History / Humanties

Humanities: Way to look at History - concepts of understanding - intangible ideas

History: What to look at in past - what exists - tangible reality

Sandeep Sir and myself often seem concerned about the disparity in students' minds about learning humanities/history. Whenever one asks him about humanities, he gives such a crisp, to the point answer, that one feels like recording it. The precision with which he speaks, I think, is a matter of age and experience.

But we discussed today that students don't connect to humanities, because they are often searching for an image to relate to, while humanities deals only with concepts of understanding history. This is complex, unless one is interested really in history. But in the western world, there is rigorous training in humanities and hence, it has been able to produce critical thinkers.

What students must understand is that history is not to be just mugged up and learnt for exams, but they are steps on which you stand and trace where we have reached. It's a measure of change. And humanities helps in understanding the relevance of change.

I used to dread history in school. But I never imagined that I would love history so much once I grew up, and also teach history and even wish to study history ahead. Perhaps it was my teacher who was responsible for my low interest in school, however, the point is that we are never taught (rather the teachers themselves don't know most of the times) why are they teaching, or why are we learning or even knowing history. If the agenda of teaching history is clear, then half the battle is won.

For some time, I have been thinking for which professions would history be more important? Some of them that I thought were the lawyers and the doctors. Laws are just historical acts. A decision passed by the Supreme court assumes the status of law. Thus, lawyers keep cross referencing 'historical ' cases to bring up new decisions (now that is completely humanities) - the ethics and morals of decision making. On the other hand, my family doctor keeps a record of 'patient history'. So he has all my records since I first visited him. Every time he checks me for any ailment, he speculates my body performance. After a few permutations and combinations, he arrives at what disease or ailment I must be suffering from and then suggests appropriate medication. his medication works fantastically.

So I wonder if one was to take all his 'history' case papers and read the history of 'disease' in the city, it would definitely show interesting patterns against the parameters of seasons, ages, genders, etc. One could do a whole thesis on the 'Health of the city' in the past 40 years. But similarly, history is important in all other professions. The key is to identify 'gaps' in thinking and build new bridges with existing or developed knowledge to break new grounds.

Architectural history is tricky, but at least in the west, there has been a tremendous use of history for basing architecture. Our inability to handle or even trying to deal with history (due to or overemphasis on culture and belief in the acts of the past) doesn't allow us to boldly question our past. The past has to be questioned to be able to step into 'a' direction in the future. Thus the past orients us to our future. Therefore history is important, and this direction is understood in the way we see our history. This is where arrives humanities. Humanities offers an arrowhead to history in a specific direction towards future. In other cases either we accept the same direction or we are direction less. Conceptually, in either case, we are aimless.

another aspect associated with history is recording it or passing it on. Most primary method of doing this is writing. And hence the second concern that arises is the lack of communication in writing. Within writing, two major problems that we face are: handling language and translation of language. Simply put, the language of expression and the language of thinking. Recently I have seen that students who have been trained in vernacular mediums express tremendously well in their own language, and are evidently weak when writing in English. The second category of students are those who have studied in English and still translate from their mother tongue to English (basically where the thinking language is different than the expression language). The last ones are those who think in English. The problem is the keeping the rigidity of expression language constricted to English. If we remove the barrier of this expression language to be english, half the battle will be won. Then a collaborative environment could be set up for translating texts in class. the problem with the second group of people is their unjustified comfort zone with their expression language. That is something that has to be broken, and can only be tackled if the student wishes to agree that there can be more richness to language of expression. The third ones are almost ready and need to understand the structure of language to be able to exactly communicate what they want. They have to work on using the right words, which convey the right sentiment and expression.

Anyway, I didnt mean to give a lecture here, but as I see and list these factors down, perhaps I will be able to tackle these three student groups in appropriate manner with history, humanities and its recording...

For KRVIA Annual Exhibition 2010

A snapshot of my fellowship:

"I work in a country where no one cares for buildings."

Chaitanya shared an interesting critique on Corrra's buildings. He says, Correa's buildings are very unclear, they do not have a diagram. What he meant was they one gets 'lost' while moving in the building.
Taking specific examples, he said that many buildings rely on external media like painting, sculptures to communicate. For example, if the whole of Cidad-de-Goa was to be painted white, the building would lose all its quality. Similarly, if  JKK lost colour, it would be a different building. However, this does not happen always.

Kanchanjunga, he says doesnot even have a clarity of 'entrance'. You wonder when you enter the building, "where to go"? I agree to this, having seen and experienced the building recently. Adding to this, each flat in the building is different, so you constantly keep losing orientation. (imagine a maid working at 3 houses in the same building! she would go mad!!).

