Patterns & research

Researchers believe that there is a pattern in all random things that are happening around us. I am not sure if this was also the case in earlier researches. It would be rather better to indicate two kinds of research: Proposing new patterns or identifying new patterns.
A classic example of finding patterns is 'Learning from Las Vegas" - the method is such researches is primarily to work with some research material (data) and find meaning into it. Such researches always are constrained within the extent of data and generalizations. nevertheless, the merit of the research lies in extrapolating important points within this limitation.

Of another type is say - "A Pattern Language" by Christopher Alexander. He proposes that there is a pattern to everything that we do.

In both the cases, the methodology still remains the question of debate. A method itself may be a pattern - chosen or assumed or proposed...Nevertheless, in all the cases, a research opens up new ways of seeing the existing abstract information around us.

we had an interesting session on discussion of "what is abstract" with Prasad Shetty in the first year design studio. It would take me another post to detail what we discussed. But one thing that was established in the studio was that we never know "everything" about "anything". We know all only in abstraction. There are a lot of things to archive from the first year studios, also second year to some extent. It seems like a big game of dots, where I keep joining them in different configurations to "see" different things. But i don't know what to do of these new things that I see...
It also becomes a question of suggesting/identifying a pattern...

So i maintain a book in which i keep noting things down. Now I have to have enough dots to be able to make an interesting pattern.

Anegundi at length

Anegundi - as soon as we reached its gateway, told us that "I am a small village", the north gateway was really small for a large volvo 45 seater bus to enter. As I walked along this village to reach our cottage with Tapan, leaving behind the bus (which entered the village from another round about entry), I realized that the village was almost over.

In the evening, we went to a small temple on a nearby hill where Shama (the Mumbai architect activist in Hampi) is proposing to have mini village festivals on the sloping mounts of the hill. As we reached, it was already cloudy, and when we were descending from the hill, it started drizzling. That night it rained. It was a great weather to have in Hampi, given the scorching heat otherwise which makes it unbearable to walk around the village all round the year. Tapan said we were just lucky!

But such a weather is most welcome to see a lot of greenery around, all the time. Our cottage was a superb example of this. We had a great green patch of land, in which were nestled cottages behind colourful flower shrubs against dried thatch roof cottages. Pink against brown really looked lovely, and purple (lotuses) amidst grey granites made an almost realistically artifical pond in the site. On top of that, leaf impressions imbedded on our concrete portico plinths, cowdung plastered walls, white washed interiors and surreal cloud shaped cloth ceilings were a perfect ambience.




















The village people were extremely simple. Tapan was a super star - people saw her in the lanes and would call her out - "tapan madam", while tapan sheepishly kept telling me "i am forgetting his name!". The lanes had some kind of hierarchy, which one could feel - because there was only one spine which we traversed the most. The smaller lanes lead to the Tungabhadra river through some route or the other.

The village had a large palace, the image of which in incomprehensible because it is in such a bad shape that there is no sense of place now. What only remains is a large courtyard, with a mystic orange Ganesh idol (as big as a human head) perched on a concrete stub in the centre of this courtyard. The courtyard doesnot see the sky, it is blanketed by a cover of dense tree foliage. You come out of the palace through a foliated archway, entering into the village cluster houses.

The houses have typical timber posts, which are fast becoming old fashioned / weak structural members for the villagers. Tapan has identified some house types through her study of the village. But what I loved was that every house had a colourful flowering shrub just at its portico. Even if it was a pink periwinkle spread around the first step you take in the house, it was completely naturally erupting from the ground, undisturbed, untailored. Many houses had staircases leading to the top of their houses on their outside surfaces, which gave a beautiful character to the houses. The sense of passing from between two house walls (almost a shaded dark alley) to opening on the open to sky terrace reminded me of the circulation of the palace complex entry (Grand platform) at Hampi. There are these subtle nuances that keep happening in the village, which one can relate at a larger level to the town of Vijaynagar, like the baby rath that the village owns is another example.

