to comparatively newer areas a like Salt Lake City or Rajarhat and other peripheries. Capitalist real estate dreams are catching up the citadel of communism on the periphery.

One finds an addictive abandon. (Gay abandon?) Starting from the beautiful pond of the centre, there are many useful relics of the past which are abandoned to languish. Kolkata is the only city in India continuing to run the transport heritage of trams. But what they have today is an apology of its early traffic wizardry. Its coaches are rattling ramshackle of wood and steel, the connectors are archaic slipping the electric network so often that the conductor has to do a repair magic with a rope more often, the people who travel are all too poor to pay a decent fair. No wonder that the Calcutta tram company (CTC) runs buses to rehabilitate their redundant employees, who cannot be retrenched and to cover the losses. All the main streets of old Kolkata have hydrants established by the east India Company with water pumped directly from the river for washing the streets. They are still there, used by poor to bathe and wash. Nobody do bother to remove them though they add to the filth of streets. It certainly serves the migrant labour.

With all this palpable chaos for an upper class elite eye, there appears an invisible equation; a balance between the various strata of society. The lower strata do not seem pushed out of sight as in other Indian Metropolises. They are very much there everywhere, the poweful votebanks, perhaps. Kolkata is not pleasant to eyes, it doesn’t show off wealth, it may be repulsive and unsightly, it does not hide the contrast with in a gleeful veneer, it does not boast of a westernizing metropolis trying to be hightech with poor parts and filthy unsightliness canned up beneath the surface. Not so far at least. The human face of Kolkata is pleasantly smiling. Metropolitan misery seems internalized and expressed. It is a metropolis of poverty with a facade of poverty. Does it provide a base to build a future Kolkata; a metropolis of progress, a city of promise? or Will it wilt and wither away faster? Does it hold a promise?

I did not see much in three days of aimless walk, perhaps. But this was my impression, I may be wrong.

Habitat design

2010-03-30T06:02:00.000-07:00

Today more than 30 % of India’s population lives in urban areas. In 2032, it will be in 41 %. Still it will be lower percentage than most of Asian countries. The problem is not its low percentage, but that too few cities are growing too fast. Miseries of bigger cities and metros are compounded by haphazard growth. The smaller cities and towns are other hand stagnating. All are in bad shape as much as infrastructure and housing are concerned. Channeling urban development is and will be one of the challenging tasks of India.

India is building. Building very fast too nowadays. The urban planning and the other hand has had a piece meal approach and did not and do not pace with building spree. Planning exercise in India has been based on selective and corrective bureaucratic measures, a legacy left by the British. And it depended wholly on controls on land development with very limited proactive role. The processes are too slow. Planning traditionally has been an exercise of distributing activities on two dimensional space and introducing networks and controls. And then wait. Architecture on the other hand has been concentrating on individual buildings and smaller complexes. Without a holistic vision of the city. While the new economic thrust invests heavily on real estate and buildings; the infrastructure and planning are lagging.

There was a need felt some decades ago for a discipline which will bridge these two areas and work in between buildings at one end and the city on the other. That resulted in ideas of townscape design and city architecture and then urban design. Design is a positive activity which is efferent from planning and it is meant to be proactive though planning tools could be used at times. The idea is to see urban development, buildings, architecture, heritage, transport, other networks and social concerns in a 3 dimension and not in a two-dimensional plane and also in an integrated way. Like town planning, Urban Design as a new academic discipline also originated in the West and looked at urban traditions developed in the western culture. It also had efforts concentrated in metro cities and leaned much on architectural aesthetics and theories. This certainly has undergone tremendous change in last two decades of evolution wherein behavioral sciences and social sciences as well as other humanities, law, finance and technology and more importantly the ecological aspects and resource utilization are getting integrated. So when we talk today about the metro lines, for example, we talk not only of its effects on traffic or its technology and alignment and legal aspects alone or how it changes the skyline, but also about its impact on the surroundings, on the behavior of people and on the additional development that may happen around etc. Essentially on what will be its impact on life on ground? This integration is not a projection of past it is also of proactive speculation and therefore, the domain of design.

When we integrate all this and take the discipline of urban design even to smaller settlements and to look at holistically with an ecological perspective, it is appropriate to name it Habitat Design. Habitat is more an inclusive a word than urban. Habitat Design is same as ‘urban design’ with a thrust on ecology and with a more integrated approach.

When we started the course on M. Arch (Habitat Design), at the BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore, we had this in mind. The courses and studios were programmed with this perspective and tried to learn from the existing urban design programmes in the country.

This will give opportunities to the participants to develop skills and attitudes to work in a variety of urban situations, not necessarily in planning or architecture alone; in urban governance or in areas of nongovernmental community work.

The approach to learning has to be a cooperative effort with students and teachers working together. That is where the studio approach comes to use. The design here is a process rather than a product to be thrashed out at the end.

An interview

2010-02-25T23:08:00.000-08:00

An interview given to Ms. Prathima Manohar, some time in 2008 but never published anywhere for some reason.

Some of the questions were interesting, so I thought it could be here

1. What's the latest trend in architecture in urban Indian homes?

There is no single discernible Indian trend. Historically, the show of vanity and wealth has been a major trend and it continues. But one can also perceive that simplicity and environmental concerns are catching up. If there is a pan-Indian trend visible today- it is that the regional variations of the past getting obliterated in the large cities given that similar techniques , services and materials are available in all our cities.

2. Is there a shift towards efficiency from elegance? Are elaborate elements out of favour?

Both efficiency and elegance have never been major concerns except perhaps in rare academic discourses. Ornamentation or ‘elaborate elements’, is also not completely out. It finds different ways of expression. Cladding is often ornamentation. So is excessive use of glass. This alone does not guarantee elegance. Sacrifice of ornamentation cannot bring in efficiency automatically.

3. What do you feel should be the guiding factors while designing a home - architecture and interiors?

It depends on the person you are designing it for. There is a class of the elite who look for ‘architecture’ beyond an ordinary lovable home. This category is increasing in all segments, due to media and higher appreciation of the value of design. A home should fundamentally celebrate the virtue of life. In the current predicament of global warming, run-away economies, appalling political scene, and insecure life- architecture could be meaningful and not simply a show of what one can afford. It could be what one can consciously avoid to make life meaningful.

4. What does good architecture do to make a house warm and comfortable?

Warmth and comforts are personal and cultural. One who is comfortable at certain environment may not be comfortable at another. I believe that there are no universal standards of warmth or comfort. All of us get used to certain comfort levels. A concern and understanding of larger values of life and society often results in an environment with more of natural elements like light and air and a choice of materiality. Thus articulating a thought process that went into the design, could be considered warm at personal level for many. But some can be easily comfortable and feel warm in an artificial and synthetic environment as well, like that of an aircraft. This depends on the basic value system one has developed with or imbibed. One can make a personal conscious choice or go by fashion. It is impossible today, perhaps meaningless as well, to be building at any one extreme, as conditions and contexts are constantly changing beyond individuals means.

5. The social fabric of societies is changing. What sort of influence is this having on architectural trends?

All changes are not deep. Most of them are transient. Economics is changing a lot of lives and lifestyles in large cities. Work pressures are also changing. Age pyramid is getting tilted towards the young working groups. Bachelors with higher disposable incomes are also rising. Nuclear families are on the increase. The demands and hold of old generation is resented but nor revolted. Women have more voice and more visible. But men have not changed as partners in many of habits. Servants are not completely dispensed with; in fact, they are becoming more and more essential. Cooking styles are also not changed fully.

This hybrid situation is perhaps more volatile and is reflected in the architecture. “Multiplicity” seems to be the major tendency in today’s city architecture. The home buyer today is also much younger. In the past, one looked towards having a house as permanent. Not so much today. Therefore, the saleability at a later stage becomes a priority. Modular kitchens and imported toilet fixtures are becoming norms. But one still finds period furniture and moulded shutters behind sleek cabinets and by side of imported electric chimneys. The mood today seems to be one of fashion and not of prudence. I think a maturity to develop out of this hybrid situation over a period of time.

6. How should an architect balance his creativity and client's needs?

Why do we put too much premium on architect’s creativity? Can all architects be highly creative? Can ordinary but well done work be not a good one? Architecture as a profession can happen, at various levels of intellectual or that of a responsible construction. We should not expect same creativity at all levels.

Client’s needs are important to be satisfied. But they should not contradict with the larger interest of society. An architect can choose to build for a client’s wish for a Mediterranean villa or an acropolis in the middle of Bangalore. Those are his fancy needs. But I will choose not be the one to design it, as it revolts against my beliefs, not because it affects my creativity. Attitude makes most of architecture not creativity alone. Talent can be wasted easily.

The questions of name?

2010-02-23T05:23:00.000-08:00

The supreme court of India made a judgement in a petition that a divorced women should not be allowed to keep the surname or name of the previous husband.

Curiously it raises many questions about name.

First a silly one:

I wonder how will this law get enforced, if a woman had the same surname before and after the marriage? Or if she changes it by making a slightly different spelling.

More seriously,

Why is that the surname or the name of the husband be attatched to a woman in the first place? Most of the time it is done forcibly by the husband or his ilk?

This was not the pattern in many parts of India before.
Why has it become a pattern now? It is a practice picked up from the British, and the West, perhaps. I know my mother or grand mother did not have a name other than one given to them at birth. They remained so even until and after their death.

Another related question, why children, boy or girl, should have the names of father's only atttatched to theirs? and why not the mother's. Is it a practice showing women are of lesser gods? Are godesses lesser than gods? These are not legal questions, but curious ones.

More practically, if a married women is made to change her name after marriage, should she not be compensated for further change after divorce? Because she will have go through difficulties of name change? Like alimony being paid. Or else she could keep the names if she wants to. It is her choice, then.Does'nt it make sense?

Thinking more about names. Name is after all an identity. Two or more part names are required today, perhaps, as a means to identify a person precisely . Especially when there are more children born than the stock of names available. The name is an identity. The given name, first name, is the first identity of the self or the person. The other attatched names are identities of the larger group the person belongs to. In a really free society, it could actually be the group a person wants to identify with. So one should have the freedom to choose "six-footer" or "lamboo" or "thin-one" or a "budhivantha" or intelligent-one, "punditha", a "professor" etc as his second name. In fact, many of these names are actually used by many even if they are not really so. They have come as default of being born to a family. There are people who have also given titular names to themselves like "manthri" or "senapathi". One can also have a nom de plume or a pen name like the French architect of Chandigarh, who called himself Le Corbusier. It meant the 'enlightened one' in French. His real name was Charles Edward Jenneret.

Most commonly used second or third name are caste names. Place name, family name, surname or combination of some or many of these are also in use. But in most of the cases, a father's name are found as part of one's name. One could choose or not to keep the surname or caste identities, though one cannot choose the father's name. In matrilinear societies like Kerala, people used to be identified by the uncle's name and not the father's. Most often people keep or remove these identities for some benefits or for some ideological reasons more than just being plain convenience. For a long time keeping caste names were considered not 'progressive' enough. Many children of some 1950s to 70s in Kerala, for example, did not have caste names attatched. In fact, some people deliberately gave their children names which were of very different caste or even from caste names from diffrent places. So it is not uncommon to find given names like Rao, Kothari or Ajay Ghosh or Winston Churchill, Lenin, Stalin, Gandhi, Choudhari etc confusing the identities very pleasently. In recent times, the ideologies seems to have taken a reverse swing so much so that some 'caste less children' of 60s and 70s have started getting their names changed with caste names attatched taking the required troubles. The caste identity seem to give a new found advantage. Some persons have even modernised old caste names to more stylically chic sounding ones!

