Khoj International Artists' Association, Delhi

Built Environment in South Asia

South Asian Architecture


In our close reconsideration of architectural history in the south Asian subcontinent, we have come to identify a huge lacuna in the availability of coherent content on the built environment in south Asia. Such an issue got articulated through multiple vectors. There is abundant scholarship on the built environment in Europe and Americas that facilitates discourse and dissemination of these landscapes and often becomes easily subsumed into pedagogical processes not only just in the above continents, but also all across the world. To be sure, architecture history students in the remaining part of the world have grown up to be architects only studying content that talks of buildings in other contexts that:

1. Defines the notion of what is “architecture” - in a certain way
2. Instills a certain value system through which built environment is appreciated
3. Desire for transforming their own, immediate landscapes to suit inherited frameworks
4. Aspiration to fit into the dominant discourse of architectural theory, seeking legitimization

Following similar parameters and methods, a number of surveys and books have been produced, often by non-native scholars, for the South Asian sub-continent. While the distance from a certain culture under observation offers critical objectivity, the material output invariably caters to an audience outside its own context and content. Such knowledge also has an alienating tendency for the natives in its consumption, because one is channeled to think through a methodology that may not be one’s own way of reading and understanding one’s context. In the lack of or absence of articulation of one’s own “method” – an epistemological notion that is deeply embedded in tenets of modern scholarship – often these ways of seeing are accepted as default. Nevertheless, my intent is not to devalue such ways of assimilating and making sense of the information around us. Rather, it is important to think, if there indeed is a way outside the ‘rational’ framework of legitimizing the knowledge that rests in different cultures.

Cultural interpretations of built environment and space in different contexts call for a nuanced translation, which in turn necessitate the mobilization of a specific kind of infrastructure. Given their unconsolidated political landscapes, many of the regions have not been able to realize the value in documentation of their architectural pasts, for that matter, in many cases, the preservation of many such places also remain vulnerable. Which aspects of built environment then, do people come to value and how? What aspects of “architecture” in this manner are regarded to be worthy of preservation in different cultures? What does it speak of these societies and their attitude to the material world? And lastly, are these attitudes evident in the architectural remains that are available today, and can they be read and studied?

How does one formulate sensitive methods in order to decipher these traits and attitudes? Where does one begin? How deep in history to go, how do we situate ourselves vis-à-vis history? How do we make sense of something that we haven’t experienced, or isn’t a part of our cultural ethos? How do you locate such a context, historically and geographically? And besides, how does this history inform the contemporary ways in which we assess architecture in different places?

drawing by Priyanshi Bagadia, SEA student

Shouts

They were shouting. We were in class. We ignored the first two noises. The third one, we decided to check out. Prasad was asking students to shout out their lungs. Fellow mates of the first year class had to respond to the earlier shouts, only through a shout. Some hesitated, some laughed, some simply acted. We stood at watched as Prasad kept making students shout. Some, whom he asked to shout again did, while some others couldn't. They expressed they had lost their energy, or that they were too conscious for the second time.

The shouts seemed like the first cries of mankind. Each person shouted in different voices - those that they produced in different capacities, and different depths. The projections of energies was powerful and raw. And the taming of this energy created newer sounds, music and language. But what does it mean for language speaking people to shout? On one hand, it was cathartic, and on the other, it was sheer excitement. Could one shout with complete self awareness? What is the loudest we can be? And how does being loud affect our body and environment?

I remained with the profoundness of this experience. It transformed me to think about language, music and communication.

The Horizon

How far do I need to be from the horizon to see it bent?
How elevated do I need to be to feel the curve of the earth?
For the limits of land are not straight
And the tip of the world I see isn't isolated from the other...

A Hejduk-ian moment in Mumbai

New CEPT

I first visited CEPT in 2003, in my first year of architecture school - when I had instantly fallen in love with the place. The rustic brick, the silent courts, the student life encrusted in its space - all made it almost spiritual. I have regularly visited the campus since, and seen it changing until today. Somewhere during 2010, the large classrooms once cubicled and personalized by 40 students, bathing in natural light and air had been partitioned into to air conditioned rooms. It was no longer the peaceful campus of Ahmedabad I had visited. Neither did it remain the mythical ideal institution - a building of architecture that espoused the very ethos that it imparted within its students. The new arrangement seemed impersonal and logistical.

