ticking around architecture: Relating my two most favorite creative personals QT AND RK

ticking around architecture: Relating my two most favorite creative personals. ...: "It might come across a little strange but, as strange as it might seem, I see both Quintin Tarantino and Rem Koolhaas with the same perspective..."

ticking around architecture: Dutched Danish Landscape.

ticking around architecture: Dutched Danish Landscape.: "This post is just to record a thought on the phenomenon sweeping the Danish architectural scenario. While Ar. Rem Koolhaas is busy propagati..."

ticking around architecture: 'OCULUS' - An inception of a dream.

ticking around architecture: 'OCULUS' - An inception of a dream.: "All we had in our minds was a will to do something for the alma matter, to 'leave a dent', to do something that would not only be just memor..."

ticking around architecture: Continuity is not simply a horizontal line of human history. - A Study Tour Report

ticking around architecture: Continuity is not simply a horizontal line of human history. - A Study Tour Report

Case 2: interviewing (investigating) Ar. Prem Chandaverkar

Case 2:

Date of Investigation: 24/04/2010

The interview was conducted on behalf of my college for our Dept. magazine. The interview was largely focused on general and current issues concerning the present day architectural practice and education in India. It has published in our Dept. Magazine "OCULUS" 's second issue.

Investigators:

1) Shreyank S Khemalapure: Gets fugitives talking.

2) Praveen Alva: Criminal Journalist.

3) Prasad Rotti: Guest interviewer.

P.A: Did you always wanted to be an architect?

P.C: Not always. In fact before sitting for the entrance exam I was looking for various options.

P.A: Could you describe what is, your kind of architecture?

P.C: Well that’s a deep and long question, very difficult to answer easily. Basically architecture I would say, where the joy of inhabitation takes priority over the impact of the visual. I feel that too many architects design from a view point that someone will turn to a corner and look at the building and say ‘WOW’! I would like to do work where the priority is that someone can inhabit it for 5 years and then look back at those 5 years with affection. So what we do is we facilitate cultures of inhabitation, then through repeated acts of inhabitation breed memories which build up your liking and love for the place. There is an aesthetic that develops after the architect has finished his work and you have to design from that point, as to what happens when you’re no longer there.  Architecture is very different from the performing arts in that sense, because those are the arts which live in the presence of the artist. But architecture is like many of the visual arts; it has to survive in the absence of the artist. We get too preoccupied with what we have to say about the work and we believe that the meaning of the work comes from what we put into it. But actually the meaning of the work comes through the pattern of inhabitation that happens after we have done our work.

P.A: What does style and signature mean to you?

P.C: I think style is a wrong starting point; style should be a by-product. It’s should be a by-product of trying to doing something meaningful. It should not be a starting point by which you can just fix meanings with some predetermined solutions. It’s unfortunate that many architects get preoccupied with questions of style, I don’t think about it. In fact one should avoid labels of any kind, because once you start attaching yourself to a label then that begins to constrain what you do. Rather then that, just focus on the essence of what you’ve got at that very moment.

P.A: According to you what makes a building iconic?

P.C: Iconic is a very loaded word and I think it is much trapped in this question of style. What we really need to get comfortable with, are buildings that can be part of the background and still be great architecture. Iconic is not high on my priorities to what I wish to achieve. But sometime I might do some building which because of its specific location needs to be iconic but you need to be very careful and try for it only in those locations. For example Brigade Rubix is a building that we are doing which seems to be iconic that’s because it’s a focal element in the approach road to that neighborhood. Another aspect would be that the building by its very program should be a public symbol like a sports stadium or a major museum.  Then we can look at making it iconic. If I’m doing a house or a regular I.T park or a hotel, then those need not necessarily be iconic.

S.K: What is your take on architectural practice in Bangalore?

