Concepts

How does one understand concepts? This mail is to be read in the context of the “new mail”. I was reading the entries for the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Performing Arts (or something), which was an open competition for architects throughout the world. There were architects competing from all the world. The winning entry was an excellently explained one. Amongst the others, one which particularly stuck in my mind was Anil Laul’s. His concept for the entire campus was that of the atoms and molecules. How the atoms and molecules are bonded to each other. And in the end, the entire building looks like carbon atoms – hexagonal volumes one over the other. The entire explanation also was like a chemistry text book.

Now is that called a concept?

“My concept comes from the waves of the sea”…and the building will become a wave of the ocean – physically – and then there will be slabs – as horizontal as possible. It’s just the skin that personifies the wave.

“Ripples” – and the entire plan will be concentric circles…

Look at Hafeez’s concept for the Osho Ashram, Pune – he himself rubbishes it by saying that it is utter nonsense. He said in his lecture that I attended: “I used the pyramid because it is the most stable form. I cladded it with black stone because black is the absence of any colour. Osho replied, ‘I like it’” and he puts together forms frivolously in his other works. He claims to bring architects in the forefront by publicizing them.

So students think that concepts are images. Images are impressions. Impressions are like signs that can be made on signboards. One of my colleagues was doing a War memorial for his thesis. His ‘concept’ was the explosion of a bomb. So his building looked like how we draw the explosion of bombs in cartoon strips. A poky three dimensional star. That becomes his “war memorial” –it has nothing to do with the phenomenon of war, neither the people involved, or the reasons.

I wonder still, what is a concept. Concepts can be held in hands it seems. The in orbit mall in malad, has a planetary dome on it (unfortunately which no one can see from outside) and then today, I see that there is a building call “something orbit” with a dome on the top at the place of the water tank. These people don’t even know what an orbit is!

It’s something like shaping the first birthday cake of a child in the shape of 1. Iconography – completely.

In interiors, the colours of the walls become concepts. So concepts are matching tiles, and wash basins. “The concept here is 3 walls in blue and the floor in white…” used to say my earlier employer. In interiors, concepts are even more bastardized. For fashion designers, colours and patterns are concepts. A new concept would be to use green with golden, for instance.

My students have similar concepts. They would say that “the white represents good part of the life and the black part is bad.” Time in space becomes a watch with personified hands. Its normal perhaps for students in first year, at least, when they are learning the difficult process of abstraction. But when architects and those too famous ones project themselves like that, it troublesome. Students in fourth year come and say “I wanted to make this space interactive”: and the immediate design is an amphi theatre or benches facing each other.

So the discourse of concept is difficult. We now a days do not use the word. Its pejorative to use it. We as faculty do not ask students to make concept sheets. They do some silly iconographic stuff by making signs and symbols for familiar objects rather than trying to dissect what it means to them. So a building for children will be a play ground, a school necessarily has to have bright coloured walls, parks have to have floral edges and all possible combinations of pavings, urban design is nothing more than street furniture (literally).

And after all that, they still have to criticize the new sky walks. The poor yellow worms crawling over the city.


Concepts of Buildings against the Jantar Mantar in Delhi