Imagining through (non) images

Day before yesterday, I visited Ratan j Batliboi's office. Neha and Akhil almost directly took me to his library first. It was a spacious room with about 3000 books on subjects primarily pertaining to architecture, art and probably management. Behind it was a collapsable huge material library. I was more fascinated with the collapsable racks than the library of materials. However, the main book library had no window, and hence i felt the library was a bit dull.

I browsed through most titles in the library. I knew many books - most of them on architects and their works. Quite big ones, hard bound, with lots of pictures. There were hardly any books that probably interested me...perhaps I had seen much of it! The master painters, the urban design ones, the architects....and of course the data manuals. What I then realised what that all architects' offices are laden with books which contain a lot of pictures, photos and visual material. Architects crave for visual references.

Architects constantly produce images. Most architectural practices produce images by churning the earlier ones. The source for their images is other images. They collect this image database from referring to hundreds of other architectural practices, images and works. However, how can practices produce newer image banks which do not really have any referentials?

Literature, poetry, text, music - all can be converted to images. What methods can we choose to do such translations? Why don't architects fill up their libraries with all such kinds of books - on philosophy, social sciences, music, audio etc. That architecture offices and practices are loaded with such visual material proves the profession to be too image heavy. For that matter, an institute like Academy of Architecture is filled with such image heavy visual material. What if architectural libraries dedicated more space to non-visual works? Can a same non visual work produce different images and different times using various methods? This would be an interesting aspect to investigate.

Buildings are the most visible cultural objects and they can not embody only visual aspects of a culture. It would be interesting if buildings embodied rituals, practices and phenomenological characteristics of cultures. Then, the debate would not be about images, but about cultures, about people, about lives...

An 80 - year old Churchgate station need not then drape itself up in railway track patterns. That's absolutely banal. Dont the people who use it everyday have any claim over it? Is it not them, who really make the station space? No, I am not suggesting that people suggest ideas for it! Infact, what if its skin engaged people in newer ways...I don't know how it could be done...but I am sure it could do much more than cladding itself in good looking sheets to make itself sculptural...

However, the point is, it ended up being too visual as an urban response. Most urban responses in architecture end up being visual. That's the libraries they refer to. Their knowledge is a derivative of chewed up ideas of other practices which are situated abroad. These ideas are chewed out into images. These images are very unidimensional - they are real and allow only one interpretation. Drawings like those of Archigram do not commit to an absolute form and hence allow multiple readings. On the other hand, music generates moods, texts have layers of meanings. Architects seldom engage with such forms of works. Therefore art practices are interesting - because artists find their own ways of engaging with an idea and generate new images. They don't reproduce images by seeing other images.

Two important points therefore to conclude:
1. What must libraries for architects consist of?
2. How do you generate images from non visual material?

Other corollaries:

Why are we not able to generate images without reference? why do we hesitate?

How does this system work? 

I think it shall take significant time and effort to study the above...

Discussing Drawings

(the above text is by Pratik Dhanmer)

me:  what do you think may be an answer to the question he raises?

 sidthemonster:  this is a very complicated question

 me:  hai naa

...

 sidthemonster:  actually a bit of it reminds me of this article on ayn rand

she was an extreme individualist

 me:  idealist...

 sidthemonster:  and her books' heroes/heroines are based on her

 me:  yeah

 sidthemonster:  no no

idealist yes

but individualist

 me:  ok

 sidthemonster:  and she was so extreme that she actually praised a serial killer who raped and murdered little girls

 sidthemonster:  effectively saying he is being individualistic (i.e. doing what he likes)  and not letting "society" come in the way of what he wants to do

 me:  no, but i dont agree to this simplistic resolution of his

 sidthemonster:  and that's my problem too

and my problem with ayn rand

having too many rules is an issue

having none is a major issue

 me:  why does this process of preparing architectural drawings become so tedious?

