If Heart was a Place

The last set of SEA interviews for its management seats were conducted through a drawing test, where applicants were asked to submit a drawing of a "Secret Space". While some attempted to draw physical spaces, many attempted to submit ideas more imaginative. To our surprise, more than 40% of the applicants submitted drawings of heart and the brain as secret spaces.

The "heart" as a secret space manifested in multiple forms. Two of the most dominant expressions were in the ideographic and the scientific drawing showing biological details of the pumping organ. Both such representations, essentially abstract, were seen as spaces, more specifically, places (for candidates spoke of them to be their own hearts). However, instead of the organ being inside us, this time humans were introduced within the organ - within the leaf-like boundary, or the arteries and veins of the heart. Both such drawing types suggested a navigation towards finding the secret space.

The "secret" found dimension in the supposition of heart as an irrational, unreasonable organ. Secrets are kept because they may not find acceptance within the normative everyday. While legitimate to oneself, secrets struggle to find place outside the self and hence remain close to the heart. The heart was clearly posed against the brain, represented as a maze (coinciding with its biological representation), or a fortress or closed and complicated entity. Nevertheless, one wonders how the imagination of heart as a place, as if it holds, contains, receives emotions became available so easily.


The Heart and The Secret

It is clear the the popular media became the agency to  manifest the keywords "secret" and "space" together into the figure of the heart. After all, numerous Bollywood songs articulating expressions of love and emotion use heart as an recurring ingredient. Song like "Zara si dil mein de jagah tu", "kabhi kahi mere dil mein khayaal aata hai", "dil ke jharokhe mein tujhko bithaakar" or those using phrases like "dil ki girah", "dil ki tijori", "dil ki khidki", "dil ka darwaza", "dil mein mere" -- and the numerous eternalized compositions clearly became an easy material for candidates to dwell upon for their drawings. Some of the above phrases frequently used in hindi songs clearly equate "dil" (heart) as "jagah" (place). Others songs imagine the heart as a space too in more metaphorical ways, within which you can call, allow, bring, host, rest or keep some one. The heart is even personified to experience emotions, feel situations and so on. Further, it also is understood as an assemblage of architectural elements like doors, windows, etc. that encapsulate a space.

That the heart is a "tijori" (locker), or parts of it can be closed "khidki" (window), "Darwaza" (door) hint at its domestic nature. It is clearly imagined as an entity that is more personal. It is here that the idea of secret manifests within the space of the heart. In their explanations, for applicants, the immediate categorisation  was the mood of the drawing to be happy or sad. This also concluded in the fact that such emotions are often to be kept to oneself - further that being sad is not a socially accepted emotion, that one (must) like to be alone when sad, and those feelings are only known by the heart...Such belief is sufficient to firmly link the heart with secret. And we now know clearly how the heart becomes a mediating diagram for secret space. If that is not enough, even some of the hindu deities are popularly depicted as such. The picture of Hanuman with Ram (and sometimes Sita) seen in his heart are quite accessible.


The Importance of Heart

Perhaps for the living body, heart is the force of life - it pulsates the body with rhythm and thus a sensation. It is the organ that physically makes us experience the life wave from within. In some sense, it orients the disposition for experiencing a phenomenon. In such perspective, the heart creates an environment. It prepares the condition for registering an event around us. However, does it itself become one?

In several media theories, the heart could probably become a conduit of emotions. Philosopher Marshall McLuhan in his sociological understanding of "hot" and "cold" media says that any media that signals out more data or information creates a sense of excitement and anxiousness which makes our heartbeat go faster, hence increasing the temperatures of our body. Such information is understood as "hot" (think of hot news, more popularly, news that sells like "hot cakes"). On the other hand media that slows down processes and takes you closer to observe your own sensation, in a phenomenological sense is "cold" - implied in the way in which your body eases out, relaxes due to the pacifying heart (eg. trans music, slow silent songs, etc.). Not only information, but even people in the way they respond, create space and operate are classified as hot or cold using similar analogy. If information is brought into consciousness (as well as expressed eventually) through the body though the vehicle of the heart, then it becomes a legitimate entity that even defines people and their characters. In such a scenario, we do reside within our hearts!