P.C: I’m very encouraged by the general cultural of architectural practice in Bangalore. One is that there is this concern among many practices to creating this very strong sense of place and not get preoccupied with iconic form or fashionable trend, so that’s a very healthy sign. This has been a legacy of Bangalore and I think our firm has something to do with it. Being the first practice in Bangalore and have been very comfortable with the idea of architecture of the background. Even if you look at what the firm was doing in the 1950s of 1960s, at the time when that generation of contemporary Indian architects was very concerned about creating the symbols of the newly independent nation, the priority here was more to the earn respect of the local community rather then building grand public symbols. And to a certain extent, I think this has affected the culture of practice in Bangalore, were there is this local rootedness and not so much of a concern for grand symbols. If you look at what was happening earlier it was architects from Mumbai, Ahmadabad, Delhi who were grabbing the limelight and winning most of the design awards.  If you consider design awards as a form of measurement, then the center of gravity has shifted to Bangalore. I think Bangalore will become a center for influence in Indian architecture.

S.K: Do you believe that there is degradation in professional education in India?

P.C: Yes, in all fields. It’s tending to be more vocational, and there is no emphasis on critical thinking. I think the mistake that we made just after independence was that we separated research from education, a trend which was created in the basic sciences and which spread into education in general. So the education system had people who just taught and who were not researchers. In India the mistake what we make is to get trapped by the fallacy that in a college the only people who are coming to learn are the students. What we really need to create is places where the faculty members are coming to learn; and that energy should be driving student learning. A large percentage of our colleges unfortunately have faculty who are not learners, not researchers, not even exceptional practitioners. A basic qualification to teach architecture should be that you should either be doing original research work which is published, or doing original practice which should be winning awards, competitions, getting published. You should be a cut above the rest to teach but unfortunately it’s not the scene.

S.K: How important do you think publication and documentation in terms of architecture?

P.C: It’s very important and it’s something that is unfortunately neglected in India. It’s an essential tool, it’s a very mundane tool but it’s a foundation on which a profession builds theist own sense of tradition,  history and criticism. Without that the publication doesn’t follow, the research doesn’t follow, the historical analysis doesn’t follow and we lack that.

P.A: Do you think the architectural education abroad suits the way we practice in India?

P.C: This question doesn’t have a straight forward answer. You got to remember, to go abroad takes quite a bit of effort, and the people who have taken the initiative to go to abroad and come back are the kind of initiative taking people. In that sense they are the cream of the overall pool of architects, and they would do well even if they have continued to stay in India because they are that kind of people. The training overseas in most part has much greater deal of rigor, because they make you think critically and they have faculty who are researchers and cutting edge practitioners themselves. But that doesn’t necessarily create the kind of architect one needs, because eventually something has to be internalized within your sense of self. Education is really using the context of knowledge seeking to internalise something and build your sense of self and identity. Each person is unique, they have unique form of expression and you have to come in terms with that and let that flow naturally. But unfortunately too many of us get influenced by trends, and ‘isms’: something like Deconstruction catches in as a trend, and suddenly everyone is doing that. If education builds’ a strong sense of self we would get a greater depth of critical thinking in terms of architecture everywhere. But unfortunately we have international culture of heroes and imitators.

P.A/ S.K: How do you think we can create a loop between what is taught is architectural schools and what is practiced in office? Do you think there is apathy?

P.C: Yes there is apathy. But for example in a place like Bangalore, there is a large pool of fairly talented architects who would be more than willing to teach if the system is more responsive. Because you know a practitioner is also looking for forms of learning, and teaching is a form of learning. Even if you are teaching something basic for 1^st year students, to stand in front of 30 students and to clearly articulate what you know, one would be challenged by that very act. As for now the interactions happen at an informal level, where the students approach us. But for some reasons colleges doesn’t encourage such things and they don’t encourage it because we have not raised this high standard of faculty as learners.

S.K: Around the world the global events are marked with spectacular architectural masterpieces, like Beijing Olympics and forth coming London Olympics for example. In India the commonwealth games are round the corner and we are sidelined in terms of creating an architectural statement. Why do you this is happening in India?

P.C: There is more of politics and government interference in how large public projects are carried out. That’s a part of the problem.  The other problem in India is that we don’t really have a tradition of urban design. We tend to look at the cities only as functional entities. Our cities have problem of sense of authenticity in India, because when we talk about Indian culture, any definition of authenticity tends to be located in the village. If look at the research in social anthropology it was largely focused on the villages. It’s only now that people have started to look at the cities but even then it’s more of technical rather than cultural research. The city as a site of culture, as a location of the avant-garde, the city as the cutting edge of cultural production – these notions have not come into light as yet in India. We tended to look at cities very functionally. We just produce 2 dimensional land use plans,  and we don’t have the tradition of urban design, seeking to build neighbourhoods, public symbols, visual identity of the city.  These things are still lagging in our urban design intentions.

