What is a School?

We never really asked that question over the semester. And how do we ask it architecturally? When we ask "what is a school?" in an architecture studio, what are we really asking? Or, what do they really ask, when architects ask "what is a school?" Are they asking how a school functions as an organization, or are they asking questions about pedagogy, or are they asking about the process of education, or the way in which knowledge is transferred? Or are they asking about the way in which knowledge is a spatial function - that to do with the design of the surroundings and its knowledge, and how the structuring of space aids a certain kind of educative process, or how the building environment teaches you, inculcates a rhythm or discipline amongst its learners, or how a good environment impacts the process of learning...
What when the question of designing a school is inscribed within the urban question? What is a school in an urban area? What schools does urbanity need? How does urbanity school us? Is school a function of urbanity? Do schools shape up through forces of the city? Does the urban mould knowledge differently? 

How does the urban, after all, influence architecture? How does the experience of the city find way into an individual, and further the built form? Are the users of city space conscious of the constructed experiences they live in? How do we even ascertain that and map such subjectivities? How are these processes relevant for design processes, and who validates them?

Teaching architecture within the question of the urban almost always ends up in an obsessive reproduction of the city. What is the obsession of urban designers to represent and draw the city as close to it as possible? What is the joy of doubling up the city through its reproductions like drawings, models and diagrams - those which also begin to turn life into an object - the pretty looking portraits and models?

There is a moment when the drawing makes the city more pretty than it actually is. This imagined prettyness soon takes over the reality of design processes, rather takes the reality of design into an imaginary space where laws of the land no longer stand valid. The personal morality works thereby, defying and destroying existing buildings and forms that do not follow the logic of the self created order. However, only those working on the field will be able to say how knocking off buildings, even if hypothetical, is non ethical. A faculty quite rightly pointed out: "These are the crises of the urban context. We have to understand them instead of defying them."

What position do you take when you actually choose to ignore the difficulties of the urban condition? In a "what-if" scenario, isn't one actually escaping the urban condition. In such a situation, the city studio focus becomes almost pointless, because in the first place, you have tweaked the city into your own personal imagination, which in effect makes you work as if you are working on a blank slate. Is the studio about creating real life solutions or imaginary engagements? This dilemma can be answered in many ways. However, what we have to decide is whether we want to engage with the difficulties of the city as it is, or as we would like the difficulty to be? (Yes, I am hinting that we begin to imagine our difficulties too, a hypothetical problem for a hypothetical solution).

Do we want to use the city merely as a backdrop, an artefact for our architectural projects; or do we want to engage into its conditions that pose a unique problem? Until the end, I was not able to to figure if we did really want to engage with the difficulties at all. It was not clear if we were testing the real or experimenting the imaginary... What after all was the "thrust" of the "city" studio? 

Is the city just studied to give us theoretical and physical handles for one;s design methods even if these designs may clearly be insular for the city dynamics? Can the final design, evolved from a "method of the city" be called "urban" and serving the city? What after all do we make of the urban context?

What do we mean when we talk of a city studio? Is a city studio about different kinds of urban responses? For example, in a dense fabric, you can

• clear the site and build
• build with/over existing fabric
• redesign the existing building
• create and intervene with a "what-if" scenario
• just propose a program
• create a temporary structure
• change laws
• rework circulation
• change character of buildings

and so on.

All the above are different design responses, and all of these seem equally pragmatic - some executed within the framework within the bye laws, other for which laws are released or eased. There could have been an academic inquiry within these different methods of urban intervention. The studio did not delve into any of these. I would like to pose, finally, what are the ethics of urban intervention?

Students made designs, ending up into an engagement in architectural form, and further how they can be theoretically read to respond to the city. We teach them story telling, most of the time. It takes much more courage to build architecture that is pragmatically possible but also theoretically tight. But theory can not become a matter of convenience, or a handle for story telling. Every one bought something from the process. Of course. But does it make them into a better architect, or a story teller? I wonder!

The Power of Cynicism

Cynicism creates a moment of dissent that is serious yet not harmful.