Plato, in expounding upon his theory of love emphasizes upon the feeling of "lack" of something, where the individual attempts to complete it. Once again, if the heart is assumed to mediate this lack, it becomes the container for love, fullness and well being. Culturally, the heart has remained an important part of folk tales, folk songs and expressions.


The Heart in Architectural Imagination
The Location of Heart

For many modern architects and planners, the biological understanding of the body became a framework through which cities could be imagined and designed. Corbusier, in planning Chandigarh, thought of placing different functions within the city through an idea of the body. The green spaces became lungs, the secretariat and high court became the brain (hence head) - and so on. The position of the heart - in a city plan - held the symbolic as well as central position. Efficient circulation of people, like blood through the heart (and thus the body), was believed to be the essential factor for efficient cities.

On the other hand, places located in such central locations within regions often become nodes for primary development. Delhi, the capital of India is often referred to as the heart of the country. Co-incidentally, it is also located in the centre top - superimposing with the heart of the figure of Bharatmata. To cheesily add, Delhi is colloquially pronounced as "Dilli", and by-lined as "Dil-walon ki Dil-li" (Dil = Heart).

The "heart" of Mumbai has always kept shifting. Presently, Dharavi, one of the largest informal settlements in India (and South Asia) is considered to be the heart of the city. It has become a nodal region which connects the south and north of the city. It is also a key connector of the east and west of Mumbai. It's centrality is as crucial as the heart - to be dealt with careful and thoughtful understanding. Every country has a heart thus, and so does every city and smaller neighbourhoods. While most of the above explanations come from popular perception, I am sure these could be substantiated with deeper cultural and historical documentation.

I think this discussion has helped understand both, heart and place as metaphors - both inter-mutable, both that affect and inform each other. However, this is an instance where both become lived metaphors - one inside the other, and vice versa. There is a dialectic relationship between the heart and a place. The suggestion of considering heart as a place attempts a possibility of evading the physicality of surroundings. It invites to find one's home within oneself, instead of the outside. If heart was a place, however, we may want to investigate what is its ecology? How does one care for it, how does one keep it and how does one occupy it? These are questions pulled from the interplay between the metaphorical and literal understanding that emerged within the drawings of secret space. Perhaps the questions themselves frame the place of heart, which may take time to find reveal their secret expression through a more sustained inquiry.

Conversation over a Card

Dec 31, 2015

As you reflect upon the year that has gone by, here's wishing you lots of new experiences to come. 

Happy 2016. 

Anuj

--

Jan 1, 2016

Thank you. like the upside down image. The world is topsy turvy now.

Lazarre Simckes

--

Jan 1, 2016

Indeed so.

The beauty of your message is evident in its pun.

Like the upside down image, the world is topsy turvy now

and

(I) like the upside down image. (My/Our) world is topsy turvy now.

But in the spirit of your message, would you say, reflections turn the world upside down? And does the act of reflecting then turn the world upside down, topsy turvy, or into an illusion?

Should one be engaged in reflection then?

Anuj

--

Jan 1, 2016

Well said and asked. The trick is to live in our reflections.

Lazarre Simckes

--

Lazarre Simckes is an award winning playwright who housed me for a year during my stay at New Haven.

Learnings from 2015

Below is a growing list of quips, quotations, thoughts by my colleagues / engagements that made me think deeper about my own practice and work. One must post a feedback for more context around the statements.


What is your relationship with environment?
Prasad Shetty

We are a culture that learns by listening. Reading and writing doesn't work for us.
Archana Hande

You can not know everything. You need to know one thing so well, through which you can understand everything.
Ashok Sukumaran

In order to work with something, you have to assume a certain disappearance of something.
ie. you need to hide something in order to engage with that thing.
Ashok Sukumaran

Words are dangerous things. Sometimes more than the things themselves.
George Jose

Apple products make you value technology.
Kalpit Ashar

आई  काय असते ? फक्त  abstract  असते! नाही तर ती फक्त एक बाई असते!
What is a mother? Mother is abstract. Else she is just a woman.
Prasad Shetty

Do you change everyday? If you don't change, you should be put in a museum. (because) you are a relic!
Prasad Shetty

