Un-Built Environment

We have a total design failure on our hands. We have ended up with a built environment does not take account of the needs of the vulnerable, it does not produce intrinsically healthy environments either indoors or outdoors, and it has evolved in a manner that has obliterated place. Totally in contrast to what built environment is expected to achieve - to make life safer and more comfortable, productive, and enjoyable. From an ethical perspective we are witnessing a transformation that penalises those without a voice (e.g. children, elderly and disabled), rewards those with higher levels of material wealth (luxury spaces and products) and reorganises the built environment with no reference to any process of debate or consensus building with local residents.

The built environment is a powerful determinant of who gains and who loses in the distribution and redistribution of its positive and negative impacts, and has played a significant role in creating inequalities, inequities, social injustice, loss of community, loss of place identity, and a loss of spiritual dimension of life.

- Warwick Fox

A new Urbanism

The Tamil Nadu post-tsunami reconstruction had many lessons to teach. The lessons were primarily about what should not be done in the next disaster.

A new urbanism has come about in the rural, coastal regions of Tamil Nadu. The landscape has changed dramatically. Where earlier it was dotted with small hamlets, made up of mud and thatch houses, with little clumps of greenery around, clinging to the beach and its environs, it now sees a wave of concrete boxes. Rows upon rows of cheerfully coloured concrete boxes seemingly marching to nowhere. The coastal, rural villages have been transformed into semi-urban ‘townships’. The populace has been precipitated into a new “urbanism” and now adjusts to its implications.

"New urbanism supports regional planning for open space, context-appropriate architecture and planning, and the balanced development of jobs and housing. ……", or so Wikipedia informs me.

But the new “urbanism” that came about in the wake of post-tsunami reconstruction scenario, has a different form, a different substance. The transition from rural to urban/semi-urban has meant severe adaptations for the community – environmentally, economically, psychologically, socially. The villages have had to suddenly face all the issues of dense, urban slums. The disaster did not end with the disaster.

Markedly different from what is “normal” or “traditional” in the area, the design, material and structural response has wholly concentrated on “safety”. An extreme response, no doubt, from a panicky government, to allay the fears of a population that was recovering from a never-seen-before and probably once-in-a-lifetime disaster.

The entire resettlement and reconstruction process was controlled by the Tamil Nadu government in a way that rendered NGOs into mere contractors, and the community into ‘beneficiaries’. The contract was between the government and the NGO and the construction and process was monitored by the local bureaucracy. The designs had to be submitted to the local technical bureaucrats for approval. The government, thus, became the ‘super client’ with all interventions responding to the priorities expressed by this entity.

Added to this, was the fact that in most cases, the beneficiaries did not know which house was theirs, so even if so desired by an implementing NGO, the design, could not respond or be adapted to the lifestyle, occupational needs, community relationships, size of family, special needs etc. of the beneficiary.

The architect/ designer/ planner too, helpless in the face of a political and bureaucratic ‘whip, was forced to adhere to prescribed building codes, to RCC-column-beam-structures and had very little scope to negotiate a better design response.

The uniformity, while trying to eliminate inequity, also eliminated creativity and sensitivity.

The design response very visibly comes from an urban, educated, and a ‘western’, mind, which perceives a compartmentalized lifestyle to be an ideal. Where rural, communal interactions happened seamlessly in a variety of ways – at the well, at the borewell, under the tree, at the tea centre, at the bus stop, at the market, these are now expected to happen in specified, marked-out areas – parks, ‘open spaces’, community centres, and sometimes nowhere. Where the rural home flowed into the street in a single fabric of private and public life, they are now on demarcated ‘plots’, that encourage territorial fencing, insulating the family in a way which is new to the community. The earlier clustered, meandering layouts of the villages have given way to albeit efficient but unfamiliar and rigid grid formats. Where one fostered interaction and connection, the other has transformed communities to nuclear families.


Ramnad, TamilNadu ... an organic layout

Except for a few exceptions, the site planning response has been a disaster in itself. Where earlier the acquired sites were undulating, covered by shrubs and trees, and dotted with small water bodies, they now are ‘prepared’ and ‘treated’ - cleared, leveled, or filled. The sites lost their character, their ambience and their soul. The sites are bare, featureless, and the few remaining water bodies only threaten to become potential waste pits. The environmental costs of such hasty action will be borne by the communities for generations to come.

