Henri Fanthome Office for Architecture

The first time i saw it was 1998, the year i joined architecture school, at the very same buildings the movie is shot at, in the same art studio. I attended classes in the same design studios, Aside from the very badly kept hair, It was much the same life. The same kurta, the same shorts and kholapuri chappals, the same jholas and rolls of sheets and models, the same Dylan, (and Zeppelin and Tull), Indian Ocean was still not known as a band. The same idealism, the same craziness, the same innocent belief in architecture, that brought what was then considered the brighest creative minds in the country from every corner of India to what was argued to be one of the best architecture schools, not just in the country but in Asia.

Nation Building was still an ideal in the late 1990s, and the 5th year Design Thesis project still looked at institutions and infrastructure as benchmarks of creativity and respectable design. The hotels and luxury resorts, and house for the rich were still scoffed at. It was still a world where the rich man’s architecture was not celebrated.

It was a world where design education, was not considered a means to get rich, but opportunity to change the world. Design education was about optimism, and dreaming, even the absolutely ridiculous, like the one that come out and unfolds from Annie's back pocket, carefully drawn on a sheet of butter paper- where the hope of brilliance and excitement are not dimmed by the need for expensive paper, and carefully assembled perfection.

In the next 20 years from its making though, some of those things would change, and in the next twenty, that brings us to this decade a lot more has changed. it almost feels like this is a make belief world, until you walk into the School of Planning and Architecture, at the ITO campus, and have your dejavu!

In my 6 years, yes i was one of those lucky few, at architecture school i witnessed similar moments a few times.

I remember talks of starting a political party, or moving to the hills and working with communities, of riding motorcycles and being free.

But by the time i had done my thesis, you could see it was on its way out, giving over to a new age.

It is a different world now at architecture school, so different, that they have a placement cell. From hope and possibility and dreaming, design education has become jobs, pay-packages and suits. I'm not sure if the students seem to have changed, or the teaching has changed, or the purpose has changed.

Or is the present an expression of another kind of disenchantment?

Have cities fallen from their pedestals? Has architecture lost its purpose? Are architects now truly agents of the rich and powerful? Have the Star-chitects destroyed the last remaining sanctuaries of hope and dreaming? The questions the film raised almost 4 decades ago, seem way more important and relevant now than ever before.

In it’s very casual and lighthearted manner it asks deep and far reaching questions at so many levels and of so many things - questions to ideas of value, of education, of purpose and of course, of architecture in a still developing nation.

Questions one hoped would have been answered in the 4 decades that have elapsed since its making. But questions that seem to have become even more critical in a nation grappling with capitalism, social and cultural inequalities, and an increasingly market driven profession.

#inWhichAnnieGivesItThoseOnes

Restored by the Film Heritage Foundation

Written by Arundhati Roy

Produced and Directed by Pradeep Kishen

Film poster taken from the Internet

# posted by Henri Fanthome : 1:08 pm