Whoa! What a problem with one's name? Am I a mere name? Does my name mean everything? Should it mean anything? Can there be names which does not mean anything?Can I be with out a name? May be an alpha-numeric identy? Why not? Why do we want nice sounding names?

With Nandan Nilekani's efforts, some of us can just choose to be known by a unique nuetral (in gender and caste) identities pretty soon! Till then live with the problem of long and short names, nice sounding, confusing, irritating, rough, sweet etc.

Questions from students

2010-02-04T23:44:00.000-08:00

The students of Sinhgad College of Architecture, Pune asked me a few questions to answer. Here are my responses:

1. How do you see your journey in your eyes? How did you evolve as an architect and a human being? Did these 2 facts complement each other?

BSB: I know I grew up as a human being first and then as an architect. I chose to do what interested me and I stumbled into architecture. I was fortunate enough to find kinds of work which interest me, and that I enjoyed doing it. That made me evolve as a person as I am. First decade and a half of my career was that of teacher and researcher rather tangential to architecture learning social sciences relevant to planning and architecture. Later, I returned to do things which were different from that yet continuing to be a teacher. It helped me to develop as a human architect, perhaps. However, my trajectory of career is in architecture is not normal. I believe that, a lot of things are chance happening, but lot depends on one’s attitude to work and life. All professions and all works have their own attractiveness. One has to have an attitude to enjoy what one does. To me, all work has been basically ‘serious fun’. Once it stops to be fun, it turns out drudgery, and it can warp one’s development as a human as well. I never wanted to be a professional on a safe and beaten track, but never a self-centered maverick just for the heck of it. That defines my work as an architect.

2. How do your philosophies translate into designs?

BSB: I don’t know. Lot of things is given to us without our own conscious knowledge. We don’t choose your parents for example or where you are born. And who happens to be your clients and what kind of work environment and design context one is thrown into. Designs emerge out of context. Context does not mean the physical setting, the site, climate, functions, surroundings, the buildings around etc, as commonly thought. Context is defined mostly by unseen parameters like budget, economy, social values, the political and social environment, the industrial and technological set up in which one works etc. When the design develops as a group effort, not just as thought product from a maverick individualist architect alone, metaphors and ideas to shape architecture emerge unselfconsciously. When we limit our parameters, the emerging architecture also will have limited valance. I believe that architecture is not experiential alone, nor just cerebral, it is a product of multivalent process. It gives a physical concrete experience as an object and also is a social construct as a metaphor or idea, which in turn may help make and further ‘social construction’ of meaning of concrete object.

3. How many design processes do you adhere to? Describe them briefly.

BSB: I am not sure. Life is a big and complex process, difficult to put it neatly. So is architecture meant to support life? Architecture can delight like art, has to be cost effective, and needs to interface with technology and culture. Thus our design ideology and methods attempt to circumscribe innovation in formal, technological and cultural realms. With its multi-valent agendas, our architecture has been collaborative -the client, the builders, contractors, the site engineers and the workmen are partners in the process.

Technology, in both its dimensions of material and technique, has been at the core of our work. The attempt has been to be at the cutting edge of contemporary technology albeit in a manner suited to the prevalent local conditions and ecology. Technology has never been an end to itself with us, but a means towards catering to the physical, psychological, fiscal, social and cultural needs of the client and the project. This view led us to pioneer the use of various materials, including stabilised mud blocks, and extensively develop and use various construction methods including brick vaulting, brick domes, skin domes and doubly curved forms, prefabrication, 3D windows etc.

4. Recent construction materials and techniques that have a bright future according to you?

Materials and technology are tools to make architecture happen. They keep evolving. They per se do not determine quality of architecture, though some materials could adversely or positively affect well being and environment. The essence of architecture remains same always. To be sensible, sensitive and safe. And to delight.

5. Your favorite historical monument and how does it reflect in your design (if it does)?

None. I have no favorites in any period of history, including present. I refuse to put anything to neat categories.

6. What are the important aspects that you will keep in mind while designing in India? Would it be the same for structures outside India?

The idea of India exists only as much as an idea of an Indian culture. So tempting an idea yet so nebulous and foggy. To make architecture it does not help. Architecture, I believe, is tied to a place and also simultaneously one cannot escape the global forces as well. Architecture is primarily a social act and phenomenon. As spatial culture it mirrors the cultural trends. A “conscious” architecture needs to be ‘located’ in a place and its culture and history. The global forces of today also cannot be discounted and need to be addressed and mended. This should inform our work. Two aspects are seen as prime foci:

1. Architecture as interpretation of the cultural text that makes the place. That text is not static but evolving.

2. Architecture as construction. This means concerns of ‘green’: impact of the place on buildings and the buildings on the place and its ecology, which also means response to climate.

This principle will work anywhere in India or elsewhere.

7. Comment on LEED and Green Buildings.

There is a lot of controversy on the subject. Green building idea as much as it is a concern for ecology and energy consciousness goes it is valid and important premise, but if it becomes an apology to support architecture which fails in all other aspects and use it as a support argument for poor design, it cannot be accepted as architecture. They could be just ‘green buildings’.

LEED like many other rating systems make sense as much as its parameters. The parameters of rating systems are many times insensitive to real local issues and priorities. They could be misused for promoting certain business interest alone. They also expect formalizing and professionalizing building industry way beyond many societies can accept and accommodate. Thus they become tools for elites to feel less guilty and to project a new champion social status. This makes little impact on the large scale really. That is why the controversies arise. An inclusive system which can address the issue from a more holistic point of view, economically, politically and socially is lacking.

8. Who are the architects who have influenced you and to what degree?

No one particularly. I have liked the works of many in different ways. I value any work which has serious thought behind. One may disagree. But one has to accept sincerity and deep thoughts as great virtues. Many, including my colleagues, my clients and my students influence my work. I am ‘influenceable even now.

9. Core skills that we as students should develop as future architects.

Skill to discern depth of content from surface sheen. Skill to question any fashion trends, past or present. Honesty to work. Skill to work in a team and to lead. Skill to synthesise ideas given by others. Skill to analyse an idea and convert it into a building. Skill to continue learning. An open, not a closed, mind. Other technical skills are secondary and that can be learned any time.

the environmental question

2010-01-28T23:41:00.000-08:00

`The inner crisis in environmental politics today is precisely the lack of bold concepts that address the challenges of poverty, energy, biodiversity and climate change within an integrated vision of human progress. At a micro-level, of course, there have been enormous strides in developing alternative technologies and passive-energy housing, but demonstration projects in wealthy communities and rich countries will not save the world. The more affluent, to be sure, can now choose from an abundance of designs for eco-living, but what is the ultimate goal: to allow well-meaning celebrities to brag about their zero-carbon lifestyles or to bring solar energy, toilets, pediatric clinics and mass transit to poor urban communities?' MIKE DAVIS in New Left Review

architectural media

2010-01-26T10:18:00.001-08:00

Media is not only a powerful tool. Media is powerful. And power corrupts. Indian architectural media is in a nascent state and given the coffee table approach of most architectural reader (really how many DO read?), they tend to be glossies either promoting some successful architects or products and hardly raising any significant questions. Critical analysis is woefully lacking. The photojournalism, which architectural media depend on, reduces architecture to visual images selectively chosen. The few professional journals available today are also beginning to succumb to the pressures of the publishing world. Glossies masquerading as design journals catering to upper society leisure individuals and to the real estate copy cats are not really educating or informing anybody, doing more damage than good. The myths of architectural voyeurism cannot be equated to serious media. The apathy of the media towards issues of built environment and cities echoes the apathy in general on matters that are not sensational.

MSIL OFFICE , MYSORE SOME MORE IMAGES

2010-01-26T03:58:00.001-08:00

architecture of cities today

2010-01-24T02:39:00.000-08:00

Written in 2005 in reply to a question during a National conference at Kodaikanal: what is the most significant aspects influencing change in architecture today

Is architecture really changing, except on the surface? Economic changes, aspirations of the commanding and controlling strata of the society, changes in the gender relations are major factors that influence architecture. Technology is a minor factor. The metropolitan economy, where service sector and global linked IT companies are leading the change, is affecting the demography and ethnicity of our large cities. Disposable incomes and spending habits of the burgeoning middle class are on the rise. This population though miniscule in the total population of India is emerging as most visible and most vociferous in the media, both print and electronic. They are exposed to the world outside through media and travel. They are also in the impressible age group and are easily impressed by the architectural glitters of the west, the shopping malls, credit cards, multiplexes, chic joints, etc. Media and popular travel and architectural magazines, advertisement, are all adding to the utopian aspirations. The architectural and spatial taste cultures are influenced by this surface glitz.

Our education also gives them little room for understanding and and to make sense of spatial culture over and above the material surfaces and to understand social and environmental implications. Their purchasing power also influences the real estate sector and influences their investment decisions. The young generation has dreams of creating mini Europe or US in India, even if it means shutting themselves inside fortified enclaves, moving along elevated highways in chic automobiles, isolated if need be from the nuisance of Indian reality outside that is too large and too distanced from their dreams. The smart real estate tries to cash in on this dream and the result is the new found surface glitter. There is short sightedness of the sustainability of this economically, socially and politically. This may have impact on the smaller towns and larger hinterland architecture, but not on a visible scale.

Beyond the surface change, I do not see any change in content (structure in anthropological sense) of architecture. Certainly not in large part of India in a significant way. Architecture perhaps has become more visual and more hyped.

It is valid even today I think, even after the reession.

Office of MSIL at Mysore.

2010-01-08T04:20:00.000-08:00

Mysore Sales International Ltd, developed this office space in Hebbal industrial area in Mysore very near Infosys. for rental market. The building is complete but the market is down and they are yet to find takers. It is sad as the building is developed with care. This is designed as a climate responsive building with openable windows and at the same time air conditionable interiors. The entrance is though a green court and the centre of the building also has circular green court. The facades are provided with inclined screen skin of perforated metal set away from the outer wall on west and south sides. With green space in between this skin and the outer wall the interiors will get a green ambiance to work in. hope the market will catch up. Thanks to the authorities at MSIL who tooK extra interest and with least interference and to Mr. Nagaraj of R&R Fabricators who were the general contractors.

A sense of angst: a melancholic melee: a force of creation

2010-01-06T09:20:00.000-08:00

Dr. BS Bhooshan

There is increasing evidence of a new confidence. We hear fewer apologies to do what we do now. There is appreciation for technologic braveries and showpieces, even if they are not appropriate to climate and culture, often. There is search for a new vigour. Daring excitement is not a taboo; experiments in market place though not acceptable. Crass commercialism and intellectualism (albeit pseudo one sometimes) coexist. There is also a renewed interest in the ‘conservative’, ‘contextual’ as well as ‘culture’ and heritage which are marketable now. May be confusing, but there is passion , of many strands. Can this be a sign of coming of age and will the generation next graduate further and start producing architecture of significance for India?

Architecture always seemed a search to me; a search for many diverse things. Search of an elusive and nebulous ‘core competence’ of the profession that defines ‘architecture’, a search for a philosophical justification for its existence distinct from some other related activities, a search for the intellectual content beyond the routine of building, a search to be different, a search for a point of departure, an ideology- low cost, green, energy, ecology, or USPs for the commercial world, etc. Extended to the professionals, it always ended up as a search for excitement, a search for name, fame and success and of course, money. The multitude of possibilities in a plural society makes architecture seem like a personal agenda. When we include all the players in the realms, the client, the builders, the construction workers and their varied skills, the engineers and consultants, the planners as well as public at large, the various strata of the society who use buildings differently with different attitudes, there arises a confusing conflict of agendas and the best exercise seem to be that of conflict resolution. Circumstances seem to conspire to make good architecture happen, nonetheless, though not very often.