S.K: Could you explain the notion ‘belonging to a place’, or ‘of the place’?

P.C: I have to come back to the earlier point I made of facilitating a culture of inhabitation and memory. It’s like you live in a house and suppose your family keeps meeting at your house. And one day you sit in the verandah and you keep chatting till 4 in the morning after dinner. After that you keep talking about that day saying ‘do you remember we sat in the verandah and we kept talking till 4 in the morning’. Then the verandah takes on a new meaning. So that’s how that sense of place and memory builds up. And one has to create architecture to facilitate that culture. Another aspect would be climate. It’s by recognizing climate, the natural contour, flora and fauna, responding to site, those also create a sense of place. So I would say it’s really being sensitive to context, physical & climatological context and social context of pattern of inhabitation.

S.K: Your take on, Indian identity in architecture.

P.C: Its same again say as style. It’s a wrong starting point. When you take it as a starting point then you will be looking at superficial labels and facades, you will never go beyond the surface. You’re dealing with Indian sites, Indian clients, Indian material, Indian climate so many things are Indian. Just deal with these things honestly and rigorously, the final product will surely be Indian. An identity or a culture is something that is alive, so never try to define it. When you define it, then it’s like culture with your head turned backwards all the time.

P.A: Is there any architect or designer whose work you admire?

P.C: F.L. Wright is one who I really admire. Corbusier for his attitude. Carlos Scarpa,  and Tadao Ando only that I’m bit concerned for one language dominates all of Ando’s projects. But the quality of work is good.

P.A: How do you unwind yourself?

P.C: Very simple things, read books, listen to music, and talk to friends.

Quick fire:

Chandigarh city: visionary for its time

Bangalore metro: technical great, disastrous in terms of urban design.

Brand architects in Indian: who are they?

Landscape: neglected dimension of architecture

Corbusier or Wright: Wright

Form follows function or function follows form: Neither . I will say, ‘form should transcend function’

Tschumi or Eisenmen: Neither.

Guggenheim New York or Bilbao: New York.

Top five:

5 books: Complexities and contradictions in architecture by Robert Venturi, Art, objects by Jeanette Winterson, Forgotten truth by Huston Smith, The ethics of authenticity by Charles Taylor, Welcome to the Urban revolution by Jeb Brugmann.

5 buildings: Falling waters by F.L. Wright, Barcelona pavilion by Meis, Querini-Stampalia Foundation by Carlos Scarps, Church on water by Ando, Crystal palace by Paxton. I got a list of historical buildings like Fathepur sikri, Padmanabapuram palace, just go through the city of Rome.

5 people: That’s getting too personal.

5 places: Bangalore because of my own personal history, I enjoyed Philadelphia, Barcelona, London.

5 film: Pan’s labyrinth, Italian film El Postino, One flew over the cuckoo’s nest, some of the Guru Dutt movies and early Shyam Bengal movies like Pyaasa and Ankur.

P.A: Do you think that after such long successful architectural practice, do you think that you have achieved everything that you wanted to do when you started as an architect?

P.C: At every moment (even now) I feel like I have just started.

Drain Brain

If 'Brain-Drain' was a situation when India was loosing great load of skilled labor to the west, then 'Drain-Brain' is loss of knowledge -and hence,perhaps, skill- itself in India.

Architect Rem Koolhaas admits that it would have been almost impossible for OMA to be able to build CCTV headquarters today. Not because the gravity defining technology vanished but because the amount of knowledge transfer that has taken place since the beginning of the century from west to east is unbelievably tremendous and he acknowledges the fact that there would have been a possibility of a better design by some Asian architect. On an average an Asian architect gets and builds more projects as compared to an architect from the western nations of the world (European and American.) But if a graph is to be drawn for the implication of the innovative and progressive knowledge of architecture the graph will show a huge convex curve dipping in India. But sadly more and more Indian Students are learning in the most creative schools of the European nations and when they return back to India, the knowledge seems obsolete as they are caught up in spur of understanding the alien architectural system of the nation and the need to survive. All the knowledge acquired from the greatest of schools start to fade away. Only if the architect becomes quite successful then he revives the urge to “do something different” forgetting that all his money, time and intellectual workouts were carried for a better architecture and for the progress of the architecture, not simply for a second act of doing different stuff.