The taking over of CEPT by the new director Bimal Patel has kept the overall intellectual and physical development of the campus in high controversy. With an increase in the demand for post graduate education in India, the need for more space and facility, the buildings on the CEPT campus have rapidly expanded. The plots on the fuzzy edge of the school, have all been given up to different architects to create new buildings for the growing needs of the institution.  Over the last few years, the likes of Rahul Mehrotra, Gurdev Singh and recently Christopher Benninger - all noted architecture practices in India, have been appointed to design new buildings on the CEPT campus - all which have been received with measured reluctance. The campus design has been held in reverence of the architecture school building's humble sections by Pritzker Laureate Doshi with its soft flowing volumes into the adjacent natural settings. For some reason, we all always assumed that the wilderness of the campus shall be eternal, that it will always allow adaptive use through its informality.

Ahmedabad is often spoken of as a 'Mecca' for Architecture in India. It's a city where ambitions of nationalism, modernism and regionalism converge. To say the least, it's a land where the modern European masters built some of the most significant buildings of their career. Ahmedabad is one of the few cities which boasts five buildings by Le Corbusier, and a large campus by Louis I Kahn. Ofcourse, it has remained Doshi's backyard for architectural experimentation and remembered for one of Charles Correa's first and most revered project - the Gandhi Smarak Sangrahalaya. Subsequently, architects have visited the place for the intellectual apparatus it lent for the discourse on modern architecture in India - producing a range of practitioners carrying forward the legacies of the above modernist 'masters'. The reverence and emotion for purity of the built object in Ahmedabad is thus, understandable. Every new project that comes within the radius of these masters is aggressively debated, critiqued and discussed. The buildings of Mehrotra on CEPT campus has been one of the victims of such evaluation.

This time however, when I visited CEPT, things seemed okay. Perhaps I was prepared to take in change, perhaps the new buildings were now inhabited and functional, or perhaps because it was just nice weather... As a non-emotional alien to the campus, I was keen to understand what these new projects do to the campus. Mehrotra's library became infamous over its exposure to first rain which brought in a waterfall through its reverse plinth slopes. The matter was corrected, and now, you enter the library through an exhibition-pavilion which is frequently used by the students across campus as a shortcut (in whatever way). The ground floor of this building is thus open, and public in nature, and establishes an axis with the architecture school. Its plinth separates the building too harshly from the remaining campus, and is too barren as compared to Doshi's treatment of the architecture school underbelly.

The stacks however, are staggered interestingly, for they split levels to suffuse within them reading spaces. A study of the section reveals different degrees of enclosures that they create for various kinds of reading experiences. Thus, browsing and reading are no longer separated, rather they assume a book-shop like character where visitors are able to stay within the book walls while reading. The furniture is cleverly orchestrated to perform as parapets, ledges or racks at the same time. The stacks take up the central volume, much like the Bienecke library at the Yale University, although humanized in scale, and improvised on its skin detail. The peripheral volume accommodates smaller carousels and desks for quiet readings and are said to be always occupied. While one would think that the sunken space is hermitically disconnected from its immediate surrounding to read, Enakshee, a graduate student at CEPT, who took me around explained that many prefer the quiet detachment. She said that the library is always full, and it's difficult to find space to work here. Whether the increased use of the library is a function of new design or a signifier of lack of space is something that needs statistical analysis, but was an encouraging marker.

The upper floors are reserved for reading journals and periodicals along with e-work stations. Some people may find the space too lifeless, for the connection to the environment is lost further; whereas for a reading zone, it's inertness may virtuous. The entire library is now a closed box which two tall bands of adjustable vertical louvres on its facade through which one may control the light entering the volume. One may appreciate for its simple inventiveness and the possibility it lends through intermediate catwalks to clean the glass panes. All in all, I was pleasantly elated about the updatedness of the library facility at CEPT. Two remarks probably summed it over my conversation back in Mumbai. Rupali summarized that the CEPT library is an example of a good American building on its campus - a neat contemporary design that fits well within the geopolitical aesthetics of architecture today. Prasad quipped on my remark over its updatedness: they reached here at the fag end, when the Universities over the world are ready to shun physical libraries altogether.