Architecture, as objects in a context-physical as well as cultural, is a total sensory experience, but not just visually alone. That is how we experienced and evaluated architecture before. But today the majority of buildings and urban spaces are designed and produced with visual experience alone in mind and are also being evaluated through the visuals, especially photographic visuals. The print and visual media have added to this. Excessive lights made possible by the lighting industry and glossy pictures and dazzling 3Ds numb our other senses. The haptic sense of touch, the senses of sound and smell and even kinaesthesia are hardly explored seriously. Are we moving away from real experience to virtual one? Does this make it possible to transcend real space defined by cultures as images can be exported and transplanted with ease? And does it relegate or reduce the architecture to mere soulless surfaces of colours? I wonder.

The design agenda also has moved from a multivalent mode to a dominant single mode. We are dependent on limited agenda today leaning too much either on elitist economic sense on one side, on crass commercial success in the middle dancing to the demands of consumer market and on social activism on the other side. Even the cultural meaning of architecture is often reduced to visual scenographic details alone; creation of visual imagery of one kind or other; either iconic (most noted ones are so) or blatantly insipid copies. Or sometimes plain gimmicks in construction, like walls made of beer bottles. Hardly do we seem to appreciate a balanced view of architecture having multiple dimensions.

So we create variety of labels too like ‘green’ buildings, or traditional or ‘vernacular’ recreations or mythical ‘heritage’ sets like the many in hospitality sector. If passion drives those choices, there is hope. But if it is simple branding and jumping into the wagon of convenience, then it leads nowhere. Many of them fail to outlive the notion of contemporaneous novelty or a limited public appeal of nostalgia and hardly achieve a seriousness enough to be called architecture. In this context, if a minuscule percentage of buildings turn out to be serious architecture, the credit goes to the heroic efforts of a few.

We create many complexes today over dominated by the production process dictating the design. And in the builder segments which accounts for large amount of urban buildings, the idea of architecture seems to be to create as much volume as possible and produce a loud packaging appeal and merchandise for sale like any other commodity. The design agenda is mutated and mutilated by management, economics, finance, bureaucracy, fashion and even ‘vastu’. The humongous scale of construction today makes neither architects nor architecture in command. Our traditional skills seem to be insufficient. Is such scale of construction a necessary evil? Or do we need to move on to an era of teamwork, reducing the often bloated egos? Is it not emerging?. Future is, perhaps, of the underdog, and not the maverick?

Architecture is taught and practiced even today in a problem solving functionalist mode. But hardly functionalism is a USP in architecture any more. Personal whims are. Hardly there is any public debate. Whatever little public space is used for discussion, current fashions take the lead. Can this lead to a serious Indian discourse, beyond the transfer of images from our past or from somewhere else? Can there be a multi-cultural synthesis for the evolving future? In the era of shrinking thought boundaries. Seriously? I hear many talking about practicality of simple design without a hangover of theory or of green rating or cultural context as justification for insipid work. Could there be any design possible like that without an underlying theoretical concept of what is architecture really?

So is it confusing? Or is it beginning of a new sensible era? Destruction is perhaps, necessary to create new construction. Can we make it happen, really, beyond the image making?

I pin my hopes on that few of the next generation. Let us not confuse them with one sided arguments. Let them open the minds and see beyond fashion and labels. And not only a new generation of architects; we need a new generation of people who can appreciate architecture in its proper perspective as a cultural medium by itself and not just a functional utility or a showpiece of vanity or packaging material.

The sense of angst which is palpable on many youngsters today sure will turn into a force of creation.

published as OPEN PAGE in Index Furniture Journal IFJ feb 2010

Shades of Green and Architecture

2009-11-10T10:22:00.001-08:00

Dr. B S Bhooshan,

Talk delivered at IIT, Kharagpur on 23 December 2009

I write this in first person as I think it is too difficult to be objective about this issue.

We, the mankind or woman kind if you want to put that way, as a species had developed from the animal stage to an intellectual group, making great strides of progress, expanding his abilities to tap the nature for greater creature comforts and making tools and technologies. He has moved from the forests to subsistence farming to manufacture to genetic tampering, faster movements, reaching the spaces unthinkable a two centuries ago. He dwelt in caves and emerged to build huts, create stronger dwellings, and sanctify them with myths and meanings, created sacred spaces and created cities and metropolises and in the last century nightmares of a curious mixture of fantasy and ecological nemesis – couchemar de la catastrophe ecologique- in the form of great and terrible cities.

Suddenly, we also find that we have entered an era of mass consumption and faster depletion of resources, and climatic changes, explosion of information on impending disaster, global warming, unavailability of potable water, creation and dumping of all kinds of wastes including e wastes and nuclear wastes and fights for resource control, crisis of energy etc. The last two decades saw these things multiplied their space in the media. There is greater awareness today. For 1972 UN meet on environment, the coverage was that of a scientific congress. But today, Al Gore’s visit to India is on the front page, there is Nobel price given to Al Gore and the intergovernmental organisation for climate change. Climate change and ecological perspectives cannot be just dismissed easily as anti development slogans. The so called green architecture, whatever that term conjures up, moved from the concerns of a few to a large number of aspiring professionals. From Passion it has moved to fashion. It has become for many a moral stance, moving towards a cult and religiosity. May be for the good of mankind! May be not.

As the momentum gains various shades of green are visible leading to a confusion of a kind especially to the young professionals. It is important that we know at least what we are doing. I talk more from the point of view of architecture and built environment, though the idea cannot be viewed in isolation to other feilds.

Firstly, we as professionals in built environment and architecture, should understand what green means to us. Secondly, we also should know that ours is not a politically neutral technical solution making activity devoid of ideological positions. Every idea has a political structure behind that to emerge as a solution.

Green buildings as I am made to understand

Green buildings usually refers to a construction development of what currently been promoted as sustainable development. Notion of sustainability has more than a hundred and odd interpretations: But what has often been used is the one that concerned with the idea of leaving the world for future generations, one which Brundland Report adopted and by the UN.

It says:

The ideal of environmental sustainability is to leave the Earth in as good or better shape for future generations than we found it for ourselves. By a definition, human activity is only environmentally sustainable when it can be performed or maintained indefinitely without depleting natural resources or degrading the natural environment.

Resource consumption would be minimal

Materials consumed would be made ENTIRELY of 100% post-construction hazards. Recycling of waste streams would be 100%.

Energy would be conserved and energy supplies would be ENTIRELY renewable and non-polluting (solar thermal and electric, wind power, biomass, etc.) Now we hear of nuclear energy as well.

Consumer recycled materials or from renewable resources (which were harvested without harm to the environment and without depletion of the resource base) only will be used.

This certainly is a utopian position at least in the present scenario. The whole question is how we approach to achieve this and what technical and managerial and societal requirements are evolved.

Ecological footprints of buildings and eco costs

One of the problems we face as professionals is how to assess the damage we do to the environment and ecology of our small planet. Perhaps, this is a problem of every living being.

A single concept, which makes an overall assessment of the environmental impact of a person, a building, a nation or any development, is known as the ecological footprint. The ecological footprint is an accounting tool for ecological resources. Categories of human consumption are translated into areas of productive land required to provide resources and assimilate waste products. The ecological footprint is a measure of how sustainable our life-styles are. The ecological footprint of a building refers to the area of land required to for continued production of wood products, embodied energy and attendant CO2 emissions. This measure is however fraught with problems of calculation. Similarly other methods are also been attempted to calculate the impacts to a single index such as BEPI (Building Energy Performance Index) expressed in terms of GJ/m2/year, the environmental cost calculated by reducing all impacts it terms of monitory value and other multiple criteria indices.

The concepts also have to be practical and have to lead to parameters, measurable criteria and norms. Do we really have?

When we are talking of green built environment or architecture, we should distinguish between Initial Capital Damage and Continued Damage or Positive Contribution within the concept of Life Cycle of buildings. Design involves both. There are many ways one can deal with minimizing continued Damage

Design with climate, Passive solar heating and cooling, improved gadgets and materials and technology ,

waste recycling, water recycling, rain water harvesting, etc.

Life style is the key for reducing continued damage; living with nature. India has been living with nature; but often in sub optimal subsistence level. Can we do it better? We can.

Initial Capital Damage will continue to be a major challenge. Because, it is more difficult address and not enough stress is given to this aspect. None of the green assessment methods and programmes and rating systems do not adequately stress on this aspect either. Methodology of evaluation and practicality of assessment continue to be a major hurdle.

Baseline for all the assessments today is a typical average and recognizing better than normal performance. This base line is difficult to define and scrutiny. The baseline and performance is expected to rise over time. Priorities and prioritisation will change the assessment norms and rating points. Experts point out that, for many criteria baseline requires a judgment call. (Tracy Mumma, Centre for Resourceful Building Technology, Montana)

It may also be noted that most of these evolved in the developed countries look at requirements from their cultural points of view. They make an anthropocentric view and give equal importance to occupants’ indoor quality as to the larger impact the building makes. They also give more stress on the impact on environment of the continued usage of the building over a life cycle of usually 40 years rather than the impact during construction. With the result highly rated buildings may also have largely negative impacts on environment compared to even normal and traditional buildings in the rural areas or small towns of India. As we generally are conscious of costs, embedded energy in most of our buildings are comparatively low, though this is not a rule.

These programmes also do not attach any negative points to any criteria. McDonald has suggested a more comprehensive matrix of sustainability. But this is far from being a practical to use.

Indian Green Buildings Council also adapted a LEED Rating System and there are already many buildings which are platinum and gold and silver ratings. A look at the rating system parameters and norms do not adequately look at the priorities of India and its developmental predicament. It does not even take note of the variety of environmental contexts, not to speak of the cultural contexts. For example, It does not consider a building which does not have air conditioning.

These rating systems seem to promote more business in the organised sectors of construction than informal ones. After all the slogan is: green makes good business sense. May be it makes sense in an environment where construction sector is capital intensive and largely formal. Is it the objective in our development paradigm?

There are many environmentalists who oppose this kind of green and tiy to promote an opposite view. And there could be many shades and positions in between.

Variety of approaches

There is no mathematical magic formula, as there is no full agreement on the approach to the idea of sustainability. This is not a technological situation, where it is problem to be just solved somehow. The approaches depend on the very idea of human development.

Global positioning:

We take the world or a country as a whole. The environment and ecology of all countries are so interrelated today that there should be a global level of policies and technological options, it is argued. Within the country also, we tend to take a larger view that all development or otherwise affect all and therefore the idea of green cuts across all sections of the society equally. “Conflict of interest and intense competition for domination” is discounted in the argument. The “reality however shows that such an understanding is naïve and illusionary”. The sustainable development mantra, if at all, in reality is meant for ‘others’ so that high development and high consumption level of ‘privileged class remains sustainable as long as possible”.(Redclift)

The fall out of this positioning is that we tend to believe that what is good for one place is good for all places, in principle. The idea of greatest common good as a basic parameter comes to fore. The quantifiers come to the picture and show that we do not have enough for greater common good. So then, we have to reduce the total consumption; either collectively by everyone or keeping some at very low consumption levels so that average remains low. Does it mean keeping a lot of people in poverty? Poverty seems to be more ecological and green solution, if at all. This will see that some can continue to remain where they are. That leads us to things like the energy priority as a leading criteria of green, where as in some places something else would be more appropriate. Say for example water.

