This was published in my column Cubes of Words, in the Magazine Design Detail, Volume 2, issue2, feb 2013
Design invades every aspects of
daily life these days. There is a proliferation of design disciplines too.
Moving from agrarian societies to metropolitan cities this change is more and
more visible and complex. When designs try to even out regional cultural differences,
complexities in the processes of design are on the increase, as are the
production processes. To a large extent, the complexity entails changes in the
organisation of professionals and their specialisations and their marketing
tactics.
Design, especially
architectural design, in a social and communal production mode (largely in
agrarian and earlier societies) was based on generalised codes developed over
long time through trial and error. In many places, in Kerala state for example,
even illiterate carpenters could work on codified systems and create intricate
and complex structures. Many elements were repeated though. The hallmark was
that the designer was no different from the producer. Design often evolved and
happened on the work site. However, though this gradual social evolution of
architecture, like folk arts, is
claimed/said to be best suited to a regional geography and culture, can it repeat
in changed social and economic and political conditions? The design
system that evolved for a political and economic context and social structure
and low density settlement structure and a per capita resource availability,
gives way with change when these parameters.
The formal systems of
architectural production evolved in places with excessive concentration of
political power and economic means. The global expansion of capitalist and
specialised manufacturing/production system developed since the middle ages in
Europe gave birth to the evolution of architectural design and its profession
as it is known today. In this evolution, design moved away from the site of
production. Remote control and representation techniques like that making
and reproducing drawings and development
of geometry for communication and scientific basis for engineering design
changed the way buildings and architecture came to be conceived. This led to
the emergence of an architect coordinator. He was a master crafts man like
before, an artist, an engineer, project manager and above all a visualiser like
a poet, a mantle of a maverick anointed onto him. Avante Garde architect s were among notable leaders in a societal context
of dominance of the intellectual, so different from that of pastoral society.
The architect Stapathi or Mimar were almost invisible in Eastern cultures. In India , though
architecture might have been celebrated, for political or social reasons, architectural design process and the
architects were anonymous. The profession of architectural design in India is
of 20C origin and took its lineage from that European context. Formal architectural education augmented the
mysticism around design. The disconnect
from the past then was not of the manifestation of the architectural products
alone, more so of the design and production processes. The unknown master
craftsman got replaced by a trained designer professional, in formal/semiformal
production environments.
Traditional production systems
are on virtual collapse today, the virtual economy creations are globalised
hyper mode, and a new pattern of design practice has been emerging. The scene
is dominated more of entities than real persons, like teams, firms and
associations. Management of design practice (that includes marketing), today is
practically more important and necessary skill. Many believe that MBA = making better
architecture? All this is challenging the very concept of an architect. An
international breed of firms is also emerging scrounging for gigantic
investments in the emerging countries, betting on the quality in deliverable
business terms. A different kind of
avant garde, backed by technology and capital are trying to be the
leaders. Markets are active, more in
selling ideas as much as products. Obviously, different manifestations of
designs and kinds of architecture are happening. Architectural crest is being moved from phenomenological sensuous experience
to cerebral adventures thus challenging
` genius locii’ to be replaced by
global `genius mundi’. Or are they trying to find a coexistence? Or are they
fighting for space?
Still there exists space for avante garde ’
artist architects, pockets of traditional craftsmen productions, some middle
designers exploiting the nostalgia for the chicness of it in the market economy
claiming the idea of mainstreaming as a goal. Then there are notions of green,
heritage and conservation as well. And there are arguments of justifications
and oppositions and resistances from earlier models of practice. Architectural schools still are largely in ‘heroic
architect’ mode. So is the curriculum, though hardly it seems to make impacts
on the students and the scene, generally.
Plural thinking is missing from the academia too, largely.
It is a new pluralist design
practice that is emerging; a reflection of the social dilemma. Culture is not
geographically/ regionally contained or separated, but socially and
intellectually segregated. Different
value positions coexisting. Gated/closed communities of different strata
coexist legally or illegally, overtly or covertly; in high society or middle
class enclaves or in slums and squatter settlements. In India, with a very unstable urbanisation
Index where migration to cities take place in all segments, ( farm labour with
no special skill to software professionals flock to swell cities every day)
this situation has to be lived with to develop and not forged to fusion. There seems to be no one way of living, or designing
in the melting pots of Urban India. The
entire gamut of construction cannot yet be formal. Or will never be, perhaps.
There seems to be space for pluralism and different kind of practices at the
moment.
This is a delicate situation
and can shake up in violent ways, as there are indications, catastrophically,
say due to global warming effects on economy, for example, or extreme social dichotomy
or political unrest leading to civic strife. Perish the thought.