The other edge firmed up by Mehrotra was the canteen corner which once used to be a series of charming stray ledges scattered over an undulating set of mounds under the campus trees. The area now boasts a hard plinth with ramps to make the place accessible. Above the canteen is a large review facility with large halls and a wide corridor that is allegedly proposed to be connected to the new building under construction, designed by Christopher Benninger. Meanwhile, the canteen building trails in the other direction through an almost monumental dogleg ramp, solidified on its underside. The midlanding of the ramp dissolves into a mini amphitheatre, which to me, saved the edge from becoming too sharp, and opening up a yet another performative corner.

What appears to be a large construction site right now across the upper floor corridor-balcony of canteen today is an apprehension filled project by Christopher Benninger. The building is supposed to host a large auditorium, spaces for staff, and the architecture department. This would mean Doshi's design to be released as free space that may be appropriated for activities we don't know yet. All this sounds rumour, but Ahmedabad is a place where architectural rumours often turn into reality! But someone who is really interested further must read the passionate letters here and here and here towards revising the proposed design that harks a deeper vision, empathetic engagement and conceptual clarity to the block that is rising up.

On the other end of the campus is a centralized fabrication lab facility for CEPT which has been designed by Gurudev Singh. The building works through a simple functional design of a shed, and extremely well detailed - simple and clean. The voluminous spaces bathe in sagacious light. To some extent, the design sectionally draws from Corbusier's Chandigarh College of Architecture, but removes all heaviness of concrete and replaces it with sleek open web steel beams that seem to have been imported from Sweden (?). The design is a no-nonsense response that serves really well to students in bringing technology and craft together. It is one of the few workshops in India which boasts a space for lithography, while trying to get closer to more recent technological tools. 

Overall, the campus is now a checkered grid of built and unbuilt pockets: precisely like a chess board. You move from one courtyard to another passing through three storey masses. Certainly, it began to feel like a western university campus, losing its revered ambiguity and wanderings. While the new buildings seem too bookish, the critiques too seem to come straight out of the text book. After reading the letters linked above, I began to wonder if these conversations became too didactic? The deification of the campus is phenomenal, to the extent that it assumes the status of modern heritage (which it may rightfully be, especially after Doshi's Prtizker).

It's not as if responses to heritage need to be docile and as human. For example, in the MIT campus in Boston, Charles Correa's Brain and Cognitive Science building does stand quietly as a background to Gehry's Stata centre, or Tschumi does provoke a new phenomenological reading when he inserts his follies into the Park de La Villete. The manner of critique could have demanded an innovative conceptual exercise that would suited the spirit of the contemporary instead of extending a nostalgic romantic past. There are often deeper conceptual critiques that theorists and academics bring to reject the new buildings on the CEPT campus. I think it is a worthwhile exercise. I feel that's why we have Ahmedabad and the legacy of Architecture with a captial A.


(the images below are not in order, but should serve as a provisional index to the above piece)