People took what they got, knowing that eventually they will modify their environs to suit their needs and lifestyle. The real architecture, design and reconstruction will begin, once the designers, the contractors, and the donors have gone.

There is a learning here.

If we are going to be faced with climatic extremes – cyclones, earthquakes, drought, heavy precipitation etc., as foreseen by Climate Change, we will be responding almost continually with reconstruction. Will this be our continuing response?

Reconstruction response itself needs to undergo a revitalization. It needs to become a subject to be deeply reflected upon. With solutions and responses to be theorized in the hallowed halls of education, so that eventually it will not remain a knee-jerk ‘response’ but will transform itself into a well-thought out, considered ‘approach’, a method, where sustainability and humaneness become embedded in it.

So that the disaster can end in the disaster, and does not spillover into reconstruction.

(this article was first published in the Indian Architect & Builder; January 2009).

Cloning culture

As Walter pointed out, Hyderabad airport is a good example of George Ritzer's concept of "Globalization of Nothing". Ritzer defines Nothing as generally centrally conceived and controlled and largely lacking in distinctive substance, while something is defined as generally indigenously conceived and controlled and possesses much in the way of distinctive substance. In other words, something is being one of a kind, and nothing is lack of uniqueness.

The airport has a "global" quality - undistinctive, uniform, like-anywhere-else airport. I often feel disoriented in such buildings. When standing inside any of these buildings, sometimes just for a moment, I try to remember where I am, which city? It was the same sense of déjà vu at the Hyderabad airport. As we entered it felt like the Turin airport and the inside reminded of the Paris departure area.

It is difficult to understand why Hyderabad airport should not look Hyderabadi. Why it should look like an European airport. The materials, the glass, even the so called ‘artistry’ of encasing the innards of the mechanical equipment in glass...

The motto of standardization is seen in airports, hotels, ATMs, malls, super-markets, metros, metro-stations, expressways, flyovers, traffic-lights, facades, billboards.... Even the models in the advertisements seem to look alike. We are now firmly entrenched in a look-alike, be-alike society. Our movies. Our soap-operas and reality shows. Our buildings. Our lifestyle. Our thinking, too, I am afraid.

I wonder whether we draw a sense of community and safety from within these symbols and motifs of the look-alike culture. We feel less alien. We are with the familiar, the understood. We are part of a larger machinery.

I guess with the fall of the many beliefs and systems, the current society is in a vacuum, in a limbo. Nothing has worked – the American dream, the maoist liberation, the communist revolution. The promise of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the ending of the Cold War has proven to be hollow. The liberation brought about by Globalization only tinsel in nature. Do we feel somewhere deep inside that this is not what we wanted? But are afraid to say it, face it? Or is it the bigger, deeper fear of knowing that we do not know what we want?

I would like to think that this not-working out is an indication that something completely different needs to happen. That this is not the path. I would like to think this might be the calm before the storm, the stillness of the turning tide, the pause before the wheel turns. The space where the idea is taking birth.

That the Substance is in the process of being formed, being defined.

Hurray, Tom !

"...some of the greatest innovations in architecture have happened during recessions, when architects have little to do but sit back and think serious thoughts about fenestration"

-- Tom Dyckhoff

Millennium Architecture

There is no better symbolization of the prevalent culture than Architecture of the day and age. Being the one element that reaches deep into the psyche of society to manifest the reality of that day and age, it is actually a visual 3-d representation of the existence of that time. Every structure thus becomes a snapshot.

We currently live in a networked society. Fast-moving, cross-cultural, cross-ethnic, pre-fabricated, primarily services oriented as opposed to production oriented, outsourced, virtual, instant-messaging, instant-gratification, monetarily-valued economy and reality.

In a globalised world, we have global citizens, global professionals, global craftsmen, global education, global methods, and a global ethics and morality. We also have global design, global architecture.

What would be the snapshot today? What does the architecture of the millennium symbolizes and how does it manifest the psycho-social-politico-economic culture of today in the building materials, the design, the process of building, the relationships, the symbols and motifs.