NOBO - North Bombay

Before I left for the USA, I remember obsessively capturing the city spaces in my phone camera. It was a ritual for me to empty the hundreds of pictures I would click every month into a well organised folder structure in my computer drive. I have more than about 2000 uncategorised pictures of the city and things I was clicking in general. I wasn't really a photographer, am not one even now. But there was something that I was "seeing" in the city then - something that interested me.

For my first year in the US, I took a lot of pictures too. Initially it was the newness of the place as well as the new phone that I was perhaps exploring. However by the second year and the end of my stay in the country, I started feeling too bored to take pictures. The place became boring to shoot. Moreover, it was so pretty that I was fed up of it. Further I also feel it was so strictly planned and each piece of architecture was so meticulously designed that it forced a certain kind of structured gaze of the camera. One could only shot those buildings in a particular way else they wouldn't give you the "right" effect.

After I came back in India, I have hardly photographed the place I encounter while traveling, essentially the northern suburbs. I have now been back for two years in Mumbai, and have merely added two more folders with a few pics added to the collection. In the beginning I was wondering if I have just grown out of the phenomenon of taking pictures. I thought that i had done it enough and would just be taking photographs for the heck of it.

Today, for some reason I feel that it is more about the part of city I traverse to and the mode in which I travel that has caused me to look at the city space quite differently. Unlike earlier, I travel to the north of the city instead of the south now. Essentially I move against the dominant motion of the city every morning. In some ways it is great because I escape almost all traffic and also that the place is much closer to my house. However what I have also come to realize is that actually the morning train travel to South of the city was much more interesting and visually appealing than the current northward journey.

Over my train journey to Dadar from Goregaon (North to South Bombay), for example, I would get actively engaged in looking at the emerging constructions  and perpetually changing landscapes along the railways. I could see the incomplete buildings, layers of landscapes at a vantage points, old and new fabrics juxtaposed, the geometrical architecture of the stations framing the city, the follies of unused redundant platform structures, and so on. Moving through Dadar every morning too, was a fascinating encounter with hundreds of commuters as well as shopkeepers setting their stalls around the precinct. The walk offered one of the most intimate sensorial experiences. From the school (Rachna Sansad), one could see at a distance the way in which new architecture was slowly transforming the low rise, sloping roof settlements. Seeing this kind of a change as a distant observer allowed thought to constantly reel in the head.

The northern suburbs, on the other hand, have a very different vibe. Awkwardly fussy, the places are hard to fathom. There's no particular architectural character to any of the northern suburbs. Indeed there are sub cultures but as an urban form, all are pretty uniform. Moving through the suburbs is no exciting task. Most of these suburbs have taken upon them hideous-looking and bulky infrastructures like the skywalks that, while allowing you to trespass the chaos on ground, become endless bland corridors with little scope for human activity. Over my road journey don't get to see any thing, besides the glass malls and cellular residential complexes - those that become more and more gated day by day. There are no public buildings so to say, except the aesthetically devoid institutions like police stations and ward offices.

I don't know how to describe this loss - for the reasons are compounded. Firstly, I have not seen any thing worthwhile in the north, and that has resulted in a poor photo-documentation of the place! I wouldn't know what to talk about the stretch even if I took pictures of what I see around me! Such factors immediately point us to think - what architectural value does the northern Bombay hold for any one? Beyond the Prithvi Theatre or Juhu Beach in Andheri, one can hardly count any places of public interest in the north-western part of the city. Cultural institutions like Dinanath Mangeshkar hall, or many similar spaces are not designed to be public in nature. Acutely closed off to the public, cladded in glass and aluminium curtain walls, these precincts repel people physically as well as visually.

Other places such as the Film City has forever been closed to locals. The BNHS and the national park are the natural reserves that have become mere functional recreational landscapes for most. Besides, these are not places that are easily accessible to everyone, especially those who live beyond the railway lines towards the West. In addition, these are hardly places where communal events for the city can be organized. A common cultural space where people can spend their time, loiter, engage in art, music, dance and such other activities is almost absent in this part of the city. Lacking cultural infrastructure, the north remains dormant, and garners no interest amongst the youth, who prefer to travel south for their recreational cravings.