 sidthemonster:  for that matter everything routine gets tedious. fact of life

when u drew as a kid it was ur escape from routine

now drawing is your routine

like i actually enjoyed studying for gre

i used to hate it in school

i was the last minute study types

also at work, i basically manage projects. Barely draw

for the last 2 weeks I've been drawing continuously without needing to manage projects

 me:  but it think, its more to do with the thought before putting it on paper - we think too much before we draw as architects

 sidthemonster:  and it's been so phenomenally exciting

 me:  exactly

 sidthemonster:  i wouldn't say so

kids think before they draw too

 me:  ummm

 sidthemonster:  only they perhaps dont think aloud

 me:  kids don't have the burden of responsibility in drawing

we have it

 sidthemonster:  true                                          

 me:  there is a correctness that has to be adhered to

a code

 sidthemonster:  but that would be a personal thing

some ppl love the responsiibility

some ppl dont

 me:  ummm

i do think it's more than routine

routine is definitely there

 sidthemonster:  what do u think

it is the reason why i stress on the routine thing is perhaps by nature i don't like to get tied down to one thing and I've experienced the same love/hate with drawing very intimately

 me:  do painters get bored of painting?

 me:  what makes us decide then to do architecture?

isnt it drawing?

or is it what?

i dont konw

it wasnt drawing for me

 sidthemonster:  it wasnt for me either

i.e. drawing

i duno why the link between arch and drawing is so tight

drawing is just one of the means

i mean rem koolhas is a journalist by profession

 me:  yeah, how else do you claim B Arch?

 sidthemonster:  and his language to describe/invent/create arch is writing

 me:  interesting

 sidthemonster:  or take even kenneth frampton

or any of the photographers who do such beautiful work with space

 me:  well

so it's the eye

 sidthemonster:  the issue is drawing is our tool of creation

 me:  the eye makes you the architect

 sidthemonster:  or the brain

 me:  so are you suggesting there could be a blind architect

?

 sidthemonster:  and just like engineers cannot fetishize their instruments, architects shouldnt too

yes of course!

i mean we talk of experiences

all the time

and experience is related to all 5 senses

 me:  ummm

brain is a very vivid answer

 sidthemonster:  u dont hear engineers going into paroxysms about beautiful java code

 me:  ?

never

  sidthemonster:  in a way what happens

i thnk is like how when ur a kid and ur trying to learn a strange new language

like say english for ppl our age

 me:  hmm

 sidthemonster:  and ppl talk to u in English

jus so u get better at it i thnk in a  way its the same with drawing for us

that a lot of the fetishizing is to get an interest and acquaintaance with a new way of expressing urself

 me:  hmmm

but what happens to this language?

we dont get fed up of it?

do we?

 sidthemonster:  eventaully it becomes a part of u

 me:  do we get fed up of english?

then why get bored?

 sidthemonster:  it becomes a way of expression

because drawing is also our tool

and just as ppl get bored of dal-rice

(i should have a better metaphor there)

oh oh

writers

they get bored of writing

van gogh almost killed himself with booredom frm painting

 me:  my god

there are traces

only you could recount!

 sidthemonster:  lol

 me:  but i do feel it is something to do with cognition

think of the tribal artists

 sidthemonster:  ok

 me:  dont they get bored of painting, if thats their work in life?

well they must be

but if one gets bored, it reflects in work

 sidthemonster:  the thing is, it ISNT

 me:  you can see that in architectural drawings

 sidthemonster:  madhubani paintings are done during diwali, traditionally

and warli paintings are also to celebrate religious occasions

so its not their job

its like drawing a rangoli

or lighting a diya every evening

and we went on...

The Architecture of Architectural Institutes III

Chandigarh College of Architecture:
(4 years ago)
Architect: Le Corbusier

Centre for Environmental Planning & Technology (CEPT) once again:
(7 years ago)

Writing

Is being emotional important for any one to be able to write well? Emotions help you place your opinions so convincingly. Does it make one strong, or does it make one weak? Do thoughts die if they are not expressed? How many thoughts do we lose every day?

When one is highly emotional, the very act of writing becomes a dialogue, which in reality, is a monologue. Every piece of writing is probably a conversation with oneself. Asking questions again and again to oneself - "is this what i want to say?". But still, they say, that a writer writes for an assumed audience. An audience which shall probably never be available to the writer. Since this  conversation with his / her audience is always so mute. And it manifests into new forms. 

And all i ask again is:
"Is this what I want to say?"

Research Fellowship Proposal – UDRI 2008

melancholy memories
of the city

The idea for the research is taken from Salman Rushdie’s book Haroun and the Sea of Stories - an allegorical account of perception of a city set in a sad backdrop…

"…a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name", which is located beside "a mournful sea full of glumfish, which were so miserable to eat that they made people belch with melancholy".