An argument against this is, the neomarxist approach, As M. R. Redclift says development can never be sustainable if poor people are not involved in meeting their aspirations.(redclift, 1987) "Overriding priority should be given...[to] the concept of `need,' in particular the essential needs of the world's poor." (Brundtland Report)

This also means that the priority of built environment in third world countries should be on increasing consumption levels of environment al goods of the poor by appropriate policies and simultaneously cutting down on the consumption of the upper class. This is the link between the needs of the poor and sustainability.

“Industrial growth needs to be redirected towards meeting the needs of the world's majority; renewable energy resources need to receive a greater share of attention; natural resources and policies need to be shifted from the arms race to the protection of agronomic and biological resource system” ( Redclift, 1987, p35)

Sustainable development, means more than seeking a compromise between the natural environment and the pursuit of economic growth. It means a definition of development which recognizes that the limits of sustainability have structural as well as natural origins.

The environment alone is not the key factor in making development sustainable; it is political power, and in particular giving power to the workers, local people, empowering deprived groups etc. in developing countries to set their own goals--presumably ones that will not damage their environments as development has heretofore, the argument goes.

This also means, in green building terms, major changes in built environmental design, organisation of infrastructure planning and their implementation in a more democratic way. This approach also denotes the need for local level actions and perspectives to be given higher priority. Some tall order, some simplification here. This also is utopian and unachievable, especially politically.

Culture critics and deep environmentalists:

This approach is characteristically anti developmental and anti-growth theories in the sense that the notion of sustainability is considered to be utopian. The term only considered to serve to revitalize development, to give it another lease on its life, by tying it to concerns for the environment. To their stance, "eco-developers" are in some sense distinguishable from traditional advocates of development--most obviously in their admission that there are environmental limits on production. However, "What ties them nevertheless to the economic worldview is the failure to appreciate cultural limits to the predominance of production, cultural limits that render production less important and consequently relieve also environmental pressure.

According to Sachs, the biological metaphor of the evolution of nature has been turned into an economic metaphor--development--and then into an imperative for all of humankind. The result is to treat people, whole societies, and nature itself as resources for economic development. But, Sachs says, "Labeling things as `resources' takes off whatever protective identity they may have and opens them for intervention from the outside. Looking at water, soils, animals, and people in terms of resources reconstitutes them as objects for management by planners and for pricing by economists."

The idea of growth (with basic idea of promotion of consumerism and consumption and market economics in place) and that of a green development seems mutually exclusive. We therefore need a development which is not economics based at all, the argument goes. But the environmentalist contributors to the sustainability debate especiallythe deep ecologists, focus primarily on nature, not culture. Stanley Carpenter, as just one example, argues that the scientific evidence, in particular the growing ecological evidence suggests that autopoiesis--the ability of life on earth to regenerate itself after injury--is seriously threatened by mindless and heedless human development. Perhaps Native American habits were more mindful of nature, but the point is to change the thinking, now, of consumption-oriented people in the United States, North America, Europe, and the Pacific Rim, and of the corporate managers who feed and foment consumption elsewhere.

The answer as suggested by radical environmentalists is a return to appropriate technologies, to craft level productions and eulogise tribal culture. To some environmental architects, this means reducing architecture to materials of natural origin or mud based and almost a negation of contemporary technologies. So we have agro-waste products and bio-waaste products, stabilised mud, water recycling at small scales, etc. All hinging on an idea of return to nature. This is an activists view, more a moralising stand than offering any market or other management mechanism and depends wholly on upholding the activist path. This approach as a variant that most of the environment –friendly- built environmentalists follow has great limitation that it offers no scalable solution. Some demonstrations there and some here. Some experimental communities here and there.

This line of thinking, applied to architecture, produces a few heroes and heroines and champions of environment with the hope that these demonstrations will spread the awareness and slowly it will take over as the only development or anti-development paradigm in the world. Will it? This reduces architecture to a single point agenda as low cost architecture did earlier. It becomes a ‘religion’ at times and has same pitfalls of religion. But architecture is beyond that as it is a multivalent verb.

Corporate Green:

On the other hand, some of the advocates of market economics suggests that green to be achieved in the present day economic theories and policies, but with more controls and investment in green practices. So the idea of “green makes good business sense”. Environmental policy literature is dominated today by the notion of free market economics. Real estate development and profit based private initiative becomes manthra in built environment. Consume more, not less. This is largely due to the advocacy made swiftly and surreptitiously through media and other means by corporate think tanks. Many incidents and accidents have created public awareness and there are more controls on the corporate bodies today. They have now counteracted by adopting and promoting an environmentalism which suited their paradigm. Arguments against corporate approach are subverted absorbed by clothing them the environmental ‘lingua’. Are they totally wrong?

Conclusion:

What I have outlined is the diverse discourses that are happening around the notion of green and sustainability. When almost all agrees and concerned about the realities of environmental degradation, there is no agreement on the prescriptions. And what is strongly said today is challenged with new evidences tomorrow.

Green approach to built environment has to take these views and be aware of the alternatives and the perspectives. As building professionals we cannot be naive about what we do and be part of a moralising cult alone. Passion is important and not be part of a fashion show.

It also shows that there is no single universally acceptable right way of doing, even when everyone agrees with the impending disaster. It may sound cynical. But that is the reality.

Personally, I feel that good architecture takes a mediating view and be sensitive to the environment. After all architecture is also a media, pun indented.

Architecture is just not a tool, it also excites and delights and it does so in variety of ways. It communicates and is responding to the social and cultural demands as well. Some in sensible ways and some insensitive ways. Both ways, it is our value judgement which determines good or bad. How do we say that our value judgements are final? And always right? The debate will go on. Debate itself is also entertaining! As modern architecture did go beyond functionalism to create great architecture which are evaluated and understood beyond functional meanings, the ‘green architecture’ can also produce significant architecture beyond being just eco-friendly. Good architecture is multivalent and will go beyond a single point agenda. Just being green in whatever shade may not produce satisfying good architecture. Vice-versa too.

References:

1. Brundtland Report : 1987, United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future New York: Oxford University Press. Most commonly referred to as the Brundtland Report.

2. César Cuello Nieto, Fundacion Neotropica, and Paul T. Durbin, University of Delaware, 1996, Sustainable Development and Philosophies of of Technology, Society for Philosophy and Technology

3. Stanley R. Carpenter, "Inventing Sustainable Technologies," in J. Pitt and E. Lugo, eds., The Technology of Discovery and the Discovery of Technology: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of the Society for Philosophy and Technology (Blacksburg, Va.: Society for Philosophy and Technology, 1991), pp. 481-492.

4. M. R. Redclift, 1987, Sustainable Development: Exploring the Contradictions,London: Methuen.

5. Wolfgang Sachs, "The Gospel of Global Efficiency: On Worldwatch and Other Reports on the State of the World," IFDA [International Foundation for Development Alternatives] Dossier 68 (November-December, 1988):4.

another few minutes of limelight

2009-10-15T06:05:00.000-07:00

BS Bhooshan and Associates could win a few more moments of attention by winning an IIA award for a house from the Indian Institute of Architects.

This house has somewhat unique for us as we have been developing a line of thinking ever since 1987 when we were working on the theme of low cost mass housing with no concrete roo. We moved a lot from that kind of technology, but the evolution of space under a bubble of roofs facinated us. Here are a few sheets we submitted for the entry.

excellence in architecture. a NIASA initiative

2009-09-13T06:59:00.000-07:00

I went to Vizag on 28 August to be part of the jury on zone 4 selection of two best theses of architecture. Beside me, there were architect. SK Das and architect Ashok Dhawan from New Delhi as members of jury. It was also nice to meet old friends like Prasanna Desai from PuneThere were 15 entries and we selected 10 for presentations on 29th. It was a very good experience. I am really happy at the quality and boldness of thinking and corresponding quality of architectural design and presentation I found in some of them. Equally distressed at the fuzzy foggy thinking and escapist presentation with equal amount of confusion. Will write more later.

future of architecture

2009-08-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

I spent the last two days at TKM Engineering College Kollam, in Kerala. yesterday and today. Looking at the thesis projects of final year architecture students. They all have finished the five years at college and are getting ready to go out in the world. A mixture of joy that one has completed the burning of midnite oil and the sadness that one has to now face the outside world squarely. All of them did not seem ready for it yet. They will in a mattter of time.

I was struck at the vastly differing competence the 24 of them developed. There was difference in attitudes and approaches too. Diversity is not bad by itself. But the lack of confidence and competance in many is disturbing. So is the lack of attitude towards the enjoyment of good work. The work itself doesnt seemed to be enjoyed by many beyond the passing in examinations. Like monetory considerations and profit making alone tilts one's attitude to work, (especially creative work) and makes it a drudgery, the marks in the examination alone make study and project work routine and the result less than the ordinary. I dont believe that there is so much difference in the basic material these young boys and girls are made of. But the out comes are so varied. It can be seen in the efforts they put in as well. Some have put in great efforts; some too less. Some of them had referred a lot, explored new areas, tried to understand and worked deligently, while many others has done too shoddy a job. Even application of simple common sense was woefully lacking in some.

Is the system at fault or the teachers or the way we teach architecture? How is it that we take children of impressionable age group and churn most of them out into closed minds with a cynical attitude to design? and may be to work and life too.

There was gender equality in numbers. But obvious difference in design efforts and exploration. The boys generally are more adventurous and seem to explore more, though not successfully or with great finish- some do; the girls generally play from safer grounds. Some girls do pretty well some with great apathy to somehow complete course. Obviously, the social conditioning might have taken away a lot of initiatives from them. An obvious and ready submission to the possible future as a housewife or second fiddle to a partner in life later, perhaps. This inspite of the fact that however good you do in studies and work. Some could even have the safety feeling too that however bad they do they will be provided or arranged for a good and seemingly easy life. Either way a lot of initaitive seemed stolen from them. However, it was heartening to see determined effort from some girls to prove they are no less.

This apart, there appears a general confusion as to what good design is in the present context of India. Greater and visible orientation is futuristic and towards absorbing global trends. Inspirations are from neo-modern or post-modern global architects who build from a place in Europe in any culture around the world. Human beings are taken as same anywhere. This flambouyant posture attracts more competent as well as less competant ones. But most of the best efforts are seen in this area. On the other hand, there are many who espouse current ideas like sustainability and green, and some take in the themes of "cultural continuity" as well ( boiling down to repeat of simple past forms with out question) but I found none doing with as much vigour as the neomodernists and seemed to put up a green or cultural front as an apology for poor efforts and design. This line doesn't appear to attract better efforts and perhaps, talent too. On the whole the inspiration stops more or less at the skin deep formal level. No spark of criticalism. Is it too much to ask at this level? Perhaps, yes.

Are we witnessing a new generation who are not questioning any of the broad ideas which circluate in different guises? Is the slogan: Follow those which sells? Is it a charecteristics of the educational context or social context? I wonder.

look at me: i am listing, but safely

2009-08-11T04:02:00.001-07:00

URS KAR SHOW ROOM, TATA and FIAT; MYSORE

Instability is a risk, but exciting - in business as well as in life and also in architecture. Controlled instability is to try to defy nature of things, perhaps. That is to defy gravity in architecture. A seemingly falling building looks unstable, (like leaning tower of Pisa), but makes it intriguingly attractive. The props make it appear stable. Stabilty is desirable, but some times boring and less exciting. This is so in business as well. Business thrives on risk. Insteabilty is risky, but attractive and interesting when risk is taken calculatedly. A show room has to be attracting the attention of passers by for sure. And then as architecture, perhaps, it should make one to think as well. This building tries to do that, particularly symbolising the time; the collapsing modern economies, which require propping.

