Saturday, June 18, 2011
Power is a Wall
One of the truly great things about Lutyen’s Delhi is its non-jamming traffic, even at peak hours traffic might crawl but it never stops. So unlike the rest of our more recently designed and realized city.
Yes it has tree-lined avenues. Each fancifully planted to give joy to the motorist with their planned flowering and shedding of leaves. These roads are beautiful, and so is the stately Rajpath. But the rest of Lutyen’s, the famous Bungalow Zone, how many of us know what it looks like?
To the citizen the LBZ is a beautiful tree-lined hexagonal grid of pleasure drives. The roads are lined by tall, almost ancient trees, and over-preserved side-walks *, edged by fifteen feet high walls. What lies beyond the walls we will never know.
The LBZ is like a well kept secret, only revealed to the favoured eyes to behold. Old photographs tell a different tale, of stately edifices and well manicured lawns, behind polite fences. Setting a standard for living it up in a great capital.
It is funny how the Masterplan of Delhi, and architect after architect seem to moon over this hallowed precinct of the capital city – preserving, studying eulogizing, when all there is to it is a wall.Yes a wall is all that Lutyen’s Bungalow Zone is to anyone who cares to walk, see and look at this great city in decline.
If we lift our noses from our British History and its many eloquently written books and our own nostalgia ( for nostalgia read the previous post, and forgive the re-mentioning) that is what the objective eye finds. The “Lutyen’s Bungalow Zone” is a ghost town behind fifteen foot or higher walls. One does not even know if it is there anymore. I could just as well say that and there would be no way of telling if I was wrong or right.
But what got me thinking about this was a recent visit to Lucknow, to sit in the verandah of my mother’s ancestral home in the heart of the city. To sit there and look out, across the front yard, a small lawn, a low fence with a green hedge and a transparent gate, to the street out. And across into the park, at the phenomenally huge tree ( that even my grandfather remembered being there).
And then later driving past the latest and largest urban development project to be undertaken in the capital of the most populous state of India. One of present government’s numerous memorial parks to Kanshi Ram, the Buddha and the Chief Minister herself. Great monuments of celebration, almost hewn out of solid beige sandstone. A mammoth exercise of paving streets, carving out roads and building parks and adjunct buildings in vast landscapes for memory. Vast landscapes of memory behind walls.
Large, impervious, in-accessible, and unfriendly. In the hot north-indian summer, not a tree on the street, not a bench, but mile after mile of polished granite underfoot. Five feet at most six, and edged with immovable, impenetrable and colossal wall.
There is no apology in the stone walls stance, either at these great parks of modern Indian memory that rudely divide the city-scape, or in the walls in New Delhi’s Lutyen’s Bungalow Zone.
The powers that be very clearly drawing lines, between “their” and “our” city. Very clearly marking the point till which you are allowed access. Very clearly telling the citizen this is not where you belong. This does not belong to you,” Stay out!”. Drawing lines with tall, blank, insurmountable dividers.
It is hard not to notice this, but in the city of today and our lives, Power is(the right to build) a wall.
* Side walks in a land where few , a) can walk and b) are required to walk or c) even need to walk – depending on whether, a) you are a common citizen or b) need to get somewhere in the LBZ or c) live in one of the aforementioned bungalows.
Labels: capital, city in decline, history, lucknow, Lutyen's Bunglow Zone, memory, new delhi, urban development, wall
Friday, September 15, 2006
De-Controlling the Place
The city is slowly witnessing a kind of perfection in the expression of its surface. Observed closely what could be termed as civic “development” could also be seen as the slow but certain disappearance of the “unfinished” from our everyday experience.
There is suddenly a marked rise in the Engineered, “programmed” surfaces. It appears desirable now that at no point does the city user get to interact/commune with “raw surface”. A manicured interface as seal as if enclosing, with no room for the original. The engineered surface becomes the reference model of the planet. Nature assumes a fictitious, mathematical homogeneity. There is an altered model of “environmental” referance.
With the last two decades obsessive fear (of architects) of the ambiguous space, the modern day city has turned more and more rigid. The loop hole, the faux pas, the erratic, which would have been responsible for the chance happening seem to be altogether disappearing from the public realm.
The surgical precision of designed intervention and desired control over the place and space, seem to render almost all public space near sterile.
There seems no room for the non-agenda. The city seems to have no regard for the space without program or the space that denies program. The urbanity seems to eschew the lack of definition as dangerous. Almost unlawful, unsafe and pregnant with imminent crime. The physical construct must be definitive; the human being must be, at all times, subject to a directing influence. Autonomy is undesirable. The experience must be homogeneous. There is no room for the independent reading or alternate interpretation.
Architecture, if understood beyond the process of expressing it, is the scene for action. It is not event, but accomplice. A loci that facilitates, advocates and then continuously informs the event.
The event, however, is not discreet. One might argue that the event might be absent, yet, the possibility, or imminence might not be negated. Then absence of event might also be treated as interstitial event, or event per se.(Human presence or absence unrequited to formulate event.
The existence of place thereby directly and automatically translates into event. There is no choice or debate, or sanction. Space directly causes event. Space and event are synonymous.
Architecture must be aware of this possibility of event. And architecture must allow for the event. Event as the uncalculated human activity that will (once played out) add further dimensions, signification, memory, association and subsequently icon/identity.
The architecture makes for the event(architecture is not the event). Event is what architecture allowed, or what the architecture is not.
