Badran at Academy

Academy in a long time hasn’t had the privilege of having a person as renowned as Rasem Badran. The Jordanian architect was invited to share his thoughts on architecture for the Annual Lecture at the Academy. In our endeavour to work towards finding a language to deal with the issues of fast globalization and changing cultures, Badran’s lecture was appropriately themed ‘Tradition and Modernity’. It would be worthwhile to reconstruct the summary of the lecture through the conjunction of the title. ‘And’ signifies the temporal property of two things happening at the same time in Badran’s work. This is seen not only in his work, but the representation of his work too. Two questions that I must raise at the outset are: Does the technique of representation guide the kind of architecture we make? Can a certain kind of architecture encourage a specific kind of representation?

Badran introduced the audience to his background thought process through his sketches right since his childhood till his thirties. He spoke of his fascination towards aeroplanes and his interest in photography. Often taking photographs from aeroplanes (elevated space); he found similar patterns in the vaguest of things. Grids of houses with lines of buses, city skylines with lipsticks and cosmetics,  reflections of sky in water with farmlands on ground – all these pairs of images brought out a dialectic of issues that Badran’s work deals with. This ability of linking up contexts in different scales was unique of Badran. Further he used these images to establish his position within ‘and’.

Badran believes that the hand is the transcendental medium through which one converts thoughts in the mind to an expression on paper. Therefore hands are the means to the material manifest of our minds. Drawing is therefore an intrinsic process towards realization of all his work. Badran’s sketches are rigorous, attempting to structure a social space through his architecture, which he recorded in his childhood sketches. Therefore he works towards drawing the essence of this cultural space into his present work.  One reads in his drawings, dialogues between the past and the present. His work is familiar, yet new; it recalls the past yet suggests a future...

His work came across to be extremely urban – one that would only follow a systematic analysis of the context of the site, linking an architectural project to the larger dynamic of the city. Drawing axes, movement and sectional study diagrams, his architecture is an attempt at ‘place’-making. His buildings seemed like always there, his housing projects were almost civilizations. He successfully breaks down his monumental programs into smaller portions which become spaces that are absorbed by the city. His buildings are never pretentious and never express any desire to stand out. Infact, they blend in their surroundings often bringing a fresh experience of an otherwise everyday space. This can be particularly noted in his projects with religious programs.

Towards the end, Badran shared some of his contemporary works which showed the constant struggle to balance his ideologies with his next generation of architects, including that of his own son. He urged the audience to believe in the potential of the hand over the mind of the computer. This conviction comes across very strongly through his method of working. The vertical buildings that his office now handles too show signs of breaking down the monumentality into smaller fragments – perhaps to achieve a certain territoriality, a feeling of emergence from the ground. It seems he maintains it through his representation – the non changing browns of his sketches echo a certain connection to the soil.

Badran over the next two days interacted with students at Academy over his sketches. His dialogues through sketches re-established into the young minds, a love for drawing as well as their own contexts. 

Drawings

Techno Cultural Schisms

Today morning as soon as i entered office i saw parmeshwar and we involuntarily struck off a casual conversation. He passing told me that he forgot his mobile phone at home. As he was leaving, he remembered something and turned back. He asked me if he could borrow my phone to make a call at his home. Initially i felt he wanted to inform his parents that they must not call him during day in case they wanted to contact him. But he went on saying later that he must inform someone at his him to switch off his phone.

I offered him my new touch screen Samsung ace and he was perplexed. He honestly and boldly requested me to dial his residence number passing a quirky remark on 'touch screens'. I enjoyed it. He waited patiently for his mother to pick up and respond. As soon as his mother picked up, she herself reminded him of the fact that he had forgotten his mobile at home. Going on further he asked his mother to switch off his phone. He waited for his mother to get his phone and then began: "press the button on top left and the bottom left...', and then kept on repeating... Although his mother tried hard, she couldn't figure it out. He went on explaining her to press the 'red' button. She didnot register. Paro silently gave up as if he already anticipated his mother's failure. He concluded suggesting her to get it switched off from his father.

This is the story of our struggle with the technological revolution. We crib, talk, try, cry and adjust with technology. We use universal references like top, bottom, red, white, etc to make others understand about it. These references too fail. The idea of serial pressing and operations donot work. Manuals of technical languages for operating gadgets fear away the older generations. The older generation would have been happier if they only had to press a single button. Or just pick up a call like that on the landline. For some.like marketing people, such struggles become USPs of their innovated products that resolve some cultural issues in technology. Others build up on agencies that can demonstrate to them...

Inspite of all this, i think we can only get to the next level of technology digesting the half baked developments in this sector.

Naiharwa / Kabir

Note the Lyrics. Personally, I like the Kailash Kher version more from his first album Kailasa.