I have also come to believe that in the absence of such events and happening, there is something distinctly identifiable as a "north-bombay mentality" - a deeply middle class, bourgeoisie world view that thinks of the south as work and the north as living. The students' worldviews (having taught at Rachna Sansad which attracted students from all over the city) differ, their ambitions differ - most of the times much narrow. These are repercussions of a space that suffers low cultural value in its built as well as intellectual environment.

It is true that these observations have become starker after witnessing the "suburbia" in the West. For a long time, "suburban" was a term so close to me that I never read as "sub-urban" but "su-bur-ban". It might sound laughable to the readers, but that the "sub-urban" becomes a second-grade life of the urban; a step down in hierarchy of environment, a "less happening" (as my sister-in-law would point out, who grew up in South Mumbai) place became evident to me only through my alienated experience of the American suburbia, removed from my own. Yet, the American suburbia is much more polarised than what we live in, and I will spare that comparison for a different time. Meanwhile, I look for ways in which I can make the northern suburbs of Bombay more interesting for myself, beyond the adventures of Essel World, Water Kingdom and the Golden Pagoda!

Tree house in National Park

Designed by a young tribal boy in National Park, this is one of the finest and most organic tree house I have witnessed in real. I have not seen (m)any tree houses, but of the several designs I often see on the internet, the labour of love and inventiveness in the working out of many details of this shelter is evident. The house is literally supported on tree branches, and the access to it happens through a ladder crafted into the branches, sometimes nooks of the tree itself.

As you reach up, you are taken into a series of enclosures that are formed by woven mats, karvy walls, and the tree itself. Windows and doors are framed using discarded wood frames of urban houses. There are several rooms on the first floor, along with a cot as well as a washing cistern (lying dysfunctional). Each room generously opens to the outside or a balcony appropriately scaled to the tree. The house is cozy, yet comfortable.

Overall, the house becomes a gateway, allowing people to pass through it. It is a marvellous piece of architecture. We are told that a leapord had once climbed up the house and fell down as it rested on the edge of its balcony. After that, the house lies abandoned in fear of animals. We climbed up the house to relive the imagination of this young untrained architect.

Art at Vile Parle

Our students painting the Vile Parle Station Overbridge. Ideas from Sol Lewitt's instructions taken one step further along with colour palettes from Wes Anderson movies.
People walking along seeing the art work are enjoying the shapes and colours. An middle-aged guy paused and asked - "Is a bird going to fly up from here"? Art makes people think in new directions. Good art provokes the appreciation of everyday surroundings.

Lines like tracks become clouds and blend in the air. Reminding of speeding trains with puking smoke, the art work connects back nostalgic entry of the steam engine into the city 150 years ago, yet in a celebratory, contemporary spirit. Colours of the day and night, compliment the environment around as well as themselves within the canvas.

Many more readings. However, later!

On the inauguration day:

Escalators / Elasticity

Elasticity

Rapidly modernizing with technology, cities like Mumbai constantly present their inhabitants with a range of new objects in urban space to interact with. Several infrastructure transit nodes are now installed with ATVMs (Automatic Ticket Vending Machines), LCD indicators, air-conditioned coaches and other such automated paraphernalia. However, one of the most significant additions is that of escalators at all metro and train stations. Unlike in shopping malls, these escalators are open to be accessed by a completely different class of users. People of all kinds in the city - young, old, infants, men, women, villagers, migrants, rich, poor are subject to this new animated object that takes them from one floor level to another.

While plugged in as a relief to reduce friction of mobility, avoid stampedes during peak hours, making commute accessible and easy for all, the watching this piece of resilient machine in a public space like the railway station of Mumbai is pure entertainment. Every morning I see novel encounters of people with this machinic animal. Women in saris pull them high to avoid their flowing ends to get into the complicated machinery, children wait for their parents to land them on the rising steps, villagers look astonished and puzzled in deciding the right moment to step into the moving platform, they wait for others to hold hands and give them the confidence and assurance that the machine wouldn't overpower them, or many are confused where to keep the hands once on the moving treads - finally holding the shoulders of strangers standing besides them... It is pure joy to look at such first experiences with new technology. In their apprehension and curiosity, people begin to learn and discover a new city. The escalator becomes an elastic medium that gets people together in a unique way, resolving and releasing new tensions of the city. At the same time, does this not become art in public space - if one considers the pure function of art to amuse people in a way that they find their own selves?