Then what’s the point studying at such great architectural schools and be literally paralysed when it comes to the implication and growth of that knowledge? One of the architects replied “they make us learn to ask the right question at the right time.” Fair enough! But imagine the amount of knowledge that goes un-attended, un-utilised –not even under-utilised- There was once a crisis of Brain Drain in India where best of the talents were fleeing to the USA for better pay and better jobs. But in architecture there’s a reverse situation. People get nurtured in amazing pool of knowledge and return to India and let their intelligence be drained away. In either cases India loses but worst with architects is they too loose tremendously in this Drain Game.

Who is to be blamed? Is it the client? Is the government? Is it the market? Is it the economic condition of the state? Is the non-appreciation of Architecture? Is the lack of architectural events? Lack of commissions? Or is simply plain apathy of everybody.

I’m just a new graduate (perhaps yearning for some change, not exactly knowing what, with a known enthusiasm and cynicism) who has a lot of questions to ask to hundreds of them and to myself.

I may sound easily cynical, but the condition, I fear, is really horrifying.

P.S: I really don’t believe that creative acts have anything to do with nationality or race. But considering the huge number of creative professionals serving one of the biggest populations of the world makes me think about their role in my bustling and yearning nation of India.

“How You Doin?” Sketching as a way of cozying up with design settings.

This is the article I wrote for the Student magazine of GIT Architecture department. I am putting this up on the blog so that those of us unfortunate souls who cannot read the magazine, can access some part of it. (Hint to the editors of the magazine if they read this: you are welcome to make the magazine part of the blog)


I still remember the first time I saw a computer generated rendering of a Zaha Hadid’s building, back when I was an impressionable architecture student. The extreme angle of the perspective emphasized the distortions of the space. It was mesmerizing, almost a seduction of my mind; with me fantasizing an orgasmic feel of walking in the space lost in the splendor of the surfaces, light, materials, etc. It was this ability of the computer-generated image that made it such a popular tool for representing ideas and visions for the architect, for ‘seducing’ the clients, the buyers, etc. But I guess it is time now to stop staring at the sultry seductress, take a step ahead and talk to her.
Throughout my time as a student of architecture before, and design in general now, one question kept popping up. Is the ability to sketch well, means to sketch a ‘good looking’ or seductive image OR does sketching has a more than a skin-deep reason for its existence? Some aspiring students wanting to get into the Industrial Design Center used to mail me asking what is the importance of sketching in the selection, most of them confessing that their sketching is ‘not so good’. I didn’t think much about it and used to reply them just for the sake of encouraging them. I used to say that while the visual aspects of sketching are important, equally important is the ability to think through sketching.
And it is this aspect that I now claim we as students of design and architecture should be more interested than in the final rendered image. Let me attempt now to expand on the ability of sketch as a way of design, touching on what I mean by sketching here and also on the act of designing itself.
Starting with the Pick-Up Line:
Lets take an example, one so familiar with all the students.
It’s the design studio and I am designing a resort on a contoured site. There is a plan of the contoured site over which I have a butter paper on which I draw a layout of a room, orienting it towards the valley for getting a maximum view for the people inside the room. At the same time, on a site model of the contours, I place a 3d box of the volume of the room at the location. I then realize that the slope is too large and there is lot of cutting involved for a rocky surface. Then I push up the room either to a much gentler slope or think of how to support it above the rocks, without cutting the land below. I then come back to the butter sheet and draw the new layout.
I am sure all of us have come across similar such situations, where by the act of drawing, modeling either with thermocol / mount board OR with the computer, we go on arriving at different ‘option’ or ideas as design solutions. Donald Schön, a philosopher, looked at this phenomenon across the architectural practice and termed it as a reflection-in-action. (His book referenced below, though a theoretical book is a must at any library of an architecture school.) Here as I move from one act of drawing to other, the ‘materials’ – the site, my desire to gather the best possible view for the room dwellers, the rocky surface, the aesthetic style I want to impose – all these talk back to me through the act of drawing or modeling. Thereby the act of ‘designing’ becomes a way of ‘conversing with the materials’ – a constant series of modifications and explorations of options and ideas as the different materials give their feedback to my design actions. Note here that by materials I don’t mean the materials like wood, stone or glass, but the materials of design – the site, the settings, the program, the designer’s intentions and theories.
It is this ability to successfully hold such a conversation through ones design actions is what Schon calls as reflection in action. Hence, as design and architectural students, it becomes imperative that we develop this ability to reflect during our design action through the design actions. The good news is our design studios are a good way to start developing this ability! But as students we need to be aware of what is happening ‘behind-the-scene’ when we do our design activities. And to be aware of the importance of this ability in design, we as students have to get beyond achieving the seductive final image, and stress on having a long cozy talk with the materials!
Lets Talk baby!
The practice of architecture has moved from a single genius architect al la Howard Roark, towards a set of smart individuals forming a creative team cutting across different disciplines. In fact for complex buildings and urban planning projects, even the other ‘stake holders’ like the people funding, the government, the people who will be actually using the spaces are also part of the design team. Though one can debate the pros and cons of such involvement, what we cant get away as a future architect is the ability to work in a team, creatively. I will claim that it is here, again the ability to be reflective, to have conversation with materials that will bail us out, rather than the finished, sexy renderings.
Bill Buxton, a principal researcher at Microsoft research has written an amazing book on this topic (in the reference list). Though he mostly talks about a need of shift in the way we design digital experiences, but the core of his analysis holds good for the challenges of the current architectural practice. Moving away from the finished ‘prototypes’ he stresses on the process of ‘sketching’ as a way forward. Looking at he figure 1 below, we can say that from the architectural standpoint, a prototype is very close to artifacts, which we use for specification, construction and representation of the final concept – Walkthroughs, Renderings, Presentation drawings, Working drawings, specifications, etc. These, I claim, in line with Buxton’s argument, come towards the end of the design process. But sadly due to their strong visual appeal, we as students fall in the trap of arriving there before exploring the settings, before having a good and healthy chat with the materials. 

