Saturday, April 20, 2019
The Problem with Our Stars - II ( Or Architectural Journalism in the Information Age)
So
much of how we look at design is based how we have taught architecture, and
also how a legacy of celebrating certain ideas, personalities and design
“trends” have shaped our own acceptance, understanding and stance on what might
be considered good architecture. The fundamental basis of marking judgments
usually relies and is formed by this at a rather early stage of our lives as we
become part of world of design.
Our
first instances of design and appreciation come from names and personalities
and critical acclaim attached to those names and projects.
While
good design is usually the ability to arrive at clear and manifest expressions
of purpose and experience that more often than not is the result of many year
(or instances)of practice.
This
many years invariably translates into a reputation, a certain sense of
celebrity, that then overtakes the discernment and appreciation of well
designed ideas and slowly turns into a celebration of entity that implies
directly good design (whether it is perceivable of not).
In
the age when books and the cost to write them, to print them and the need for a
captive audience necessitated the need of a certain degree of repute and
personality to ensure a successful publishing, but that age is past.
In
the age of digital media (4g, Instagram and online publishing through blogs
etc) and a much wider platform and faster speed of putting data out and also
the opportunities that the many digital platforms offer to generate
conversation, I find it problematic, that Good design still seems to be the
domain of the celebrated Design professional.
So
what’s stopping us? Is it that there is little good design happening?
Or
is it that the conversation around design is rarely the conversation about
design but more the conversation around the designer and why this or that
represents good design in a wider body maybe (but surely reputation) of good
design.
So
when I see internet and social media based Architectural journalism / curation
and content creation that does little more than merely replicate the printed
mediums.
The
lack of need of infrastructure, and the freedom and independence that the
digital platforms afford seem to have little consequence on the conversation
and content. And most surprisingly has had little contribution to the discovery
of outliers and design that is actually testing/ stretching / breaking new
ground.
Is
there need for it? Yes, is there scope for it, given the minimal content
available and the sheer volume of work being carried out, and the scale and
geography of the subcontinent? Put simply, the scope is immense.
Will
it be economically viable? Yes.
That’s
a no brainer!
So
then why aren’t we seeing more of this?
Most
models online even seem to rely on An older process of delivery, where architects
and designers are asked to send in “material”, that includes self celebratory
write ups and documentation on their work, this process models itself closely
on the footsteps of the dead or dying “masters”, with a acceptable level of design. These look more
like advertorials!
I
have been guilty of this. But as practices desperate to get heard, and eager to
get our message out in the cloud of noise that is design journalism, you can
forgive the practices!
But
why isn’t there more frontier journalism,and more exploratory? And why isn’t there
a uproar for this kind of material. Why don’t we see your journalists/
architects/ writer setting out armed with smartphones and 4g, with blogs and
Instagram ablaze!
Why
isn’t there a loud clamor in the design circles calling for this kind of
content?
And
can it be a collaborative model? A network or people willing to share, converse
and actually have a meaningful Architectural discussion that goes beyond the
names!
Of
course everyone wants to name-dropped after a certain point in time.
After
years of teaching at a few design schools, and having the good fortune of
spending 6 years at Undergrad at SPA New Delhi, I think the answer is how we
are introduced to Design and Architecture, where the case study seems to be
central to the establishing precedents of good design. But never seems to
stop there! And it becomes a debilitating exercise of name dropping and
reputation.
But
you can call content curated, if you will, but you cannot call it journalism if
all you are doing is featuring contributions from the architects themselves
without the slightest attempt at generating discourse!
But
if we want discourse, we have got to be ready for a little criticism! (And
if there is one thing I have learnt from the few wine-filled dinners (that I
have started to avoid) and fewer meaningful talks and discussions I have
attended in these past many years – Architects don’t seem to like criticism!
Much of our architecture is pattern book stuff (High modernism when modernism
is long since dead) or Stylistic interpretation like post-modern, (when we
didn’t even have a modern) and form fantasizing. Not to say there isn’t grounded
architecture that is geographically / culturally rooted and socially relevant –
but those architects are not among our stars. And sadly, there’s little being
done to add them to the constellations of our sky!
Monday, April 01, 2019
Of Architecture, Museums, Oversimplifications and the Taj
I am tired of hearing
that the Taj Mahal is fantastic architecture
and
it so follows that if people can
appreciate the Taj, they can and must have good Architectural taste.
I'm paraphrasing, but thats pretty much what was being expressed.
That’s like saying I
must know good food because I follow Gordon Ramsay on Instagram! But I turn
up my nose at the local Aloo-Tikky joint. (Or I watch Masterchef Australia!)
And, no, a tomb made
by an emperor to remember a dead wife in an exercise of monumental excesses,
arguably the most intricately and ornately decorated still would not be my
benchmark for good (let alone great) architecture in the subcontinent.
