The other morning I was thinking of the cultural and social role of balconies in urban space, especially in these times of the COVID pandemic, when most of us are quarantined within our homes. In such a confined situation, the balcony has been the closest release into the "outside". In its ambiguously integrated physical character, the balcony appears to be a wart-like extension from the primary body of the building. Physically suspended in space from all other dimensions except its connection to the building, the balcony occupies the liminal space between the interior and the exterior. The balcony must have been a soft replacement for the tropical inhabitant's seamless weave into the outdoor of the ancestral horizontally laid out home, that is now hewn into the vertical assemblage of the urban apartments. However, in the urban space, the balcony assumes many more meanings than just remaining a place to linger, loiter or merely gaze into the happening or nothingness of life. In the limited carpet areas of urban living, the balcony extends the house into a spectrum of activities.
Within the scheme of the home, the balcony could be an architectural metaphor for alienation. It is the anonymous, unclaimed, "public" counterpart of the demarcated, claimed "private" interior of an apartment in a multi-storied construction. The larger inner livable domestic space scaling down its containment to allow often, merely a single body perhaps prefaces its association with a sense of solitude. In addition, balconies are a release from the often cacophonous constrained interiority of the home. Sometimes, on the other hand, the loneliness and silence of the home is erased by melting into the bustle of the street, or even the busy road. The balcony allows one to be semi-anonymous to the world through its part hiding architecture. When in the balcony, we are semi exposed - partly in partly out, neither grounded nor absolutely floating. This in-between-ness lends the body and the mind a distinct disposition to float itself into the space of dream and desire. The balcony thus remains to be read phenomenologically in its lived reality.
If window is the two dimensional invisible screen that connects the inside and outside within a house, the balcony is the volumetric space of the window that can be inhabited by the body. It projects the body into a panoramic view of the outside that the window merely peeks into. Figuratively and metaphorically, the balcony more often that not, has been imagined as space of escape. To be sure, in several modern vertical buildings where safety norms have necessitated for the construction of exclusive emergency exits, the balconies are often strung into such open fire escape staircases. In older structures, such escape infrastructures are added as step-child extensions separately, also evident in their distinctly different construction systems. Social and moral ambiguities that cannot be contained within the domesticity of the home, tend to leak into such spaces. Acts of stolen love, self-pleasure, assumed socially immoral indulgence have often been staged in this space. Balconies thus become a site of behavioural and moral transgression.
Within the scheme of the home, the balcony could be an architectural metaphor for alienation. It is the anonymous, unclaimed, "public" counterpart of the demarcated, claimed "private" interior of an apartment in a multi-storied construction. The larger inner livable domestic space scaling down its containment to allow often, merely a single body perhaps prefaces its association with a sense of solitude. In addition, balconies are a release from the often cacophonous constrained interiority of the home. Sometimes, on the other hand, the loneliness and silence of the home is erased by melting into the bustle of the street, or even the busy road. The balcony allows one to be semi-anonymous to the world through its part hiding architecture. When in the balcony, we are semi exposed - partly in partly out, neither grounded nor absolutely floating. This in-between-ness lends the body and the mind a distinct disposition to float itself into the space of dream and desire. The balcony thus remains to be read phenomenologically in its lived reality.
If window is the two dimensional invisible screen that connects the inside and outside within a house, the balcony is the volumetric space of the window that can be inhabited by the body. It projects the body into a panoramic view of the outside that the window merely peeks into. Figuratively and metaphorically, the balcony more often that not, has been imagined as space of escape. To be sure, in several modern vertical buildings where safety norms have necessitated for the construction of exclusive emergency exits, the balconies are often strung into such open fire escape staircases. In older structures, such escape infrastructures are added as step-child extensions separately, also evident in their distinctly different construction systems. Social and moral ambiguities that cannot be contained within the domesticity of the home, tend to leak into such spaces. Acts of stolen love, self-pleasure, assumed socially immoral indulgence have often been staged in this space. Balconies thus become a site of behavioural and moral transgression.
