"The discourse of architectural form has become obsolete...who talks of form today? The debate on form is an old issue now,"
"India has not entered, or even managed to enter the discourse of architectural form" - I discussed with the new team of Architecture Design first year. The debate was about the role of form in architecture.
India-trained architects immediately understand form as "iconic" and label it as pejorative. In Indian context, I think the idea of form itself is borrowed. The emphasis of space in Indian architecture is so strong that we fear to deal with ideas of form. Formal responses in architecture have never satisfied the community in India. They have only served the craving for aesthetic or beauty, or otherwise invited a lot of criticism for a-contextual responses. Indian architectural community has not successfully placed a form that generated a dialectic - an argument in a mature architectural sense. All bold forms here can be so easily classified as copied or adopted.
Vernacular has become a style, instead of a cultural manifest. Why doesn't present cultural condition fuel the design of form in architecture? Why don't cultural processes shape form? They are either expressionistic or reproductions of the past. Do buildings talk to each other in the city? We have not, in the real sense, explored the function of architecture as a formal message... Architecture has so much potential to communicate in space. How does Antilia talk to Kanchunjunga? How do buildings in the IIT campus talk to each other? How do the tall buildings respond to each other? Do our cultural institutions talk to each other? All architects are only writing off buildings. Statements is not the way I want to talk of form. In fact, I am talking of form as response in 3-dimensional space. What meanings do forms hold? Can we tap them? Can we play with the imagery, yet be spatial? Any debates, disconnects...post here...
Post buildings, we shall discuss...
"India has not entered, or even managed to enter the discourse of architectural form" - I discussed with the new team of Architecture Design first year. The debate was about the role of form in architecture.
India-trained architects immediately understand form as "iconic" and label it as pejorative. In Indian context, I think the idea of form itself is borrowed. The emphasis of space in Indian architecture is so strong that we fear to deal with ideas of form. Formal responses in architecture have never satisfied the community in India. They have only served the craving for aesthetic or beauty, or otherwise invited a lot of criticism for a-contextual responses. Indian architectural community has not successfully placed a form that generated a dialectic - an argument in a mature architectural sense. All bold forms here can be so easily classified as copied or adopted.
Vernacular has become a style, instead of a cultural manifest. Why doesn't present cultural condition fuel the design of form in architecture? Why don't cultural processes shape form? They are either expressionistic or reproductions of the past. Do buildings talk to each other in the city? We have not, in the real sense, explored the function of architecture as a formal message... Architecture has so much potential to communicate in space. How does Antilia talk to Kanchunjunga? How do buildings in the IIT campus talk to each other? How do the tall buildings respond to each other? Do our cultural institutions talk to each other? All architects are only writing off buildings. Statements is not the way I want to talk of form. In fact, I am talking of form as response in 3-dimensional space. What meanings do forms hold? Can we tap them? Can we play with the imagery, yet be spatial? Any debates, disconnects...post here...
Post buildings, we shall discuss...
5 comments:
Vernacular has become a style, instead of a cultural manifest. Why doesn't present cultural condition fuel the design of form in architecture?
What is the 'present cultural condition'? And in the Indian context, does the term 'present cultural context' have any relevance in a generic sense?
Why don't cultural processes shape form? They are either expressionistic or reproductions of the past.
Cultural processes do shape form. Especially in India. Think about it. But seldom new forms. Just the ones we've been seeing since forever. And these forms that are the result of cultural processes, more often than not, in the Indian context, are plan-oriented forms where the planning is infulenced by the particular cultural activity or process, which in turn influences the form.
Do buildings talk to each other in the city? We have not, in the real sense, explored the function of architecture as a formal message... Architecture has so much potential to communicate in space. How does Anatilia talk to Kanchunjunga?
Can you not see it? It so so obvious, how they talk to each other. Rather shout at each other. Or someone else would say that they're ignoring each other. It depends on perception. And btw, it's 'Antilia'
How do buildings in the IIT campus talk to each other?
The old buildings all do. Beautifully. Through the trees. They're from the same family. The new ones are the ones that create a fracas there. But there's still harmony because of the trees.
How do the tall buildings respond to each other? Do our cultural institutions talk to each other?
Do they need to? Why? Tall buildings, like their Architects, have big egos and don't talk to each other. Simple.
All architects are only writing off buildings. Statements is not the way I want to talk of form. In fact, I am talking of form as response in 3-dimensional space. What meanings do forms hold? Can we tap them? Can we play with the imagery, yet be spatial?
More often than not, these 'statements' that you talk of do, in fact, stimulate the senses visually as well as experientially. The form itself has no meaning, hence there is no point in trying to derive it. The meaning lies in the spatial experience and the visual imagery; also in the process that precedes the generation/evolution/conceptualization of the form.
Any debates, disconnects...post here...
Well, I think the point of raising the question was not to get yes or no. But in some sense, you do make me believe in your conclusion. Does meaning only lie in the spatial experience? Do you mean to say the visuality around us doesnot hold meaning?
Isn't the visuality around us akin to visual imagery? Which I have also cited as one of the things that has meaning. On further thought, the visual imagery that a form creates or contributes to is actually a part of the overall sensory experience. Which is what has meaning.
Our culture today has been deeply penetrated by technology, cosmopolitanism and globalization. However, there is some intrinsic way in which we appropriate all these processes. That intrinsic process does reflect in form, but only makes it perverse and shrewd. I don't think we confidently project how we have appropriated the above ideas or even modernism for that matter.
The idea of vernacular has to be redefined today, along with the idea of local...and it will change physical manifest due to progress in technology...We haven't done that, so you are right when you say it's old - Thats what I meant by vernacular being classified as copied.
Its not gone obsolete...it has taken many more layers to call it form...or in other words stripping it down to form...
World is not simple anymore... at least for designers with so much pouring in each moment...even for most disconnected ones...
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