Investigative thoughts on translating music into space

The translation of music into architecture is still an obscure process and one may consider and observe many methods for it. However, firstly, I must explicate the difference between sound and music. The difference between sound and music can be considered analogous to that between caves and rock cut architecture. Essentially, music is structured sound - sound that is bound into the framework of melody, rhythm and beats. Music is a more complex animal than sound to be translated into architecture. When it comes to being transformed into space, architects often tend to convert any medium or experience into visuals so that it can be harnessed into a language of architecture. However, what system do you choose to convert sound or music into visuals! It is one thing to produce music or sound through established conventions of written visual notations. And it is arguable, since firstly, these are just conventions, and secondly, not all cultures have such developed systems (read visual systems) for recording, passing on and performing music. In traditional and most cases, particularly in the electronic and more so the digital era, the frequency bar graph of the musical records is taken as a beginning point.

The frequency bar graph of any music system displays a graph of the different aspects of music on a two dimensional Cartesian grid where the amount of frequencies of different tones are measured. While this can be an empirical measure of sound, the experience of the entirety of music is certainly not so isolated. That means, we do not experience music in its constituent individual tones, rather it is a holistic multidimensional one; where the streams of rounds create a complete environment affecting one physical as well as emotional senses at the same time. Thus using the frequency bar graphs of soundscapes that appear on digital screens offer an accurate measure of tones, but don't give us an accurate method or measure of experience. I therefore find it quite redundant as a tool to use in order to make something tangible from music into architecture.

The way in which music translates into space needs to be investigated through the framework of the musician. A musician, - a vocalist, instrumentalist or any such virtuoso is consciously striking specific chords in order to create a space in the mind of his / her audience, or creating a particular kind of environment for the listener. In this, he / she is also perceiving certain qualities of the environment, in quite an abstract fashion, and for his own practice of making music for the audience. In this, The musician has quite subconsciously articulated a method to work out space into music and further deploy it too. This particular method needs to be learnt by the architect.

In quite direct terms, music has the obvious highs and lows, the adjectives of three dimensional space that come to define certain characteristics of music. Such adjectives offer the most ready means for music to be interpreted as spatial. In terms of a phenomenological experience for the performer, it means (For a vocalist) Singing in head voice for higher note, while from the belly for a lower note. The high and lows in the standard upright position & balance of the body then, are quite literally, but also pragmatically up and down in the body respectively. In terms / for the listener, it either creates a mood of excitement, charging up the body to swing and more with the performer or make oneself sombre, melancholic through the low notes. There is ample theory on how moods are actually created by a selection of sharp and flat notes (for Indian classical music) and then through movements of through notes, in both, Indian and Western Classical music. One thing, that has to be rather. specified in that while curtain association with certain kinds of music or forces are already established for us in both the above music systems, I constantly like to challenge them in terms of feeling what it actually does to me as against the expected or prescribed effect. However, this can also be a factor that may be left up to the subjectivity of the listener. For example, the association of stately Western classical music or Baroque music is a matter of association, or I wonder if one genuinely can understand It to belong only to that context. Similarly certain ragas sung in certain time periods may purely be a historic experience.

In our detached, isolated and mobile environment that we listen to music today, one wonders how these historic associations work themselves out. In history, listening to music (and therefore the production to space) must certainly not have been an individualistic affair. Then comes the idea of volume, depths and perspective - all that closely relate to architecture and space there characteristics are definitely more about technique of using notes.

The question finally is, what essentially do we represent when we are understanding music in order to translate into architecture? Is it the literal redistribution of particles that are visible on digital pads, is it the bar sheet on which notations for music are written? Or is it the rhythmic changes in tones and melodies through subjective experiences that are shown on paper? In all three, the understanding of music is merely visual. But what does it mean for architecture? Do we then assume that in architecture, the experience of music can only be usual? Or is there a way to actually create a space which induces a musical feeling?

