inspiration

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.

future of architecture

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.

Architecture and Cultural Continuity: some questions without clear answers

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.