One standard critique that everyone has for Correa's buildings is that they are not detailed enough. The edges of the buildings, the railings, the steps, or even the windows or any damn thing. Nothing looks 'tight' in Chaitanya's words. Also, although Correa may be a world famous architect, he has not offered anything to India for which "people would come from outside to have a look at". He was perhaps mentioning about the 'iconicity' of a building.

Another point he made was that his buildings do not have a 'tropical' character. A tropical building would be a building with a private-semi open verandah (long) and then opening to sky building. This is where, he says, the courtyard typology fails. His buildings don't even speak of the tropical character through colours - which are bright and whites. Rather, he chooses earthy and more rural colours.
His remarks are relevant.

However, in the past week, Correa has hinted answers to all these questions in our conversations with him. So I will defend all the critiques from Correa's side one by one:

Correa operates through the Hindu ideas of myth and reality. He believes in the hindu philosophy of the universe and this philosophy accepts things with their chaos. There is no black and white like the western philosophies of how we came into being. Thus, although his buildings start with a process of structuring space, he ends up making complex movements in the building that resonate with the central idea of the philosophy of ordering chaos (which he explains as multiple layers of order).

While talking, he said that he loves to introduce paintings, suclptures on walls because they, he assumes, are not a separate element of the building. He says that in our culture, a person staying in the village feels that painting is an integral part of the process of house-making (like the warli, madhubani, kutch houses). He also mentioned that even critics like Kenneth Frampton are not able to appreciate the paintings he makes on his buildings, because there is a lack of cultural experience.

"I work in a country where no one cares for buildings." he says.
further, he says that "I did most of the Government projects using the contractors of the State Public Wards Department, like the Sabarmati Gandhi Ashram or the Vidhan Bhavan and the Bharat Bhavan Bhopal. You can not expect pristine lines and finishing when you are working with local people. These are not priavte clients which can spend so much on precision. Infact, I feel the unfinished-ness adds to the quality of the buildings. Even the indian khadi fabric looks beautiful because it doesnot form clean straight lines. The undulating warps and wefts give character to the cloth, it echoes our culture." And he also ties it up with the philosophy of Hindu culture/philosophy. But those interested in seeing crisply finished Correa buildings, see the Champalimaud Brain and Scientific Research Centre in Portugal. Here, the client was a private company and they could afford being precise. To sum it up, he himself feels very sorry for all his ill-maintained buildings.

So I shall keep updating more of such discussions and debates whenever possible.

Time for a one liner:
"Manmohan Singh is a cross between a kitten and a mouse"
(he acted it out too)!

Charles Correa - a charactersketch

As a small child, Correa loved to play with toy trains - in an interview he said. He wanted to study something that would give him equal amount of satisfaction and that's the reason why he joined architecture. On his table 81 years after he is born and 50 years after he started his practice, one can see a number of toy trains. I have still not asked him which one is how old, but lets see if I get an opportunity to make a mini questionnaire for him.

The table is exceptionally low, and shows him tall even when he is seated on his chair. The table has plenty of pencils and pens, weights, cars, his numerous awards, collectibles and gifts from all over the world and animated sculptures.

 

 

Correa is a hardcore modernist - he believes in a plan, and he doesn't like any one speaking or informing in the present tense. For example, yesterday i told him, "'A' is working on transferring videos to the computer" - and he almost lost it and said, "where do you learn this language from, the language of the present tense? what do you mean by 'he is doing' - like 'she is cooking in the kitchen' - 'i am doing it'... what do you mean? we all are doing something, he is not sleeping over the table, he is definitely doing something - but that doesnot mean anything. But if you tell me what he did, or what is is going to do or finish by today, that is what makes sense. This is why the condition of our country is like that, there is no accountability...(shrugs)...'contractor is doing that' - what do you mean?"

The first taunt of my work with him.

but this is not the time to evaluate his thoughts, i feel. I must know him more to be able to understand a personality like him. He has presence.

As I watched him closely, he had dense silver white eyebrows, almost like a camel. They almost make a chajja over his eyes. And he keeps fiddling with his eyebrows. And they are always unsettled. His ears, as Dhaval puts it are 'elephant ears' - they are large. His spectacles are like those of Corubsier - jet black, round and big. There is no ambiguity in its colour (not sparkling silver-grey or golden-yellow or copper-brown). They are just BLACK. He writes and overwrites over tracingpapers and almost wastes tonnes of paper every year. Because he doesnot reuse any paper for printing twice. And because of fear, employees make so many errors that they end up printing everything thrice. Also, he has a habit of 'seeing' the correction at every stage - so every small incremental improvement is printed. Seeing is believing for him. 

