Newness

In the first year of architecture, it is so difficult to make students understand the idea of the 'new'. Students gyrate to nake something familiar. Something that they have already seen. Most methods to make them understand or take towards the unfamiliar are resisted. Under such cases, we see cliches. This is where the production of kitsch happens. To imagine the already seen out of some thing that has been a part of the everyday and has been used to create the seen thing earlier produces a kitsch.

The process of instilling the 'new' for us is pedagogically addressed as 'unlearning'. Unlearning is the notion of undoing thinking in the structures in which we are made to think by far in our life. At many instances I have wondered why must architects think absolutely out of the world? In the deep thoughts of our mind, we all want to be different, we all want to create different-'looking' things, we all want to create different things that what already exist. And after doing that, we want to debate about culture.

Culture heavily looks at familiarity and tries to root you in your context. Something that is completely contrasting to the above! These thoughts keep crossing my mind! It's funny, since I want to study culture to offer 'new' solutions! Sometimes, Dushyant's philosophies haunt me. But I have decided for myself that I am going to engage constructively with the material world as far as possible.

Coming back to the idea of new, we force students to create 'new' objects, often from the familiar. This is done through a series of operations from different disciplinary mechanisms. For example, we would take language, then mix it with visuals, then films and then sound and then building - all which have different languages. We basically want students to create uncanny objects - which are strangely familiar. We haven't devised enough methodologies to achieve fascinating results though.

Re-living Academy's Past

Suresh Singh has been officially re-appointed at the new Principal of Academy of Architecture.

I have always liked his systematic approach at managing things. His managerial skills are impeccable and I particularly remember how well he handled out building construction submissions during third and fourth year. He is a no nonsense person and believes in taking only tangible action. Although over the past few years, I have found him to become more and more cynical of the bureaucratic situations that he has been handling and grinding into. This must have rubbed off all his energies and enthusiasm.

But larger agendas for an institution can not be overlooked. My father always gives me the example of how graciously the old President welcomes the new one in the US inspite of whatever differences they may have. This is a sign of accepting a decision of the people and allowing fair chance to the new candidate to perform as per one's visions.

I thus welcome our old principal. Probably a benchmark to attain or gauge from here where the school goes must be laid down. As I prepare to sign off from the school, I will be keen to look at where it reaches two years from now...

Fact File
(personal observations)
the list would go on! 

Old v/s New

The first thing he did as he entered the principal’s cabin was removing the brass idol of Ganesha.	The first thing he does is to garland the large brass idol of Ganesha and light up incense stick .
He locates the problem for poor performance of students in the teaching methods.	He locates the problem for poor performance of students in the students themselves
He believed that rules must be challenged in order to progress.	He believes in the Dhirubhai Ambani rule: Never challenge / question the government
“The whole system is bloody stale”	“Why do you want to get into the mess?”
Believed in redefining the way in which system works.	Believes in obliging with what University has laid down for us.
Believes in taking the right decision (as per his knowledge) without necessary consent of the management.	Will not move any card at all without the consent of the management
Professional Practitioner	Associate Professor by qualification
Has only two degrees: B Arch & M Arch	Has collected numerous degrees
Makes people under him work hard	Makes people under him happy
Pushes for productivity quotient	Pushes for high happiness and satisfaction quotient
Fights for his principles	Keeps his principles and fights for his designation
Was disliked by most non teaching staff	Favourite of most non teaching staff
Pro technology	Semi technology
Pro young generation	Old school
What new are we doing?	What is the need to do new?
Optimistic	Cynical
Man with large messy ideas	Man with simple, less, effective ideas
Man concerned with intellectual progress	Man concerned with physical progress
Exposure level: Global	Exposure level: Indian
Personally writes recommendation letters for outgoing students	Asks students to write their own recommendation letters

Architectural Drawings: An Inquiry II

In conjunction to my previous post on Architectural Drawing, I wanted to bring to forth some examples for the elaboration of ideas expressed earlier. These voyeuristic pictures are taken in an examination hall - during a History exam, where students were expected to explain several structures by sketching them out. Most of these sketches are appalling, with little sense of scale, proportion or any architectural value. If I may say, these are more like diagrams which 5-8 year old children would make as their first impression of a building. The do not even have the sensuality of medieval artistic drawings.