Innocence + Arrogance = Stupidity
Prasad Shetty

"Architect" has become a soft identity in the present times.
Madhusree Dutta

(But) Politics is not a bad thing (if used constructively).
Rohan Shivkumar

Pratap Morey at Tarq

measure | decipher
A Review

Mashed-up images of development trapped within webs of urban visions define geographies of Pratap Morey’s perspectival landscapes. Morey assumes the dual role of an architect and a surgeon in crafting the tumultuous landscape of Mumbai. He demonstrates in his works the nature in which erasure of old urban fabrics is brought about by simultaneous processes of imagination and operation - an imagination of the “clean” and “beautiful” often projected through perspectival visionary drawings by architects and developers on one hand, and the surgical “removal” of the old & “resurfacing” it by the new built form on the other. In doing so, the pinched protruding beast-like building forms on the flatly imagined cityscape almost announce an organized war, bulldozing and consuming the older neighbourhoods.

The tension between the old and the new is primary to all of Morey’s works. Metamorphosed photographs of emerging buildings seem to engulf the fragile outlined memories of older environments. In another series, a web of perspective fabric entraps hallucinations of perpetual construction activity. In yet another, scaffolds, reinforcements, unfinished framed structures inscribed within the ordered perspective create a fractal-like space, at once lending the ungraspable process a measurable dimension. Such overlaps reorient the coordinates of former living conditions.

One particular image within the polyptych, ‘Superimpose V’, is extremely poignant – it shows the outline of a man seated in his older space overlapped over an unfinished metamorphosed building skin. Within the logic of artist’s current work, the viewer is compelled to read the narrative of the replacement of the older domestic setting by new standardized spatial products. However, on another view, the outlined man seems to be trapped within the dilemma of the old and the new, literally as if the building-skin was a cage. Further, the man could also be working out his wilful transition into the new environment. It is the ‘wilful’ that finds little place within the heuristics of Morey’s works. The city seems to be an imposition within the antithetic vocabulary of black & white, order & disorder, drawing (unfinished) & photographs (finished), clean & busy, or on the other hand then & now, before & after. Narratives of several lives that inhabit the in between space of aspiration, creation and even appropriation of the ‘new’ and ways in which the city gets owned yet again shall lead to the loosening of Morey’s perspectives, perhaps resulting into an abstract sensuous medieval cartography. 

Landscape and the City

Landscape and the City
18^th December 2015

Concept Note

It may not be incorrect to say that all cities came to inhabit a landscape – a setting that was a given, a space that was to be tamed and a resource that was negotiated for productive purposes. The historical response of cities to their natural settings has undergone many shifts – influenced by the evolving social, political and economic forces. The relationship of a modern city (as a phenomenon) with (its) landscape is worth a close examination. Modern processes lent cities the confidence to reorient the course of nature and landscape. These “natural settings” were thought of as entities that could be reconfigured within the imposed logic of the city. Thus, cutting off hills, redirecting rivers, reclaiming waters, erasing forests, altering terrains and reimagining geography was merely an exercise in the process of city building. These aggressive moves were always looked upon as permanent solutions to immediate crisis.

Landscape’s centrality to growing urbanity has come to be realized and emphasized only in the recent past, triggered by the dissatisfaction in the environmental leveling that urban environment has attained with respect to its natural resources. In the case of Mumbai, this new leveling is seen in several scenarios – whether it be the leopards invading and attacking human settlements, the flooding of the city in 2005 rains, the changing patterns of fishing along the coasts, etc. It is clear that these events have brought to the forefront, time and again our carefree handling of the urban natural settings. We are at a juncture where several physical alterations are being imagined for Mumbai: the proposal of coastal road, the redevelopment of the Eastern waterfront to name a few. The discomfort with the present “equilibrium” has brought us to critically consider these new imaginations, this time, with landscape as priority.

The recent Chennai floods, or the not-so-old Sabarmati overflow hint to us that more or less, every city is now facing an environmental crisis that is embedded in the question of how cities have engaged with their landscapes. In other words, it may be possible to find some directions to reimagining urban life in considering questions interposed within the theme of “Landscape and the City”. This seminar aims to address the mediation of landscape by cities, and vice versa. In this exchange, we aim to contemplate what are the channels through which a landscape practice can be streamlined within city processes? What are the attitudes through which issues of the city can be approached through a landscape perspective? Further, how do we find methods in which such attitudes can be instilled within our everyday living? Through the individual expertise of our panelists, and their past engagements, we aim to gain an understanding about what challenges lie ahead of us if landscape was to become the primary framework through which we intervene within our cities.