This was an article written for a column on 'Urban Delight' to the theme of 'Resilience and Sustainability' for a magazine "My Liveable City". The small write-up didn't make up for the magazine because I could not provide photographic evidence to qualify it as urban delight. Given the unexpected nature of encountering the event, as well as the constraints of framing a natural shot of the techno-cultural human act, it would take a lot of work and thinking to get this done. However, I have also come to realise that a city like Mumbai cannot be proved to be visually delightful. Most Asian cities are about living and being - and it is challenging to capture its life visually.

Few days after I closed off on the writing, I went to a mall where I encountered what I wanted to share. Low light, lack of camera skill, limitation of technology - all the issues came back. Nevertheless I took a video. Perhaps, this would still work to get a sense of the kind of delight, and hesitation I aimed to talk about.

The article is a reworked version of "Escalators" post on this blog.

The Golden Pagoda, Gorai

Two days ago, Dipti (Bhaindarkar) and I decided to visit the Golden Pagoda that is right off Gorai - pretty close to our school. The plan was just to get a feel of vacation - something that all the other schools are having right now. After much procrastination and thinking about the heat, I gave in to Dipti's idea. 

Taking the boat from Gorai jetty and reaching the other end of the city was quite fun. I had quickly made myself aware of the location of the Golden Pagoda before we left - which is when I realised that it was right next to the site of Essel World. I was quite surprised. The first time I visited the Pagoda, I had taken a road route and it seemed to be quite far. When I saw on the map, I became more aware not only of the proximity of the place, but also the geography of Mumbai more closely!

When landing from the sea side, you have to walk about 800 metres from the jetty point until you reach the entrance. Basically, the pathway to the pagoda is a shoot off from that of the Essel World. The pathway is banked with gabien walls and almost zero foliage - and in addition you may not find any internal transport to reach the pagoda. Not that it requires one, but in excruciating heat, for old people and some emergency situations, it's just nicer to have some transportation to take up upto the entrance of the pagoda.

I was quite flustered walking in the hot sun and approaching the monument under the open burning sky. While one would assume that the positioning of the staircase frontally is supposed to take you inside the pagoda axially, in reality you have to walk all around the building to actually enter it. The entrance is discreet, and hardly noticeable, lost in scale. What is further disappointing is that no one apart from those who have done a 10-day Vipaasna course can enter the main dome of the Golden Pagoda. Thus, all we could do is enter a transparent tunnel from where we saw the large column-free domed space above which, the sacred relics of Buddha have supposedly been kept! In about a minute, this spectacle was over.

Dipti and I came out almost instantly, because we were already sweating and the interiors of this tunnel had no air circulation at all. Escaping from this suffocating space, we decided to sit down under one of the massive columns. I took a nap on its plinth while Dipti sat thinking nothing (or looking around). In my usual cynicism, I kept complaining about the poor detailing, the hollow flooring, the gaudy goldens and the cheap decorations onto the Pagoda. Everything seemed extremely patchy.

After our nap, we decided to visit the canteen. Located in the underbelly of the pagoda are some carelessly kept art galleries, and further, the canteen. A large flattened sweeping space, the canteen sucked at any kind of aesthetic. Should such an expensive pagoda deserve a canteen that has column-beam lowly ceiling and the cheapest of plastic chairs and tables? It had no view, no natural light or air, nothing! I wondered what spirit of space they wanted to create? But wait - did they even think about the spirit of this complex in the first place? On exit we saw the plan of the site, and it felt like the final year design project, something of the sort of a "Mediation Centre" of an average student from the architecture school.

The return journey was nicer. The sun had set and we took the boat, where although we couldn't find a seat, we saw the pagoda in soft light, along with the louder ones of its counterpart - the Essel World rides. At that moment, a new landscape revealed - on one hand was  the a place of entertainment, pleasure and earthly phenomenal delights. while just adjacent was the Vipaasna centre, the place to leave all of one's worldly desires. One was shouting out loud while the other was sitting quietly. One where life was bouncing from the ground, and other where life ideally retires. Seeing them sitting together side by side as we moved away from it on our boat on water was quite fascinating. Floating between the two ends, we kept taking pictures pondering at the absurd profundity of city life.