Figure 1: Sketch and a Prototype (Source: Sketching User Experiences by Bill Buxton)
Before we go and start cozying up with our design settings, let me clarify that by ‘sketching’ what Buxton means is not just drawing on the paper, but an activity of design beyond drawing. As in the figure 2, sketching is the process of early design activity and includes drawing, doodling, building models, mock up models, etc. The word sketch inherently means it is not finalized, it is not solid, is easily changeable and mold-able.

Figure 2: Sketching involves various early design activities
So, Lets Cozy Up Now!
A closing reminder, through a diagram again by Buxton, which succinctly shows how a design process should be. I need not mention that it holds good even for architectural process also! 

Figure 3: The Design Process as a Tree (Source: Sketching User Experiences by Bill Buxton)

References: (Books that Ought to be in any School Library)  
[1] Buxton, B. 2007 Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc.  
[2] Schön, D. A., The Reflective Practitioner. How Professionals Think in Action. 1983, New York: Basic Books, Inc.

Scarier Sixth sense and Phillipe Starck at TED

Most of you people would have seen the TED talk on sixth sense, Prasad had also mailed it from our yahoo group I guess. My own $0.02 on it and the buzz it has created.
As it makes a bit of extra work for me to post on my blog and again copy n paste it here, I would appreciate if you guys read it on my blog and we can continue having discussion here as its more comfortable.
Also you do watch the Phillipe Starck talk at TED... inspirational to say the least...
Link to my blog: http://7mackerelskies.wordpress.com

Have we missed the boat and are stuck up on the wrong side of the bank?

Hey folks,
I know it has been a loooooooooooooooong time since I have posted anything on this blog and since we have had some good discussions.
I am now posting what I have posted on my personal blog. and would like you guys to add to this thought of mine with your own observations and instances and debate on the question raised. Hoping for another fruitful discussion!