***

This post shall be detailed soon over later posts.

Poster Design: Anuj Daga

Shilpa Gupta & the Roundness of her works

presented at Colloquies, Art India
for Abhay Sardesai's curatorial theme
This city reminds me of another

Most of Shilpa’s works turn semiotic relationships imagined in objects upside down. The spinning doors never close, they perpetually keep opening. The microphone itself doesn’t speak much, but almost completes its story through the photograph. The electronic LED signage equivocally announces one’s east as another’s west. The fragmented queues queued together into a reel merely combine many people. The safety airplane straps don’t tie one down, they bind themselves into a ball that may freely roll on. This conceptual and often formally observed circularity that Shilpa employs in her works essentially emphasizes her dialectical method. It allows us, rather, pushes us to turn the questions back to the objects (and their materiality) that they would otherwise pose us.

The everyday of a city is phenomenologically experienced in its roundness. In its repetition, revolve and regularity, the urban environment embroils us within a structure of the round. (To be sure,) did I not do today, what I exactly did yesterday? Woke up by the alarm, swung the door and stepped out, queued up before the travel, walked the same journey along the shop-lines…and all again in reverse until I am back home? Shilpa’s works in fact seem to question this ritualistic roundness of city life by ceasing the objects from encrypting their performances within our bodies and lives. In her reconfigurations, she challenges the memories through which objects we encounter regularly end up driving us.

It is perhaps in this physical winding and the conceptual unwinding through which new spaces are perceived and habituated. The dialectical play constructed by these objects shift and slide us into multiple geographies, physical or mental, reminding us about our experiences in different places we may have been. While these phenomena and objects define the experience of most cities, the carefully configured rearrangements loop us into a process that triggers a comparison between one geography versus the other. It is through these instruments (apparatus) that one city reminds me of another.

***

Shilpa's works:

http://www.shilpagupta.net/Public/Work/157/2652-1

http://shilpagupta.net/Public/Work/215/Untitled

http://www.shilpagupta.net/Public/Work/205/Untitled

http://www.shilpagupta.net/Public/Work/180/Untitled

http://www.shilpagupta.net/Public/Work/97/100-Queues

***

Abhay Sardesai invited me to respond to Shilpa Gupta's work recently for an art event organized by Art India at Jindal Mansion. The program for the curatorial theme "This City Reminds me of Another" was jointly organized by the University of Warawick, UK and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. The event aimed to look at works of five different artists whose works intersects with the above theme. I was a respondent to contemporary Mumbai-based artist Shilpa Gupta's work. Other artists amongst the presenters were Sudhir Patwardhan, Gieve Patel and Tushar Pandey. Hema Upadhyay who was also invited wasn't able to make it.

The event aimed to challenge the conventional setting of a panel discussion through which art often gets discussed. For yesterday's evening, Abhay interfused artists' works with poetries and structured responses. About two poetries and two respondents were put together with each artist's work. The respondents were from different backgrounds of art (Sahej Rahal), architecture (myself), anthropology (Rashmi Varma), literature (Brinda Bose), film (Anjali and Jayashankar Monteiro) and social sciences (Shekhar Krishnan). One got to listen to different views on the artist's works.

It was a treat, as always, to listen and observe the works of artists Sudhir Patwardhan and Gieve Patel, as much as Shilpa Gupta. Sudhir showed a series of paintings, and perhaps one of his new works trying to extract the idea of the "other" within the city. Showing his series of paintings on Ulhasnagar, he went on to say, "The city can surprise you in many ways". Showing images of everyday environments being taken over suddenly by new developments, the city brings to us a surprise. This change makes you experience otherness. Sudhir kept on bringing paralles betweenthe imagery of his work with different artists in other parts of the world. For example, his invocation of Edward Hopper's work, Canaletto "Grand Canal" in Venice, Andrea Mantegna - all attempted to reinforce the theme of the talk. The impressionistic frames of paintings made by him and the other artists pushed him to imagine that he was certainly thinking of other cities (through his experiences of images) while producing his own works. Sudhir's third proposition was that the city surprises you in "its projection of the future". All such aspects of change, surprise and projected imageries make us experience otherness within our own city. He said that the fear that this city (in which you live) could become another place, is another otherness that one experiences.