I wonder how all his pencils on the table are always sharpened - they are always sharp. The papers are crisp, the pens are clean, the tracings are neat, the checkered pad is fresh. That is his characteristic.

"How did you get interested in archiving work?" he asked me after 4 days of my meticulous work, "You are really good at it, i am really glad..." (he waited for me to answer)

and almost articulating and editing my answer, I said "I was always interested in research and even during my research last year, I was very particular about noting down things." and I stopped fearing he would judge me on what I said.

One liners by him (more to come):

"A woman can't be 5% pregnant" 

(implying that you have to completely be involved in anything you do)

*I joined Charles Correa Associates as an archivist on 29th Nov. Don't know how long this journey will be.

New money

Ahmedabad Panoramas

In order:

1. Ahmedabad Textile Millowners' Association (ATMA)
2. Centre for Environmental Education (CEE)
3. Sarkhej Mosque
4. Hussain Doshi Gufa
5. Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT)
6. Gandhi Smarak Sangrahalaya
7. Calico Dome

All pics copyright: Anuj Daga

Photo post

Now a days, I keep taking pictures of things that keep trigerring random thoughts in me. These days I keep feeling so lost that i tend to find meaning into everything, every action that happens around me. Here are some strings of thoughts that the following pictures have invoked (note the larger idea/reference below the pictures):

The shadow pattern of a flat grilled window on a warped cloth was so fascinating that i wondered if it implied any thing for designers to consider.
























Descartes - Grid - Distortion


The convex canopy casting a concave shadow reminded me of my Graphics class that always used to stir up debates of resolving sciography of objects.






















Graphics - Sciography - 3D to 2D

During Diwali, in India, it is customary to decorate the space you live in. If you look around in the night time in Diwali, the city buildings merge with the black sky and all we see is glittering colourful lights with which each house is decorated. chains of lights patterned on the grid of iron grills of windows, canopies of trees flooded with LEDs, lanterns, soft lights - all make the city even more spectacular. The picture of a bank below, with sparkling lights and ad hoc decoration speaks of how the staff must have wanted to do it with love, but ended up just putting things on the ceilings, walls, or cabinets.























Urban Aesthetic - Ad hoc arrangements


On my trip to Hampi, I got this bottle bag from a bamboo workshop in Anegundi. My mother ended up using it as a flask in the house to hold flowers. She also wound the snake around it that I got from the same place. This tiny piece of arrangement (the flask, flowers, snake) kept changing very frequently sometimes from day to day, while sometimes morning to evening!
Now it's no longer there.























Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki - Domesticity - Aesthetic


the potential of children to use every space as a play space in a busy city like ours in commendable. Look at this child resting on the bus stand and dreaming as if he's in a playground!


















Architecture & Play

What originally used to be my house for the first 15 years of my life is now a full fleged workshop for my father who is an engineer. When i look at this house today, I wonder how we lived here - in a tenement literally 10' x 10'. Today we barely have any space to even lie around. It makes me so conscious of my body, which has grown big, adult and cannot accommodate the cozy space which this house once created. But other than that, also the fact that how every bit of engineering material was available for play - wires, registers, magnets - all of them.
















XS - Extra Small / Chawls


The barsati on which we endlessly played - where neighbour friends would call out peeping inside the house, and we would sneakingly get out leaving our books on beds. This also used to be a peripheral garden for my mother. The smell of rajanigandha during the night would fill the entire space. The sharp shadows that the moon light would make, the rains in which we jumped out here - it was fascinating.








Public space

and also that an arrangement of multiple similar looking things can look so good. neatly arranged across a small vacant patch against the railway lines - almost lined up to the tracks.











Repetition - Arrangement and organization

Techno-Cultural Schisms

me: so what happened?
why he got frustrated?
her: they (students) didn't want to know or see anything
me: that's a perpetual problem with today's generation
her: were blind*
yes na
why i wonder
me: they see everything thorough their cameras
and mobile phones
her: not even through those
not really seeing ever.

3 important points raised in our chat above:
1. Students have become unobservant
2. Students see thing through technological gadgets
3. Tutors feel irritated with this fact.

One can debate these points against each other. but let us try to come to a more relevant discussion after elaborating on the above 3 points.