 

These are incomplete ongoing long term thoughts.

Four Learnings from Gautam Bhan

Gautam Bhan is one of the foremost academics advocating how environments in the Global South need their own theory. Over the last two years, I have had the opportunity of dabbling into a lot of discussion on knowledge production within the Global south, as well as the urge to decolonise education in this region. In my effort to give meaning to what "decolonise" means in academia, and how does one think of performing it, I indulged myself in Bhan's talks, from one of which, I got some very tangible ideas for academic practice. Here they are:

The ability to translate

Academics are not able to translate their language in different scenarios/situations and therefore they feel silenced. Academics speak in largely academic situations/settings because they are almost sure that it is (going to be) the space from where the validation of their language comes from, and thus are trapped in the "seduction of the academia"

Automatic Modernity

Bhan points out how the project of modernism gives an automatic direction to aspiration - and to aspire has to come to mean to be modern. This conceptual relationship between modernity (read modernity coming from the West) and the desire for progress and the engine of aspiration needs to be challenged. That is the culture work academics have to collectively undertake, Bhan suggests.

On Insularity of Academic Voice

Bhan says that no one stops academics from writing, intervening and performing in domains outside of academia. Therefore, academics cannot afford to stay within the bubble of knowledge production of academia and lament that the world outside is not listening to them. The must actively find audiences and write in their language to make their knowledge and findings about the world more accessible.

On Theory from the North

Bhan says that we need to "particularize" Northern theory - meaning, theory coming from the north is not universal theory, and that it must be assigned a status that it is a theory of that place - and therefore, it cannot be "the" way of doing/thinking things everywhere, rather, "a" way in which things happen somewhere, and therefore all ways of doing things hold value and knowledge because they are inherently embedded in certain values of a place.

