Decolonizing Architecture

"It's like the person who had good handwriting was made the leader of Gram Panchayat."
- Prasad Shetty on the attitude in which architects were taught and imagined in the first few decades of the introduction of the profession in India.

"They were expected to execute the drawings to accuracy on site - so a person who could read drawings well and supervise sites was a good architect. But any good engineer can make a building. The architect must realise that his/her task is to craft space."

The Scattered Present

In the past few months, I have probably upset so many people around me, close, not so close, for reasons known or unknown, for aspects valid or invalid. My silences, utterances, all have failed me, all worked against my intentions. Neither did my actions bring me peace, nor did they resolve my dissatisfactions. Everything seemed to entangle more than before with every succeeding day. One problem resolved into another. How does one make sense of the situation, I don't know?

I shouldn't get into describing these events. The blog may have no longer remained a space for speaking aloud. I had always thought of it as a personal diary, but what a fallacy it was! Someone has said very aptly, that we all write to be read by someone. I wrote primarily to record, out of instinct, for myself, as much to be read, of course by someone. To be sure, this "someone" was an evolving version of the self, more than any other. Anyway, social media's publicness often leads you to strange forms of repression through self censorship, and as I write this, I am already worried of so many (mis) interpretations it might pose for some. But one is not ill-intended, as often construed of products and producers of social media when they go against an opinion or person. I don't even know how, and if I must begin to even elaborate it, because it will complicate so many problem-ridden affairs that pushed me to an outpour.

These days, I wonder how, if I were to, begin to resolve problems one by one; set equations straight again, rejoin cracking ends, crease crumpled edges, rework relationships...the imaginary dialogues roll in the head, and suddenly in a flash of negativity, things fall apart. I laugh at myself to the extent of disarray that I myself seem to have created, through my own distancing. But this moving away from things, was perhaps only to come closer to myself. Have I been so wrong that I can not enter myself even in bypassing the other? Or had I gotten too close to someone to make it too difficult for them to lose me? And could this conscious process of movement towards the self be labelled as "ego"?

I wondered for a long time on what is identity without ego, and how does one claim agency without having a sense of identity? Often, ego is seen in a pejorative way. But can a historically identity-striken person give up the pursuit of self definition when he/she achieves enough clarity to discern the feeling of right from wrong? How does one resist power that possibly could overrun certain unexplored dimensions of a productive ego? Such questions still seek their root, their location, for it is the place which will help address the means through which reconciliation may be sought out. Which hidden repressions have played out in the past to ruffle so much, so rapidly? Are these just circumstances that have conspired a difficult environment? How can so many forces and energies go wrong at the same time that they seem to make a world so disharmonious?

How would things change? Does one need to work on them, or wait for time to heal? If only I could foresee, I could make an intervention. I am tied into the existing circumstantial pattern that holds me back from taking new steps towards repair. What if situations worsen in my intervention, what if experiments fail, what if I lose more? Perhaps these need psychological attention? I remain unsure.

Undoing a Screw

Of the many phenomenal experiences, the first one I want to list is that of opening a screw that is tightened into anything. Unless you don't use force against it, the screw doesn't release itself out of the substratum. Thus, only while you push it in, the screw brings itself out. I have always found this oppositional nature of intent and action paradoxically profound.

Shall list more over time.

On 'Style' and 'Type' in architecture

In architecture, studies in image, iconography, symbols, style, and such other visual tropes are often seen as pejorative in the line of specific modern discourse that rejects ornament over building in the favour of studying its spatial configuration. To be sure, ornamentation over a building is the medium through which we "access" and "construct" historical narrative apparent in much of archaeological analysis. Can we consider the new urban motifs of the contemporary built forms for serious study in the present? How do we write histories of architecture by studying building ornamentations that get produced in the hypermediated space of information and exchange of images? My inquiry is triggered primarily in consideration of the question: how do the relief works at the two millennium old Kahneri caves in Mumbai gain more currency for architectural studies over the contemporary global fusion of plaster casts that are overlooked and dismissed culturally allegedly for their poor value?

We know for a fact that iconographic scholarship has been a serious practice, and scholars have invested their lives in understanding how intangible ideas get moulded into shapes and material. Iconographers have helped us decode for example, languages, codes and deeper myths around which ancient or pre-modern societies were probably structured. Several cultural products, including buildings are dated based on the motifs they carry - for they index the advent of technique and expertise, as much as adaptation and civilizational movement in history.  In this vein, would the iconographies of today not be valuable to write histories of built environment for the future? Would the transport and assimilation of motifs within a building, even if hypermediated, not be of any value to the architect's role as a cultural commentator? Often, there is a prevailing anxiety to embrace the discussions of "style" within architectural studies today. Such aversion is understandable in the register that often these become ready templates for uncritical building authors who want to reproduce effectual experiences through gimmicks. However, the articulation of a certain idea into style (that which becomes material), also underpins the ideologies through which the society negotiates prevalent forces for a given building. To reject the notion of "style" completely may not be wise - for in being kitsch, pastiche or even gaudy, it still holds value and comments about the dominant mode of production in a society. Can/should a society really free itself from 'style'?