Observation is a slow activity. Observation includes not only seeing, but also thinking about what one is seeing. It automatically involves an analytical process, where thoughts generated give rise to more questions and more thoughts. Learning in today's age still, particularly in our educational system is more instructive. Thus, 'seeing' is not 'learning'. 'Doing' is not learning. In the pace of life which students have been brought up in, where things around go so fast (fleeting), it is almost impossible to expect them to stand and stare. Although there might be time to stand and stare, who wants to engage in staring? because remember - staring is not considered learning by students.

So what does one do even if he/she has time and is not staring? One engages with objects that one can keep in your pockets. Mobiles, cameras, i-pods, now i-pads, etc. pervade and accommodate our free time. Listening to one song again and again, watching at videos of funny men repeatedly, passing on jokes and building up on them all the time is what accommodates our time reserved for staring otherwise. So, if we have to see around, we take our camera/mobile and frame a view - which as I said, can be seen again and again.

Are we in the process of generating information that can be relived in a later time? Media technology has immensely invaded our daily lives which keeps engaged in producing this data. I am using the word 'data', not 'knowledge'. Data is information, raw material. Thus, we see through our gadgets. I am using the word 'see', not 'observe'. To observe is to see analytically.

I shall jump back to the above two paragraphs to find new meaning (?) later. Before that, I must explain the third point.

We (myself, the '80s ppl) perhaps come from a different cultural background. We took birth in an age where the TV was the boom (but only with a national channel). 1965? A.I.R.! I will not get into my history with Television, but i must say, cable was a craze, and we were not privileged to have it till 2000 (millenium). Telephone was a luxury and we only got it during 1994. Computer was there at home since father was an electronic engineer - and we worked with Wordstar. There was a humble transistor where we would listen to cricket commentaries. Walkman was the newest invention perhaps? The digital diaries became famous in late 90s - they could keep addresses, phone nos and calculators. Solar calculators were priced possessions. Digital watches with light and alarm was a fad. All I am talking about is our interface* with technology.

The IT became a revolution in 2000. It was only during my FYJC (first year junior college) that IT was introduced as a vocational subject in the science stream for the first time. For us, it was alien? But - long live Rajiv Gandhi for bringing in the communication drive.

Technology is not in our blood stream. Or to be politically correct, i think technology is at least not in MY blood stream. But children today are born in this fleeting pace of technology. Electronic toys - they get as soon as they are born - children want to play with mobiles and computers - jumping electronic monkeys. Cartoons are full of electronic stuff. During our time, cartoons seemed only so hard to believe, and that's what glued us to them! Magic has always been a matter of play in space and time. But today I think we live magically* - Bluetooth/wireless/wi-fi/gps and what not!

The question is what do we do with it? We are too caught up with our space-time experience. We feel nostalgic all the time. We want everyone to live that same experience - perhaps only so that we feel at ease with the society (social pace) around us. But the society is bound to make us uncomfortable. How do we accept such change? How fast do we change? Perhaps the pace of this change is exponentially increasing. If we can feel the cultural schism now, I wonder what happens in the next 10 years.

But going into that discussion is another thesis altogether. We have to conceptualize a space within the new time dynamics. To do this, we have to accommodate two fronts - we have to make ourselves culturally forward and a the same time think of engaging the current technology into the system. It's challenging because it changes our pace of living. But i think, it also, at the same time makes the system more demanding. For example, if a student has a query, he/she can immediately call up/email his/her faculty today, and the faculty too can respond immediately - but what happens in this process is that the data sharing becomes almost immediate, to word it differently, the EXPECTATION of receiving data becomes immediate too, which is what pushes you to be sharper and thus pushes you to be demanding.

This dynamic of the space-time relationship has major cultural pitfalls*:
1. the older generation of faculty many a times refuses to accept such demand. they believe that it is not the correct system for addressal of professional exchange. they would rather trust personal meetings and physical exchange of data/knowledge. Due to the ill-information about usage of technology, the distance between it and the archaic user further develops a gap between the guide and the faculty.

2. many a times, in developing countries like ours (i must say in institutional spaces like ours), systems are not technologically equipped to handle any form of soft communication. This can be easily eliminated.

3. the younger generation (those on the receiving end) are not equipped with the skills that the oldies are familiar with/fond of. This is a major cultural schism which irritates the faculties. Such a schism ends up in recognizing skill itself as a practice. so to take an example, within graphic design, there are practices of printing, dying, making paper, cutting paper, laminating, typography, book making, binding, drawing, etc etc... - although a graphic designer must be equipped with much of the above.

So we are going into too much extreme and i would love to carry on. But the point remains to still find a way of working within this technological, cultural schism.

*(a lot more to be elaborated upon)
Responses on this post shall be highly appreciated.

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.