Event is where the architecture is not, the interstitial mediation between, within or without the physical construct that is architecture. Arising out of the conscious act of removal or non provision of the physical that allows for action to unfold and thus create event. Yet the architecture and the event it fosters are inseparable. Each symbiotically embedded into the others construction. Thereby architecture seeks relevance or import by/ via the loci of its absence or where it is not. A calculated removal of definition that allows for a definition of ambiguity pregnant with possibility. That allows for a human ingenuity, combination, and permutation that would be called event.
Thus the event is not architecture. The event is non architecture. The event is between architecture, within architecture but not architecture. Architecture is the non event.
In the future urbanism there seems no place for event. The excessive control seems to point at Urban system and a collection of human codified activities and set directives within its confines.
Calculated activity, regulated, quantified and defined is not event. These are process. Embedded into, and coded into the physical construct.
Where intended process is absent, event is possible. The new Urbanism seeks to “make” space for process. The new Urbanism seeks to establish process and deny possibility.
Possibility is event. The event makes place.
Architecture (to generate place) must allow for the subversion of process. It must allow for usurp-tion by other consciousness or chaos.
The appropriation of the place by use, and varying collective memory and consequently varying individual association.
loci : process : Architecture : process : architecture : process
_____________________________________________________
loci : architecture : no-process : event : memory : place
To generate successful place one must limit its architecture. One must establish limits it must not transgress. And at the same time define models or strategies by which it is to engage not oppose and antagonise the uncontrolled space.
The process leads to knowledge of process or activity. Process becomes everything . The machine is perfect the architecture is absent.
The absence of process allows for self determination. The possibility of the multiple and variation. The possibility of experience and event. The birth of association and eventually memory.
The beginning of Place
(The manifesto for de-processing space).
The need to de-control the (architectural) place.
There is suddenly a marked rise in the Engineered, “programmed” surfaces. It appears desirable now that at no point does the city user get to interact/commune with “raw surface”. A manicured interface as seal as if enclosing, with no room for the original. The engineered surface becomes the reference model of the planet. Nature assumes a fictitious, mathematical homogeneity. There is an altered model of “environmental” referance.
With the last two decades obsessive fear (of architects) of the ambiguous space, the modern day city has turned more and more rigid. The loop hole, the faux pas, the erratic, which would have been responsible for the chance happening seem to be altogether disappearing from the public realm.
The surgical precision of designed intervention and desired control over the place and space, seem to render almost all public space near sterile.
There seems no room for the non-agenda. The city seems to have no regard for the space without program or the space that denies program. The urbanity seems to eschew the lack of definition as dangerous. Almost unlawful, unsafe and pregnant with imminent crime. The physical construct must be definitive; the human being must be, at all times, subject to a directing influence. Autonomy is undesirable. The experience must be homogeneous. There is no room for the independent reading or alternate interpretation.
Architecture, if understood beyond the process of expressing it, is the scene for action. It is not event, but accomplice. A loci that facilitates, advocates and then continuously informs the event.
The event, however, is not discreet. One might argue that the event might be absent, yet, the possibility, or imminence might not be negated. Then absence of event might also be treated as interstitial event, or event per se.(Human presence or absence unrequited to formulate event.
The existence of place thereby directly and automatically translates into event. There is no choice or debate, or sanction. Space directly causes event. Space and event are synonymous.
Architecture must be aware of this possibility of event. And architecture must allow for the event. Event as the uncalculated human activity that will (once played out) add further dimensions, signification, memory, association and subsequently icon/identity.
The architecture makes for the event(architecture is not the event). Event is what architecture allowed, or what the architecture is not.
Event is where the architecture is not, the interstitial mediation between, within or without the physical construct that is architecture. Arising out of the conscious act of removal or non provision of the physical that allows for action to unfold and thus create event. Yet the architecture and the event it fosters are inseparable. Each symbiotically embedded into the others construction. Thereby architecture seeks relevance or import by/ via the loci of its absence or where it is not. A calculated removal of definition that allows for a definition of ambiguity pregnant with possibility. That allows for a human ingenuity, combination, and permutation that would be called event.
Thus the event is not architecture. The event is non architecture. The event is between architecture, within architecture but not architecture. Architecture is the non event.
In the future urbanism there seems no place for event. The excessive control seems to point at Urban system and a collection of human codified activities and set directives within its confines.
Calculated activity, regulated, quantified and defined is not event. These are process. Embedded into, and coded into the physical construct.
Where intended process is absent, event is possible. The new Urbanism seeks to “make” space for process. The new Urbanism seeks to establish process and deny possibility.
Possibility is event. The event makes place.
Architecture (to generate place) must allow for the subversion of process. It must allow for usurp-tion by other consciousness or chaos.
The appropriation of the place by use, and varying collective memory and consequently varying individual association.
loci : process : Architecture : process : architecture : process
_____________________________________________________
loci : architecture : no-process : event : memory : place
To generate successful place one must limit its architecture. One must establish limits it must not transgress. And at the same time define models or strategies by which it is to engage not oppose and antagonise the uncontrolled space.
The process leads to knowledge of process or activity. Process becomes everything . The machine is perfect the architecture is absent.
The absence of process allows for self determination. The possibility of the multiple and variation. The possibility of experience and event. The birth of association and eventually memory.
The beginning of Place
(The manifesto for de-processing space).
The need to de-control the (architectural) place.
Labels: architecture, city, city and perfection, control place, de-control, de-processing, event, memory, perfection, placeless-ness, program, space