Architecture & Politics

A few months ago, a friend shared with me the announcement of a conference themed "Architecture and Emotions" that called for an investigation into how politics and governance come to frame the intellectual mood of any State and harness architecture a vehicle to translate such emotion in its physical environment. I keenly submitted my abstract since the topic interested me a lot, although, my paper wasn't selected. ‘The State of Architecture’ (SOA) exhibition that opened almost subsequently seemed to look at some linkages in how architecture was inscribed within the political developments of the country over the last 65 years. After some study and pondering although, I felt that SOA was quite unsuccessful in drawing attention to architecture as a function of politics through its recycled rhetorics. In addition, some of the political events like the Emergency of 1975, that the curators chose as marker of the exhibition, did not seem to integrally influence architecture within the country at all.

Thinking of a more nuanced analysis on politics, architecture and identity, I am reminded of Arindam Dutta, now the director of the PhD program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, who in his undergraduate thesis at CEPT culls out much more than what the exhibition could put together on the walls of NGMA. Dutta’s thesis charts how the idea of India was defined post independence by Government’s conscious and regular initiation of several cultural institutions that became the medium of infusing ideological and political thought within the intellectual sphere of the country. The interaction between art and architecture, and the role of political ideology in translating the ethos of the times into physical environment emerges softly in Dutta’s thesis. On the other hand, the material showcased at The State of Architecture exhibition made me wonder if contemporary architects in India, are in any way even able to grasp the political situation of their State, and able to find a language / method to translate the political impulses into their built works? Do architects realise the potential of architecture to be an object for cultural and political interrogation and investigation?

Right around the time of the exhibition planning, the Indian State had imposed several restrictions - including beef ban, pornography, and so on. Many such decisions have deeply affected human and spatial dynamics especially in the networked society of today. (Think of housing societies that do not allow muslims or non vegetarians, gated communities, ban on public display of affection, policing of public spaces, etc.) Without getting into details of how, (which would call for another long blogpost), I would like to mention that it was an excellent opportunity for the curators to play on the idea of “state” - 

a. as an integrated political community, 

b. as the architectural  condition with regard to its internal structure and its role to report, or 

c. to express something clearly and afresh.

I felt the pun on the word “State” was hardly emphasised in the execution. In fact, ignoring the questions of communal disturbances caused by some recent decision of the new BJP government in India that were still fresh during the inauguration of SOA, the curators inaugurated the SOA by the lighting of a lamp - a predominantly Hindu symbolic practice.

The end of this exhibition was seen by a yet another political upheaval. Kanhaiya Kumar, the president of Student Union at JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) raised questions on the idea of nationalism, the issue of curtailed scholarships for students of the reserved category studying at government institutions in India. Kanhaiya Kumar’s episode was a snowballing of several other politically charged events within the country. Primarily, this event was only followed by the suicide of Rohit Vemula, a dalit student pursuing his PhD, whose stipend was stopped after he was found to be raising social issues under Ambedkar Students' Association on his campus at the Hyderabad university. Not to forget the award-returning by several intellectuals and prominent cultural figures in India also took place in protest of the government's moral and cultural policing.

Realised during such charged political and intellectual mood within the country, the SOA exhibition almost seemed to look away from questions of secularism, nationalism, casteism, free speech, constitution and many such cultural issues were raised by several intellectuals. SOA's curatorial endavour did not address or provoke the architects in responding to these charged political events within the country - those which shape our ideals, ideas and thereby our institutions in their intellectual and physical spirit. (I understand that it would have called for reorientation of some of their planning - but there was no attempt to even add a lecture in discussing these issues that frame the political mood in which cultural production of architecture is imagined).

How does architecture - one may ask - play a role in provoking political questions? What within the scope of architectural production, allows to stage and perform such inquiries? And how can architects participate actively in shaping the society?

A friend once aptly summarised: "Architecture is the manner in which politics takes form." To be sure, it is architecture through which questions of identity and memory take shape in the built form. It is only architecture that is able to preserve the ethos of a society in its material and spatial structure for the longest. It is through architecture that the political structuring of a society is often understood, interpreted and analysed. The Greek Forums, Roman Republics or German Reischtag - all buildings talk of the power dynamics of their times. Artists like Michelangelo or Ledoux (and so many others) have demonstrated how political situations of the time can be encoded into the built form of architecture.