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| The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo |
In its outstretched disposition, a semiotic reading of the balcony alludes to Michelangelo's 'The Creation of Adam' where God's arm is outstretched from the body in order to impart a spark of life into the man (Adam, who is imagined in the image of God himself). Much as Adam compliments the figure of God in the artist's rendering, the cantilevered fragment of the balcony reaches out into the space, off a building probably to reflect upon its own inner incompleteness. Is the physically incomplete balcony the mirror of the fractured space of home - one that attempts to dissolve the individual it contains within the outer world? Such tendencies become vivid as we begin to consider various works of art across histories and cultures that feed into the imagination of the balcony as a site of union and the expression of love. Many popular adaptations of folk tales by Disney have consolidated the balcony into such a trope. The most impressionistic one is demonstrated in the animated Arabic fable of Aladdin, where his lover Jasmine is often found lost in longing and hope leaning against the parapet of her palace's balcony. In the absence of one's partner, balconies are seen as an outwardly setting to depict the inner solitariness.
The gendering of the balcony is a unique phenomenon. In urban multi-storied apartments, the balcony appears to be the primary domain of the female - one who is associated primarily with shaping domestic life. In many instances, the balcony is gendered as the space of female hope. The balcony is the social and environmental laboratory of the home that holds extra-domestic conversations, activities. It is a space of care and concern, a place where the body expectantly relaxes and retires. For the male, it could quickly become a space of performance, a space where the body asserts and stages itself firmly. The balcony's transparency may be quickly hijacked by the assertion of the male body. Whereas, ironically for the female, the balcony is often a space to disappear into. Its seeming queer existence in the architectural scheme of the building (one that is liminal, in-between and purposely incomplete) immediately crushes it under the patriarchal hegemony. In such a reading the balcony's character is most productively exploited by the queer body. The tectonics of gender as explained above may be elaborated through the consideration of three artworks, primarily considered from India.
Artist Sudhir Patwardhan’s distinct representations of people in the space of the balcony set the home and the city in a unique contemplative relationship. In his collection Snapshots from a family album, a painting uses the site of the balcony to position the viewer on multiple thresholds at once: the home and the city, the inside and outside, the covered and uncovered, the private and the public. What holds our eyes in this painting are the figures of two women, probably related to each other as mother and daughter. The manner in which the women occupy the space is rather submissive, finding comfort within each other, as much as the release into the outside. The mother holds her daughter in a manner of restraining her, at the same time drawing support. The daughter on the other hand is fairly poised, and confrontational. The view on the right is that of a city under development. What does the juxtaposition of the figures with an incomplete city under construction mean? Could the parapet of the balcony be that invisible mirror which reflects the inner landscape of the women contained within its semi naked space? In their reliance and incompleteness, the two bodies begin to dialogue in themselves a soft tale of patriarchy. In the semi lit space of the half-covered balcony, their inner beings begin to resonate. For the women, the balcony is a site to enjoy their reluctant freedoms.
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| Jasmine in the adaptation of Aladdin animation by Disney |
The gendering of the balcony is a unique phenomenon. In urban multi-storied apartments, the balcony appears to be the primary domain of the female - one who is associated primarily with shaping domestic life. In many instances, the balcony is gendered as the space of female hope. The balcony is the social and environmental laboratory of the home that holds extra-domestic conversations, activities. It is a space of care and concern, a place where the body expectantly relaxes and retires. For the male, it could quickly become a space of performance, a space where the body asserts and stages itself firmly. The balcony's transparency may be quickly hijacked by the assertion of the male body. Whereas, ironically for the female, the balcony is often a space to disappear into. Its seeming queer existence in the architectural scheme of the building (one that is liminal, in-between and purposely incomplete) immediately crushes it under the patriarchal hegemony. In such a reading the balcony's character is most productively exploited by the queer body. The tectonics of gender as explained above may be elaborated through the consideration of three artworks, primarily considered from India.
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| Snapshots from a Family Album by Sudhir Patwardhan |
Artist Sudhir Patwardhan’s distinct representations of people in the space of the balcony set the home and the city in a unique contemplative relationship. In his collection Snapshots from a family album, a painting uses the site of the balcony to position the viewer on multiple thresholds at once: the home and the city, the inside and outside, the covered and uncovered, the private and the public. What holds our eyes in this painting are the figures of two women, probably related to each other as mother and daughter. The manner in which the women occupy the space is rather submissive, finding comfort within each other, as much as the release into the outside. The mother holds her daughter in a manner of restraining her, at the same time drawing support. The daughter on the other hand is fairly poised, and confrontational. The view on the right is that of a city under development. What does the juxtaposition of the figures with an incomplete city under construction mean? Could the parapet of the balcony be that invisible mirror which reflects the inner landscape of the women contained within its semi naked space? In their reliance and incompleteness, the two bodies begin to dialogue in themselves a soft tale of patriarchy. In the semi lit space of the half-covered balcony, their inner beings begin to resonate. For the women, the balcony is a site to enjoy their reluctant freedoms.
