Boredom

If there is any thing that I could write here, it should be about my absolute boredom with the current state of my life. I think I am done with this city and there is nothing more Mumbai has to offer to me! Although I haven't seen the entire city, every new place I go could be categorised into some kind of generalized experience. I went to Dharavi yesterday and I didnot feel any thing different, just before that, I had been to Ghatkopar and I felt like I would feel in all typical neighbourhoods. A few days ago, I had gone to Brinda Somaya's office - yeah , that was something that made me feel as if I entered a different area, the huge walls screening of the docks and the sea. That was interesting. But over all, the fort and the suburb has nothing new to offer.

The events in the city are mundane. The fast paced life is machinic. Not that I didnot try to unwind myself: I enjoyed at Namrata (Shah's) engagement over the weekend - we danced, jumped, ate...But why would I feel bored? I wonder!

I have written off to Sen Kapadia and Vandana: Both have been extremely helpful and cooperative. I have no interest to undertake those projects now. I could have ended up in great papers on their practices. There is a sudden lack of motivation to work on it now. Project offers come and go. Design ideas don't occur to me. Studios are dull. Teaching is exhausting...

?

But I am not even working enough, producing enough...sometimes I feel I should take a sabbatic - just go to some asylum. I am wondering if I can carry it on for the next year...!?

From the Sky Walk

Goregaon West.

Academics - A Fractal of Reality

I think as academicians in the field of architecture, we take more pleasure in the production of representations of the real world. We love to get beautiful work done from students on paper. We like good drawings, good models: all good looking things which are a miniature version of the real world. Do we feel happy about it being more pristine, clear and pleasing to the eye as compared to the reality around us? Are we too disturbed by the adulteration of imagination as it becomes real? What kind of a world do we live in - that of the comfortable 'experiment' space where we can change colours or materials to suit the eye. It's only about the eye. That which looks pleasing to the eye. On the other hand is writing, which can slip from within our hands...

Yes, academia produces questions, criticisms, debates. But the nature of frustration that professional practice brings is absolutely different and could completely validate the physicality of the built environment. I guess the biggest factor in profession is time - the time in which you deliver. Imaginations get crunched in this time machine. Other is the reality of economy, unfortunately. And lastly, all material things that manifest ideas. I am recalling Plato and his idea of the ideal being something that you could hold...

But I have to find stronger role of the academia in the built environment - not just that of the training. How much of training does the built environment reflect anyway? The professional any way has an different institution through which he/she operates. Its almost like brain washing - what you retain from school is only the factual knowledge. It's a pity that those who want to engage with critical questions only can teach...I am wondering if profession can allow / look beyond time, money and material...I am sure it can, and it has, but the extent is very less.

Anyway, why I thought of this was thinking of all abstractions that we make in school to make things look good. I had this habit of making models as they would look in real  - so I had really jazzy colourful models. Later I started making monochrome models - but buildings are not monochrome! And in addition, people like multiple colours on their walls...But in school, its probably all about the aesthetic, or rather am I getting too driven into it? Hmm, point to note.

Pedagogical Deviations

Over the last year, we were experimenting with a very bottom up approach. We would give the students problems which completely throw them off and force them to question if that is what architecture was. Our projects revolved around strong theoretical ideas and issues and we were able to raise important issues through conceptual solutions that students unknowingly brought to the table. The faculty was interested in thinking with the students and I felt, it was an interesting way of working.

However, by the beginning of second year, we realized that students had no idea of scale and proportion and still drew their drawings as if nothing mattered. They had no idea of logistics of space or proportion. Staircases were randomly placed or unresolved, rooms were obnoxiously proportioned, there was no relationship between sequencing of spaces, no response to anthropometrics - something that we thought was a matter of observation. However, students failed to even think about all of it. This year, it was scary to have designs which had no idea of proportion and scale - even when questioned about it, students were in oblivion. This is when we realized that we need to address this aspect critically in our upcoming projects.

As a result, we started thinking of very pragmatic projects, limiting the scope of thinking and response. The project like the play school, which the second yearites are currently working on - is a fairly simple, infact simplistic project. Inspite of this, I do not see conceptual ideas coming through. There is a big gap in the students' mind in relating the programme with the space and user. There is no inquiry into how the user behaves. No one thought of their own childhood - all are working like scientists, trying to manifest it into a formal idea, which itself is based on very weak grounds.

