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).

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 ....

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.

On Habitat Planning

UNDP, during post-tsunami reconstruction, was proposing to develop "Habitat Development" guidelines. Some of the guys even toyed with the idea that we could participate in the process. It led to some ruminations ....

Habitats happen. Habitats develop - over time, over years, over decades. They are developed by the people who inhabit these habitats – they add, modify, take away, build, renovate, restore as per the needs that are felt in a given context, in a given time. It is hence not necessary that a response that was appropriate in a given time, in a given context, with a given community will be appropriate in another time and another context, with another community.

Hence, habitat development is a contradiction. For it cannot be "developed" or "created" at one shot, as a response in reconstruction.

However, a habitat development approach can be taken up. It would mean that the response is appropriate in the given time and in the given context with an eye for future expansions and modifications. (and hopefully with learnings from the past).

Habitat approach can only be a holistic response – a response that comes about when there is a deeper, greater understanding of the environs of the habitation – the land, its undulation, the water resources, the vegetation, the peoples, the lifestyles and patterns, the relationships between humans and humans, between humans and the environment, between humans and animals.

Are there givens in such a circumstances ? Can we say that response X, Y, Z is needed to make the habitat most suitable ?

How does one establish guidelines under such circumstances ?