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| Sudhir Patwardhan |
In contrast to being inside the threshold, in another of his earlier works, Patwardhan posits the viewer outside the space of the balcony. The foreground of the painting, blinded by a stone wall and a city bus, immediately draw the viewer's attention to the space of the common corridor: the elevated balcony of the chawl across the street. A middle aged man and a woman are seen to be leaning along the wooden railing, perhaps at the end of the day. The busy street being overlooked is left behind in time in the eyes of the man whereas the woman besides the post seems to rather pick on the energy of the chawl and the city. Both the bodies draw very different energies at the same time. The balcony ties the entire chawl together stringing together the different rooms as well as the social lives of the people. In the ecosystem of the chawl, the balcony is a diurnal map – with traces of laundry, water storage, shoe racks and flower pots that become infrastructures of communication in this conduit of multidimensional exchange.
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| You Can't Please All, by Bhupen Khakkar |
Indian visual artist Bhupen Khakkar’s body in the balcony stands in a distinct ambiguity in his seminal work You Can’t Please All (1981), that begins to explore his own gay sexuality. A Tate entry on the painting reads:
In the above instances, the balcony is literally the space from where the inner lives and landscapes of bodies get lived. The balcony view is indeed theatrical, and no longer appears metaphorical within the scheme of the architectural vocabulary of the cinema hall. It is indeed the space from where the the physical launches into the virtual. But in real life too, balconies are spaces where humans willingly wait to interact with other species. They feed the birds, hop with the butterflies, and ofcourse, nurture a garden of their own. The balcony is one's own tamed wilderness, a forest of one's own. It is a space where one steps into the other-world of nature. The plants bring insects, flowers, fruits - thus they add new colour and demonstrate the transitory nature of life. Through its delicate structure of grills and bars, the balconies allow plants to creep, dissolving the hard boundaries of building structure. The balcony is a space of effervescence, and offers the infrastructure of dissolution.
Balconies thus support and allow the flourishing of a parallel life-cycle. In capitalistic societies where every inch of an owned urban property must be put into use, such aspects are often exploited towards maximising utility. In its semi-occupancy dimension, the balcony space could dubbed as an essential unproductive space of the house. The balcony - often excused as the lesser space of the home, and assumes a hierarchy. Therefore in the urban vein, it is constantly attempted to be co-opted into the productive logic of the home. Through physical or infrastructural extensions, the scope of a balcony space is extended beyond its limits. With homes that have permanent maids or servants, the balcony is transformed into their make-shift room/home. In small houses with kids, the balconies in their detachment offer the silence and isolation for study, and manifest as reading and learning coves. In other instances, limitations of living space compel inhabitants to use their balconies as a space to store infrequent goods. Balconies are often installed with lofts and hanging closets that can double them up as stores as well as spaces of recluse. Other adaptations convert balconies into laundry spaces or puja rooms; for they are enabled with its own source of inlet as well as outlet for water.
You Can’t Please All (1981) was named Khakhar’s ‘coming out painting’, by his contemporary Timothy Hyman. The painting depicts Khakkar on his balcony, naked, watching an ancient fable be re-enacted before his eyes. The fable tells of a father and son taking their donkey to market. As they take turns riding the donkey, passers by comment on who is riding. ‘The father is old so he should ride’, say some, whilst others complain the father is heavy and will overload the donkey. The story is concluded with the fathers refrain “Please all, and you will please none!” For Khakkar this tale reflected his own desire to accept his identity.It is clear that unlike the realism of Patwardhan's city outside the balcony, Khakkar's sight from the balcony is an imagined one. It is a place from where he is able to introspect into the personal dilemmas of his sexual identity and future. As apparent in the painting, the balcony is also the bedroom, the world outside is the playground of desire. The viewer situates oneself somewhere between the pink and blue grounds of the balcony and the outside respectively, flowing into each other. The fully naked body of the artist is only visible to the viewer, securely hidden from the outside by the semi-wall of the parapet. The balcony thus demonstrates the dualities of identity, hiding and concealment, private and public, in other words - it becomes a queer space for life to unfold itself. At once, the balcony's own existence echoes in the desires of the portrayed body, here, of the artist himself.