I was part of a team visiting some villages near Mumbai to understand how people with low literacy levels use their mobile phones in day to day life. We were specifically there to understand how they do ‘save’ the contact details of their friends and families and we were in for some surprise. Of course, we did expect that they would keep a physical diary or notebook around them to write down the contacts as we do come across people using this model fairly frequently. But we came across some instances where people used some really interesting ways to beat the problems that the current phone models posed for low literacy and different language skills. For instance, there was this one person, who had saved a four digit number in place of his friend’s name along with his phone number. It turned out that in his circle of friends only one guy owned a motorbike and as it was easier for the person to type number than the alphabets in his phone, he saved his friends contact number under this unique vehicle number! While some of them asked their more educated friends to save their numbers in the phone, one plumber used the missed call list along with the last 5 digits of the phone number to manage his current clients.

Then there was this other time, when coming back from a long trip, my parents and I took a coffee break in a small town. There was a political rally in that town and the restaurant was full of people with some ‘political connection.’ A particular loud mouth was sitting just behind me and my mom and was shouting in his phone trying to give directions to the guy on the other end, which irritated my mom and I had to give him some piece of my mind. But then the situation was deftly and diplomatically handled by my parents to avoid me getting beaten up by the three thugs. This incident made me think, why we shout on the phone when the other person is not able to hear us, as it doesn’t matter how much we shout, it all depends on the network strength! I feel we really don’t realize that the voice quality over the phone is network dependent and behave as we would behave when talking face to face – if you are not audible speak loudly. Actually, instead of blaming the people that they are not ‘mobile-literate’ we should blame ourselves – the designers and developers who develop these technologies, which give not much of an idea of how they work to the people who use it and which are not tuned to the people’s everyday environment of use, like other objects.

There was this other instance when I was trying to design a sandwich cart for a street side vendor, when I came across some very interesting facts of their daily life. Each sandwich vendor had an impression that if they can give out an ‘image of selling clean and hygienic food’ they will attract more people; hence they used braded butter and breads (which were used also as an advertising element). Also, their carts, were ‘designed’ and constructed in an ecosystem, which involved the vendor himself, the local carpenter or plumber and the policeman (with the policemen raiding these units every other month, the unit was dirt cheap made of recycled wood from carton boxes, so that they can keep making such stalls). These facts clearly reflect the notion that we human beings are driven by an inherent (meaning which is not taught) sense of enhancing our lives with whatever resources given at hand – ‘jugaadu’.

These observations and some more lead my mind to ponder some very fundamental questions. The first being, are we (the designers, developers, managers, manufacturers) missing the boat and are on wrong side of the bank? When the ‘user’ of the various products that we are going to produce is a productive and resourceful human being, are we considering this fact and exploiting it in the designs? Are we ready to accept that the ‘user’ here is not what we deduce from the ‘requirement gathering’ and ‘user study’ phase but a much more complex person going about her daily life in a very resourceful manner? I feel yes, we have missed the boat and are on the wrong side of a flooded river! The myriad products and gadgets which are heralded by the press as ‘something which will change the way we live’ and which don’t even take off from their research labs, are a testimony to the fact that we are missing something fundamental. And there is something we need to understand in why some of the other products and artifacts have been highly successful in doing so, without that being the intent of the designers or developers – like the internet or the sms!

Well these questions and the one mentioned in my research motivations are what I am going to attempt to answer. The first thing would of course be to see if anyone has been asking some similar questions and what answers they have found. Well, there are some real good people doing this and soon I will follow up this piece with some of my insights into what others have been doing with the same question.

I will also keep putting up some more interesting observations that I have come across or will come across regarding the day to day life of human beings.

"We want to be Them, They want to be Us"

Eisenman's six point plan

Point one: Architecture in a media culture
Media has invaded every aspect of our lives. It is difficult to walk out on the street or stand in a crowded elevator without encountering people speaking into cellular phones at the top of their voices as if no one else was around. People leave their homes and workplaces and within seconds are checking their Blackberries. Their iPhones provide instant messaging email, news, telephone and music—it's as if they were attached to a computer.
Less and less people are able to be in the real physical world without the support of the virtual world. This has brought about a situation in which people have lost the capacity to focus on something for any length of time. This is partly because media configures time in discrete segments.
Focus is conditioned by how long one can watch something before there is an advertisement. In newspapers stories keep getting shorter, the condensed version is available on the internet. This leads today to a corruption of what we think of as communication, with a lessening of the capacity to read or write correct sentences. While irrelevant information multiplies, communication diminishes. If architecture is a form of media it is a weak one. To combat the hegemony of the media, architecture has had to resort to more and more spectacular imaging. Shapes generated through digital processes become both built icons that have no meaning but also only refer to their own internal processes. Just think of any architectural magazine today devoted, supposedly, to the environment, and instead one finds media.