on Loneliness

Read on Monophobia

On Self discovery, Kavi Grace

आत्मशोधाच्या आंधळ्या वाटेवर चाचपडत जाणाऱ्या प्रत्येक वाटसरूला कुठे न कुठे भेटणारा सहयात्री सिद्धार्थ. बुद्धाच्या सिद्धी पेक्षाही मला त्याचे सिद्धार्थपण जास्त मोलाचे वाटते. तसे त्याने फारसे दुःखही पाहिले भोगले नव्हतेच, पण एवढ्याशा दुःखाच्या दर्शनाने ही त्याचे राजीवंशी अस्तित्व उध्वस्त झाले. हा उध्वस्तपणा झेलतानाच्या सर्व व्यथा ओंजळीत घेऊन तो तडक निघाला. व्यथेला ईश्वरी करुणेची परिमाणे देण्यासाठी पुरी फुटून निघाला. अनुभवाचे पंख कापून दुःखाला मानवतावादाची शिस्त लावण्याची त्याने घाई केली नाही. ज्याने आयुष्यभर कुठल्याही प्रस्थापित मूल्यांचे दडपण मानले नाही आणि निर्माण अस्तित्वाची जडणघडण होत असताना या प्रक्रियेला कुठल्याही तडजोडीच्या वेठीस धरले नाही तो सिद्धार्थ. त्याचे व्यासपीठ होऊ शकत नाही,करू नये. व्यासपीठे म्हणजे अस्तित्व शोधाचे पंख कापून मुद्दाम दुबळ्या केलेल्या सामर्थ्याची चेष्टा करणारे कत्तल खाने असतात. बौदेलैर या फ्रेंच कवीने अल्बाट्रॉस नावाच्या महापक्ष्यावर एक कविता लिहिली आहे. या पक्षाचे पंख अजस्त्र असतात, डौलदार असतात. आकाशात भरारी मारणे हेच त्याचे सामर्थ्य आणि सौंदर्य. पण या पंखांचे वजन जमिनीवरून चालताना पेलत नसल्याने हा पक्षी फार केविलवाणा दिसतो. जहाजावरच्या एका कॅप्टनने अशा एका समुद्र पक्षाला बेताबेताने गोळी घालून अर्धवट जायबंदी केले आणि मग डेकवर मजेत चिरूट ओढत तो त्या अगडबंब पक्षाच्या देहाची केविल वाणी बेढबचाल बघत राहिला. घायाळ सामर्थ्याची चेष्टा करण्याची उर्मी आणखीनचनावर झाली तेव्हा कॅप्टनने या महापक्षाच्या पंखाला जळत्या चिरूटाचे टोक लावले. अनवट वेणीच्या चिरेबंद नक्षीत छिद्र पाडल्यावर कॅप्टनला कृतकृत्य झाल्यासारखे वाटले. चार सवंगडी बोलावून मग तो महासामर्थ्याच्या चेष्टेत स्वतःचे आत्मप्रतारक सामर्थ्य शोधण्याचा प्रयत्न करीत राहिला. सिद्धार्थाच्या आयुष्यातील प्राण तत्त्वाची पिंजण नाकारून त्याच्या सिद्धीला मानवतेचे तत्त्वज्ञान मानणारी व्यासपीठे बघितली की मला अपरिहार्यपणे समुद्रावरच्या महापक्षाची टिंगल टवाळी करणारी शहाण्यांची सभा आठवते. व्यासपीठे अशीच बेमालूमपणे माणसांची विटंबना करीत राहतात. अनुभवांच्या तोडमोडीला घेऊन तडजोडीचा मार्ग स्वीकारण्यासाठी पठडीचा आश्रय. मग प्रेषिताच्या व्यथा सूत्रांची काय? शरणमंत्रांनी आणि मुल्ला मौलवींच्या पहाट गजरांनी आवाजाची दुनिया घटकाभर स्तब्ध होत असेल पण ती हादरून जात नाही. मंत्रामागचे प्रेषितांचे अनुभव हेच खरे मार्गदर्शक असतात. पठडेबाज गुरूंच्या आश्रयाने मार्ग तर सापडत नाहीतच उलट दिशाभूल होत राहते . अशी दिशाभूल नाकारणे व स्वीकारणे हा ज्याचा त्याचा वैयक्तिक प्रश्न. पण नाकारल्याशिवाय अस्तित्वाला हादरे बसत नाहीत आणि हादरे बसल्याशिवाय काही नवनिर्माण होऊच शकत नाही ही दुःखवैभवाची संपन्नता. यासाठी पठडी सोडून सृजन प्रलयाला सामोरे जाणे हीच सिद्धार्थ पणाची तपस्या.

Translation / English

On the blind path of self discovery, every passerby somewhere or the other intersects one fellow traveller - Siddharth. More than Buddha’s achievements, I find his Siddharth-ness more valuable. To be sure, he hadn’t seen or experienced much adversity, but the encounter of mere sorrow brought his princely existence at stake. Devastated at once, he set out carrying all the pain promptly in his arms. He wholeheartedly devoted himself in order to measure suffering into the dimensions of divine compassion. He did not deny his own experience of sorrow in order to quickly discipline adversity within the imposition of humanity. The one who did not subscribe to any established values of society in his life and did not interfere in the make up of existence while in the process of one’s own self evolution - is Siddharth. Nor can this process be staged, and neither should it be attempted. Theories are essentially slaughterhouses of the wings taken during the flights of self discovery, mocking at the sheer will that one puts into it.  The French poet Baudelaire has written a poem about a giant bird called albatross. The bird's wings are featherless and graceful. To fly through the sky itself is its boldness and beauty. But the weight of its wings makes this bird appear very clumsy while walking on the ground. A ship's captain accidentally shot one of these seabirds and partially captured it, and then, while having fun dragging its claws across the deck, he watched the whirring of the bird's body. When his urge to play at brute force reached its climax, the captain attached the wing of the giant bird to the tip of a burning torch. Upon drilling a hole in its untwisted braid, the captain felt a sense of accomplishment. Calling four companions, he then kept on trying to find his own self-propulsive power. In overlooking the trapping of Siddhartha’s soul into the cage of life/existence and looking at his findings as the foundation of human philosophy,  I am inevitably reminded of the meeting of the wise men who were tinkling with the mermaid's ring on the sea. Theories continue to make a mockery of people in this way. They are the refuge that people take to succumb to an accepted normal rather than acknowledging the difference of experience. Then what about the Prophet's sufferings? The world may be temporarily silenced by the sermons of ministers and the dawn alarms of the mullahs, but it does not shake the world.  The experience of the apostles that lie behind the mantra is the real guide. Taking refuge in deceitful gurus, one not only fails to find the path, but instead continues to be misled. Whether to accept or reject such misguidance is a personal choice. But existence cannot be shaken without rejection, and without shaking, no renewal can take place. This is the glory of suffering and grief. To leave the plateau for immersing oneself in this flood-plain of creation is the penance of self discovery.