To me it is an object
in the landscape.
Like a icon, a flag, a
post, appreciated and viewed singularly for its place in the distance in a landspace, as an place to be photographed before.
A marvel of
construction, proportion and shape, and craft, definitely but architecture?
Also the common discussions
around the Taj, rarely, if ever, go to the Char-bagh, or the Masjid and its
mirrored Aaram Ghar, or how it fits in a larger landscape or urban precinct,
those I have heard only in the confines of architectural conversation
between very lettered conservationist, and architects.
No one I know thinks
of the Taj beyond its celebrated imagery, its marvel of an Object-in-a-Landscape
and the phenomenal pictures it lends itself to from every angle, like a finely
crafted curiosity, that attracts travellers from all continents to marvel at
its perfection. It is a wondrous tourist attraction, surely, but is it
architecture? We could argue that.
Does it fit the
Vitruvian Ideal? Commodity, Firmness? Delight? Or the 10 markings of
architecture? How does it address climate? Or shelter?
Does it belong on that
bank of the river? Or is it contrived, Kind of like the Guggenheim at Bilbao?
And the word is divided on Ghery’s Bilbao( i’m being polite when I say divided,
but we will leave it there)
But that isn’t why I
started out on this.
As the epitome of the
Mughal Tomb, does it automatically become great architecture? And even if
it does (although i’d argue it doesn’t) does an ability to appreciate the Taj,
an easily acquired (sometimes considered a default human birth condition even) automatically
translate into an ability to appreciate and recognise good architecture
elsewhere?
Or is that some sort
of oversimplification?
Or more,
condescension?
I’m tired of the logic
of this - the ability of recognition and appreciation of established and over
exposed examples of classical architecture(and I write architecture to address
all the examples we may come across) being touted as a demonstration of an
ability to appreciate architecture in all its complexity in its much less
tourist-loved and academia obsessed vernacular and contemporary models that
populate the places and spaces of our everyday lives.
So why am I raising
this?
So there has been talk
about a museum of architecture for a while now and i’m wondering how we or
anyone will go about deciding what is good architecture and what merits
inclusion and what doesn’t.
(And please don’t throw
the “buildings designed by eminent architect” criteria at this, if it weren’t for
the name, there isn’t much to most of theose buildings in most cases.)
The Architectural
press and the glossy journals do an awfully bad job of this, with an absolute
lack of any kind of critical investigation, where firm invariable contribute
both written and visual material and articles are more like author monologues
of “design” celebration, even when there is little design and less to celebrate
about it.
So how else?
The contention that if
you can appreciate the Taj you can appreciate good architecture is, well less
talked about, the better. And even then i’d argue that the Humayun’s Tomb complex
is possibly higher in Architectural value as well as in its opportunities for
learning and demonstration of Architectural thinking and purpose than its Agra
Cousin, that is more an exercise in aesthetic brilliance than anything
else.
But to me it doesn’t
end there, to a culture and a consciousness that views life as cyclical and regenerative, a
tomb being the bench mark for architecture for the living is somewhat ironical
If you said temple?
Would I have the same Discussion? And if you are going to bring up Khajuraho? My
response is an emphatic YES! And for possibly the same reasons!
So lets not bother to
revisit the argument.
Much of our
appreciation and acknowledgement of our own architecture comes from the volumes
of Fletcher and Tadgel, who did a wonderful job of documenting our historical
monuments, but seem to have been driven by a collectors view, of cataloging,
classifying etc these structures with a Art Object view on them. While the
documentation is exhaustive, it speaks little of culture, tradition, life,
landscape (but being dead monuments mostly, you cant fault that), almost a
taxonomists delight, those, but do very little for an understanding of
architecture as frame for human life.
And nothing for the
humbler cousins, the vernacular of the varied geographies that make up the
subcontinent and have nurtured life for innumerable generations but have been
skipped by schools and architectural historians in the their ever westward
looking view (barring for a token study somewhere in the earlier years of
architecture school)
Also, most of us at
architecture school are taught to appreciate buildings as architecture because
a certain name is attached to them.
So how would you
appreciate a good example of Kumaoni House?
Or wait,
Would you appreciate a
good example of Kumaoni House if you raved about the Taj Mahal? Or would you
Rave about a Matharoo Building because you find the Lakhmana Temple in
Khajuraho the finest example of temple architecture?
I think not,
The world’s rife with
oversimplifications, but as an architect, oversimplification of architecture
I’m not very good with!
P.S. i thought i'd post a picture of the Taj, but sadly i don't have one of my own, but im sure the internet will flood you with a million pictures of it in less than 0.08 seconds, as for the Kumaoni House, please visit Kumaon!