Granite is abundant in the village, but for some reason, people seem to be making newer extensions in their houses in brick. Tapan has refuted this approach in the village through her work "Uramma house", which is a beautiful Guest house in the village. The Uramma house (name comes from the Goddess Uramma), has a linear portico, spacious entry room, sunken court, landscaped courtyard and two guest rooms with bathrooms inside. The Neem tree inside is amost a surprise for all the visitors. There were other trees like the white gourds, and some smaller vegetables etc. The courtyard, offset from the living space just brings the right amount of light in the room and the axial passage separating the rooms and the courtyard gives enough privacy to the guests. Not only that, from inside the rooms, one can frame interesting patches of the court that are almost planned.

Coconut leaves were used extensively to extend porticoes and form canopies, the village had a temple which was snugged in the rocky hill behind. monkeys would crawl in and out of the temple. Parrots and pigeons kept fluttering all the time. The green wings of the parrots made a good combination with the red stones.

A bundle of naughty boys always crowded around the 64 pillar mantapa or somewhere near the Tungabhadra river. There was one more temple complex near the river banks. Villagers often go to fish there, or have a bath, clean clothes, utensils. Some awkward impressions of the village was the switch over to plastic pots instead or brass/steel or clay, switch over to plastic bags instead of jute/cloth or fibre, switch over to brick walls or concrete staircase instead of the rough humble granite - all such transformations look grave when compared to the lifestyle of the people around.

There is a small masjid, a small church, a banana workshop, a library and a school in the village - I could not explore them much. This leaves some room for the next visit.

Anegundi Tales

A lot of things to say about this little village - across the river Tungabhadra - a village called anegundi - older than hampi - about 600 years old - small houses - granite construction - timber posts - brick superstructure - lime plasters - rough slabs - smooth dung finishes - colourful flowers against plain white walls - banana workshop - simple south indian food which students disliked - cluster houses - fast disappearing - modernity enters social structure - tapan concerned - mapping mapping - students draw sections through the village - first day of hammering - next day improvement - had a small bonfire - karan's birthday where students ruined the silence of place by silly loud music - and just such typical stuff.

but there shall be another post with detailed observations of what i saw through the NEW eyes.

and here is more of the feel:

Drawings

These are drawings by my 8 year old nephew. He's obsessed with aeroplanes - from earlier two dimensional drawings of aeroplanes, now he has graduated to drawing them in three dimesnion, and he has now started detailing each part of the plane. He has many aeroplanes as toys, makes paper aeroplanes and rockets and keeps getting more of them in all forms!

jury after a year

I took a jury after almost a year today! I almost couldnot comprehend the projects initially - perhaps the first five students I got were extremely disappointing. The latter ones were good. So I too got in form, and understood how to crit them.

Most of the times, it is for me to understand the methodology the student has followed for the project...once it is cracked, the student too enjoys a crit and it makes sense to have a dialogue.

these were my students from last year - who, i thought were extremely shy and underconfident last year. This time, they appeared confident, and strong. One of them, as soon as we gave a crit, changed, rather ripped his model to accommodate our comments - i believe, that was rather bold, and exciting. I really felt nice about it, and about the fact that he too was aligned to what we were speaking as jury. I think, in the latter half, all of them were good - they enjoyed but took our comments seriously. I think this must be the spirit of a jury - and this is when both learn - the student as well as the teacher!

Secrets

Secret: Not open or public; kept private or not revealed

I wonder whom can one share the innermost secrets with?
Perhaps a person whom you never know, or a person who knows nothing about you or anyone you are related to. Actually the questions are more regarding secrets: Should one have secrets? Should one consider sharing secrets? Can one die with one's secrets? Are secrets useful? If they are useful, and can not be shared, then how can one harness them? When must secrets be revealed such that they may not harm anyone around that person? Are secrets always harmful (rhetoric!)? How do secrets change people? Does keeping secrets make you strong or make you weak?