Translation / Hindi

आत्म-खोज के अंधे पथ पर, हर राहगीर कहीं न कहीं एक सहयात्री - सिद्धार्थ - से मिलता है। बुद्ध की उपलब्धियों से ज़्यादा, मुझे उनका सिद्धार्थत्व ज़्यादा मूल्यवान लगता है। बेशक, उन्होंने ज़्यादा विपत्तियाँ न देखी थीं, न ही झेली थीं, लेकिन बस एक दुःख के अनुभव ने उनके राजसी अस्तित्व को दांव पर लगा दिया था। एकाएक टूटकर, वे सारे दर्द को समेटकर चल पड़े। उन्होंने दुख को ईश्वरीय करुणा के आयामों में ढालने के लिए खुद को पूरी तरह समर्पित कर दिया। उन्होंने मानवता के थोपे हुए दायरे में विपत्ति को शीघ्रता से अनुशासित करने के लिए अपने दुःख के अनुभव को नकारा नहीं। जिसने अपने जीवन में समाज के किसी भी स्थापित मूल्य को नहीं माना और अपने आत्म-विकास की प्रक्रिया में अस्तित्व की संरचना में हस्तक्षेप नहीं किया - वही सिद्धार्थ है। न तो इस प्रक्रिया को मंचित किया जा सकता है, और न ही इसका प्रयास किया जाना चाहिए। सिद्धांत मूलतः आत्म-खोज की उड़ान के दौरान निकले पंखों के वधशाला हैं, जो उस विशुद्ध इच्छाशक्ति का उपहास करते हैं जो व्यक्ति उसमें लगाता है। फ्रांसीसी कवि बौडेलेयर ने अल्बाट्रॉस नामक एक विशाल पक्षी के बारे में एक कविता लिखी है। इस पक्षी के पर पंखहीन और सुडौल होते हैं। आकाश में उड़ना ही इसका साहस और सौंदर्य है। लेकिन अपने पंखों के भार के कारण यह पक्षी ज़मीन पर चलते समय बहुत अनाड़ी लगता है। एक जहाज के कप्तान ने गलती से इनमें से एक समुद्री पक्षी को गोली मार दी और उसे आंशिक रूप से पकड़ लिया, और फिर, डेक पर उसके पंजों को घसीटते हुए आनंद लेते हुए, उसने पक्षी के शरीर की फुफकार देखी। जब बलपूर्वक खेलने की उसकी इच्छा चरम पर पहुंच गई, तो कप्तान ने विशालकाय पक्षी के पंख को जलती हुई मशाल की नोक से जोड़ दिया। उसकी उलझी हुई चोटी में छेद करने पर, कप्तान को उपलब्धि का अहसास हुआ। चार साथियों को बुलाकर, वह अपनी आत्म-प्रेरक शक्ति खोजने में लगा रहा। सिद्धार्थ की आत्मा के जीवन/अस्तित्व के पिंजरे में फँसने की अनदेखी करते हुए और उसके निष्कर्षों को मानव दर्शन की नींव के रूप में देखते हुए, मुझे उन ज्ञानियों की बैठक की याद आती है जो समुद्र में मत्स्यांगना की अंगूठी से झनकार रहे थे। सिद्धांत इसी तरह लोगों का मज़ाक उड़ाते रहते हैं। ये वे शरणस्थल हैं जहाँ लोग अनुभव के अंतर को स्वीकार करने के बजाय एक स्वीकृत सामान्यता के आगे झुक जाते हैं। तो फिर पैगंबर के कष्टों का क्या? विश्वमंत्रियों के उपदेशों और मुल्लाओं के भोर के अलार्म से अस्थायी रूप से खामोश हो सकती है, लेकिन यह दुनिया को हिला नहीं पाती। मंत्र के पीछे छिपे हुए रसूलों का अनुभव ही वास्तविक मार्गदर्शक है। धोखेबाज गुरुओं की शरण में जाने से व्यक्ति न केवल मार्ग खोजने में असफल होता है, बल्कि लगातार भटकता रहता है। इस तरह के पथभ्रष्ट मार्गदर्शन को स्वीकार करना या अस्वीकार करना एक व्यक्तिगत निर्णय है। लेकिन अस्वीकार किए बिना अस्तित्व को हिलाया नहीं जा सकता, और बिना चुनौती, कोई नवप्रवर्तन नहीं हो सकता। यही दुख और शोक की महिमा है। इस पठार को छोड़कर सृष्टि के इस जल-तल में डूब जाना ही आत्म-खोज का तप है।