In the above instances, the balcony is literally the space from where the inner lives and landscapes of bodies get lived. The balcony view is indeed theatrical, and no longer appears metaphorical within the scheme of the architectural vocabulary of the cinema hall. It is indeed the space from where the the physical launches into the virtual. But in real life too, balconies are spaces where humans willingly wait to interact with other species. They feed the birds, hop with the butterflies, and ofcourse, nurture a garden of their own. The balcony is one's own tamed wilderness, a forest of one's own. It is a space where one steps into the other-world of nature. The plants bring insects, flowers, fruits - thus they add new colour and demonstrate the transitory nature of life. Through its delicate structure of grills and bars, the balconies allow plants to creep, dissolving the hard boundaries of building structure. The balcony is a space of effervescence, and offers the infrastructure of dissolution.
Balconies thus support and allow the flourishing of a parallel life-cycle. In capitalistic societies where every inch of an owned urban property must be put into use, such aspects are often exploited towards maximising utility. In its semi-occupancy dimension, the balcony space could dubbed as an essential unproductive space of the house. The balcony - often excused as the lesser space of the home, and assumes a hierarchy. Therefore in the urban vein, it is constantly attempted to be co-opted into the productive logic of the home. Through physical or infrastructural extensions, the scope of a balcony space is extended beyond its limits. With homes that have permanent maids or servants, the balcony is transformed into their make-shift room/home. In small houses with kids, the balconies in their detachment offer the silence and isolation for study, and manifest as reading and learning coves. In other instances, limitations of living space compel inhabitants to use their balconies as a space to store infrequent goods. Balconies are often installed with lofts and hanging closets that can double them up as stores as well as spaces of recluse. Other adaptations convert balconies into laundry spaces or puja rooms; for they are enabled with its own source of inlet as well as outlet for water.
Only until a few years ago, urban building bye-laws in a city like Mumbai allowed the free construction of 10% of the built up space of apartments as balconies. Over time, shrinking floor spaces of apartments, extending families and the desire for larger apartments led to the perverse practices of subsuming balconies into the "carpet" space of the house. The addition of a projecting grill, installation of fans or lights, creation of decks or closing off with sliding windows are all means through which the balcony is brought into the productive ambit of the home. The introduction of the sliding window changed the character of the balcony and made it feel more a part of the room instead of it being separate from the room. Due to this, it began to be made into a part of the room. It was also installed for having privacy, reducing sound decibels and avoiding dust within the house. Introduction of air-conditioning necessitated sealed interior spaces to avoid leakage of cooled air. It is thence that people also started closing off the balconies and amalgamating them within their rooms. All in all, the semi-open balcony was now completely interiorised. The recognition of such practices has led the planning commission to dissolve the balcony as free space in building codes.
Finally, Aditya Potluri, Saurabh Vaidya and Ranjit Kandalgaonkar's "Boy in a Balcony" ties together the poetry and politics of being suspended in a balcony. Vaidya, perhaps aptly calls it a "no man's land", showing a view that is neither framed from the street, nor the interior of the home. Several perspectives merge into the frame together and hit the eye simultaneously. Surrounded by a range of realities and imaginations, desires and negotiations, claims and contestations, the balcony becomes a safe haven to perform and peek privately into the everyday - of the other and the self. In this in between ness, the balcony finds and becomes a whole world of its own. No longer does it need its host, it assumes the character of the flying carpet that floats into, across and away into the pasts, presents and futures simultaneously. It could be a site of unison - seen even in the recent chauvinistic thali-banging acts orchestrated across several countries in the spectacular appreciation of the "COVID warriors" that brings these separate pixelated pocket-volumes together; but at the same time, becomes the perfect place to hide, or even contemplate into the future that we wait to enter and inhabit.
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| Boy in the Balcony by Aditya Potluri, Saurabh Vaidya and Ranjit Kandalgaonkar |
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