These days Aniruddha (Mahale) and I keep poking fun at each other on being elitist - We keep blaming each other to be more elite (quite reverse Sarabhai v/s Sarabhai phenomenon). Not going much into the hows, I think we are just reacting to a situation where we end up interacting with extremely high class students and star kids!
However, such situations have compelled us to relook at our past and the kind of projects we did in our past. Chaitanya maintains that the profession of architecture can only cater to the elites. Architecture is a regimental profession, which orders / structures other peoples lives according to what architects think is right for the world. The great masters did that - and we enforce the students to think of the last detail, only following the Mies-an quote: "God is in Detail". We train students to think even of the hairpin that the client would put in order to suit the inhabited space.
Architecture sees the slums as a nuisance, the popular aesthetic as kitsch, the domestic decoration as middle-class and rejects ornament in its current modernist hangover. Infact, these are the most basic design sensibilities from where students develop a liking for design - for the aspirants, design is about decoration, arrangement and creativity. Most students come with a strong humble sensibility of the middle class. Architecture severely insults this sensibility, or at least it does not respect these or channel these as potential design drivers. However, I must caution myself here to be specific of my experiences and my college - Academy of Architecture, Mumbai.
I came to Academy of Architecture with a heavy creative cultural baggage - I learnt to 'create' things from my mother - she taught me how to make things out of waste, of giving domestic waste an aesthetic value, she taught me how to make rakhees, I saw her paint, embroider, knit - all of it that fascinated me. I came to the architecture with this 'creative' interest. The beginning of the course was interesting, but it took a weird cultural twist by the second year when we were introduced to Interior Design. I never understood the subject - I just couldnot comprehend the idea of laying out an interior. Coming from a background where a house was a collection of utilitarian objects, sprinkled with artistic pieces here and there, I wondered what to put in a large living room plan apart from a diwan and a TV case?
I never dined on a dining table - eating was still a family activity - circling in the living room where food was served turn by turn to all. There was no question of understanding the concept of a dining table / dining space. The bed was more importantly a storage object, than a sleeping one - to the extent where height didnot respond to anthropometrics, but to the height of objects to be stored / amount of material to be stored in the bed hollow. Cupboards were not about hangers, but about the safe vault and safety. Study table was always a dream - I never had one. It was only pillows which became the table when kept on my lap... In interior design, we were expected to 'design' for these 'everyday' activities. In my home, objects for these activities happened over a period of time - as and when my father could afford it - so we had a steel cupboard, a wheel table, then some teepoys, diwan later, bed even later... So all of them were incoherent (speaking from a designer aesthetic). Apparently, that is not what ID expected us to do. I struggled and struggled and wondered what I could 'design' in an interior space other than the life i lived.
We had projects like interpretation centre in the same year - a word that I had never heard of. Our faculty, in the guise of explaining the concept of an interpretation centre, ended up telling us the programs that we needed to provide. Later in the course we were expected to design large centres - a naturopathy centre for some people who would come to these places for a few weeks. As outings, we always stayed in dharamshalas (inns). This stretch of imagination from an inn to individual cottages was far too much to grasp then. Further in the course were were asked to design more elitist and polished projects -in the guise of 'large scale projects'.
One of the first questions the faculty asked our class: "So how many of you have been to a five star hotel?" (seems a very humble question, but the medium of writing doesnot allow me to explain the intonation / delivery of speech). The obvious well-to-do people raised hands. A huge bunch of us looked at each other - perplexed. A social class of students for whom, once a month food at a local restaurant was a luxury, were expected to think of being to a five star hotel. The professor continued to share more experiences of five stars while all of us kept drowning ourselves in an imagined bubble of shame. We were expected to visit such places as case studies - buildings which do not allow you in without shoes and shun you by your appearance. Convention centres, hotels, residential towers, townships - all kinds of projects which were then farfetched for a class of people like us to imagine.
I am perhaps trying to draw attention to the completely insensitive ways in which elitism was thrown upon students without understanding the socio cultural backgrounds we came from. I wonder what others thought when they were asked whether or not they had been to a five star hotel. Isn't it too personal and sharp a question that makes you conscious of your own social status? What socio-mental traumas does it create for all such people who are completely shy and may never be able to admit their insecurities due to their backgrounds? And for those who have never been to such places, how does the curriculum ever expect, in 3 months, a design which suits an elitist taste and works absolutely efficiently?
These are sensitive issues. The academia has to deal with them very carefully and study cultural patterns to be able to slowly open up students to various aspects of design, so that they do not hurt the cultural sentiments of students from socially sensitive backgrounds. The academics have to think and rethink of projects they give students to handle. In the fellowship I did with KRVIA after my graduation, I realized how hegemonic design could be, and how soft, other systems are. We can creatively engage with these softer systems to be able to learn more about life in general instead of superimposing on ourselves a completely foreign order of living.
However, we face quite a reverse problem right now. We have a large set of elitist brats within whom a handful of people who can not afford quite many things have gotten embedded. This elitism reflects in the way they waste all kinds of resources, the general lack of concern for others, the tantrums they throw, the for-granted attitude towards their teachers, the stupid reasons they argue for, the lack of discipline - and I could go on...!
However, when Aniruddha told me how he gave over all his architecture stationery to one of such 'embedded' students, I really felt touched. If only the elitist, instead of wasting resources helped their friends who can not afford luxuries that they tend to waste, it would make such a larger difference...