The much celebrated Mannerist architecture of 15th century brought out unique commentaries on existing political tensions within the then European society through the subtle and subversive play of building elements to defy existing norms and beliefs. Architectural iconography became a poignant way thereby to encode a script of resistance, yet open up new orders of space and experience. (Mannerist, in fact, came from Italian maneria, which means 'exaggerated style in speech, art or other behaviour'). In the 18th century, the reinvigoration of classical forms in a pronounced and provocative manner by architects like Claude Nicholas Leadoux, Boullee or Lequeue offered critical social commentaries through their often fantastical architecture. This was a period that we know of as 'Neo-classicism'. The "-ism" must not be confused here to indicate a "stylistic" discourse, rather, a way in which architecture materially became a vehicle for certain political and ideological mobilization. More recently, in the 1970s, Robert Venturi's 'Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture' argued for embracing a certain vocabulary of architectural elements that modernism famously rejected, in order to produce a plurality of meaning which offers play in the everyday experience of architecture. Often marked as the key moment for a 'post-modern' discourse in architecture, the book influenced several architects who went on to create, yet again, provocative, humorous - sometimes even kitchy reproductions of architecture. Despite the role of architecture that offers social commentary through the mobilization of ornamentation - structural or applied (and certainly not devoid and divorced of parallel typological changes), there is a tendency to suppress the symbolic role of architecture, which is essentially negotiated through style. On the other hand, sytlistic (mis)appropriations are common  and index a range of values. However, can its discussion be totally excluded from historical analysis and understanding of the architectural object?

The discussion of architecture through style can be problematic if it is not undertaken critically, and delivered as a template of design. Contrastingly, we can argue that the speculations on societal structures based on analysis of building 'type' may be grossly incorrect, for we do not know the practices and precise myths which shaped these spaces. For example, archaeologist Suraj Pandit in his analysis of certain cave at Kanheri expressed how difficult it was to figure the function of a long cave which had stone platform strips with carved cup-shaped depressions at regular intervals. Was it a dining hall, was it a library, was it a place of preparation, was it a place of group mediation - we do not know! The diagram for all the above activities could potentially be same. How do we rely on typological analysis in such situations? In the contemporary times, in India, very few architects understand the notion of "type" - and thus, we do not see its active mobilization within our buildings. Often, default, accepted, already-formulated ways of organisation are replicated neutrally without understanding new contextual settings. The malls, corporate office blocks, the BHK - all are examples that exist in our very own environment that have largely been uncritically adapted and multiplied. Would architectural historians discard 'type' as a legitimate frame of analysis in this vein?

The opening up of new frames of architectural analysis must not reject the older ones. In this case, there is no need to denigrate the scholarship of 'style' in order to bring to force the analytical order of 'type'. Historians must be generous in accepting new frames of references through which the object of architecture can yield knowledge. The rejection of one over the other is a modern symptom which flattens interpretation to singular way of living and thinking. If we consider ornament as an integral part of building, what kind of building could we craft? Does the over-emphasis of type force us to think of buildings as an organization of spaces, rather than its craft? How can we marry craft with type, how can we marry ornament with construction in a meaningful way - not simply as an application, but as a way of space making? And in that case, is there a way to bridge the discourses of 'style' and 'type' for a more wholesome architectural history?


I have not detailed here the definition of 'style' or 'type' and the theoretical discourse around them. However, I expect that the readers will look into their histories and the criticism around them. 

Building Tongue

Of Left Over Spaces / Kashi Art Cafe, Kochi

It is evident that the coming of the Biennale has transformed the area of Fort Kochi. One visible change is the way in which the biennale ties together the spaces through an artistic schema. Another important aspect is the release or rather the creation of a public realm in the interstitial space of the home and the street. Numerous independent enterprises, mostly cafes, have come up in the verandahs of houses, run by the house owners themselves. These are generally extensions of the main houses, and thus accommodated in the porches, front yards or backyards. The innovative ways in which people come to inhabit and experience Kochi on one hand, and the utility of a cafeteria on the other is rather unique. I have remained intrigued of the way in which people imagine space to evolve into a new economy.

Another interesting thing is the way in which, in order to cater to such above economies, interstitial spaces - those between buildings get occupied.  Left over spaces like passageways, access routes get transformed into inhabitable areas. But these beautifully detailed and carved out spaces envelop the body rather intimately.  Smaller lean-to roofs create narrow covered spaces, leaving some gap for the light to enter from above, nestling courtyards within. Corners, window thicknesses, niches, plinths, parapets, all enliven the streets, without the need for people. Traces of habitation can make the experience of streets engaging.

(Geraldine Borio has studied such spaces closely in her recent scholarship - drawing from examples in Hongkong).