The designed buildings in our surroundings today merely reflect their submissive tendencies to capital and the forces of market, eventually becoming more and more vulgar day by day. There is hardly any conscious attempt by architects to translate political ideas of their context within their built works. What we are left unfortunately with, however, are just ideas for building Shivaji and Ambedkar memorials. No one is even interested in debating what it would mean to build such monuments in the age of so much political disparity and technological advancement. If these expectations seem too idealised for architecture to address, the temporal nature of an exhibition can experiment them within its schema. Politics, after all, is performed (and constituted) through the institutionalised body - the everyday actions and gestures, the structure of language we use to communicate and the space that emerges through these. The modes of seeing, engaging, interacting, positioning, framing, displaying, revealing - essentially all architectural tactics - can be employed in the temporal space of an exhibition to provoke the user to challenge and question the existing power structures. In reworking these spatial gestures, the exhibition can destabilise the normative to pose fresh questions in thinking about space, body and politics.

Just a few days ago, filmmaker Madhusree Dutta quipped quite an important point. Quoting the example of her father, she went on to demonstrate how our everyday thoughts are completely governed by the political ideology of the State. Madhu’s story, the specifics of which I now forget, demonstrated how her father who never was extremely patriotic became extremely nationalistic towards the end of his life essentially because of the political mood created during that time by the Government. The fact shows how our moral values, codes of conduct, ethical principles, world view - everything is contained in the educative machinery put into action by the State. Change of such political ideology, resulting due to several reasons like change in leader, change in governing party, etc also has an effect on the individual’s imagination of immediate space and the world at large.

State Governments, in the policies they frame and execute, instill or deprive its people of certain sense of confidence with which they perform (in) and take decisions, in other words, think their everyday lives. Average people, who do not necessarily have the critical skills to question such policies quietly accept and establish such beliefs as normal. It is here that Madhusree added another important corollary. In the given societal structure that we live - namely that of the joint family or the nuclear family - a person is forever a constituent of the family - a small part of a large institutionalised machinery. How can the ‘individual’ survive in the (non-liberal) family?

Self criticality, a value that is often a function of independent liberal thought, can only be nurtured in self-questioning. Such inquiry of the self is not possible unless one is allowed enough space to experiment and test one’s own thought. The institution of the family works against any construction of the idea of the ‘self’ or the ‘individual’.  Individualistic endeavours within the family may be seen as disrespectful, or even selfish. In such a scenario, how do we expect the majority of a population to be self-critical, if the idea of the self, or the confidence in one’s individuality itself is absent? It is in these ways that the political mood of the country works itself out - an intricate mesh of macro and micro conditions.

Architecture in the country gets produced through such macro and micro conditions. Our architects lack individuality - and this is not to gesture that building styles don’t bear signature styles of architects. I mean to hint at individuality in terms of self-criticality that one ought to develop within this overwhelming political mood that the State creates for the average countrymen. Only when architects are able to rise above this political bubble, will they be able to create buildings that catalyse political action, as well as serve the society at large in the capacity of being public intellectuals.

RIP Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid at Yale during 2013, talking of her works.


The World Beyond Ideas

The Hastings Hall was full, so we had to move to the overflow area. I still remember - people queued up for long, and many still didn't manage to get a seat. Her talk was defiant, plain and direct. She kept flipping through her works without delving much into their process. It was all about the "experience" - leaving the audience with the potential of what architecture can achieve, as she says, beyond ideas.

A colleague from Yale once discussed, "I think she is depressed"
I asked, "really?"
She said, "Don't you think so?"

I felt it was an interesting proposition. Zaha was exceptionally different. When she moved around the studios at Yale, even the air around her would be under her command, but as if, she has made private friends with her own environment. From a distance, she seemed warm but guarded. Perhaps, it came from her own history - her being an iraqi woman architect. All these three identities constructed her into a distinct figure.

Anyway, I am glad I was able to see and hear her in person. It is always inspiring to see confident and famous people talk. You know the environment they command and create. And you also know how it makes you feel, and how you would want the world to feel around you.