( see also http://bsb-architects.com )

Mallikarjun House, Bangalore India, BS Bhooshan and Associates, world architecture news, architecture jobs

2009-07-31T05:32:00.000-07:00

Mallikarjun House, Bangalore India, BS Bhooshan and Associates, world architecture news, architecture jobs

on top of chitradurga fort: "minimalism"

2009-07-29T06:09:00.000-07:00

This beautiful masterstroke of a creation has some how missed to be celebrated. This struck to me more original than the complex Hampi archtecture at Vijayanagara, nearby. The artistic genius just sculpted a small shikhara on top of a naturally formed rock. The shikhara sits snugly and prettily there; adding to the beauty of nature and not distroying it. If this is not 'minimalism', what else is?

A sense of angst: a force of creation

2009-07-10T01:15:00.000-07:00

Architecture always has been a search. A search for many things. Search of a core competance of the profession which will define architecture, a search for a philosophical justification for its existence distinct from some other related activities. a search for the intellectual content beyond the routine, a search to be different, a search for a point of departure, an ideology- low cost, green, energy, ecology, or USPs for the commercial world, etc. Extended to the professionals, it always ended up as a search for excitement, a search for name, fame and success and ofcourse, money.

In 70s when many of my generation started out, India was in a heroic stage yet in confusion. Trying to find an architectural identity - from the past and for the future. That is why the heroism, that we are setting out to be great again. There has been many an effort. But then we were trying establish as a nation. Perhaps, more a diffident nation coming to terms with the world after centuries of feifdom. One wanted to asert that we are a nation, a force, a cultural entity of note. Naturally many tried to look at our glorious past, even if it meant digging up too distant a past. More than looking at the past, we always showed impatience with the alien or assumed to be alien, more specifically, so called western ideas and architecture. In all our pusuits, we somehow detested the west as something terribly intruding into our legitimate glory. May be true or may be not, it also provided a platform for a search for alternatives. That in fact took us to many directions in architecture. Some scenographic excitements and some diatribes of social pathology too. Very little which provided a thrust forward.

urban revitalisation: reinventing our urban spaces

2009-07-05T11:20:00.000-07:00

I am working on a talk to some engineers on a requested topic on urban beautification. This is my reaction:

Reinventing urban spaces

BS Bhooshan

The concept of urban beauty has been an elitist pastime. I see problem in a talk about urban beautification. It is that it begs further questions. And it suggests cosmetic skin deep action.

Beautification suggests something to be done to something which is potentially ugly or not in order. Is it not a way of looking at it. What is ideal beauty? Beauty as a concept comes from perfect ideals. Are they elusive. And never reachable as the parameters we are dealing with are innumerable. Perfect ideals are like unreacheable “ perfect justice” as told by Amarthya Sen. More over a city is not a thing of beauty. It may be enjoyeable place and a workable place. But not an object of beauty by itself.

We can’t start on clean slate. The question is how our spaces could be made workable and enjoyable.

Our urban history is like our general history: truncated bits and pieces and never continuous. So is our architecture of cities. We are always at crossroads. Never find a direction. And we raise wrong questions and get unsuitable answers. May be I too am raising wrong questions. You decide.

First let us not talk about the big cities. They are beyond my comprehension. Many will agree with me. They are humongous and sometimes, no always, very vital: full of energy and synergy. lots of potential. Good in many ways: opportunities. engines of growth. But their spaces are getting torn apart. There is identity crisis in all. Being too big is not the only problem, neither being too complex. They did not evolve from their roots: they jumped and leaped: Some from to colonial beginning and some from pastoral beginnings through British and/or royal legacies to Western ideals, American dreams and many more dominant influences.

Second, we always wanted models. Provided by desi as well as alien dreamers. We wanted to leapfrog into modern scientific era and represent it in our cities like we did in Chandigarh. And for some time it seem to hold out a panacea for all cities' problems. We forgot about Fateh pur Sikri or Jaipur or Srirangam. All new extensions since pre independence embodied contonement ideals or later, Chandigarh's legacy or American dreams of Clarence Perry or Runcorn or the garden city and satellite town prescriptions of UK . All towns seemed to dream of the grandeur of Champs Elysses of Paris. We all marvelled at Connaught place, at Rajpath and Raisisna Hills and thought of cosmetic surgeries in other towns much of which went awry. And still we lament about the cities and towns problems. We think the grand beautiful plans somehow offer a model for India. But I would rather look at more simpler solutions and local opportunities. Seemingly simpler lives and simpler urban spaces of less complex communities, perhaps, offer up a model, hidden in the muck. But one must look at the right places with right eyes. That will be the challenge. And how to make and modify them to suit current needs a place demands and opportunities it provides. Architecture plays a big part, for sure. Architects only a small part. We, meaning all, not just professionals alone, together should search.

I will show some examples and try to learn from them.

We will have to move from hardware to software solutions; meaning looking for spaces not big constructions. For example; mobility is important, not the roads. Education is aim, not schools. Health is the priority, hospitals are only one of the means to it. We may need adhoc and small tickles against grand physical plans. Aesthetics of a different kind, than the ones we have been admiring from the images of other cultures.

Joberg nite

2009-07-04T09:12:00.000-07:00

Went to a night club in joberg on 20 may09. Four of us. That was an adventure. The rumour is that Joberg is not a safe city especially after dark. There were many who wanted to go to a night club. But were advised not to without guide. So someone found a guide, Some black guy arranged by a hotel employee. He would take us and drop us back to hotel. By 9 pm we were taken in a limousine driven by the guy to a night club. It was half an hour drive from hotel. The place was called Grand place.

The idea of insecurity starts from the entrance. A dimly lighted place where one pays to enter. You enter though a revolving door of strong horizontal bars. One at a time. No one can rush in or rush out. Then you are frisked by gentlemen thugs. And you see people sitting in twos and fours around round tables. All spread out around a circular podium and bar below. Two girls up topless dancing. And then you pass around to find a place, you see more. Naked girls sitting on laps of fully dressed men and gyrating their bodies as if dancing. This is no Disco or anything. It is something different. No boy or man is dancing. Of course, there some women customers who came with their men. Too few.

It was my first encounter of the decadence of licensed organized and very decent (!) way of fleecing. Of course only from those who volunteer to go and experience the excitement. This fleecing is also part of the experience. As in casinos. Wonderful spread of food, ( something like more than 50 varieties), noisy music and bare bodied girls dancing all the time. Dancing and soliciting for a massage or private, dance in side rooms. Bare means totally bare at times, not even thongs. Some girls are blacks and more of whites, Russians, Poles, Chinese, hardly any Indian. All in 18-25 age. The guys moving around make it secure, are all black thug looking gentlemen in suites. Smiling friendly and very soft spoken. The customers were largely white, but a fair amount of blacks and Asians.
Even if you are not tempted enough for anything more, you will be tempted to spend on alcohol. Food is on the house as part of the entrance fee.

There is continuous din of music. Weird strobe lights and generally dim and reddish ambient light. The girls go up to raised circular podium below which is a circular bar. Two to three girly go up at a time. Half dressed. The dance around two shiny circular stainless steel vertical bars fixed form bottom to ceiling. The shiny poles are phallic symbols. The girls use them and gesticulate holding to it to dance and do high acrobatics. They have bodies highly pliable and extremely attractive figuratively. Very thin, hardly any flab, naturally with is kind of gyration! Some are accomplished acrobats; climbing uup the shiny poles rotating horizontally around with legs holding on to it and sliding down. They could climb the poles upside down as well.

Music is recorded and is bits of pop rock songs of yester years, some current too. Girls go up in twos and fours for a song. Fairly but thinly dressed. As the music changes rhythm half way through, they throw away the top and mostly have only thongs. The they do the acrobatics on the pole. Once the music stops, they pick up the clothes and climb down and another twosome climb up for another number. Then they go round the tables talking touching cajoling urging and tempting and dancing privately in front for a negotiable price. They go topless and bottom less. They solicit you for as dance in private rooms too, if you are inclined. Of course for a price. I see people vanishing and reappearing. There are massage girls, and men mostly Chinese looking.

Once we come out after eating. They don’t allow you to get out unless in a taxi. Or own cars. The number of upscale limousines parked out gives an idea what kind of people vist the place. There are many other joints around that place, I think. That perhaps, is for safety. We had our man waiting. It was 12 when we reached the hotel to catch a nap before getting up for next day’s meeting and conference at the hotel.

The eerie, uncertain, out of certain wild western Hollywood movies- uncensored, bordering on pornography, is revolting for the first timers, but people seem to get addicted. It is surreal. I only wonder, how much of it legal and how much illegal. Sure there are border cases with the connivance of authorities. I am sure there are places similar around the world, in Bangkok, London, Las Vegas, may be Mumbai too, with some variance. It was new to me. And therefore eerie and revolting.

first rains

2009-07-03T04:09:00.000-07:00

It seams it will rain. Since yeaterday the ambience is rainy. but yet to rain really. It is already too late. by almost a month. Severe droughts and power cuts are beginning to stare. When it rains, some people will be sad. As it will affect their livelyhood and their roofs will leak. Yet no one can wish no rain. But no rain is good business for some.

Getting used to a pattern is an addiction and when it breaks, it disturbs most.

What is Indian culture

2009-07-02T21:48:00.000-07:00

A well known columnist and an economist, Gurumurthy, made a statement yesterday at Mysore that Indians are aping the west and that is not good. We should not, according to him, forget our culture. globalisation and opening up of culture and following the west will be doom for us, according to him. He suggests us to emulate Korea, Japan and Italy.

I know, some of you also may, that this Gurumurthy was advocating the good things gloabalisation can bring to India. And he made a public statement at Chennai four years ago on a IIA meet on globalisation that we should not worry unnecessarily about the bad things it may be pointed at. Now I am confused.

How to embrace gloabalisation and be part of the west dominated globla economy and still preserve ones culture. Have those countries really preserved their culture intact? And what is real core of Indian Culture. Saris for women andsuites for men? Puja in the morning and drinks in the evening?

Or corruption at all levels. or something else?

Is there an original Indian culture ? I am at a loss to understand. If any body knows, please tell me.

What is aping? Really. Is jeanswearing aping? Learning to use americanism aping? consumerism aping? liberalism aping? homosexuality aping? bride burning a worthy cause? modern medicine aping? spirituality and god men preservation of culture?

Changes always happen, aping are no aping. It is upto us to decide what is good? why blame others?

Significance of Laurie Baker

2009-07-01T03:42:00.000-07:00

Dr. B. Shashi Bhooshan,

Who was Laurie baker? It is difficult to put him in the category of just an architect as most people do. Neither had he lived like just an architect. He was admired by people of many walks of life. But still architectural fraternity claimed him as one among them though many did not know him enough or his ideas enough. What makes Baker an important phenomenon of recent Kerala? It is not the fact that he started work as a missionary and did everything in that zeal, not even that he touched many lives and influenced the opinions of policy makers and ordinary people, nor that he could create dream houses for many who could not even dream; all that is known and written about by media. His significance is that he was an agent of change in architecture at a turning point in Kerala. But still I feel that he was most misunderstood architect.