If I was to say that our initial projects in first year were about form (Marrying Machines), constructability (Building out of waste), expression (Expression space) and function (Building New Grounds), in respective order, the students have completely ignored the learning out of it and infact brushed it off. It was disheartening to hear from them that they felt that those projects never addressed 'practical' design issues. I felt that was too myopic a judgement made. However, accepting their feedback, we thought we must try working with them on a practical project and see how well they receive it. It is always difficult to channelize a project without a theoretical stand point for me. The project "Playschool" does not appeal to me, because one does not know how to channelize thought. They have been asked to work out the design through mathematical principles (eg. Fibonacci, fractals, modular, etc.).

Before the mathematical principle, one has to arrive at an idea. This idea across the class is a landscape of randomness - none of the students have come up with a relevant idea, that even relates to a child, or a play school or the organization of a building. Probably what I mean is in such a project, any idea is workable - and then, how do you contextualize? None of them have yet, gone into their childhood to dig out any aspect that they could manifest into a project. But then, there are these vague ideas of working with rhymes, music, dance, sound - all of which can we dealt with in so many ways. The lack of theoretical stand point does not allow to channelize a direction specifically for this particular project.

But eventually, we are moving towards the same random design method of the old school: give a project - student brings an obscure idea - nudge it to make a project. Eventually it will become something. My problem with this is a large amount of literal translation that becomes foolish buildings in our built environment. For example: a child is like a blooming flower, so the building becomes a flower; or children like basic shapes, so the building is a concoction of triangles-circles in plan, which eventually extrudes into a cake form. That the school is a place where knowledge grows - so the graph of growth of knowledge becomes a building; that it should be a happy place, hence curved forms. Such cliches shape our physical environment and a brief like this does not address it at all, in fact, it allows them to take it forward and make it build-able. It is the academia which has to address such issues. However, that's not happening right now.

We always chalk out objectives of the project but we never evaluate at the end of the project if students have achieved them. Most of them don't. And with the current 2nd year class, they ignore much of it, rather, they question the objectives itself! That's silly. But this pedagogical shift which embraces the old school programme driven projects are disappointing and unfortunately become monotonous engagements with a singular site.

I know this post has become fussy - I am not clear on any thing mentioned here. I have not stated what is the deviation, because I am not finding the right words to articulate...but eventually I would elaborate.

The Architecture of Non-Reason

"Why can't architecture be illogical?" asked a student.

I answered in the classic modernist way - that architecture is not absolute sculpture - and that thus it differentiates itself from art, that it is for a function and that it has to serve a larger community. That no architect can generate buildings (event if it was for the self) without considering logistical factors. That sculpture does not have to follow rules..." and so an and so forth...

To which, another classic, but un-informed response - "But all forms work..."

I said: "Yes, you put a toilet block in the middle of the road and it shall work - but what as an architect are you offering?"

Ah! Classic statements (I have educated myself on this while I was studying in my SYB Arch fuelled by my angst regarding role of an architect and what we are supposed to do? these were explanations I was satiated with...)! However, to me this debate was outdated and it did not take us anywhere. Sometimes, students ask questions which they themselves do not believe in. (I felt so with this one)

(my problem was the misplaced question on illogic: a brief that demanded an inherent mathematical logic to arrive at a design solution must not have harboured such a question which absolutely seems a-contextual to the project method)

I have been thinking of writing on "The Architecture of Non-reason", which shall ironically be logically reasoned out. I haven't decided on how and what would I write on it. But the trigger is my recent engagement with documentation of Sen Kapadia's projects - absolutely unreasonable. One can't even call it absurd: It does not even fall into a logic of method - he makes purely a-typical objects / spaces (as he would prefer to call them). He calls them intuitive. His buildings are absolutely un-relatable, abstracted to a level where one has to struggle to make an association with the reality of the world. 

Below are some images from Sen's office - and I have purposely chosen images I do not relate to. In all images, I see the manifest of non-reason. He would never justify even if my threw my question in the most direct way. 

The architecture of non reason perhaps works through intuition. Intuitions are one time decisions. They are untamed. They appear and die, one does not make plans for intuitions, they come on their own and go away! They do not have histories and hence are free of associations. Can one justify intuitions? They are not empirical or scientific, yet correct  most times - or at least decisions made intuitively never make you feel dejected. They qualify themselves as acceptable, and certainly one can not demand explanations for intuitions.

That is how the above architect works - with the idea of non-reason. But I am still not sure if non reason is a reaction to reason. Is it the struggle to be unreasonable that one makes such alien forms? Are these objects from another planet? They certainly do not qualify as poetic formally, the look like remains of some dead object, or something that has smelted, melted, eroded, in the state of metamorphosis - non conclusive. 

However, I have to elaborate some pedagogical deviations or revisions in the next post. Meanwhile, the post has allowed me to surface some points to elaborate my argument on the idea of non reason.