Mumbai has always been projected as a city of dreams. For an outsider, Mumbai has always been a city of hopes, the opportunistic city, the popular Bollywood, the city of Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan. A popular notion amongst outsiders is that every Mumbaikar is a neighbour of a filmstar. A ready question on any outsider’s list at the first meeting with a resident of the city would be “How many hero / heroines have you seen?” Mumbai’s history more or less follows these questions. We talk about the Gateway of India, the Marine Drive, romanticize about the colonial past, the cosmopolitan culture, and more recently the enterprise and the Bollywood, which is documented very well. The popular history of the city always talks about the seven islands, the colonial rule, the beginning of a metropolis and growth of a commercial hub – a morphological understanding of the place. However, it cannot be neglected that the city has many more events to recollect that just these. When we are talking about events and people, we are talking about memories. Good memories are always generalized and compiled. However, something amidst all this remains untold – the bad memories.

Never is Mumbai’s history seen in the light of its dark events. The research paper is geared towards breaking the notion of Mumbai being a city of dreams. The purpose of the research is to construct an experiential history of the city by collecting memories of people, which are not good in taste. We remember the dark events of Mumbai only when another unpleasant event occurs in the city. These distasteful memories are merely collected as journalistic records and published every time another bomb blast would occur, or the city is filled with water in another downpour, or so on. However, these impressions never contribute towards a significant part of Mumbai’s history. What still attracts people is the new lifestyle, the modern buildings, and the city lights – as projected by traditional history.

Research Problems and Questions

The project will try to explore new ways of reconstructing the city, the prime questions being - Why should the history of the city only be celebrated by the glorious events of the past? Why does the history need to recollect only the good times? Why does the city of Mumbai attract so many people inspite of the fact that it is actually a machine? The aim of the thesis is to look at our city of Mumbai as it is – in the most pragmatic manner. Once we break away from the projected positive image of the city, we may be able to capture important fragments of history through collecting memories, which are not much talked about. The less talked about memories will discuss problems that the everyday inhabitant of the city deals with. At the same time, it will give an insight into the problematic past of the city. These recollections of the past hide into themselves
a conception of a city space, which has never been talked about. The objective of the research is therefore to construct a city space, which seems to be unacceptable, but is still lived in. The project would attempt to make the difficult history of the city more agreeable to natives as well as outsiders for whom; the city of Mumbai has always been a city of celebration and fantasy.

Aims and Objectives

The objective of the thesis would be to collect stories from different kinds of people, of them having unpleasant historic memories of the city and stitch a new layer of history for the city – the difficult narrative. These stories will question the idea of the outsider’s image of the city versus the problems of the native. These stories will also delve into the change in the perception of an outsider becoming a native of the city.
Thus, the scope of the thesis is to methodically use narratives to capture experiences contributing towards a difficult, more unpleasant history and on the other hand deconstruct the idea of Mumbai as a city of Enterprise.

The compilation of these varied experiences may be extremely interesting to read just as stories, but at the same time, the thesis will attempt to draw a picture of the space which each story would create for the city. These pictures, coming together as a storyboard will help in imagining a physical manifestation of the “bad” city through individual memories.

So once the bitter bytes of the city are scanned, one might just get a complete different perception of the city. A city playing in the hands of various interests and nurturing itself on biases. A city thriving on so many interests can not be silent. It is boiling. Different people living in different times in different parts of the city will contribute to a palimpsest of images. The city of Mumbai is therefore no more has the nice man’s image; and neither does it have that glitz and glitter of the Bollywood. It becomes a city which lives on the edge, with every working person contributing towards a memory - a collective memory that is deep hidden since a long time. The common man wants to share his bad memories. But conventional history does not provide the opportunity to do so – because histories are always written in good taste.

The research will allow the inhabitants who are associated with the city to share their bad memories of the city. The research will undergo an ethnographic study of experiences of the people in the city. These experiences will be collected in the form of stories or narratives. The narratives thus collected will help in re interpreting the history of the city in an alternative way – where the city of Mumbai will no longer be available as a platter for beautiful dreams. The research allows the city to reflect upon its unpopular past by looking through the bitter everyday memories of the ones who make the city.