History will remember Baker for making a generation of architects of Kerala think of their past in whatever little way and make them understand the relevance of building materials as well as appreciate the texture and aesthetics of ordinary materials. It is more significant to note that modern architecture came to Kerala too late, or may be it is true to say, it never came. All we have seen before the 60s were the insipid PWD stuff and the occasional works of Bombay or Madras architects. And Baker created some thing new in this vacuum. Though with the single minded idea of cost reduction. That was first ridiculed and then accepted and then was eulogized and even worshipped and followed. His kind of architecture was slowly kept aside today or if followed, done so only in form, like Gandhian ideas are today. Yet Baker will remain a turning point in Kerala’s architectural history; the history of modern Kerala and Indian architecture.

To eulogise is to forget the real content and keep only the form. Baker’s also might follow the same pattern. The ideas will get corrupted if not already by the followers who may not understand the spirit of enquiry Baker started with in architecture.
Baker’s architecture is largely misunderstood. People have used his ideas to suite their ends. Some followed his brickwork and some his tracing of tile roof shapes in concrete, some his jallis and some his cost cutting measures and a few followed him to make ecological sense of his works, which, in my opinion, was the most sustainable of his teachings.

Baker’s architecture is read erroneously and simplistically as “ Kerala style”. I think it was not that simple. The so called “ Kerala style” is itself a questionable notion. (this is not a place to write about it). But the irony is that by labeling it that way, the critics and followers in Kerala as well as outside have belittled the importance of his work. His works, - homes or institutions or religious buildings-, had an idiosyncratic stamp typical of his and were molded by the firm belief in Gandhian frugalism and the conscious attempt at eliminating the unnecessary, may be of cost cutting. To do so it was inevitable to build climatically suited structures and use skills locally available. When this was a philosophy, it was inevitable to result in an architecture that we now know as that of Baker’s. But we, took it as vernacular and labeled as an adaptation of “Kerala style”. He never claimed so.

Baker did question the logic of plastered makeup as an unnecessary paste on unlike anybody before in Kerala. He bared his walls of beautiful brick works or stone masonry and made us admire the beauty of materials. None did that in Kerala before except Architect Chisholm and his ilk in the 19c or early 20c. He used plans and sequence of spaces, which were contemporary and modern (least the way Kerala planned traditionally). He used openings and windows which were simplified modern. None of these could be called Kerala Style. His jallis were neither an adaptation of the past. Baker rejected past’s follies and adapted relevant and significant ones from anywhere

But true, he made tiled roof and sloped concrete roofs resembling the roofs of traditional Kerala as well as some wood joinery details, railings, etc. more like the “post modernist” way, yet very ingeniously and beautifully. And to that extend he was using an easily recognizable architectural vocabulary and signifying certain accepted meanings of forms. He was thus rebelling against the accepted principles of modern architecture as well. I think, that to him was just a way to get more latent ideas of architecture, - of lower cost and frugal living and ecological building - acceptable to people, more like the way Mahatma Gandhi clothed his ideas in simple mass appeal. Baker’s architecture will be and is significant beyond these scenographic formalisms. At the techtonic level and in technological innovation and spatial creativity, his architecture was universal, modern and had the significant spirit of adventure and objectivity. Modern scientific spirit of enquiry was the basis of his architecture. And it happened at a significant point in Kerala’s architectural and political history.

Let us remember not to reduce this significance of Baker to that of a mere technician (even if a masterly one) or just a low cost architect. Let us not disgrace his masterly adaptations with cheap imitations as seen in Kerala’s recent scenography of questionable and insipid adaptation of sloping roofs. A serious study of Baker’s architecture is required. I hope some one will do it. May be that only a European will be destined to do that!

Baker was admittedly a Gandhian in ideas and yet like Gandhi he is understood more superficially and because of his eminence, would be followed more in form than in real spirit and content of ideas.

2009-06-28T02:47:00.001-07:00

..friendship is also about forgetting a whole aspect of a friend.... Daniel Boulanger

Architecture and Cultural Continuity: some questions without clear answers

2009-06-28T02:21:00.000-07:00

First Draft: Require revision, please do not quote, comments are welcome . This was prepared for a talk at Calicut in 2008 April to a course on the same subject.

We dance around in a ring and suppose,
but the secret sits in the middle and knows. Robert Frost
.................................................
There is a difference between actual built environment and social construct of architecture. One is, “direct experienAce of concrete things “and the other, “ knowledge of their meaning.” Architecture isa constructed idea. Physically as well as socially. Whose idea?

I must confess that I do not subscribe to the view explicitly expressed in the course pamphlet. It is a position many express today that the world is eroding the many cultural identities and something urgent has to be done about it, lest the plural identities are raced to ground and cultural world is levelled. This positioning, I believe, is based on the perspectives one takes. I am presenting my view. I must also say that I do get distressed by the alarming rate at which globalisation makes certain cultures and cultural traits dominant and pluralities get suppressed. But I don’t believe that it is an isolated phenomenon in architecture and the solution offered as outright rejection of the trend is a solution at all. Nor is it something absolutely new.
First, what is culture and cultural continuity? Spatial or temporal diffusion?
“Culture” is an elusive word and many definitions are possible. To me, it is the way life is conducted: The everyday life. The dress, the rituals, the food, how it is cooked, the gender relations, the morals, the religion, the way we express and communicate- language, literature, the arts, the films, the sports, the television, the net- all. Then for brevity, we abstract them only to sophisticated or more intense expressions. Like literature, music, art and architecture. That is only an abstraction. Abstractions are cerebral; a constructed idea of culture. This abstraction is a reflection of the society and its culture; we presume. But this construct need not be so as there is no uniform culture in society. While it is easier to talk about architecture, or a particular media, it is difficult to talk about culture as a whole. The dimensions are too many.
Continuity means a flow. We presume and it is true that life cannot be suspended or put to a full stop easily. It flows from generation to generation. So also does culture. It is also understood that culture has a spatial dimension and it pertains to a society in a place or a country or state. That is to say, it is assumed to have a spatial boundary. That spatial boundary is what gives it an identity. Where do we limit that boundary and what parameters do we use to limit it. Political history may have a big say in this.
Is Indian culture an entity uniform identity? And is there an Indian Architecture really? What are its basic parameters and characteristics in a particular period or today? What is the basis of European identity? or for that matter that of Mexico, USA or Singapore, the Malaysia? Does all parts of India have same cultural base? Is it the religion or political history or something else?
Apart from religious base of a remote past (?) of origin which we are suppose to have continuity at some level; Language may be one aspect which defines culture. May be because, it is a common vehicle of expression. This is again an aspect of vague and stretchable boundary today. Music may be larger regional idea, so are architecture and art today. Do these forms have a spatial identity?
May be we can talk of architecture more clearly, more so about the built environment, in sharper and smaller spatial boundaries. Spatial culture and syntax of space in our older cities are more identifiable entities. Therfore, we identify and distinguish the images of Delhi, to those of Mumbai and to Kochi or Alapuzha or Mysore or Trichy. But any research would tell us that the popular identities exists in parts. Major parts all cities of similar complexities have been similar for at least for the last century or so. The agraharas of Mysore and Bangalore or that of Mylapore in Chennai is similar. The poles of Jaipur and Tols of Ahmedabad are similar. So are the parts of Old Delhi or Hyderabad. Only minor details vary. Still there is something which deffrentiated these places. Then the so called, Kerala’s architectural heritage, which extended to many parts of west coast, Mangalore to Gokarna to Ratnagiri. The basic architectural character of houses and built spaces are similar with tile roofs and courtyards etc. And et different in some details. These forms are also found with little variations in other countries as well. We also discern the influence of other cultures and technologies from east and west modifying this architecture for centuries.
This also means that there is a spatial continuity of cultural expression. Especially with regard to architecture. (This is true of language as well.) But when the world has shrunk with more communication, spatial boundaries of culture also have become nebulous. Can we wish that only the former should happen, not the later? Cross fertilising of cultures also has happened.
The spatial continuity of architectural character started eroding earlier. Now you can find labelled “Kerala tile roof” in Bangalore, in Maharashra and elsewhere. So are the Charupadis and the Chettinad house details. Similarly, mediteranian villas, or tudor houses etc. are also being built and sold everywhere. Dining tables coexist with puja rooms, Italian kitchens with court yards, tile roofs over concrete; a curious mixture of fantasies and nostalgia. But none of those have the same meaning and utility as before or elsewhere. These are style statements and sometimes wish expressions or nostalgia. Is this cultural continuity? I am not sure.
If spatial continuity changes or erodes; so should temporal continuity. The former can be accepted, why not the later? Now we are talking of two dimensions of continuity, space and time. When one is a controlled and considered stable, the other can be studied. But simultaneous changes in both makes it difficult for any assessment. We often make reference to break in continuity only with respect to time, assuming that space limit is defined clearly. If one travels from one end to another of any country, common language changes slowly and continually, in continuum and over a long distance it changes completely. This is so also with architecture and many other aspects of culture, except things like cricket- international cultural expressway symbols. The same can be applied in the time scale as well. A person from 19th century visits a place of his village or town, he may find a lot of culture and architecture has changed, yet he may recognise it. But if a person from 1st century visits, he may find it totally different. A break has occurred in that long distance of time in the same way break occurs over space at the same time axis. Yet it is not break but gradual change.
If discontinuity of culture in space is acceptable, why not along the time dimension as well . The point to be noted is that every generation, perhaps, is worried about the changes. More so, when the velocity of changes is increasing and it seems too fast. This worry, leads to kneejerk reactions and propositions. Many writers have expressed this earlier more succinctly.
Cultural basis of Architecture:
The works of Amos Rapoport or Nold Egenter, Nikolas Salingaros and even the works of Christopher Alexander and philosophers like Gastin Bachalard (Poetics of Space) and even recent researches on genetics, animal culture and nuro sciences point to the importance of culture in Environmental Design and spatial culture in the development of human society. No doubt. But what are options and propositions? The studies tell us the evolutions from a tribal and isolated cultures and about the present. Not much is known about the importance of experimentation and the craving for novelty in the evolution propelling us to the future, which is also a great cultural trait of homo sapiens. We bask in nostalgia at the same time we crave for novelty. Rapoport’s conceptual frame works are very interesting, to say the least; so also are the structural anthropologists’ works on pre structural objects. Even, Rapoport admits that culture plays a larger role in much of the residential environments. The same is not accepted for non residential environments, but it can also be dismissed as he points out. Not much work has gone into this as the present day society is bombarded with a plethora of new typologies of built environment of a complex nature and the exigencies of speed and profit does not allow investments in thoughtful developments. That is also part of culture!
One of the commonly found easy solutions to this seeming problem is to apply scenographic details to a technologically different situation and building sometimes having different tectonics than the culture had before. We have this problem that architecture and built environment is understood more as stenography. Therefore we do not find it unnatural to marry these and seek a solution. We often hear about modernity with roots in the past. Meaning an allegory of past facades over modern buildings. It has not worked. Like the tall buildings of Shanghai with oriental roof, and similar applications in India: Close at home, the mascot hotel addition in Trivandrum, the Kerala’s new secretariat there or the Vidhan Soudha of Bangalore and so on. They tend to become poor caricatures. On the opposite spectrum, we find blatant imitations of the glass and steel or aluminium clad buildings brought to us as high technology images. As, Rapoport suggests, we feel that glass and steel makes a gesture of high technology while small openings with larger solid facades make buildings which are closer to oriental culture and India. Both solutions are simplistic typecasting. We need to understand more, if we are serious in making built environments for plural cultures. It is a phase where it cannot be otherwise, I believe. There are other extremes of similar kind.
There are also works which has gone into the basics of spatial organisation on a simplistic level like that of vastupurusha mandala. The Bhopal Vidhan Soudha, or Jawahar kala Kendra, Jaipur are examples with some amount of success. But these successes have not produced any acceptable theses or theory, which can be generally applied. They remain at the level of high art of individualist explorations, while most of the built environment are produced at, though professional, yet craft level; simplified applications of formula and type casting.
We are worried about two things, that our great cultural past requires continuity somehow from perceived breaks or erosion. We also want us to reach the moon. And become global players. We accept the globalising international capitalists free economic solutions and tools. But, we have a general problem in accepting an open society and a free spirit. Is it not a contradiction of the day? We launch the missiles and satellites at an auspicious time. On the positive side, perhaps, family ties more or less are as before. Some where we feel we are doing injustice to our culture. But we do not know enough to make that culture work for our ambitions either. Except by exporting exotic scriptures and yoga and ayurvedic therapy. Yet the main stream developments are not hinged on these things. The things we do are of value: value of symbolic projection of our self. Our Architecture and Built environment shows this confusion. Added to this, of course, are the pressures of real estate, the change patron from the individual and the state to the corporate entities. This exigency alone is a sufficient condition to relegate architecture and built environment to a minor theme augmenting profiteering. Architecture then is understood more as scenography and surfaces, not in tectonic planes and spaces leave alone other dimensions.
This is somewhat related to what Rapoport calls a handicap principle. The principle, explains how and ‘why certain environments are created at great expense a and effort- to communicate the ability of he builder to muster resources and labour to communicate power and impress people” (Rapoport 2008) A handicap wants to project an ability. Emphasising expense. To show that we can afford, we can do. In highly self conscious way. Architecture at best as symbolic expressions of power and resulting built environment is incidental.
Culture and heritage
Some of us are also worried, many of usl, about heritage, our built heritage.
Heritage of a place is equated with built heritage. Often the buildings produced by it patriarchal elite: the ruling elite of the past form the part of what is considered heritage. Even when the general mood of the society is in no way ready to accept the social validity of those who produced it. In some places and at some times, it happens to be that the new economic and political and what may be called cultural elite determine what is the heritage. What ever the legal and cultural definitions (INTACH and others notwithstanding), heritage buildings largely mean what the current elite consider them to be of heritage value. Largely consists of the oldest buildings of the place, and those associated with local or national history, social, political or religious. Heritage buildings need not necessary be of great architectural value.
Heritage also does not mean a tradition. Many traditions and influences can be discerned in the buildings of a single place or culture, built in different times and sometimes even in the same time. The heritage means what a society decides to be so. The heritage has to be understood synchronically and diachronically.
Conserved heritage buildings are no longer mere architectural symbols of the past. They form an important link to the past by binding people emotionally to a place and strengthening roots and sense of belonging. If projected further than this, heritage could mean an unnecessary baggage and may stifle freedom and sometimes also trivialise the very heritage itself. Heritage environment or abstracted features of taken as a cultural base to project a future of environment do nat make good sense. we should understand that by recreating past architecture, we do not recreate past culture. Architecture is part of a culture, but not the whole of culture. The various dimensions of culture has undergone substantial changes, and we welcome them as well. By clinging to the architectural veneer of a culture, what do we achieve?
Heritage need to be protected, given respect, may be. but cannot be taken as the raison d’ etre of architecture of a place. It gives ways to understand culture but do not give adequate equipment for the design of future.
Conclusions:
In conclusion, I take the view that we cannot achieve anything by outright rejection of all the architectural trends. Serious debates are surely missing. We need to understand the core of spatial behaviour and build spaces around / for that. The architecture suited to social and culturally determined spatial behavioural pattern. This would require understanding on the spatial pattern of behaviour. Also we should take the view that built environment in anywhere except new cities, is a multilayered environment, chronologically and sociologically. Foucault calls this heterochronia, many times existing together. There are also heterotopias, many cultural spaces existing together. Architecture as a discipline is ill equipped scientifically to deal with these phenomena except in simple older typologies like residential environment. A theoretical foundation has not emerged. Neither modern architecture, nor post modernism or post structuralism, or theory of critical regionalism has anything significant thing to offer especially, to cultures like India. What is happening is architecture taking a back seat and total submission to real estate and economic solutions and activisms of many kinds. Even, the heritage outcry is pushed partly by the economics of tourist industry.
To find a hybrid solution, perhaps we have to look into abstractions globally and locally. This may require inflections of the global on a symbolic and significant way. And we may do well avoiding scenographic cut paste transfer techniques; either from past or from somewhere else.