This is not to say that such students can not become architects. But what is happening to the emphasis of the course on drawing? Computer softwares have definitely challenged the traditional ways of hand drawing, but which architecture college in India is that software savvy? We do not even have sufficient infrastructure to deal with such softwares in institutions. Therefore, it may not be wrong to assume the strong dependence of our curriculum on hand-drawing. Having said that, at the third year level, do we expect basic buildings to be drawn like above? Three years in the course, are we obliged to tolerate such frivolous attitude in the canonical understanding of built forms (scale, proportion, etc.) from students?

Does architectural education need to depart from drawing as an essential skill to be able to understand built environments? What possible re configurations in the physical environment can we imagine if
a. we have drawings like the above?
b. if drawings are not a part of architectural education?
c. if drawing as a medium is replaced by some other medium / tool?

etc.

It's time to seriously think what pedagogical turn we need to take, given the huge amount of intake in architecture courses, where we attract a thick bunch of students who do not necessarily have any aptitude for this field. We are just entertaining them on the money they have paid! Again, I might sound cynical. But the point is that if we need to maintain the wide spectrum of the course so as to allow all such kinds of people (interested and non interested), we need to harness any kind of potential they may have in pursuits of architecture.

(I am sure I am terribly unclear in the above paragraph - but the non-clarity is intentional, since i may end up becoming too narrow minded and biased in my opinion)

I think as basic exercises, following is what could be done in history classes:

1. Draw a square using scale
2. Draw a square without using scale
3. Draw a rectangle 
4. Make an octagon using a square
5. try drawing a circle without a compass
6. Draw a circle inscribed in a square
7. Draw 4 equal squares to make a single larger square
8. Draw two rectangles that make one square
9. Draw two squares which are 8 squares away from each other
10. Find the centre of a square

And the list continues. These are basic geometric principles we studied in our schools and most students seem to have forgotten it. Since this is school knowledge, one can not even debate about the entry of all kinds of fields (science, arts, commerce) into architecture. All above questions are directly manifestations of buildings. These are the ways in which our ancestors too must have devised systems to make their spaces. But anyway, one can go on. I am just trying to find out ways in which we tackle the current crisis...We are in an age of extreme ignorance.

Architectural Drawings: An Inquiry

At architectural schools all across the city of Mumbai (even India), there is an increasing discontent within the entire faculty body with respect to the quality of architectural drawings (the drafted drawing)  produced by the students. They complain of the lack of understanding of space and the inability to express their ideas of space through the taught skill of architectural draughtsmanship. The faculties who teach architectural drawing today have essentially been trained in an era where hand drafting was the norm and there was an aesthetic value ascribed to the quality of drawing one produced. Such training not only set their architectural flavour, but also their aesthetic choices. Architectural drafting, then, was an art form in itself. Such notions have come under reconsideration not only due to new preferences of production of architectural drawings (drafting and modeling softwares, etc.), but the direct influence of drawings on similar bland urban environment.

Over the past year, I did an exercise several times to ascertain my doubt with the reason behind terrible architectural drawings prepared by students from first till the final year of the B Arch course. I would draw out a basic architectural plan on the board showing various components of a house, using the accepted universal convention of architectural drawing (solid lines in varying intensities for elevation, dark thick lines for section, dotted lines for hidden elements of the building, cut-lines, crosses for voids, etc.).  The plan (typically a one-room house) would have a clear entry, plinth, doors or windows and a courtyard to be able to suggest an open space inside the house.

Then I would turn to the students and ask them to draw out a 3-dimensional visualization (a basic isometric sketch) of the same drawing. Given the bare basic drawing of a single room space, the sketch should not take more than 15 minutes to complete. However, even second year students would find it extremely difficult to draw out a simple room with basic operations of punctures, as shown in the drawing. At the end of this sketching time, I would find a range of responses:

1. The basic proportions of the 2d drawing are lost in the 3d. In certain cases, where the height was not mentioned, students were unable to imagine a comfortable (or at least conventionally accepted aesthetic/functional height) for the space.
2. The levels inside the house / room are not understood. A simple step down for a water body or a single step down for a court containing a tree is apprehensively interpreted with great difficulty as something unusual. 
3. The windows do not assume a logical sill level.
4. Elevation lines of parapets, porticoes or steps or ledges are mis read as high walls, or floor patterns, or nothing –they do not show any signification on the 3d visual.
5. Things that we assume: plinths, steps to go up, ledge to be of low height or parapets of a basic height, are drawn haywire. 
6. Dotted lines of voids, overhangs, roofs or canopies are almost ignored.
7. On being asked about movement, no clear ideas of circulation form in their minds. They would randomly begin explaining the building through a window or a door.
8. Structural systems are never thought of, even if clearly shown in the drawing. They donot structure the drawing
9. The inherent logic of geometric proportioning of plan forms do not occur to them.
10. Thicknesses, materials, etc do not become a part of the reading, even if indicated in the drawing.