Writing Architecture / Death of Architecture

I spent my weekend in Ahmedabad over a panel discussion on 'Writing Architecture' organized as a part of the 'Death of Architecture' programming. The panelists I shared the conversation with were Miki Desai (architectural historian), Sameera Rathod (editor, SPADE), Shiny Varghese (Journalist), Meghal Arya (academician). The session was moderated by Sachin Shah, faculty at CEPT. Panel discussions are often blind games, if you do not know what you are going to be asked. They almost seem like vivas that induce immense pressure on giving engaging answers  as well as inform audiences about the topic at hand. However, a theme like 'writing architecture' often becomes too generic if not held within a framed question. For example, one could look at the architectural writing in the last 20 years, or architectural writing and its relationship with new media, or emerging forms of writing and critical discourse in contemporary architecture. Further, these could be looked at through very specific examples, or works by panelists, which can be questioned within a critical framework in a forum. Without such a framework, often such discussions become freewheeling conversations through keywords derived from a broad conversation in order to keep things going for the duration of the talk. The conversation at the Death of Architecture on 'Writing Architecture' seemed to liminally rely on the panelists' improvisation to the questions posed. It is important for the moderator to have a position(s) in the background of which the responses of panelists could be understood, or through which a debate, and dialogue can be nurtured.  Else, the talk becomes lament which everyone feels happy about. It is important for panel discussions to enter, even if performatively, the form of soft debate which provokes the audience to think through new ideas, or articulate new positions. While the moderator, in his humble attempt, threw reasonably open questions, I felt the discussion lacked spark. It was largely lost to thinking of writing as a way of reflection, introspection or criticism. However, the dimension of experience of writing and reading architecture was completely missed out. If one considers that writing constructs an experience through the employment of form/style, technique, content, tone and media, what criticalities must one expect from the writers of today? What has been the impact of writing? And how must one write today?In general, one needs to review on the form and content of writing in order to have a crisp discussion on the politics and agency of writing/writers today. While I have mentioned on other platforms, the avenues that have opened up for writers today, and the increased demand for writing - one needs to understand what is the subject, content, quality and kind of writing that is being produced? What purpose does it cater to? Whom are architectural writers writing for? How, after all, has writing suddenly become a viable and valid profession in the contemporary time in India? An analysis into textual production through these questions would allow us to map the different trajectories of the practices of writing today. Further, how have they addressed the practice - of profession or academia needs to be understood. One of the key questions to address is that of readership. What kind of books have come through over the last two decades in architecture? What kind of writing do people like to consume and why? Who are the best selling (contemporary) writers and how are they writing? What are the shifts in voices that write? Sachin rightly pointed out that on an average, an individual today reads more content in a day than one ever did, say even two decades ago. How does reading so much (often unnecessary, informative) content shape the reader today? What is the psychological and phenomenological experience of reading in the contemporary times? How are these shifts reflecting in the subjects and objects of architectural writing today?There are a lot of questions that could be jotted down, however, they would remain ambiguous unless we take up concrete examples to elucidate what it means to be textual today. Further, how is architecture being written today? One of the interesting ideas that came up through the discussion was if writing could be considered as a legitimate communicative form through which architecture could be conceptualized and constructed. Working through the example of archival drawings of the Manavendra Palace in Jaipur, that were mere diagrams with a scribbled set of poem-like notes - I tried to suggest that the form of representation, synonymous to "architectural drawing" today - that which consists of orthographic plans and sections, is fairly recent and even a colonial legacy. Were all buildings in history realised through drawings? And following the notes of Jaipur building archives, could one mobilize forms of writing as possible communicative tools for alternative spatial articulation?

Drawing from City Palace Archives, Jaipur, (MSMS II Museum) with written instructions on construction.

Drawing from the City Palace Archives, Jaipur (MSMS II Museum) with written instructions on construction. 

Meghal Arya pointed out the often-embeddedness of academic writing in architectural jargon and unnecessary references, and her preference of the essay-form which allows her to contemplate while weaving through relevant examples. Riyaz Tayyibji suggested to preserve the sanctity of the disciplinary writing - that which constitutes the very discourse of architecture. However, my response was to expand the frame of "disciplinary" to knowledge production in general, and not restrict to architecture. Instead of making the discourse so exclusive, the discipline of architecture could productively borrow concepts and terms from many other disciplines (as much as lending its own terms to) in order to expand the manner in which space is otherwise narrated and understood today. Such a method would demand participation and dialogue with other disciplines,  making architectural discourse more inclusive as well as enabling and amenable to other professions. My principal point however was, that students no longer related to the voice in which architecture has been narrated so far. Contemporary histories must find voices that resonate with the language which this generation is more conversant and comfortable with. The tapping of writing forms that get shaped through new media must be understood and strategised within more serious writing projects. This could be a way of involving younger audiences into both writing as well as reading, ultimately architectural conversations. Historians of architecture need to update the methods and materials, along with the narrative forms they employ in architectural research. Space is no longer in habited through the morality of romantic socialism of nationalism, narratives against which so much architecture in India is always backdropped. The recent excess of discussions in this field have also been around informality and impermanence. These have been substantial formulations, and they certainly hold value. However, how must architects narrate these stories to their community and larger audiences, beyond blind lament, empty critique or indulgent introspections? Those narrations may perhaps shape new experiences through writing.