Methodology

The research will adopt a qualitative mode of collecting data including in depth interviews as the prime generator of stories. Therefore, the study will primarily depend on ethnographic surveys and learn about the city through people’s past. These stories will be collected from people who share memories with the city.
These would include people from different areas dislocated during the numerous rehabilitation drives. Stories may pertain to the rise of slums or the rise of the working class in the city and therefore look at a particular economic section of the city, which drives it. The increasing migration in the city calls for having interviews with people who have been outsiders since a very long time. The research may look into stories of existence of people in the city, the struggle for space. An interesting aspect of the study could be to study the increasing fear with the city as an instrument. These would include the experiences of everyday travel, a comparative analysis, and in more recent context the fear of crime and the underworld within peoples mind. The everyday negotiations and the tensions that these create – exploring the meaning in – “I need my space”. The purpose of the research is to bring these difficult narratives together to stitch a history of the city, which may not be pleasant. In other words, the idea behind the proposal is to construct a history of the city through bad memories.

The ideas discussed above may seem to be more contemporary, but the research suggests that there existed times when Mumbai went through a difficult phase. Secondary sources for the project would be newspapers discussing stories of individuals, which will be used as pointers, local magazines that discuss works of local people and events and other relevant books from libraries where stories can be studied.

Studying and tracking blogs of people might also be an interesting way to understand their perception of the city. The nature of these people would be difficult to detail at this instance.

The research aims at collecting these bad historic memories of the city, which are never discussed considering them to be offensive / harmful or distasteful. Such memories do not contribute to the touristy image of the city; neither would it allow freedom for envisioning a dream but will be very realistic. Hence, these historic memories are never talked about. Thus, the thesis will try to construct images of the city through layers of experiences instead of physical markers and at the same time, it will try to break the popular notion of the city being a dreamer’s island.

***
A proposal that did not take off.
(I now realize how it could have been so much better!! I lacks major literature review. But the proposal was almost prepared in no time...)

Energy + Design

I was talking to Parameshwar this morning and he told me about his post graduation course in sustainability with TERI. He had some interesting facts to share with me.

I had always assumed that windmills are those vertical fans. We make gross assumptions here. Wind mills were mills - they used the mechanical energy to do work. (one such tableau model can be seen at the Nehru Science Centre). That means, the rotation of the fan would be used to do mechanical work (and it was not converted into electricity). What we confuse them with, are wind turbines. Wind turbines convert rotation of the fan into electrical energy. Unlike the vertical fans, there are also horizontal ones, which are very beautiful and perhaps more efficient. It would be really interesting if we started incorporating them in our designs. There are so many types of wind turbines - the helical, horizontal, vertical, etc. We don't even know half of them...These are extremely sculptural and would make great design elements instead of installing dead statues on our sites... 

You can just google them as 'types of wind turbines'

He also said that for tapping geothermal energy, one has to dig almost 10 kilometres below the earth surface. India almost does not have any scope to tap geothermal energy because there are no volcanic bellies here. The ones which we had, have now gone dormant, and hence not really usable. Iceland, which he said is the land of fire and ice, is fetching a lot of geothermal energy. Why I am writing this here is because I was assisting the Services course last year. While teaching Electricity, we pass by these facts so breezily, and students make it petty when then reproduce then in their answer sheets. However, we could possible engage such details in building design. The building forms could become huge machines generating electricity. We haven't considered inhabiting machines that probably could sustain our projects...

Regarding hydroelectric power stations, I had always presumed that the turbines must be placed directly under the water fall. But it's not so. Water collected in the reservoir is taken through pen stocks to the power station. Pen stocks are 2 metre wide pipes which push the huge turbines that produce electricity. 

The biggest problem with renewable energy sources is that they are intermittent. We do not have constant supply of sunlight, wind, etc. So, Parameshwar said that we actually end up installing 4 times equipment required to actually generate the basic energy that we consume. 

I am absolutely fascinated with all these technologies. Perhaps the static nature of the buildings disturbs me now...but i think we can creatively engage with exciting technologies which not only help us in addressing the question of sustainability, but also of creating exciting forms in architecture.

Thinkers of the World

The Architecture of Architectural Institutes II

An inspiring space to learn.

obviously: Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad.

People reading this post are encouraged to discuss the subject here.

Haridwar again

Fruits