Point two: Students have become passive

The corollary to the prevalent media culture is that the viewing subject has become increasingly passive. In this state of passivity people demand more and more images, more visual and aural information and in a state of passivity people demand things that are easily consumed.
The more passive people become the more they are presented by the media with supposed opportunities to exercise choice. Vote for this, vote for whatever stories you want to hear, vote for what popular song you want to hear, vote for what commercial you want to see. This voting gives the appearance of active participation, but it is merely another form of sedation because the voting is irrelevant It is part of the attempt to make people believe they are participating when in fact they are becoming more and more passive.
Students also have become passive. More passive than students in the past. This is not a condemnation but a fact. To move students to act or to protest for or against anything today is impossible. Rather they have a sense of entitlement. The generations that remember 1968 feel that those kinds of student protests are almost impossible today. For the last seven years we have had in the US one of the most problematic governments in our history. Probably the most problematic since the mid-19th century and president Millard Fillmore. Our reputation in Europe, our dollar, our economy, the spirit of our people, has been weakened. In such a state of ennui people feel they can do little to bring about change. With the war in Iraq draining our economy there is still the possibility that the political party responsible for today's conditions will be re-elected.
Will this have consequences for architecture?

Point three: Computers make design standards poorer

This passivity is related to architecture. Architecture today relies on one of passivity's most insidious forms—the computer.
Architects used to draw volumes, using shading and selecting a perspective. In learning how to draw one began to understand not only what it was like to draw like Palladio or Le Corbusier but also the extent of the differences in their work. A wall section of Palladio felt different to the hand than one of Le Corbusier's. It is important to understand such differences because they convey ideas. One learned to make a plan. Now, with a computer, one does not have to draw. By clicking a mouse from point to point, one can connect dots that make plans, one can change colours, materials and light. Photoshop is a fantastic tool for those who do not have to think.
The problem is as follows. "So what?" my students say, "Why draw Palladio? How will it help me get a job?" The implication is this: "If it's not going to help me get a job, I don't want to do it." In this sense, architecture does not matter. In a liberal capital society, getting a job matters, and my students are in school precisely for this reason.
Yet education does not help you get a job. In fact, the better you are at Photoshop the more attractive you are to an office, the better you will work in that office.
If I ask a student to make a diagram or a plan that shows the ideas of a building, they cannot do it. They are so used to connecting dots on a computer that they cannot produce an idea of a building in a plan or a diagram. This is certain to affect not only their future, but the future of our profession.

Point four: Today's buildings lack meaning or reference

The computer is able to produce the most incredible imagery which become the iconic images of magazines and competitions. To win a competition today one has to produce shapes and icons by computer.
But these are icons with little meaning or relationship to things in the real world. According to the American pragmatist philosopher C S Peirce there were three categories of signs: icons, symbols, and indices. The icon had a visual likeness to an object.
Robert Venturi's famous dictum categorised buildings as either "a duck or a decorated shed"; the difference between an icon and symbol in architectural terms.
A "duck" is a building that looks like its object—a hotdog stand in the form of a giant hotdog or, in Venturi's terms, a place that sells ducks taking the very same shape as a duck. This visual similitude produces what Peirce calls an icon which can be understood at first glance.
Venturi's other term, the "decorated shed", describes a public facade for what amounts to a generic box like building. The decorated shed is more a symbol, in Peirce's terms, which has an agreed upon, or conventional meaning. A classical facade symbolises a public building, whether it is a bank a library or school.
Today the shape of buildings become icons which have none of these external references. They may not necessarily look like anything or they may only resemble the processes that made them. In this case they do not relate outwardly but refer inwardly. These are icons that have little cultural meaning or reference. There is no reason to ask our more famous architects: "Why does it look like this?"
There is no answer to this question because "Why?" is the wrong question.
Why? Because the computer can produce it. One could ask these architects: "Why is this one better than that one?" Or "Which one of the crumpled paper buildings is better?" Or "Which one is the best and why?"
There is no answer again to these questions. Why? Because there is no value system in place for judging, and there is no relationship to be able to judge between the image produced and its meaning as an icon.
These icons are made from algorithmic processes that have nothing to do with architectural thinking.

