KRVIA Fellowship 2009-10

So it’s over now.

We started our fellowship on 1^st August, 2009. We submitted our papers exactly after a year in the last week of July, 2010. Today was the jury. We had almost one week for preparing the presentation. As always, I had thought of doing different things for the presentation. I wasted about 2 days in preparing an unsuccessful audio novel. I wondered the first three days about making a panel. I had made 10 postcard-photographs to hand over to my jury such that they could match the photos with the stories I presented in my paper, which doesnot contain any of them. Nothing materialized. But all for good.

The jury was quite different than what I imagined it to be. In the sense that it was to happen in an audio visual room, but ended up happening in the meeting room where there was a round table and about 15 people sitting (I was expecting the number to be quite high). It seemed like some elite privileged group is presiding over some secret research.

Somehow, I was very relaxed with the presentation – not nervous, not anxious, no growing heartbeats, not cold palms, no making rounds of the loo before the presentation – it was the same feeling as before the std X examination: I was excited to give it. Perhaps, when one has good work, one is all the more excited to present it. I feel my work was good, because it came up well as a book. I would like to have such a book in my library. My book was titled “Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki: Stories of Domesticity”

My research was a study of domestic spaces in the city, which offer different conditions of interior space as compared to what the profession of interior design offers. The study was large, and the massiveness of this research area is incomprehensible. Firstly, I have not found any document that talks about the domestic spaces in the city in an architectural, spatial way. Secondly, there is a range of house types in the city. Thirdly, there are a range of user groups in the city. Fourthly, there are multiple agencies which operate upon the making of home. Added to this, there are desires and aspirations of people that manifest in the home.  If I were to take all these parameters into consideration, I could have perhaps spent 3 years researching on this subject, and another two in detailing on each object that the interior space accommodates.

But for me, it has been more important to just open up an idea of domestic space. Did any one before talk about the domestic space in the city before? I did not embark upon any such study. Secondly, for me, this has been a way to learn the tools of research, taking a stance in a project and finding new ways of looking. Thirdly, being able to put any kind of material (collected information, data, pictures, etc.) together in a perspective was challenging. Deciding what to do with whatever you have – how do you work with material rather than a research question, how do you curate and make sense out of the information you have was something that I learnt during the past one year. Above all, although it was very difficult in the beginning to even understand what my guides were trying to bring out, it has been extremely enjoyable process putting the data together, writing stories and seeing at patterns of domesticity. Never did I see logical progression of ideas in domestic space, until I put it in a timeline perspective.

I had not rehearsed my presentation. But I kept reading my book again and again before the presentation such that my tongue gets used to the words that I would be using in the presentation. Somehow, it worked, and the presentation was glib. Although I couldnot keep time, there were two alarms that Rupali gave me during the presentation. It would have worked if we practiced our presentations, but there was almost no time for it.

Coming to the comments that the jury offered, perhaps most of them said that the presentation was good. But almost all felt that it should have been more conclusive. There should have been more conclusions that should have come out of the presentation. Amita Bhide said that the presentation touched upon a lot of extremely fascinating things, but did not follow them to the end. She made a nice observation about the aspect of how are ‘negotiations’ made inside the house, the ‘conflicts’ between various people involved in the making of the house  – how do they affect the final outcome. Also, she questioned with whose point of view is each story written, because a house is not made by ‘a’ person, but several people. The presentation did not bring up the idea of the house in changing budgets. She felt that although each story focused only on the idea that the title conveyed, there could have been a lot more going in each of the cases.

Abhay’s questions were different. He was firstly concerned about the selection of the methodology of the project – the stories; because he felt that it was a safe idea to work with them (ofcourse it was!). But he asked if there were also more ways of talking about the ‘experience’ of the house than only talking about the objects in the house. A question that had come long ago (perhaps the first presentation that we made to our internal faculty) came again: Why are there no people in any of your pictures. Kopytoff came to rescue then! Also, he questioned the idea of a ‘home’, the idea of living. I asserted that I was looking at the subject in the way I was going to use the study in my practice. Hence, for me, more important was to understand what happen of ideas inside the home. But Abhay did not push for any answers and was quite comfortable with my responses.

There were a lot of questions when the discussion was opened to the audience. Sandeep Sir’s question about “what is interiority”, or “what do you mean by internal?” was something that I felt was too theoretical question. One important thing that he said was not to “slot” these trends as phases, and rather talk about them as continuous – be more historical with them. He also raised the idea of duality in the domestic - where on one hand, domestic spaces are adjusted into (made more humanistic), and on the other hand they are tamed (controlled). It was too theoretical again. But maybe I can take this up if I am doing a phd on this!

It was a surprising to see Ateya, with whom I had spoken about a year ago on this project, when I was quite apprehensive – she said, “I am sure you will figure something out for yourself.” She sharply picked the angst in me about “what should be the role of an architect?” and she said that may be one needs to start working with the fevicol company, or be designing together finishes things like these. Basically she said that there need not be this strict notion of the role of an architect. She actually added to the value of the presentation by actually giving ideas of how one can start looking at these agencies.

The most important comment, I feel was that of Rohan. Rohan said, that the achievement of the thesis is the position that he has been able to take, and the thesis has jumped in a huge way from what it began with (having strict ideas of how things ought to be), about “why people don’t understand what I am giving them?”, to being able to acknowledge it. This comment from Rohan was precious for me, because it made me realize what I spent my past year doing. I just deconstructed my own architectural stereotypical notions of looking at things around me.

 Rupali since the last month has been fascinated with the sudden turn that the thesis took in the way of Robert Venturi’s “Learning from Las Vegas”. She pointed out that how the study actually claims to learn from existing situations (rather than being pessimistic about the conditions we see). I did not actually get a chance to talk to any one later because all ran for lunch after the session after kairavi’s presentation.

Two particular names and comments: Sandeep sir said that, “the presentation was very nice, we will talk about it when we meet” and George said that, “we shall talk about it in detail later”. So perhaps these are pointers for the next step.

I missed Sonal Sunderrajan and Prasad Shetty during the presentation. It would have been really nice to have them comment on my work (infact the presentation).