Are secrets associative? Why do we fear to have secrets? In other words, how are secrets generated? Why do people end up doing something that constitutes a secret? Is secret just a social construct? Did the first man on earth have secrets? Do animals have secrets? How are secrets fearful? Why do we fear revelation of secrets? Can we become fearless?

Questions,
any answers?

aise hi...

Decorations

Sometimes life places you in a very ironical situation.

As architects, we have been trained in an aesthetic sensibility which is different from the taste that happens to encompass us. Decoration and design is an intrinsic part of the daily lives of people in India. Each festival, each occasion always has a big share of preparation activity that goes in decoration and arrangement. Thus, as a country, every moment we produce numerous ideas, for makeshift decorations. I am not quite sure if as architects we are made to appreciate them. At least I am not a big fan of such inpromptu ad hoc aesthetics.

I think the closest space building exercise for fresh architecture students is the making of the Ganpati Pandal. When students make an "architectural model" for the first time in the course, they almost end up making ganpati mandals - with plenty of colours, real grass, or atleast plastic grass, flowers, thermocole bricks, patterned papers, frills, poster colours, dried leaves...and all that. The only problem I have with these models is that they do not respect SCALE. All tableaus that are built are too representational to be architectural. So I have been strongly discouraging students to make such models - that they make during Ganpati, Janmashtami or Christmas.

Perhaps I too started to experiment with such spatial models with Christmas tableaus in school, but Janmashtami celebrations at our house has always involved plenty of decorations, and that too with toys, clay statues, bricks, etc.

I was always skilled at making all these crafty things, and so people in my society often call me for such decorations. Although after doing an architecture course, my viewpoint towards these decorations has changed, and as far as possible, I avoid them - because they are only about decoration. This year (just a fortnight back), I was called to decorate the Ganpati pandal of our building. I made mountains out of POP, a very tried and tested trick. However, I felt very funny doing this, since as a faculty of design in architecture, it is me who keeps telling students not to get into "making ganpati pandals". I wonder what this exercise of making a Ganpati tableau does to me as an architect...

The story doesnot end here, rather, the real part of the story comes here. A random DNA (Daily News and Analysis) survey of the 600 Ganesh pandals around the suburbs took place 7 days ago. They selected 20 best decorated Ganesh Pandals across their survey. Our society got the FIRST prize!!! I dont know who the surveyers were, but although our decoration was not eco friendly, nor was our attempt to achieve it, the newspaper (DNA,Sat, 24th July- http://epaper.dnaindia.com/epapermain.asp x?queryed=7&eddate=9/25/2010))reports it as

"Ganesh Idol: 5 ft made up of Clay with the Himalayas in the background

Decoration: White Cloth used to depict the Himalayas,

Colorful Cloth Drapes & Real flowers to decorate the mandal"

Reporters always mess it up - they goof up so much! (and the always miss out important names, eg: the decorating team!). The above information has been printed without verification by us. None of the society members knew when these people came for a survey!

Anyway, so here is the news report and the small announcement function that we had in our society today. All were excited to have the trophy. I only worry that this event will become more institutionalized in the coming years and I will be pulled in more and more into this!

I wondered if this was an indirect message by Ganpati that "don't consider these decorations unsophisticated". Well, I remain confused, although I never liked what I did at the tableau here, a strange feeling grips me now...

What is this kind of situation supposed to mean?

Baghban III

I dont understand my relation with relationships. Relationships are very fragile - they are not for people who have a really hard head. And one perhaps takes a life time to learn how to handle them. Sometimes i feel i am too critical about relations - i don't respect relations. The consequences of such an attitude is that i take a lot of liberties to do things which i assume can not be questioned. But such is not the case in real life. Especially when you take moral stances.