While Anjali and Jayshankar pointed out in their response that Sudhir's work is gentle and yet seen through a non-sentimental gaze and if one could propose that Sudhir is performing a "critical radiology" (Jayashankar's take through his knowledge of Sudhir as a doctor), Sahej brought out that there was no "cinematic time" in his images. It is that in-between time which most of us have seen the city in. It is the city which we all experience in between our commute, while traveling, moving. The light doesnot dramatize or change the space we see, rather places us within it in a critical way.

Gieve Patel presented his works exploring the "street as home". One of his works captured two men standing against a wall with a blue patch behind them. The patch, Gieve mentioned, was meant to show peeling paint. However, what he got interested in eventually is that the shape of the patch looked like a map. This juxtaposition of the two men against a map of "no-place" gave another dimension to the thematic of the evening. Gieve showed his famous "Letter back home" speaking of the labour from Andhra who during those days of the '80s would ask the educated to write  their stories to send back home. He ended with a beautiful story/painting of a man holding a peacock. The story goes that the peacock must have climbed down the Malabar Hill over the night and landed in an office lobby at Marine drive by the morning. When the keeper of the office opened the door, he was pleasantly surprised to see a peacock in the office. He immediately called up his boss to say "Sir, there is a peacock in our office!" The boss's response was much urgent. He directed him "Call the Times of India" - and so he followed. The Times of India published in 1960s, a black and white picture of the man holding a peacock in his office lobby standing against the sea framed by the large window (as directed by the boss over phone!). Gieve's painting is merely a colour rendering of this picture/story, a story, which Gieve thought, would probably never happen in the city again!

Shekhar Krishnan and Brinda Bose responded to Gieve's works in unique ways. Shekhar, in the spirit of Jayashankar's spirit called for Gieve's paintings to be medical/biological poetry (again invoking Gieve's profession as a doctor).

Shilpa showed a lot of works, many that I was aware of, but hadn't included in my short review. She informed how the period of her learning art, between 1992-97 was a contested time in the history of Mumbai city - with the communal riots and the ingress and foray of new ideas and technologies during the period when liberalization began to affect the city and its people. Such politically sensitive environment finds poignant expression in Shilpa's works that uses different media to bring out several layers of meanings. Shilpa however explains that the media she uses is not central to her works, rather, the content of what she wants to express or evoke, is. I must appeal that people must look up her work online to get a better understanding.

It was followed by my response already shared in the beginning above. Rashmi Varma graciously added to my response reinforcing some points, and reading out Walter Benjamin, a quote that befit her works quite well but I fail to remember!

The evening ended with Tushar Pandey's performance. He explained that in order to think through the theme "one city reminds me of another", the relationship with that "one city" was extremely important. While the thematic assumed that everyone would have that strong relationship, Pandey said that he was not able to have a consolidate relationship with any city. Thus his idea of the city, and hence the other, itself is fragmented. This threw a new light on the discussion, but also encapsulated the spirit of the times we do live in - a city which is increasingly becoming a no-place, a city that is losing its memories to "surprises" as Patwardhan brought out...

Untitled

I have been writing, just not on the blog. I have been noting in my notebooks, tonnes of notes from things I hear from colleagues, friends. I have been recording conversations - many that need to be transcribed. I have been drawing, ideas that can be hopefully executed. I have been photographing, images that need to be spoken about. I have been thinking, of themes that need to be elaborated. I have been documenting, projects that need to be curated and exhibited. I have been reading, works that need reflection. I have been listening, lectures that can be archived.

How, in the midst of so much activity can one find any time to put things down in coherent manner on a blog. This place requires serious updation with all of the above, and I just have to find a strategy to make it happen. Perhaps in the coming weeks, I could put together something that is worthwhile - something that I will like to come back to in future and read again, smile, and applaud myself! 

