Institutions and their Idiosyncrasies

Institutions are intimidating. I always fear them initially. They have their own rules and codes of conduct and they expect you to know them before you engage with them. I wonder if it would be different in case we knew the conceptual operation of any institution we want to interact with. Nevertheless, the lack of knowledge that you are made to feel when you enter institutions is what makes you feel miniscule. Each institute has its own language - own terms and its own grammar. They always take advantage of this language and operate within the loopholes sometimes for their advantage.

People working in any institutions have mastered their own languages and operate in idiosyncratic ways. Sometimes they surprise you, sometimes they amuse you - but most of the times, they make you angry. This anger is towards institutionalized ways in which they behave and expect you to behave.


I have been running around banks these days to get some papers arranged for my financial records. And the more they ask me to wait for simple things, the more I get irritated. So I started recording idiosyncratic behaviours of people in bank. The following is very judgmental, sarcastic and has to be read in the frame of my mind in the bank, waiting for a simple letter stating my account balance in another currency:


"Most women in banks work like housewives. The way they handle paper, the way they write on official documents and the way they interact with machines (printers, computers, scanners, etc) is absolutely like they are cooking food. Basically they mishandle everything. The last thing they would think of is a misreading that could occur due to their bad handwriting, erasure or damage that may be caused due to their improper handling or trouble that customers may land with due to non functionality of machines. But this is not only true of women, most men too behave so. I don't know if this critique comes from my institutionalized aesthetic towards paper or because of the values instilled in me during my upbringing. But one thing that I am certain of is that the above errors I pointed out are purely functional and have no aesthetic implications. Each act at the bank involves figures which relate to money. And one may not disagree that all matters relating to money have to be handled with utmost care and discretion. 


This woman poked multiple pins in the document that she was supposed to finally hand me over. Not only that, in order to poke the pin, she folded, almost pinched and crumpled the paper spoiling its entire crease. Forget the crease, the way she put the bank's rubber stamp on the paper was so hard, that the ink blurred and the stamp print appeared like an impressionist painting. No one in their lives could ever understand which bank I hold an account with. The whole purpose of getting a bank stamp, I feel is lost. Now, it just remains as a blue stain on the paper, completely disregarding its own content and all information that lay below its ink. Inspite of sufficient white space on the paper, this woman official chooses to bang the stamp on the most irrelevant space. Banging the stamp to get an impression on a document is like a ritual - it has to be accompanied by the loud sound. Somehow I think, these officially relate a 'good' print to the loud noise that is produced while the perform the act of printing. And a compulsory part in the sequence of all this conundrum is the ritualistic mess up with the prefixes 'Mr.' & 'Mrs.' with the names. Quite obediently, this person committed this mistake too.

The handwritings of bank officials are prophecies by the pen they use. It feels as if some divine intervention occurs through the ball point of the pen. The words they write are least legible and can only be understood by who wrote it. Handwriting specialists may make theories out of such coded writing. For others, they are squiggles on the paper. Although they must be considered very valuable. It matters what transcends from the ball pen to the paper through their hand. For the bankers on the other side of the table, it's almost an ordinary job done. The value of the work is only to be understood by the client, not the worker. 


In such ways, institutions hone their staff. They perhaps employ staff who are ready to take endless pressure and perhaps express all the frustration on the tools they use or work they do. The work is an artifact - a signifier of their frustrated lives. One can curate a potential art exhibition of it! I am afraid I am not an expert. But it would involve an elaborate team of specialists, psychiatrists and artists to give more profound meaning to the otherwise quotidian work that the institution employees produce.

Portfolio Planning

Architectural Drawing: An Inquiry III

Is it out of nostalgia, the love for the past or the critique of the present, I dont know. Why do we always find our pasts comfortable than the present? This post is a continuation of the dialogue on drawing as an act. And in this section, I am thinking of the tools we used to draw, versus those used today.

I am perhaps trying to document shift in a certain kind of drawing culture. The shift has caused changes, and through my own bias, I undervalue them. Shift in culture of doing things changes values we associate with them. 

(Typing has become boring and in my note book, I make very diagrammatic notes - like concrete poetry. The interface of a blog in its conventional format does not allow it. So these days, most of my posts end up becoming very fractured and without elaboration. Pardon for that - that is also a culture shift). However, I will try to explore diagrammatic writing on this interface. 

Below is a list of activity > old tool > new tool list. All activities are related to drawing:

Activity	Old tool	New Tool	Remarks
Drawing a line	Lead wooden pencils: minimum grades	Lead wooden pencils: multiple grades Clutch pencils with different points	Students use different pencils to draw different intensities of lines.
Sketching	Coal / Coke sticks	Charcoal pencils	The way in which one handled a charcoal stick changes, hence the way in which one draws changes
Erasing	Conventional cubic erasers	Pencil erasers Erasing shields	Students take lesser care in the first step of drawing
Inking	Rotring pens	Microtip rotrings Stabillo	The care taken to make edges meet is lesser. The care taken to preserve the tool is lesser.
Straight lines	Foot rule, drafter	Rolling scales, adjustable setsquares, stencils, etc	Things happen faster and the culture of cross checking dimensions is fading away.
Sharpening	Cutters / blades	Sharpeners, electronic sharpeners, etc	Sharpeners are becoming redundant with the coming of clutch pencils.

Students now carry different pencils to achieve different grades of lines. Back in our times, our professors taught us to use a single pencil to create a variety of line intensities just by correct application of pressure. Is it too late to re-instill in students this value - since the uses of using only on pencil are purely logistical - it saves the time you spend in switching tools and it saves the space the new tools would otherwise occupy. It also avoids chances if losing or buying expensive items.

Tools are always devised to overcome shortcomings. Few baseline shortcomings can be underlined as the issue of speed and the issue of facility. These ideas take larger meanings over time, than just their functional values and tools become objects to possess. 

In the remarks column, all statements point at a certain way in which value system is changing. Our ways of looking at a drawing versus the students way of looking at a drawing must be imagined through the process in which the current generation is operating. Otherwise, we may leave ourselves dissatisfied with the kind of product the students are offering us.

-----

WORKING QUESTIONS:
Do our tools control us? 
Or has the possession of these tools become a style statement?
Or are there new deficiencies of skill which have devised new tools? What does it say of our culture? Do we belong to a culture that capitalizes upon every kind of human activity - whether efficient or deficient? 

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.