In a fast moving culture that cannot wait for an end-result, concrete very much is the material of the day. An ultra-malleable material for but a short time, it requires fast intervention before it loses this quality. In a use-and-throw society, that wants something new before it has got bored of the old, it stands good as it degrades within half a century.

In a society where visibility is rated high, glass dominates. An insular society that needs a notion of freedom, that needs an expanse of vision from the armchair without a desire to interact with the outside, glass insulates from the natural elements creating an inside reality far removed from that one outside.

In a global world with a multi-ethnic culture, the most common aspects become the least common denominator that proliferate. Universalization of design thus happens. This is best seen in the commonality between any of the structures and cities of the world. Be it soaring skyscrapers or the flyovers and express-ways.

The way the society treats its people is best symbolized in the cubicalized, pigeon-hole apartments and high rises. Nuclear units for nuclear families. Seperatists. Individualized. Faceless innumerable windows, that look into one another eliciting a withdrawal into the self for privacy. Space a premium – socially and economically.

The social structure of today is best symbolized by the gated communities that barricade a section of people inside while excluding the rest of the world. The difference from the olden-day forts being that it is now also for the public and not only the rulers. It symbolizes the paranoia, fear, loneliness, violence and divisiveness that permeates our consciousness today.

The interactive streets have given way to the rushing, blurring expressways symbolizing the way we relate. We interact by choice, at our behest. Facebook-like, we have stop-overs for replenishment. We connect when we want to. Public spaces are marked out areas where people go to. Its no longer the fabric of everyday life. Community has to be invited.

The square and the flat are now the universal shapes. Easily assembleable. Quick to integrate. A quick-fix, easy-to-learn, networkable solution. Prefabrication makes it easy to Outsource and customize.

I guess I could go on ....

Nature of Architecture

i am beginning more and more to feel that actually architecture is not static. Its such a dynamic process. It is one element that can reach deep into the psyche of society to manifest the reality of a day and age, a visual, 3-d representation of the existence of that time. Every structure a snapshot.

In this sense architecture cannot be sanctimonous and rigid as it is made out to be. It cannot be stuck in the rut of form and facade ... it needs to "see" its dynamism, the process, the evolution which is what actually happens when an architect designs.

Conservation cracks

Heritage and conservation have unfortunately become exactly what it has become - a 'monumental' intervention. Not only in terms of the effort it requires but also in terms of its application. The repositories of people's knowledge and traditional systems are now 'museumised' in the forts, palaces, temples and such.

And herein lies the loss.

Why does heritage promotion fail ? I think it is because of this nature of the concept. Because it ignores or neglects the living heritage among people - still alive, still being adapted and adopted. It ignores heritage in motion. It ignores evolving heritage. The 'glamour' is 'frozen' in the palatial hotels and structures. Traditional practices, skills and crafts are 'showcased' in the aesthetics of boutique hotels. Heritage becomes elitist. Access to it is restricted. Its aliveness in everyday lives of ordinary people is eroded and lost.

Heritage dies and becomes a candidate for conservation.

Wanted – New Architects; New Architecture

Change, progress, forward movement comes only with self-reflection – by oneself and/or as a community. What kinds of psychological spaces, formal and informal, exist for the architects community, to reflect upon itself? Christopher Alexander, http://www.patternlanguage.com/, has said it succinctly - “…The reasons behind the increasing irrelevance of architects are complex. There are many issues facing us, but one of the more simple ones is that we do not have, as a professional community, adequate platforms, forums, or vocabulary for debating our differences and exchanging information.”

Architects seem rather lonely. Especially to me, with a NGO background where every little thing gets discussed to death, not having adequate fora to discuss one’s relevance and place in society seems as though something important is missing. Architects seem trapped in their ivory towers, thinking they hold the answers to all problems. In fact, it might just be probably true. They do have solutions – to micro as well as the macro; to the social, political as well as technical. If only they could come out of their very own version of Stockholm Syndrome (The Conflict Inside; Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava; Indian Architect & Builder, january 2009) where they are in love their client and their dictates. Ranjit Hoskote’s sketch of the aspiring architect quite hit the nail on the head: “Many young people go to architecture school with a self-image of the architect drawn from the deplorable writings of Ayn Rand. In this version, the architect is seen as Epic Hero, a Romantic genius, a lonely Howard Roarkian challenger of history who is equally indifferent to the needs of others and to the currents of the time ”.