The Loneliness of Landscapes \\ Ronny Sen at Tarq

published in Art India \ Dec 2018

The Loneliness of Landscapes 

Anuj Daga is moved by the poetry in Ronny Sen’s documentation of the raging fires of Bihar’s coal mines.


In a selection of images clicked with an iPhone, Ronny Sen’s show Fire Continuum at Tarq from 23rd August to 29th September, presents a distinctly political landscape in a poetic rendering. Through an array of ‘tablet-sized’ portraits, Sen attempts to capture sights of wonder and despair spread across the coal fields of Jharia. Known for their everyday violence, popularized in recent Hindi cinema, regions of Bihar and Jharkhand have been perceived to be extremely rough. Rightfully so, for much of my summer vacations would be spent in these ‘dark’ areas visiting several collieries with my maternal uncles. The long bumpy bike rides on mountains of coal in brazen heat made us inhale ample coke, leaving us with black sweat and rough hair. More so, coded conversations and quiet exchanges would expose me to negotiations and inner politics of everyday existence. To look at Ronny Sen’s work is almost a personal revisiting of those old dust-laden journeys in the burning summers of Bihar.

Underground fires were first reported in Jharia in 1916, some of which continue to be alive. One of the first sets in the exhibition captures flames rushing out of the belly of mines. Vast tracts of mined mountains lie open in clouds of smoke and dust in Sen’s documentation. At once, the viewer is compelled to link the journey of coal into dust that eventually exhausts through fire into smoke. The photographs hint thus, at the simultaneous explosion and implosion of coal into fire.

Fire is in continuum with life and death of people settled around the coal mines of Bihar and Jharkhand. As much as it supports the livelihood of people in the region, it has also taken many lives, like in the Dhanbad Coal Mine disaster of 1965 where an explosion led to fire in the mines killing 268 miners. In addition, the burning coal creates vacuum below the land causing its subsidence that has often led to engulfing whole settlements. Yet, locals refrain from leaving Jharia due to the fear of losing livelihoods. The dual bind of loss and hope is best expressed in the gaze of subjects that Sen goes on to capture in his photographs.

Coal mining in India began as early as 1774, which only picked up with its need as fuel for the steam engine locomotives that came to the country in 1853. The First World War saw the rise in demand of coal subsequently, slumped in the inter-war period, and scaled up again for the Second World War. While several private and government companies existed for extraction and trade of coal for nearly two decades after independence of India, an overall nationalization of coal mines took place by 1973, essentially to prevent unsafe and unscientific mining practices and poor working conditions of labourers.

However, the coal mafia in the region have continued smuggle coal in an organized and sophisticated manner, through a nexus of politicians, government officials, businessmen and locals. Such open violation of the State policy is suggested in a clever framing of the white ambassador on the fuel-laden black mountain in one of Sen’s photographs. The smug play of colours creates a quiet, yet powerful statement.

Photo-sets detailing the explosion process and architectural ruins, laid out on adjacent walls of the gallery, narrate the story of development and decay. The solitary nature of people and buildings bring to us a strange sense of loneliness in looking at the entire landscape, both seemingly awaiting an intervention. The emptying of resources by extractive and environmental processes produces a vacuum that gets amplified and framed in the clinical treatment of the images.

The show is an artistic survey of an environment that we often take for granted. While the exhibition introduces us to the environmental pressures that resource-laden sites in India often undergo, the viewers may find themselves seduced into the surreal calmness of the images. On the other hand, the form of the exhibition – portrait photographs taken through a phone – begs for a discussion on the numerous impulsive criticalities that we freeze visually on our mobile devices. Taking photographs of shock, wonder, amazement, deviance, spectacle, violation and aspects that construct us through the defining of the other has now become a habit amongst many of us. The ritualistic production of documentary evidence allows us to formulate our personal relationship with landscapes and actions of the State. We produce and travel with several exhibitions thus, all the time. What happens to these photographic exhibitions that we carry and share personally across new media platforms? By pulling them out for public display, the exhibition in some way, attempts to demonstrate the soft power of such impulsive criticality to become a cogent tool for mobilizing action. It extends agency to the viewers to observe closely, their own environments.