--

Manik Sitaram Godghate alias Kavi Grace (10 May 1937 – 26 March 2012) was a Marathi poet.

Read more here
 

Notes on Vedanta

Doom Scroll

It just occurred to me Some people like me doom scroll Instagram because it gives me/Them an analytical charge, to constantly keep parsing information that is coming your way. Here, the lust for information is maintained much like the earlier form of media - be it books reading material. However, the nature of information is much multi mediated - to include not just text, but also Sound, video, Thus, rather than consuming a single kind of thing, me is bombarded with a lot more, which to an analytical mind could be very exciting and testosterone inducing. It gives a thrill to sit and crunch more data, it makes the right kind of next level challenge then to consume this multimedia data, reeling at a much faster pace.

Notes on Music

 

Equality vs Equity

on Monophobia / On Hobbies

Being alone isn't about developing hobbies and interest and things to do when alone. Developing a greater tolerance for, and intimacy with, your experience - the emotional, cognitive, visceral, imaginative and sensory moment-to-moment arisings that constitute your basic aliveness. Many of us live in a state of chronic distraction from our experience. Being alone means being capable of entering more fully into your experience. It's about cultivating more unmediated presence to your experience and to the real, concrete world that surrounds you.

From Psychology Today dot com

Notes on Play - 2

Connected to Earlier Post

Cult of Play: A new book looks at how children play in the city
published in Hindustan Times, 24 March 2025

Link: https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/mumbai-news/cultures-of-play-a-new-book-looks-at-how-children-play-in-the-city-101742756856410.html

includes my essay:

Locating Play Across the Inside / Outside
Case of Mumbai apartments from 1970-2020
Anuj Daga

abstract:

This paper aims to trace the evolution in the cultures of play-spaces for children within the changing apartment living configurations of the middle class within the city of Mumbai over the last fifty years. The contention of the paper is to bring out the dialectic relationship between the forms of spaces and spaces of play that emerge in the densifying suburban residential neighbourhoods of Mumbai. In order to scope this study, I focus on three stages in typological forms of apartment configurations that have evolved in the city over 1970-2020, and the allied neighbourhood provisions to compensate for playspaces, that primarily come to characterise suburban living in Mumbai. These evolutions are reflective of the social, economic and political forces that shape urban development, and in effect the infrastructure of play as inscribed in the city.