Traces from Romila Thapar's lecture on Secularism

Romila Thapar, eminent historian of India, was in Mumbai for a lecture this Monday where she spoke on secularism in India.

Following are traces from the lecture:
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Without secularism, people in India will have to imagine and identify themselves through religion, caste, class, language, etc., she began elaborating. These parameters will become primary in establishing one's identity.

At the outset, she went on to distinguish between the terms "secular", "secularism" and "secularisation". "Secular" is that which relates to the world that is distinct from the religious. "Secularism" demarcates that boundaries for the social institutions to exercise control over how people should live and conduct within a society. "Secularisation", finally, is the process by which a society recognises distinction. 

The observance of law is strengthened when people know its purpose. 

Religion had emerged as a social and personal need. This eventually became an organised instition. Thus it became important, and authoritarian. 

The control of religious institutions over the social, which secular wants to keep distinct.

Religion has its sanction from faith

Social laws are the spine of the society. They protect the rights to live. Education is one of the things which socializes a child into the society.

Civil law - how people conduct within the framework of rights and duties.
Social law - must prescribe the absolute minimum - things like standards of basic health and education. 

Secularism helps keep a negotiated distance between the religious and the social.

Religion should not dictate / prescribe the civil laws. Social essentially tries to entail the right to live.

Indian definition of secularism just talks about the "coexistence" of religion. however, secularism is not just that, said thapar.

"Is secularism a western concept?" some argue. But so are the ideas of nationhood, democracy, etc. Certainly, more contemporary ideas of liberalization are western imprints. 

Colonial views of indian religions have been almost  internalized today. These were constructed as monolithic projections of the hindu and the muslim nations - without registering the finer nuances within them. Not everyone within "hind" or the "muslim" behaves and believes in a singular ideology or manner. Evading the nuances,  the English made the two appear hostile to each other. They did this for they wanted to control. Such a move was clearly political. However, there have always been fights and aggressive negotiations between the two religions throughout history. this image was imprinted on india distancing the two religious. This was thus a colonial construct.

Hindu and muslim, both are not monolithic religious entities, they are themselves composed of different caste, class, and sects. The interaction between caste, sect and religion with the state was the way in which indian society moved forward. Sects allow the less orthodox to assimilate new ideas. They are not as rigid aand monolithic as religions. This allows, and is thus, fluid(ity)

All forms of arts literature, music, classical art forms were positively hybridized and even patronized by courts and sultans. This evidences the constant negotiations and dialogue between the two cultures.

Siddhpur, Gujarat

Siddhpur is a town two hours away from Ahmedabad City. While many ancient buildings around it date back by 900 years, much of its present architecture came up about 100 years ago. The town has several neighbourhoods, the prominent one being that of the Bohra Muslims who settled here before independence. Composed of merchants who benefitted from the trade right across the Gujarat sea, architecture of Siddhpur borrows distinct Art Deco language for the havelis spatially informed by a Bohra lifestyle. It reflects a balanced mix of modernity and tradition. Much of the town today is remanent of a period claimed by the rise of trade and industry within Indian mainland. Today however, most Bohras have moved to bigger cities, leaving behind modest mansions that talk of a community that once flourished through cultural and economic exchanges.

While the grid-ironed, neatly laid out Bohra mansions become the centre piece of the town, the peripheries  dissolve into meandering pathways that take you to older neighbourhoods, or wadas as they call it, reminding of the pols of Ahmedabad. The facades of these mansions fuse different forms of column capitals - corinthian to ionic to composite. These are punctuated regularly by segmental arches. The width of most houses is between 6 to 8 metres, lined up in a row within a block. Thus many of these mansions have openings only on two ends. They donot technically share a common wall, for each house builds their own side walls even if adjoining each other, which eventually allows them to carve out space for storage and furniture. The smaller ends, in conjunction with the central skylight / open well allows the house to breathe, at the same time maintain ambient light within. 

Frontages of Bohra houses are mini caverns. They are a hybrid between the traditional otlas and the rajasthani haveli entrances. Taking you on a high plinth, the entry steps dig into the facade, creating a cozy portico, well shaded and inviting. The entrance is not as heavily treated as that in the Rajasthani haveli. Backyards are not elaborate. Back face of houses have a series of windows on either sides. The center is ususally reserved for inlaid furniture. 