I don't know what it is to be a mother? Mother for some one else is just a relation, but being a mother is describing the relation itself. It does not remain a relation then. It is not about two bodies then. Why would one body care so selflessly for another body? Not only physically, but mentally too? What is it to be mentally and physically so? Often I question my familiarity with my mother. I don't think I know her enough. I think i take her so much for granted!

One of the fallacies that my family (in the sense of men vs women) falls into is to compare physical activities of both these genders. I have myself been very critical of this - is physically, a man stronger than a woman? does it affect in the work that we do? My friend Neha (Parkar) always maintained that women are physically weaker than men. I always refuted. Physical strength, i assumed, comes from the mind. But i think a mother is more about the mind, than physical. She goes beyond the physical to achieve something that does not even an achievement. Actually I am not even able to express in words how disgusted I am to understand how I know my relationships.

Can one imagine mothers behaving tit for tat? Can anyone image getting hurt back when you hurt your mother? Sometimes, I have told her things that I didn't ought to, and found no way of expressing my guilt. As children in our kind of social setup, we are never taught to express to parents (its the fear-respect relationship we are brought up in). But we don't even have the courage to say sorry for something wrong that we did to our parents. Once, I came home frustrated, and just passed her a comment - and immediately i realised how wrong it was. It took me an entire night to write a sorry note, which i kept in her room near her pillow to express my guilt. I don't know if she read it, i don't know if she skipped it, but the next morning, things were better for me. But what I am surprised about is that how timid we (children of our generation in our family) are to articulate communication to our parents.

The truth is that we do feel about them, but can not express. We are not equipped with the language in which to express. We never appreciate her for a tasty meal she makes, but we do make a point when a pinch of salt is more in the dal. She takes it courageously. I don't know how. But that does not mean we do not appreciate when she makes an excellent recipe. We are just not taught to appreciate her. The question here is - should you be taught this? who should teach you this?

I suspect sometimes if this is a western thought - in convent schools, (where my nephews study), they communicate to their mothers much effectively. They are taught to say things to their parents. The schools take a lot of efforts for parent-child activities. There is a lot more glib communication between them. We never had such interactions. During our time, it was only the Open house day when the teacher would tell the parent about the ward. That was the kind of relationship that was strengthened between the parent and the ward - a highly institutional, instructional and now i feel utterly stupid.

When once, my principal wrongly called my parent (mother) to meet for some of my wrongly represented activity, I felt so embarrassed, and I cried in front of 40 people in my class after my mother left. It was purely because of the kind of societal values that i was brought up in - of holding parents' nose high. What made me cry was my misrepresentation of the 'institutional' or ideal image that i mentioned before.

Once when I could not finish my Hindi paper (and left questions worth 7 marks), I entered home crying, and my mother consoled me so beautifully, that I felt even more confident for the coming exams. It was my mother who used to train me in Hindi, and I was one of the best students in hindi, which again made me remind of the "institutional" image we "must" represent. Although I managed to get 2nd highest in spite of leaving 7 marks, i now wonder what must have made my mother completely ignore the 7 marks (institutional instruction) and cajole me at that instance... how could she remain out of it...the institutional way in which we were supposed to be brought up in?

I remain with these questions, investigating where does the gap lie, what is the problem, why this gap, it makes me uncomfortable to think of myself as inconsiderate...i hope i am able to manage some middle path for myself.

Second Year Exhibition

After a lot of struggling, grumbling, cribbing, pushing, thinking, working, the exhibition of the second year students was finally realized. We had as the jury : Kamu Iyer, Ravi Hazra and another person from Goa (whose name I forget).