Below are some examples of ways in which seemingly left over spaces (my favourite is Kashi Art Cafe)

The Production of Ambiguity / 'Provisions' by Raqs Media Collective

published in Art India
Vol. 23 / Issue 1 / Apr 2019

The Production of Ambiguity

Raqs Media Collective’s show invites us to doubt our political and social bearings while revisiting George Orwell’s life, points out Anuj Daga.



The 3D-printed burnt biscuits individually encased and displayed on the French table at the Raqs Media Collective’s show Provisions at Project 88, Mumbai, from the 16th of January to the 9th of March, sharply comment on the French army’s trial accounts of the Paris Communards. The Paris Commune was a short-lived radical socialist and revolutionary government composed of the working class that ruled Paris for two months in 1871. Later, 20,000 of these workers were said to have been imprisoned in ‘hermetically closed’ cattle wagon-like pontoons with no sign of fresh air, thrown upon a heap of biscuits that reduced to crumbs under them. The prisoners in the dungeons ashore survived only on crumbs of biscuits and rancid fat.

In a continual reading, the lenticular prints To Ask When Empty mounted alongside on the wall seem to express the disorientation of those tortured prisoners. However, in a more general sense, the shifting illusory impressions of verb couplings like ‘To Disobey/When Told’ or ‘To Feed/When Hungry’ jeopardize quotidian causality. They invite the mind to flicker in their stereoscopic bracing of everyday tasks. How is eating/feeding and hunger controlled? When does one pour/ask into the empty/full glass? The variable relationships between cause and effect perceived in the lenticular shimmer as we move across space and time induce skepticism and prepare us to dive into a pool of doubt.

Palimpsests of perforated sheets in varied materials talk of toxicity, and ask if, humanity in the spirit of equity, may share contamination too. How does one map the distribution of decay and pollution, disease and contagion? How does pain overlap life-forms, and what kind of possibilities emerge between them? On another wall, a fictitious conversation between workers and robots in a factory canteen leads us into questions about humanity being reconstituted vis-a-vis artificial intelligence. Narrated in ten screen-printed newsprint panels that embody the act and materiality of labour and mass production, the story simultaneously reveals the inner mechanized lives of workers in confrontation with the enlivening agencies of robots. Over a short conversation, the worker and the robot confuse and confound their lives within each other.

These peripheral, seemingly disconnected distractions, finally lead us to the centerpiece of the exhibition – a film travelogue that weaves the artefacts in the show in the life and work of English writer George Orwell. Beginning in Motihari, Bihar, in British India, where he was born in 1903, the film draws context from his self-initiated inquiries into the experiences of working class people, his clever commentaries against social injustice and his ideological belief in democratic socialism. In its hand-held footage, the film becomes a diary written through moving images. Captions excerpted from various works of Orwell and other sources like the Pali canon appear on the screen as margin notes and allow us to remain close to the journey.

As one sits through the film, remaining artworks in the room uncannily begin to reveal themselves as annotative intersections across time and place. Orwell’s biography indexes several concerns regarding class, caste and self-identification manifested within the exhibition. Born to a lower middle class English father who was an Indian civil servant and a mother with French roots, Orwell’s short life kept drifting within the bounds of a transforming colonized territory. His reflective writings like Animal Farm, 1984 or The Road to Wigan Pier referenced in the film provoke the viewers to contemplate the fate of politics and people, and affectively tease out their sense of ideological bearings in contemporary times. Borrowing from Orwell, the artists ask, “Why not cultivate anachronism as a space time hobby?”

The film screen becomes a mirror through which the artefacts in the room biographically reflect each other in space and time. The choice of Orwell as the central subject resonates at several levels. His birthplace emphatically helps the Oriental subject identify with the issues of labour and land; his writings index subversive alternatives to the dominant regimes of capitalism; his travel alerts us to the risks of communist experiments; but most tellingly, Raqs’s own artistic practice invested in thinking through writing and critical journalism refers to Orwell’s. In following Orwell’s life journey, the artists revisit genealogies of several political ideologies and propose provisions.

Provisions takes us on a spatial, historical, literary and political journey and mobilizes the productive force of ambiguity. They claim, “In doubting, you create provisions for many people to participate.” Towards the end, the curatorial character of the exhibition begins to allude to Orwell’s allegorical Animal Farm and the artworks begin to relate to each other within a charged flux of political exchanges.

When does history begin to work itself inside me? What encounters occur within myself?  As I prepared to leave the industrial space of the century-old metal printing press, which is now a gallery, where the artifacts were exhibited, I gave one last glance to the lenticular clock prints titled Sleep Clocks. Are these the objects of industrial time that shape an individual into a worker or a worker into a robot? Do they come to direct further or release me? Inducing a flash of doubt, the hands of the clock moved, and made my world more provisional than before.




Raqs. To Ask When Empty. Installation view. Lenticular. 24” x 12” each. 2018. Image courtesy the artists and Projects 88.

Construction Sites - I

Khoj International Artists' Association, Delhi