To be read with this post on dagagiri

Seven Social Sins

Internal aggressions

Why does one look to move away from one's own context? What is the need to travel? Why does this occasional internal desire of fleeing away occur? Which kind of space constructs such circumstances? Are these implications of social space? One of the prime reasons i want to go away from my place is because it has remained too conservative for a very long time. From parents to seniors to friends to students to most colleagues, all are so narrow minded and so closed to the world that this place seems almost suffocating. The social institutions bask in their own rotting principles and it is almost impossible to overturn the educational instituions anytime soon. Hypocrisy is another large value, the inheritance of which always puts a fake mask on the name of progression. Everyone claims to be open, but want to be in their own comfortable positions. It is like a moving wheel just lifted slightly above the ground. Everything seems to be happening but we don't seem to be moving ahead.

We have hardly been productive, since we seldom commit. Commitment is a responsibility. Every responsibility has risk. Perhaps that is why we fear to commit. Being productive would mean opening up ourselves for judgement. If we become productive, we can look back and see we have created and thus can evaluate ourselves. We hardly leave such traces behind thus making ourselves difficult for interpretation. Perhaps that is why we are a land of mythology and poetries. We take a lot of pried in our history of non-building or the idea of nothingness. Everything is layered and open for interpretation. For some time, i too would have loved such layered past since it allows deep penetration. But it also makes us an extremely slippery and uncommitted race.

We take a great pride in this legacy of ours. I am fed up of such slipperiness. Perhaps this is not an age to afford slips. I can not slip now to damage my crucial bones. I need to stand and therefore develop a position to be able to open up different perspectives. Perspectives will allow multiple views. Poetry shall follow - after all, i began my life with it. I want to go out to become more rational to be able to appreciate my own context of irrationality. Irrationality perhaps may not be a correct word that exactly defines the spirit of this place.

Although they say that the grass on the other side is always greener, still at least from here, other developed countries seem to be much more progressive and receptive to different ideas. "My world" is only a construct of my own limited exposure. It is made up of people i know and things i am around. I need exposure to make comfort with the place i live in. I need to know if other contexts are as difficult to live. I want to test if i can stay with myself for long enough to produce ideas.

Peeling History

Falling buildings have along railway lines of western suburbs have revealed to me another layer hidden behind the facade of an existing interesting building. Layers of urban fabric morph into new forms in the process of which they expose glimpses of hidden cultural manifests that are never available to us otherwise.
One wonders how to capitalize on such events to record moment which will be soon lost to the monsters that will again cover the temporarily revealed history.

The city is an evolving script which changes its own interpretation depending upon the position of the viewer. The changing visuality through the door frame of my train compartment manifests the above idea in reality. It seems as if suddenly someone decided to cut a new section through the everyday city.

Academy of Architecture: Studio Space

Fruits again

Terrace Cultures

The absence of terraces in high rise buildings has disrespected an old atmospheric culture of people in India. People in India share a distinct relationship with the sky and celestial bodies. They begin their day by worshipping the sun and eat their food on certain special.days only after seeing the moon. Festivals like Id and karva chauth are so closely tied to the worship of moon.

High rise buildings hide them off, create difficult viewing tunnels. Pent houses further eat up terraces. The space of the terrace in a building which was once public and readily available to every member of a building has now been lost to wealthy people who prefer to live above everyone commanding grand views of the city. This reflects the capitalistic culture of the city that has eaten up old customs and traditions which people still follow.

Gardening, kite flying, feeding birds, keeping offerings for birds after deaths are all activities intrinsic to our culture which kept terraces as an active place. Even when buildings were four to five storeyes tall, one wouldn't hesitate to run to a terrace during the evening where everyone would meet up, play, walk, etc. Although four storeyes still maintained terrace culture, seven made it difficult. Later, these were too sold off to the communication companies or advertisement companies, to earn money for individual societies. Communication antennae occupy large amount of space on terraces and leave no space to move. Further, their installations are hurtful. Similar is the case with advertisements that come up on buildings. I remember going to a friend's house to view the Halley's comet when it crossed across Indian skies during the '90s, the then recent tall building completely blocked the view of the north sky from my old house.

Thus, the new urban forms have disregarded these very activities of people through which people connected to the world outside them. The sky scrapers have not left any room for people's engagement with the sky. Forget terrace for people, we do not even have enough open space to run out to in case of fire. We thus do not appreciate the different shapes of clouds, the hues of the evening sky, the moonlight or the pole star - which we all once gazed at through our benevolent barsatis. The sky is perhaps the only space which forces us to think that there exists another reality beyond our own. It allows us to penetrate deep into it and takes us to a macrocosm that we are only made familiar of primarily through our mythological texts. It is the space which the grand mother points at hinting to the devil's house and the place from where Santa Claus arrives. That patch of sky, which has stitched the quilt of memories is now a luxury of the past. Shrinking into the balcony, the terrace shall soon disappear (or has it already disappeared?) as an architectural gesture which allowed human imagination far deep into a cosmos that once chiefly structured our lives.