Is this what has happened? That the architectural education institutions have churned out symbolic, technical responses and clones of a historic and past glory rather than a thinking, reflecting community which can construct new societal responses? A tired, blasé, frustrated, incestuous community that satisfies itself with glories bygone? If we take off our eyes off the Parthenons and Pantheons, we might just be able to see the modern-day colossal mistakes, that neither integrate into the backgrounds nor reflect the common man’s lifestyles and needs. Is it easier to keep our eyes and attention and debates and discourses on the technical, design details than current and future socio-political realities, especially as it is impossible to really design in isolation and be removed from these realities? Does this kind of myopia imply a deep insecurity, a well understood inadequacy to respond as a community to socio-political trends? To innovate and bring fresh thinking not only in “structures” but also social structures? The problem is that even in technical responses, the innovations seem so few and far between.

What the architecture community (and also many other sectors) needs is to learn from the IT (information technology) community. It requires a movement within, a deep down explosion that can set off an internal revolution, that can set in motion processes that will result in spawning ideas and interventions that can become workable, can reach millions (and thus make millions too), and become user-friendly. Remember the computers of the 1980s? The cost, size and difficulties in using them? In just two decades, there has been a revolution and today we see gadgets that can fit into a palm of every Tom, Dick and Harry … including the local grocer and the business tycoons – and each fitting the socio-economic profile of the user. What was the magic formula that made it happen? The IT community is as exclusive and impenetrable as the architect community. So how did this professional sector re-invent itself and made itself an indispensable product in so short a time?

Agreed that architecture is art – but the difference is that the output of this art form is not ensconced in hallowed halls of the super-buyers or museums, but directly interacts with the rest of the society in everyday terms, even if it is built for only one client. The outputs of this art form bring about large scale change in the environment, influences social psychology, can engender long term communal responses while influencing the aesthetics and management of small and large scale spaces. Thus, it not only owes the rest of humankind, but more importantly, owes itself a relook at its role in the making of the world in the coming century, even if it is only as citizens of this world.

What this community requires is to relook at itself within the present context, check out its relevance, identify the gaps, enlarge its response canvas and create a way forward that will be responsive to next century. No one else can do it for them. Neither the client, nor the politico-legal paraphernalia that underlie the industry, nor the ‘aam janata’. It has to come from within. A dynamic re-defined, a language modernized, a system revitalized, a response ‘real’-ised by the thinkers of the industry.

It needs a Vox Populi of its own, that can bring to focus its own understandings, perceptions, and perspectives and propose solutions on current realities. A means that will break the self-imposed isolation and help it to mingle, co-operate and collaborate with the rest; that will not only bring much-needed, fresh solutions but also will help it to gain from the mutual support. It can choose to become a force that can influence change, dialogue as a sector with the powers-that-be, and bring forth its own vision of society rather than leave it to mundane and petty bureaucrats and contractors.

It might be difficult to make the old horses drink. However, it might be useful to introduce an ongoing self-reflection process which allows the more adventurous, the more curious and the more reflective to have an opportunity to do so. A self-reflection process that frequently evaluates itself in the context of micro to macro, allowing for re-positioning and an automatic rearrangement to the relevance required. A process that will enable this community to be where it ought to be, where it has been in the past – at the helm of making of new societies, envisioning and designing new landscapes, and being true Architects.

It is not as if alternative practice models have not emerged. Sure, there have many successful attempts by brilliant pathbreakers who have relocated themselves within the broader social processes of change, have put themselves directly in touch with not only the sites and their histories but also with the users and the workforce. They have made for themselves indispensable niches of being participants in the cultural processes of their times and have become agents of social, political and economic change. However, these have remained more as personal crusades, fulfilling personal destinies. Young professionals do look upto them and model themselves upon them. But what is more urgently required is to create avenues for changes in process designs which will help the future generations to examine and realign themselves to changing times and become change agents in their own right.