23June2009

2009-06-22T11:25:00.000-07:00

Hope fires the cauldron of life. This could be true only when we look from one side. Can it also be said that despair, some times, fires life too?

21 june 2009

2009-06-19T21:25:00.000-07:00

today morning, i was to go to Bangalore. Got up early but with a stiff neck. And stayed in bed and finally stayed back. Later I went for a walk. Is it the stiffneck or something else which made me take the decision to cancel the trip? i think at the back of mind i was weighing against going. This happens always. We, sorry I, calculate every action from various points of view and at some moment the balance favours the action and at another, the points against weigh high. At slight provocation external to the situation under anlysis, it becomes easy to decide. An excuse to decide? It is funny how mind works.

Croc farm , crook farm

2009-06-18T11:12:00.000-07:00

Suncity 240509 :

The last day was eventful. Went around the croc farm yesterday and had a meal of croc meat. It was white meat and delicious. There are 7000 crocs there in the farm. They are breading them and selling the meat and skin. The meat of only less than two year and skin of less than five are useful. So they crop them before five. The normal female Nile croc, the variety here live up to 80 to lay 50-60 eggs every year once they are 7 for all the life time. The males may live up to 100-120 years. They grow upto 4.5 meters. Huge monsters. There are some which are above 80 here. The crocs have to lay such huge number of eggs as a survival strategy. The young ones are so tiny and are preys to all animals and humans. Most do not survive beyond two, except in the farm.

They eat only twice a year. In fact they get migrating cattle and antelopes only twice when they come to water for drinking. In one helping they can wallowt up to half their size in weight, which is up to 450 kgs; flesh, bones all/ anything is digested and converted to fat and stored in body for the next six months. During this time the females solicit and cajole the male. The males live in style with own territories. And a harem of 10 to13 females. Then lays eggs in a hole made on earth and bury them well and sit their watching until they hatch. It is funny, that temperature determine the sex. Less than 32 degrees it is female. More than 32 males. If more than 35 deformity or death. They become preys soon enough. The females go to water only to drink, during which small interludes the hyenas, snakes and other animals attack the eggs. A real struggle of survival. A drop of tear for the crocodile! And a feminist support for the female croc as they take the burden of laying and bringing up the off springs, guarding against natures cruel predators to become predator themselves. The males live happily guarding his territory from other males and hibernating. Naturally, the chauvinistic pig crocs are in lesser number. Thank god, the females tolerate the exploitation! And nature has given them the urge to keep producing till the end. And thankfully both males and females have very tiny brains, less than the size of our thumbs.

Today, we went to see the big hall where conventions and pageantries like crowing of miss world is held. Humongous. It can accommodate 900 people legally 11 000 illegally. The fixed seats are about 4000 or so all at the periphery of a polygon, raised by about 8 ft like in a balcony. The proscenium stage is at one side raised 7 ft above ground. The middle space is for standing, 6000 comfortably and legally and 2000 more a little packed. Then there are stacks of folded seats below the fixed seats, which can be pulled and slided out in tired rows, to accommodate some 3000, while reducing the standing space.

Fully air conditioned, with strobe lights, sound system and all, it is really a horrendous monster good only for pageantries.

Ten kilometers outside the Sun city is the lion farm. About 40-50 lions in captivity. Of various ages, small 6 month old catlike creatures, the cubs to 6’ high monsters. One could handle some cubs. All grownup male lions are at least 5’ in height majestic monsters with great lair. They have kept tone male with a harem of another 5-6 females. Male chauvinistic pigs and cats.

The whole city is run and scavenged and kept neat by blacks. The reception boys, concierge, the waiters, the stewards, room cleaners, casino clerks, chefs, guards all. They give a lot of employment to former Bushmen. For sure. They are paid in cash, not byy liquor as once used to be. Sara, who was doing up the rooms twice a day, stays 15kms away in a village almost invisible from highways. She goes and comes by bus transport. A local infrequent service. She is hardly 30, has two children and her husband too works there. An electrician. Speeks fair English with a heavily slurred accent, just like the way she walks moving her heavy body. An attractive shining dark skin with million pleated hair, she is a Zulu. Heavy protruding bottoms and thighs to match balanced by the bountiful bosom, does not seem to bother her in the efficiency of her work. She moves heavy furniture with great ease and rearranges beds and books and strewn sheets meticulously. The waitresses and reception girls are slimmer taller kind. Another tribe or people from Zimbabwe. Lot of people from other African countries,( referred somewhat derogatively as makwere kwere, the other Africans) work in the cities of South Africa. They provide cheaper labour. Most men are handsome, well built, slim and appear as antelopes on the move. Very elegant. There are heavy sumo wrestlers too, but fewer.

Jo-burg, South Africa

2009-06-17T11:01:00.000-07:00

20May2006

Hotel Hilton, Sandton city, Johannesberg

Last evening we, a group of architects from south India, descended down here landing at the hotel at 7 pm local time. I feel envious of those in the hospitality especially those at the front desk and reception and baggage management for their cool in handling motley crowds with cranky travel-wary, snobbish heads ill tempered with urgency to get to room and retire after long travels. And top it all has varying sizes and numbers of baggage.

I checked in with out the baggage which was to be delivered to the room. I got ready to bath after 28 hours from start at Mysore, before the luggage was to be delivered. I Changed and tied a hotel towel (small enough to expose a lot, big enough to cover the vital) around, the baggage man rang the bell. I opened the door in the steam-bath-attire came out to find that the baggage was not mine. While talking to the man, the door was shut cluck! I was to stand on the Hilton hotel corridor fakir or Gandhi style almost nude. There was a big commotion and the hotelman ran to the reception to get a fresh access tag. The five to ten minutes I was in full belly-dance view for the people who passed around. Did I feel a little voyeuristic! May be. I am used to this in my house at Mysore and back in the small place of the village in Kerala where many of my generation move around fakir style anyway. It was perhaps an irony of sorts, as I did this in the corridor of the westernized cosmopolitan unrealistic world of the five star South African Hilton hotel, where during apartheid not long ago, I would not have even been admitted let alone do the acrimonious gandhigiri of sorts, even if due to a strange comedy of errors. And this is the place where mahatma learned his answer of naked nonviolent resistance to brutal politics of discrimination. I did not, should not, feel bad, after all. For I am proud of father of my nation, to say at least.

Yet, I had a good sleep after a good though insipid kichadi of south Indian dinner at an Indian restaurant. Morning started very early around 4 thanks to my cell phone doubling. as a chronometer showed the IST, which is 3 and a half hour earlier than SA time. For a change I could be more than punctual.

Today, we left early by a nice coach to Pretoria, a good one hour drive away from Jo-burg, through a good highway on an intriguing landscape. The roads are of pretty high standards for the largely individualized world class car transport. The country side had chunks of thick vegetation alongside, many exotic plantations and some natural, dry grass stretches, and violetish dry bushes and green bush clumps in between brownish red patches of soil and an undulating hilly terrain. Some rock outcrops as well. The landscape is not uncommon in some parts of India – southern Andhra or eastern Karnataka. Weather was cool bordering to chill.

