In architecture, studies in image, iconography, symbols, style, and such other visual tropes are often seen as pejorative in the line of specific modern discourse that rejects ornament over building in the favour of studying its spatial configuration. To be sure, ornamentation over a building is the medium through which we "access" and "construct" historical narrative apparent in much of archaeological analysis. Can we consider the new urban motifs of the contemporary built forms for serious study in the present? How do we write histories of architecture by studying building ornamentations that get produced in the hypermediated space of information and exchange of images? My inquiry is triggered primarily in consideration of the question: how do the relief works at the two millennium old Kahneri caves in Mumbai gain more currency for architectural studies over the contemporary global fusion of plaster casts that are overlooked and dismissed culturally allegedly for their poor value?
We know for a fact that iconographic scholarship has been a serious practice, and scholars have invested their lives in understanding how intangible ideas get moulded into shapes and material. Iconographers have helped us decode for example, languages, codes and deeper myths around which ancient or pre-modern societies were probably structured. Several cultural products, including buildings are dated based on the motifs they carry - for they index the advent of technique and expertise, as much as adaptation and civilizational movement in history. In this vein, would the iconographies of today not be valuable to write histories of built environment for the future? Would the transport and assimilation of motifs within a building, even if hypermediated, not be of any value to the architect's role as a cultural commentator? Often, there is a prevailing anxiety to embrace the discussions of "style" within architectural studies today. Such aversion is understandable in the register that often these become ready templates for uncritical building authors who want to reproduce effectual experiences through gimmicks. However, the articulation of a certain idea into style (that which becomes material), also underpins the ideologies through which the society negotiates prevalent forces for a given building. To reject the notion of "style" completely may not be wise - for in being kitsch, pastiche or even gaudy, it still holds value and comments about the dominant mode of production in a society. Can/should a society really free itself from 'style'?
The much celebrated Mannerist architecture of 15th century brought out unique commentaries on existing political tensions within the then European society through the subtle and subversive play of building elements to defy existing norms and beliefs. Architectural iconography became a poignant way thereby to encode a script of resistance, yet open up new orders of space and experience. (
Mannerist, in fact, came from Italian
maneria, which means 'exaggerated style in speech, art or other behaviour'). In the 18th century, the reinvigoration of classical forms in a pronounced and provocative manner by architects like Claude Nicholas Leadoux, Boullee or Lequeue offered critical social commentaries through their often fantastical architecture. This was a period that we know of as 'Neo-classicism'. The "-ism" must not be confused here to indicate a "stylistic" discourse, rather, a way in which architecture materially became a vehicle for certain political and ideological mobilization. More recently, in the 1970s, Robert Venturi's 'Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture' argued for embracing a certain vocabulary of architectural elements that modernism famously rejected, in order to produce a plurality of meaning which offers play in the everyday experience of architecture. Often marked as the key moment for a 'post-modern' discourse in architecture, the book influenced several architects who went on to create, yet again, provocative, humorous - sometimes even kitchy reproductions of architecture. Despite the role of architecture that offers social commentary through the mobilization of ornamentation - structural or applied (and certainly not devoid and divorced of parallel typological changes), there is a tendency to suppress the symbolic role of architecture, which is essentially negotiated through style. On the other hand, sytlistic (mis)appropriations are common and index a range of values. However, can its discussion be totally excluded from historical analysis and understanding of the architectural object?
The discussion of architecture through style can be problematic if it is not undertaken critically, and delivered as a template of design. Contrastingly, we can argue that the speculations on societal structures based on analysis of building 'type' may be grossly incorrect, for we do not know the practices and precise myths which shaped these spaces. For example, archaeologist Suraj Pandit in his analysis of certain cave at Kanheri expressed how difficult it was to figure the function of a long cave which had stone platform strips with carved cup-shaped depressions at regular intervals. Was it a dining hall, was it a library, was it a place of preparation, was it a place of group mediation - we do not know! The diagram for all the above activities could potentially be same. How do we rely on typological analysis in such situations? In the contemporary times, in India, very few architects understand the notion of "type" - and thus, we do not see its active mobilization within our buildings. Often, default, accepted, already-formulated ways of organisation are replicated neutrally without understanding new contextual settings. The malls, corporate office blocks, the BHK - all are examples that exist in our very own environment that have largely been uncritically adapted and multiplied. Would architectural historians discard 'type' as a legitimate frame of analysis in this vein?
The opening up of new frames of architectural analysis must not reject the older ones. In this case, there is no need to denigrate the scholarship of 'style' in order to bring to force the analytical order of 'type'. Historians must be generous in accepting new frames of references through which the object of architecture can yield knowledge. The rejection of one over the other is a modern symptom which flattens interpretation to singular way of living and thinking. If we consider ornament as an integral part of building, what kind of building could we craft? Does the over-emphasis of type force us to think of buildings as an organization of spaces, rather than its craft? How can we marry craft with type, how can we marry ornament with construction in a meaningful way - not simply as an application, but as a way of space making? And in that case, is there a way to bridge the discourses of 'style' and 'type' for a more wholesome architectural history?
I have not detailed here the definition of 'style' or 'type' and the theoretical discourse around them. However, I expect that the readers will look into their histories and the criticism around them.