This was a big revelation to me. I had to reconsider my entire teaching and talking with the students. Since the essential medium / vehicle that facilitated our discussions and dialogue was drawing, one had to make sure that students too knew the language of drawing properly, without which a conversation is not possible.

Through our learned conventions of reading a drawing, architects immediately visualize a space through the drawing / drafting. The visualization feeds the value judgement and further helps in taking personal design decisions. We are further able to anticipate missing parts of a drawing (representation)while we look at an architectural drawing. We ‘read’ the hidden aspects like structural system, circulation, quality of light, etc which are not evidently shown on an architectural drawing. We expect our students to understand and interpret drawings like such.

The reading of architectural drawings have become binarized into solid and void.  Very few students are able to understand the depth of a drawing. Today, they essentially grasp the contained space within the walls, i.e. the black for them defines the enclosure and the white is the occupied empty space. Beyond this, there is hardly any understanding of any aspect of space - volume, material , texture, scale, etc. that takes place through the drawing. Due to this fractured reading, the thickness of value too is reduced and architecture becomes a process in merely trying to encapsulate a space in novel shapes.

In the process of drawing today, students are increasingly distancing the meaning associated with the lines in an architectural drawing. The process of institutionalization of the architectural drawing (for construction purposes) was an exercise in assigning meaning to different types of lines. Thus, the thick line signifies something that is cut in section, and a thin line in varying intensities signifies the distance of lines in elevation. Dotted lines signify something that can not be seen while symbols of shapes stand for various other things. Through such signification, architecture constituted itself as a discipline. One must investigate some of the first drawings that were ever made - to be able to understand the semantic transformation of drawing to meaning.

We have always attributed the emergence of the abstract painting form to the introduction of the camera. We are now beginning to see the close relationship between painting and drawing, or the artist and the architect. While painting remains an abstraction or a representation, buildings surpass the representational form and manifest into materials that are available for consumption. This consumption feeds lives, hence its essential separation from art is necessary. This is not to say that the artist doesnot make art for his/her living. But paintings directly can not cause physical destruction. In that frame, buildings can be violent and physically bothering.

With increasing multidisciplinary nature of the architecture course, the established institutions through which design ideas are represented (here, the drawing) are beginning to crumble before newer softwares and representations. These new techniques form a new value system, and hence we see a new manifestation in our urban environment.

On the other hand, drawings have to be made extremely simple to read and understand by the layman for easy consumption. I am referring to the mass produced brochures of the mass produced buildings in our environment, which are given out as news paper ads or handed on the streets to passers by during advertising campaigns of reality projects. This process is about converting a drawing into a seductive image. It is the beauty of the image that supersedes the architectural value of the project. In other words, various processes happen:

1. The information is reduced to container and the contained. The drawing eliminates micro information like offsets in walls, room heights, etc.
2. The interest of the customer is in size and not comfort. (the shift of value from qualitative to quantitative)
3. The colour of drawing does not carry any meaning architecturally, but works towards an appealing image.
4. Functional information (like the North sign) become symbolic (for purposes of vastu); and symbolic information (like floor tiling or sofas) become functional (that suggest a certain  lifestyle)

This is perhaps going to be a part of a larger pedagogical work that I may undertake soon.

Final Juries

In final juries, all look good - the students, their work and the premises of the college! At the end - people are able to put their work together in a perspective. One sees different kind of students - those who keep peeping into other people's juries, those who keep preparing on their own presentation, those who help others until their turn arrives and those who are till the last minute, completing their own work. I was definitely amongst the last kinds.

The more I think of the past, I feel how futile it is to keep finishing one's incomplete work. Instead, one must strategize how to cover up the undone or incomplete work. It's the talking that takes much care at the last minute. In thinking the talk, one also clarifies why one was not able to finish certain aspect of a work. One is able to consciously look at latent priorities and decisions that just happened in the process. Juries must be confession spaces, which makes one confident of one's own process.

I used to love giving juries since it allowed me present my ideas to an external body of experts and receive absolutely unbiased critique on my projects. I would wait to have fresh perspectives and criticism on my work, to be able to take my ideas further.