The spatial structuring of the house is layered. One enters a series of spaces one after the other, arranged from public to most private. You enter the house through a lobby which is the fulcrum from where you divert into different directions. You either take a staircase to the upper floors, or turn on either side for the wash area/bathroom or the kitchen - planned on either sides of the entrance. Modern logic of servicing a space are well incorporated within these houses - seen in the pipes concealed within the walls, but taken out through the external facade of the building. Beyond the lobby are a series of three layers / spaces.

The first layer is a common room where visitors sit. This space has a wash basin on one corner, and water pot (panihara) on the adjacent side. This space is often lit by an open skylight. There are changing rooms behind the panihara. The second layer is generally a small vestibule with a cot and a seating place, generally for a semi private recluse. The innermost layer is a large private hall, often the most well kept, with exquisite in-laid furniture and cushions for floor seating. This space is lit up by two large windows. The spaces on the upper level generally include a room for larger gatherings.

Such layout reminds one of Louis I Kahn's diagram of the served and serving spaces. The servicing areas of the house are clearly clubbed and zoned towards the external face, while the remaining spaces are set off from the lobby in varying intensities of privacy. 

The bohra community is well held between two converging primary lanes. One of them is the Bazaar street - the most active and bustling part of the town. It is lined with several shops on either sides selling all necessities. In parallel, on the streets are vendors on carts. The Bazaar street eventually extends to the railway station, one of the boundaries of the town. The other boundary is the large cemetry. 

Siddhpur is an ideal town. It has taken me long to clearly distinguish a village from a town, and more importantly a town from a city (Dont we always refer to South Mumbai as "town"?). However, Siddhpur (after New Haven, where I spent two years), has made me more clear about the characteristics of a town. A town fits right between the village and the city, blending characteristics of both in its pace of life, kind of people, scale of activities and access to amenities. These observations may seem very obvious. But these experience of a town life makes one re calibrate the way in which you relate to a place. Being bred in a metropolis, a city like Mumbai, a town is certainly relieving - offering a good speed - not as slow as the village. It offers you conveniences of the city, not making you travel far to meet people. A town can be easily navigated on foot, or if you had a bike, unlike a city. The density of information it throws at you is controlled. It is not a village because you have modern day facilities, institutions and so on. That in essence, was my learning from Siddhpur. 

Discussing Design with Gurdev Singh

Gurdev Singh, the dean of Navrachana School of Architecture, Baroda was here at SEA taking a workshop as a part of the Technology Module for second year students at SEA. He was here for three days, where he engaged with students in making objects out of laminating wood. curving strips of timber into sensuous structural shapes that would be assembled into different objects. Gurdev Singh, for those who may not know, is one of the most engaged and passionate educators we have in architecture today. He began his teaching career in CEPT Ahmedabad in the late 70s, after which he went to the middle east to coordinate the architecture program (so is what he quipped). He spent some time there constantly learning from the cultures of construction imbibing a distinct sensibility and sensitive approach to architecture through technology and material. Further he spent time in Yemen, then Australia, where he was for about 20 years. While in Australia, he also constructed his own house. Gurdev shared his years of accumulated experience with us over small chats and two presentations he gave to our students over the last three days.

The first presentation was about two of his projects. The former was titled "House in a Bush" and the latter was "Bush in a House". In the first part, he spoke to us about building his own house in Australia. Gurdev went on to preface briefly the site, located about 20 minutes from the city centre, where habitation already subsides and life becomes quiet. He bought a large plot to himself in order to make his house. "It is a trend for people to take up large properties, and build a home at the edge of the road so that it is visible to everyone. In this way, people can claim that they have a beautiful house, and that it has a large property behind it. When we were building, we decided to camp over there for the first seven to eight months finding out what location would be the best? Where does the sun rise, where is the light best, where do we get morning rays, and so on. So for the first few months, we were just camping, after which we finally decided a location." His house is situated about a kilometre inside from the access road, nestled between the trees and just besides a dam and a water body. 