Course on Spatial Theory

on Learning

Useful Maps

Map of India just before British came in 1764

Of Being in Sur

In a documentary noted vocalists from the Gwalior gharana Rajan Sajan Mishra mention of one question their father used to ask them: 

"What is the opposite of sur?" 

Sur, in common parlance - is a note - an established harmonic frequency of sound between which the musician glides to produce delightful experience. 

"A quick answer to this question,"  Mishra brothers elaborate, "is besur meaning, off-note. However, we don't believe that is so. The opposite of sur is silence. Music is the play between sur and silence. If we dont allow silence, we cannot appreciate sur." 

The generosity of such a definition of sur certainly needs discussion. Now, sur is often understood as to be in sur. So the opposite of it could mean to not be in sur. One could approach the understanding of sur from speech too: For example, why is speech not considered music? Why is speaking not singing? In this line of thought, singing or music is that experience of hearing that glides between or through particular frequencies of sound. These frequencies are ascertained as harmonics of a base note in ascending or descending order, clearly distinguishable as different from the previous. We thus have 12 key notes - including harmonics and intermediate sharp/flat notes. A more trained ear would be able to decipher 23 - which demands immense hearing acuity. At a simply level then, to be in sur means to glide from one identified note to another through an aesthetic rule. Any sung or heard note, off the aesthetic register shall be deemed off-note or besur. Speech does not follow musical rules thus, but is not bereft of sur thus. We all speak in some pitch - however, our subsequent words are not uttered in complimenting musical pitches. Speech my have lyricality, but still, it ceases to be called musical, or surail (surila). 

To think of sur held in conjunction with silence rather than be-sur offers a fundamentally insightful way of thinking about music, people and the world at large. For music, it calls to identify each utterance as a musical frequency - in some scale. If not identifiable, it coaxes the listener and the musician to rethink their own knowledge so as to locate the sound in an appropriate scale. In such an understanding, Pt. Rajan-Sajan Mishra not only go past the binaries of sur-besur, but they suggest, in fact that every uttered word in a part of the world, in some sur - that exists in some scale - identified or unidentified. Such a reading speaks of the emancipatory potential of musical knowledge in its abstraction, making it inclusive through the transcendence of spoken language.  

What is there in enjoying (Hindustani Classical) music? Sometimes, I feel it's so simple - dwell on the glides and transitions between the different notes and what they make you feel. You suspend yourself in a pure abstract space - you are free to make your meaning out of it. A free wheeling journey that you can totally indulge in. Sometimes, it answers the internal questions in bypassing jargon of verbalism completely. If you are able to decipher, the tone, texture, quality, ingenuity of moving between the notes  will reveal to you the emotions that speech carries in its intonations, instead of words. And at times, the economy of words that dot the intonational will upen up multiple words between speech and silence. It is perhaps this interplay of sound and silence that defines the world of sur in the musico-philosophical conception of Pt. Rajan-Sajan Mishra.

Notes on Play

Maps and Power

Maps and Power

JNAF

21/06/2024

Maps and their powerlessness. when many maps come together, they create an impermeable matrix where one cancels the other, and eventurally, the available space becomes redundant for any meaningful upgradation and /or occupation. Maps also become a way to соmpete, escape or obstruct an opportunity. Most of the times, maps lie with the powerful, power-holding bodies, and not with the people who оссuру ground, who live the life of map in reality. How do we give charge of the place and its maintenance to the actual inhabitant rather than getting lost in the multiple overlapping and conflicting bodes that wantingly or unwantingly lay claim or parcels of land that seem to have produced or arrived at a different social change?