Since the project was about the1:1 installations, there were no hard core drawings that any of the groups made. Earlier the students were asked to prepare sheets on corel draw. None of the groups had an idea to work on it, although they have been taught how to use it. But when the canvas becomes 8'x8' on a computer screen of 21", things have to definitely go haywire. I rejected the idea of computer drawings primarily because it was second year - where one needs to engage more with the hand done work. All we therefore had was the process rough drawings that were used to deliberate upon their constructions. These, i call second year "working drawings". It was a mammoth task to make the students understand that process drawings are not bad - that they are pinnable, that they are as beautiful as the final ones... For the entire beginning setup of the exhibition, students argued if they were to put such sheets. They never had the concept of having such drawings as final. They used to reproduce their process sketches on the final sheets. It told them that it was ridiculous to do so.

I felt there was a rich sense of beauty in the process work. My task was to bring in content on to the boards - mostly students get stuck in presentation drawings and making things look beautiful, and do things which tell nothing about their projects. I asked all students to bring in the lousiest of sketches that they had made over 2 months. They got them and then followed a process of selecting what we could possibly use. Cutting torn tracings neatly, straightening crumpled papers, neatly cutting all rough tracings into one size and then organizing them together - I felt as if i was making a beautiful collage of memories.

I wondered how students did not value such brilliant process drawings they made. Perhaps thats because they never refer to books. They are from the internet age. They are facebook people - people who see silly videos and "like" them. Partly, i think also their teachers never told them to concentrate making hard core process drawings, intense, and preserving work produced by spending long hours on board...

I had a tricky situation with two groups who didnot have almost any work! The painting group and the Parasite group. In all, the painting group had 12 'blue' pencil colour sketches of the same place, that too of different sizes. I asked them to make A3 photocopies of all of them to regularize the colour since it did not relate to their actual work at all. Then the remaining space was filled up by 8 A4 pictures. I dont know again, why students dont even understand the relationship between the sizes of papers i.e. A3=2(A4) = 2(A5). No one told us... One can use these proportions to think of organizing things on board...

Anyway, may be they were brain dead. So i just instructed and they executed. That was all I cared atleast for yesterday.

The second group had only 9 small sketches, almost of the size 15 x 15 cm - and other sizes. I asked them to regularize it to a format and then they had to put it in a grid. When I left things to them, they started making patterns from those squares - it was ridiculous! I just asked them to follow me and execute.The entire panel was blank otherwise. They creatively filled up with a stick model of their inspiration picture.

Another group which didnot really have any final drawings of the project was the tree - so we made a large tree cutout and pasted on the board. They executed it quite well and we made a put other process sheets to complete a frame.

Constant nagging, following up, trials and tribulations made the exhibition work somehow. As soon as Atul and i left, perhaps the entire class slept over. I say this because we had instructed them to finish things and they were still the same the next morning when we arrived.

Students were all well dressed - but the exhibition space was in a mess. This was beyond my control. I shouted at many of them, yelled to get them to action again - clean up drive - barrage of peons, house keeping guys and students followed. We removed horde of bags, organized cloth, cleaned of dust, removed garbage - all which should have done much earlier.

What was disappointing was that the AD faculty itself arrived at 9 am - completely unbothered about the whole setup. They also left the place by 10 30 am! They decided not to be there for their jury! This happened the second time. And I have never experienced this in my entire life time. I felt this was extremely irresponsible, despicable and unexpected behaviour.

Atul beautifully briefed about the project to the jury - sometimes i feel he really crisp in what he says. I felt i must have recorded. He assisted the students and the jury throughout. Students were half dead, which I dont know how to comprehend. It reminded me of times when I used to be awake for two nights working on my drawings (I was obsessed with inking) and still come fresh and remain fresh for my and my friends' juries. I listened to all of them - I don't know what would keep me awake. May be again, its just me.

In the end I would like to say that, if this process of putting up the final work was completely under my control, I would have strived to make this exhibition even better. There are many inconsistencies which I would have liked to work upon. But I was handed over the charge only for 8 hours - that too a day before. And I think I did a good job out of it. But it would require much thoughtful students, much trustworthy peers and much more control and authority to do an extraordinarily amazing exhibition...