The guide – a middle aged Afrikaaner lady of British descend, spoke fluent English in a curious accent mixing Dutch and Flemish words and adding “everything” to everything like many of us do in India. I told her that she spoke good English and she was delighted and when I added ‘ like us Indians’, she did not follow what I meant. She recited perhaps an official version of SA history and ‘everything’ sprinkled with prepared humour, sounded well repeated too, and peppered with jokes and ‘everything’ followed by a dry fizzy giggle almost like an opening of a soda bottle followed by a sound of the empty bottle rolling on a pebbled surface. Hardly anyone reacted to her jokes.

The first stop was the VOORTREKKER monument nowhere in the middle of vast ‘kharabland’. This was built in 1949 of local brownish stone and marble. Stones were layered chiseled rounded semicircular so that all walls looked like piles of equal sized book backs. “A beautiful building” as per the guide was perched atop a small hill and accessed through a winding road and flight of very wide stone steps with brownish yellow granite (may be they contain gold ore! 4 gm per ton) risers and black slate treads. The podium in front of the monument too was paved by irregularly cut ‘random’ slate sheets. That was very pastoral! The compound walls were decorated with larger than life stone and concrete reliefs of ox wagons which the voortrekkers used to travel and conquer the gold land from the native Zulus. The monument is to commemorate their arrival and control over a vast chunk of land of real gold that made South Africa and the voortrekkers richer. The inside is of the monument again approached by two flights of steps culminating at the main entrance above 4 meters above the podium. Inside was a domed square hall. The dome was hidden outside by decorative parapets. The walls showed the history of the battle of the blood river where the Voortrekkers won over the Zulus in retaliation of killing one of their leaders. The fight between the natives, though acknowledged great guerilla wayfarers today, must have been largely one sided with the voortrekkers having gun powder and other contemporary ammunitions and the Zulus, the spears.

On coming down the steps to the coach, I wondered if it was worth the trouble to come up there to watch this unispiring monument. Then a bus rolled up the parking bay carrying a load of school children and outside the monument we saw another group of school children near the ox wagon ride, a joy ride as Voortrekkers travellled! Hardly any of the children was black.

Another 30 minutes, we enter Pretoria.

First to the museum and house of Kruger the President of old Zuid Afrika Republik around 1900. The man is somewhat the maker of modern SA and is revered figure at least by those of European descent. He lived in a ordinary looking colonial and yet a fairly small house for a President. Kruger used to have visitors on the front portico which was hardly two yards from the road having sip of coffee and discussing state’s matters. Well, that may be true and he was supposed to have been a disciplinarian religious person taking decisions by the book. The bible. There were many statues of the man and many photographs and railway wagon in which he traveled and ran the government in his exile when pursued by British troupes. He was helped by the Dutch in the run towards a declaration of freedom for SA to be a domain under the British queen. Apart from that the building very clumsily cluttered with Victorian furniture had no great character. Nor it moved me as I was when seeing the Gandhi Ashram at Wardha or Sabarmathi. May be an afrikaans would be. One perhaps has to feel as a part of a history to be moved by the immediate past. It does not matter when one talks about a remoter past, where humanity somewhere binds all together. Like the recent discovery near Joburg of humanid remains like that of austrlopithicus, believed to be one of oldest of men, existing some 40000 years ago.

There were small garden of flowering shrubs being meticulously tendered by a native South African, perhaps a zulu. He was oblivious of visitors watching him. The natives also guarded the gates and did many the upkeep. The painting and decoration of the metal model of two African lions on the front verandah was being attended by a white South African. The small church across the road was significantly beautiful, though of a common type of the time.

We moved through the central part of Pretoria where rich men lived once with palatial buildings now being used as monuments, offices or museums. The freedom square was small and cute with statue of Nelson Mandela presiding. Mandela another revered-perhaps, more revered today- South African has his presence felt everywhere; roads, statues, squares, buildings. All modern parts looked nothing extraordinary, but clean lines and functional, typically modern. The Sandton city, the better part of Joburg- is laid out in grid pattern with plenty of roadside plantations, people living mostly in apartments. Cars and Cars and too few two-wheelers and significant absence of public buses. Very few people on the streets. A stark contrast to Indian cities.

The union building was a secure place. We could just have a look from the front. It houses the RSA Government. It is a long low rise stone building with tile roof and domed central and side wings, sited over a hill overlooking a park in front valley and Pretoria beyond. The building was by Herbert Baker, the architect who designed the Secretariat at New Delhi as well. It was the same Edwin Lutyens and Baker team which built Pretoria prior to moving to New Delhi. Both cities were to be show cases of the British supremacy and their superior architecture to the colonies. Yet, thanks to 100 British and one Indian elites of the time petitioning the viceroy and to some in powers seeing the arguments in the petition reason enough, new Delhi’s buildings are garnished with Indian motives and mughal jallis and used local craftsmen to build them to create an Indian toppings to the British cake. The Union building looks totally Victorian with their Corinthian columns and entablature. To think further, it is ironical to see Corinthian columns on Lalith Mahal palace at Mysore built in 1949 and still more absurd and to some level bizarre to see those strange Corinthian leaves still crowning the more recent and even contemporary RCC columns of many buildings, most decadently the Hotel Leela Kempinsky, at Bangalore. Easy to explain then, perhaps, why we have mercenary teams of names like ‘knight riders’ and ‘super kings’ fight with some ‘Indians’ too for the crown of crickets entertaining value.. Why at South Africa? You may have look further at emergent decadent entertainment Industry, perhaps. Royalty is a favorable commodity everywhere, especially when entertainment is a snobbish commodity for conspicuous consumption!

Returning from Pretoria back to Joburg we had a stop at the Gold reef city, an entertainment park made out of an abandoned gold mine. The fantasy is built around the mine. A ride to some 226 mtrs down the 3000 mts deep 14th shaft was a real experience. Even with all modern precautions and electric lights the ride has thrills of some risks. Narrow tunnels, low head rooms, not enough light, eerie turns and propped up stone ceilings at places with dripping water too. Imagine the miners working at 3000 mts down ( now flooded) with just candle and no pumped in air and much hotter than the surface, with chisels and hammers ( electrical drills were introduce later) and dynamites with a possibility of earth caving in very high. The risk must have become part of a bore of life’s dredging task rather than thrill of coming back alive. And the best of times, a ton of golden rocks could yield only 4 gms. of gold! Do we think that human cost when looking at the price of yellow metal? It proves even Marx’s labor theory of value. But now, the technology has changed, they are even looking for gold at waste dumps of rocks of those times and still finding it profitable, It require less labor, more technology and therefore more capital. More humane?, perhaps. Not to expose labor to high risks is not to employ them at all! The demand justifies the price, not the value based on labor anymore! Marx or no Marx.

The adventure of the white man risking a lot and coming down to such inhospitable places at all odds in search of fortunes and gold is admired by all. Harbingers of progress. That makes them a superior human race! How wonderful and courageous! They also knew well, and the losers everywhere did not, that once you get the control over land and resources you can make the losers work for you and take all the risks for you. All you have to do is to keep them poor enough, if not slaves. You have to risk only capital. If you have someone, (government or rich parents or fathers-in-law) to bail you out, even that is not thrill enough! And one needs bungee jumping, night clubs or betting at the new cricket!

SUNCITY FUNCITY

2009-06-17T00:58:00.001-07:00

Palace Hotel
Suncity RSA 21-22 may 2009 Saturday

It’s the last Blast. Heat is on. Screams a full page advertisement for IPL final in Saturday Star, a South African daily. It also says :
Sunday 29h30 Opening ceremony ( no mistake!) to commence straight after the game. Don’t miss explosive performances by AKON, Katrina Kaif, Poenix fire Dancers, Eddie grant, Jugalbandhi of drums, as well as laser shows and the crowning of Miss Bollywood.

News papers usually carry no news of IPL. They are busy with other local and international sports. The entertainment center here has a 50-60 seater bowl with a large screen playing the game. I found no body there on Thursday. But some yesterday. Today’s the citizen, another paper, carry some picture news in the front page of IPL. Picture of 5 girls selected from the crowds of previous matches by IPL officials as contestants for Miss IPL Bollywood. The winner will get 50000 rands and a chance to act in a bollywood movie. Inner page of the same news paper has pictures of Preity Zinta , Shilpa Shetty and Hritick Roshan, Yana gupta , SRK and Katrina. The paper also features, the local singing sensations, Grant and AKON as attractions on Sunday.

The curious mixture of cricket and (filmi and pop) glamour. The glamour seems to get the upper hand! That is sportainment!

Five of our group managed to get some VIP 5-6 passes for yesterday and today. May be fo finals too. They went in a taxi travelling 5 hrs up and down from here to watch. I did not find any of them that crazy about cricket. May be I don’t know. It was the fun of going and being in the gallery and when nothing else to do. And tell others that they had been there, perhaps.

This Sun City is a fun city. No city really. It has hotels, entertainments, movies, casinos, resorts, manicured lawns, exotic plant beautiful roads, crocodile farm with 7000 crocs, tribal ( paid up tribals to perform) centre, two golf courses all in the middle of a hilly bush forest of a 55000 hectare game sanctuary with a plethora of animals large and small: African elephants, rhinos, hippos, lions, antelopes, giraffes, zebras, and many birds. It is nice to hear the bird chirping all the time outside the window. And gurgling sound a stream of water outside. So soothing. The stream of water of course is run by a huge pump, no natural stream. Well, a lot of this place is not natural, barring the forest. The Sun city is created on an imaginary story of a lost tribe and their lost city with a palace, where I am staying as a crudely and decadently luxurious 5 or7 star hotel. Rated as one of the best in the world! All the trees it is surrounded are palms and tropical ones, not found within a km away. The buildings, in with marble and granite and in some places made to look like ruins. Big hollow boulders, I believe imported from USA, is everywhere making caves roofs and passages for lifts housing casinos and auditoria. Some trees, large ones and plants with flowers are petrified natural ones. Look near natural, but don’t grow. I sometimes think, is the bird sound real?

The palace, the hotel is huge. Some over 500 rooms and suites. A potpourri of architecture. Whimsical. Yet some meticulous detailing. But on the whole it does look neither authentic nor serious. Like Disney land, to borrow Maxwell Fry’s words, the experience is there, but no seriousness.

MAXIMUM CITY

2009-06-17T00:11:00.000-07:00

Suncity 220509
I was reading this book: Maximum City by Suketu Mehta about Mumbai. Interesting and large part boring narratives. I came across this:

Long before the millennium, Indians such as the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi were taking the country to twenty-first century, as if the twentieth century could just be leapfrogged. India desires modernity; it desires computers, information technology, neural networks, and video on demand. But there is no guarantee of a constant supply of electricity in most places in the country. In this, as in every other area, the country is convinced it can pole-vault over the basics: develop world-class computer and management institutes without achieving basic literacy; provide advanced cardiac surgery and diagnostic imaging facilities while most easily avoidable childhood diseases run rampant; sell washing machines that depend on non-existent water supply from shops that are dark most hours of the day because of power cuts; support a dozen private and public companies offering mobile phone services, while the basic land telephone network is in terrible shape; drive scores of new cars that go from 0 to60 in ten seconds without any roads where they might do this without killing everything inside and out, man and beast.

Very correct assessment. Though not new, well written.