The absence of terraces in high rise buildings has disrespected an old atmospheric culture of people in India. People in India share a distinct relationship with the sky and celestial bodies. They begin their day by worshipping the sun and eat their food on certain special.days only after seeing the moon. Festivals like Id and karva chauth are so closely tied to the worship of moon.
High rise buildings hide them off, create difficult viewing tunnels. Pent houses further eat up terraces. The space of the terrace in a building which was once public and readily available to every member of a building has now been lost to wealthy people who prefer to live above everyone commanding grand views of the city. This reflects the capitalistic culture of the city that has eaten up old customs and traditions which people still follow.
Gardening, kite flying, feeding birds, keeping offerings for birds after deaths are all activities intrinsic to our culture which kept terraces as an active place. Even when buildings were four to five storeyes tall, one wouldn't hesitate to run to a terrace during the evening where everyone would meet up, play, walk, etc. Although four storeyes still maintained terrace culture, seven made it difficult. Later, these were too sold off to the communication companies or advertisement companies, to earn money for individual societies. Communication antennae occupy large amount of space on terraces and leave no space to move. Further, their installations are hurtful. Similar is the case with advertisements that come up on buildings. I remember going to a friend's house to view the Halley's comet when it crossed across Indian skies during the '90s, the then recent tall building completely blocked the view of the north sky from my old house.
Thus, the new urban forms have disregarded these very activities of people through which people connected to the world outside them. The sky scrapers have not left any room for people's engagement with the sky. Forget terrace for people, we do not even have enough open space to run out to in case of fire. We thus do not appreciate the different shapes of clouds, the hues of the evening sky, the moonlight or the pole star - which we all once gazed at through our benevolent barsatis. The sky is perhaps the only space which forces us to think that there exists another reality beyond our own. It allows us to penetrate deep into it and takes us to a macrocosm that we are only made familiar of primarily through our mythological texts. It is the space which the grand mother points at hinting to the devil's house and the place from where Santa Claus arrives. That patch of sky, which has stitched the quilt of memories is now a luxury of the past. Shrinking into the balcony, the terrace shall soon disappear (or has it already disappeared?) as an architectural gesture which allowed human imagination far deep into a cosmos that once chiefly structured our lives.
High rise buildings hide them off, create difficult viewing tunnels. Pent houses further eat up terraces. The space of the terrace in a building which was once public and readily available to every member of a building has now been lost to wealthy people who prefer to live above everyone commanding grand views of the city. This reflects the capitalistic culture of the city that has eaten up old customs and traditions which people still follow.
Gardening, kite flying, feeding birds, keeping offerings for birds after deaths are all activities intrinsic to our culture which kept terraces as an active place. Even when buildings were four to five storeyes tall, one wouldn't hesitate to run to a terrace during the evening where everyone would meet up, play, walk, etc. Although four storeyes still maintained terrace culture, seven made it difficult. Later, these were too sold off to the communication companies or advertisement companies, to earn money for individual societies. Communication antennae occupy large amount of space on terraces and leave no space to move. Further, their installations are hurtful. Similar is the case with advertisements that come up on buildings. I remember going to a friend's house to view the Halley's comet when it crossed across Indian skies during the '90s, the then recent tall building completely blocked the view of the north sky from my old house.
Thus, the new urban forms have disregarded these very activities of people through which people connected to the world outside them. The sky scrapers have not left any room for people's engagement with the sky. Forget terrace for people, we do not even have enough open space to run out to in case of fire. We thus do not appreciate the different shapes of clouds, the hues of the evening sky, the moonlight or the pole star - which we all once gazed at through our benevolent barsatis. The sky is perhaps the only space which forces us to think that there exists another reality beyond our own. It allows us to penetrate deep into it and takes us to a macrocosm that we are only made familiar of primarily through our mythological texts. It is the space which the grand mother points at hinting to the devil's house and the place from where Santa Claus arrives. That patch of sky, which has stitched the quilt of memories is now a luxury of the past. Shrinking into the balcony, the terrace shall soon disappear (or has it already disappeared?) as an architectural gesture which allowed human imagination far deep into a cosmos that once chiefly structured our lives.
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