The site is primarily covered in Eucalyptus trees (about 95%). "When the leaves fall down and the water flows over it, you can taste the soft smell of the woods..." he went on to say. Discussing the first few design options and why he chose to discard them, he concluded "The most difficult client you can have is yourself! And it is always a problem when you have to finally present it to others, because you are aware of all your flaws, and you have to constantly apologise to others that 'Don't look there, I know that went wrong!'" The final scheme that Gurdev showed us was a house that opened out in various directions placed on a mild sloping land. The bedroom was oriented to morning sunrays, the living space was opened towards the evening light. "If you invite any one for dinner, they will arrive by default at 7, or maximum 7.15. That is the culture in Australia. So when they arrive, the sunrays have still kept the living space warm, and there is still enough light for them to look out!" This is how he went about siting the whole house.

Interrupting him, I asked, "Excuse me sir, but I don't think any of us have visited Australia. Could you tell us about the weather conditions there so that we are able to better understand the scheme?" He went on, "Oh yes, so the temperature ranges anywhere from about -7 degrees C to 35 degrees C over the entire year. One of the things to note is that while the sun goes from east to west via south in our place, over there, it goes via north. So instead of the 'north light' that we open our houses to in India, there it is the south light. It took me a while to get used to that. They get a lot of dew. So in the mornings, you can collect over 50 to 70 litres of water just from the surface (gesturing his house on the screen). There are forest fires that can spread over kilometres. Bush fire is more common. The more common reason for it is the litter. The fire can actually come and burn the whole house. Thus we have to clear the litter in 100 metres radius of the house. The best way to save yourself off a forest fire in such situation is just to be within the house and come out only when it is gone. So that is about it."

"We built the whole house ourselves. Wood sections were drawn on the floor, full scale, so there was no scope for any errors. Those were our very working drawings." Sharp sloping roofs extending in the opposite direction of the contour open up the house as one goes deeper within giving it a low entrance but a voluminous climax. The thrust of Gurdev's presentation was on construction techniques and materials he used for the house. He informed how it put it together, taking together another guy from the university, who was disillusioned by theoretical ideas of sustainability. So they just came together along with one more person in making real things. 

Much of the construction is dry, using timber, glass and corrugated sheets. Gurdev took us closer to each detail that he designed, sometimes even inventing new spaces in the process, resolving two problems simultaneously at a time. He went on to say, "You see, we arrive at a number of ideas when we are in the design process. And we have the urgency to use and present all of them at a time, in a single project. However, we must always use only two or three ideas that are most relevant for the project. The rest, we must note down in our diary. That helps in controlling our urge to talk it out. It helps us build patience. We can always use those ideas later in other projects!" Such experiences flowed constantly over his talk. It was his experience speaking all over! I thoroughly sat through his presentation with a smile on my face. 

At the end, I asked him a few more questions: "Sir, did your learning from India in any way influence the construction process or the design in any way?" Thinking for a short while, he went on to talk about the ideas of go-mukhi and wagh-mukhi aspects from old building principles in India, and related the design to it. A house should always be "go-mukhi" (like the face of the cow) - smaller in front and bigger at the back - that represents being humble. In that sense, he said that the house comes to hold that spirit. But besides, the architecture is completely Australian vernacular, he said. The type of construction, the use of tin roofs is the architectural history of the place. Recently the Australian government restored some 100 year old buildings made in tin roofs. That is precisely what is Australian heritage.

The second part of the presentation discussed a building he designed in Delhi, India. This section was titled "Bush in a House". Here, Gurdev presented his winning entry for Rajaswa Bhavan, located just within the radius of India Gate. The project was situated within the historic radius and aimed at understanding and preserving the identity of the place. The existing trees were identified as the cultural markers of the area, and hence the building scheme was planned in a way to house them.

The building was crafted within the void created by the trees, and was hung from above. The entire logic of construction was turned upside down, by having four vertical masts that held a steel "foundation-rail" up in the sky, dropping the building blocks down, like an inverted pyramid. Nothing except these four cores touched the ground. The parking and services were buried underneath the ground to give clear space to look at the trees. This was a bold, straightforward scheme, probably the reason for the success of the project, as Gurdev speculated.

On the second day, Gurdev gave a crisp lecture on techniques of mud construction. I will be uploading my notes from the lecture soon along with possibly some pictures of his work in Australia.