I am driven to write this, because in the last few years, I have interacted with some very interesting people - architects. I have heard them speak from their hearts, share their agonies, listened to their dreams; I have read what they have been in the past, and their slow but sure degeneration over the last few centuries. It pains to see a people who are meant to be protagonists in the drama of designing and generating societies, slowly sideline themselves to mere technicians, project managers, and sometimes contractors.

Gated Communities or Sitting Ducks ?

The ‘gated communities’ response is such a direct antithesis to current trends and efforts to create inclusive societies, that one wonders at the response. It seems to me very much akin to the ‘flyover response’ – flyovers that fly over problems rather than solve them. Gated communities shut themselves inside, believing that the world begins and ends there, and wonder why social degeneration is happening and urban security risk is increasing.

We need to understand the genesis of Gated Communities. It has been a response of the ‘aggressors’ against the ‘natives’ – in Brazil, in South Africa, in Europe, in Israel, in parts of India, - evident is that the ‘encroacher’ needed to feel ‘safe’. The response has a certain mindset behind it, with an inbuilt streak of guilt of an occupier and fear of the resulting backlash from the ‘victims’.

Can such design responses in a historically critical context become a mainstream design response? The basis of many of the current problems have been precisely that – a mainstreaming of short-term, very contextual responses – whether be it Gated Communities or Urban slums. Can a response that might have seemed relevant to a South African white man in an Apartheid situation where he should well been afraid of a black repurcussion, possibly be a relevant design response in Urban India in its Mumbais and Delhis? Yet that is what we see. And while walls around cities, world over are coming down, we are happily putting walls around communities.

Over time what will happen to us in India, will be what has happened to the West. We will keep out the ‘social trash’ – the doodhwalas, the maid servants, the vegetable vendors, the newspaperwalas, the service and maintenance guys – make it so difficult for them to exist within accessible environs, that in the long run, these poorer communities will find employment elsewhere and will eventually leave these Gated Communities to their devices. And like in the West, we will slowly find ourselves having to wash our own dishes and clothes, sweep our homes, repair our plumbing, etc.etc.etc. We might also begin feeling a false sense of security. False, because Gated Communities, isolated and not networked, will be much more vulnerable to people who might want to take potshots at them. It is much easier after all to target a fortress than a neighbourhood. And it has been shown time and again that any security that can be put in place can also be equally undone.

And then when the discrimination, alienation and separation is complete, and social outrages and rages build up, we shall cry out in panic at the backlashes we face and we will wonder why our designs are not working.

Who can be held responsible for mainstreaming these kinds of anomalies? What kind of reflection process does the designer go through before proposing a design? What kind of help, support and alternative viewpoints are considered to understand various dimensions especially in construction of societies? How are the ecological, economics, politics, social impacts, psychological long term repercussions of what is proposed evaluated? What kind of consultations happen or opinions taken before we take up what will eventually lead to social engineering?

Can the architect throw up his/ her hands and believe that s/he is not responsible for cities – that they after all only build buildings and not cities. And they are not just buildings after all – they are collections of buildings that become neighbourhoods, collection of neighbourhoods that eventually become cities.

Does the architect has no control over his/her decisions? Are they becoming blasé and giving up and withdrawing into individual shells for the next fantastic project. What stops them from becoming a pro-active community that is able to put its imagination and head together and influence change? They do have solutions – and saying that 99% of the structures are anyway built without architects is just a cop out. If they influenced 99% of what they DO build, it might be the vehicle of change that is needed.

Reconstruction Education

What does architecture mean in reconstruction ? Oor what is reconstruction architecture ? Is there some special sensitivity/ education/ exposure required to build in post-disaster situations ? Only architecture does not seem sufficient. With a history of a variety, scale and magnitude of disasters what has been the architectural response to rebuilding ? (unfortunately i found only software architecture or rebuilding of monuments and big buildings when i was looking for info on it).

Similarly what does education mean in conflict/ disaster times ? School and all its trappings mean nothing when lives are on line. Alternatively how does one record/ document the real-life-education gained during such situations ?