How does time play a role in producing such incongruencis? (How) is planning (the practice of planning) related, complicit in such misalignments? Are such misalignments themselves ways of asserting producing power. Is such power a way to create political dialogue that feeds political interest? whom does such dialogue benefit? In other words, what is the "economy" of such misalignments, such conflicting maps? How is responsibility deflected through such maps, and how are delays produced- whom do delays like these benefit?

--

Does a forest become a forest in its unfamiliarity? (as compared to a garden) One knows all plants and species one brings to a garden.

Sum up note / Shanghai Other Other Conference May 2024

on ethnographic practice

It has been a wonderful two days. And I must put a disclaimer - I dont know what to think about it but I'm probably the only person who is not a PhD person. But still and also I'm an architect, I've not done much ethnographic work, really, but still I mean, I want to say that from what I could learn from all the presentations, that it's a lot about negotiation of meaning. And what I was thinking throughout is: ‘is or isn't meaning provisional? and you know, and does meaning operate temporally in experience? Because how do we understand ethnography which is inscribed in the meaning that is the changing locus of both the subject and the object? Like what I understand today is not what I understand of this object tomorrow, and what this object is today will not be the same object tomorrow? So, you know, if the meaning of an event is continually changing with the evolving lives of the subject and object, then what do we make of a given ethnographic process or product? and this was the thought that, you know, was running in my mind.

And the second is my engagement in this, in, like, my closest association with ethnographic kind of practice, is to kind of coordinate with many kinds of people. In the sense that you know, my or even my context of other other coordinating with many others in curating. Or when i'm kind of bringing many people together to kind of understand what are the vulnerabilities they are experiencing or assuming or foreseeing in getting somewhere, doing something, and as a curator, I'm always kind of trying to help them mediate that - sometimes effectively, sometimes not, sometimes Getting into many fights, and because of lack of, you know, conversation, and I wonder if this can itself be an ethographic reflection. 

[...] and as an architect, I am trained to read spaces. And so I kind of do ethnography of spaces and objects, and I kind of like to think through Appadurai's Social life of Things or Kopytoff’s Cultural Biography of Objects, because we feel that people because we think of people as embodiment of spaces; or embodiment of spatialities and therefore I'm interested, or I also think of it as archaeology of space, or in some sense, reading space to excavate behaviors of people. So in that it is in that sense that I kind of think of ethnography and ethnographic practice. And so, you know, in that sense, i've been thinking that what other qualities than an ethnographer must possess. And what, after all, is the ambition of ethnography, you know, because we all were kind of discussing some time ago that, you know what jobs we'll do, or whether we should do academic practice, or whether or not we should join corporate spaces and stuff like that. But what do we really want to do as ethnographers? And I think in the least it can be, of whatever we want to do, it could be about culling out of concepts of space and living. You know, rather than creating regimes of control because you've seen that colonial ethnography has mostly been about controlling, and I've also been very skeptical about these Area Studies Departments that come in many Western universities, because they have, primarily, it's the historic force behind. Kind of a new colonization. So i'm always skeptical of these Area Department or area department studies, so I don't know how to think about it. But also I mean, therefore, how do we produce frameworks of alternative practice through our new ethnographic context?

So with that, I kind of invite you all to think and linger through these thoughts and bring this Bring this two day intensive workshop to conclusion and invite you for dinner.

Chinature

notes from a lecture delivered by Prof. Nannan Dong at the Tongji University in 2017.

Architectural Sketches

Urban Studies vs. Urban Planning

Me: I do not understand the difference between urban Studies and urban planning. What is the promise of urban studies as opposed to urban planning?

Min: Urban studies is more into theory - like understanding the complexity of the city. Urban or architectural planning is more practice oriented. The fundamental difference is:

Urban Studies is theory: How to understand the city, 

Architectural planning: How to operate.

So, many urban studies scholars, especially urban geographers think architects do not have theory. That was the question [Gautam] Bhan was addressing yesterday - it's about theorising v/s. operationalizing. In either way, theory is related to operation. They can't be separated. But Chinese urban planning is far more practice-oriented.