Point five: We are in a period of late style

Edward Said in his book On Late Style describes lateness as a moment in time when there are no new paradigms or ideological, cultural, political conditions that cause significant change. Lateness can be understood as a historical moment which may contain the possibilities of a new future paradigm.
For example there were reasons in the late 19th century for architecture to change. These included changes in psychology introduced by Freud; in physics by Einstein; in mathematics with Heisenberg; and in flight with the Wright brothers. These changes caused a reaction against the Victorian and imperial styles of the period and articulated a new paradigm: modernism.
With each new paradigm, whether it is the French revolution or the Renaissance, there is an early phase, which in modernism was from 1914-1939; a high phase, which in modernism occurred 1954-1968 when it was consumed by liberal capital after the war; and a period of opposition. The year 1968 saw an internal, implosive revolution, one that reacted against institutions representing the cultural past of many of the western societies. This was followed by post modernism's eclectic return to a language that seemed to have meaning. The Deconstructivist exhibition at the MoMA in 1988 put an end to this cliché and kitsch style.
Today I say we are in a period of late style. A period in which there is no new paradigm. Computation and the visual may produce a shift from the notational but this in itself is not a new paradigm. It is merely a tool. The question remains: What happens when one reaches the end of a historical cycle? On Late Style by Edward Said describes such a moment in culture before a shift to a new paradigm. A moment not of fate or hopelessness but one that contains a possibility of looking at a great style for the possibility of the new and the transformative. He uses as an example Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, written at the end of Beethoven's career. This was the composer's response to the seeming impossibility of innovation. Instead Beethoven wrote a piece that was difficult, even anarchic, that could not be easily understood and was outside of his characteristic and known style. Beethoven's later work is an example of the complexity ambivalence, and the "undecidability" that characterises a late style.

Point six: To be an architect is a social act

This last point deals with architecture and its unique autonomy. Since the Renaissance in Italy when Brunelleschi, Alberti and Bramanti established what can be called the persistencies of architecture— subject-object relationships— these persistencies have remained operative to this day. Alberti's dictum that "a house is a small city and a city is a large house", remains with us in all works that we see. In other words the relationship between the part and the whole: the figure and the ground, the house to its site, the site to the street, the street to its neighbourhood and the neighbourhood to the city.
These issues constitute the basis of what would be called the dialectical synthesis as an aspect of the ongoing metaphysical project. Thus one of the things that must be investigated is the problematic part-to-whole relationship— which is part of a Hegelian dialectical idea of thesis and anti-thesis forming a new whole or synthesis—and the relationship of building to ground.
Architecture has traditionally been concerned with these dialectical categories, whether it is inside/outside, figure/ground, subject/object. For me today, it is necessary to look within architecture to see if it is possible to break up this synthetic project from within. This attempt is what post-structuralism would consider the displacement of the metaphysics of presence.
If we continue to think that what is presented is necessarily truthful or what we see is truthful and also beautiful then we will continue to subscribe to the myth that architecture is the wonder of the metaphysics of presence. It may become possible with such an awareness to move away from what I call the hegemony of the image.
People always say formalism is the project of architecture's autonomists. For me it is precisely this autonomy which is architecture's delay of engaging with society. If it is architecture's activity and its own discourse which in fact impacts society, then to be an architect is a social act.
This does not mean social in the form of making people feel better or happy. Or building houses for the poor or shopping malls for the rich or garages for Mercedes. I am talking about understanding those conditions of autonomy that are architectural, that make for an engagement with society in the sense of operating against the existing hegemonic social and political structures of our time. That is what architecture has always been.

we're always the last ones to receive news!

Just came across this interesting architect couple's interview... Their attitude towards life and architecture is reflected in their answers to these questions...

what books do you have on your bedside table?
t: none - no books.

do you read design and architecture magazines?
t: sometimes it's necessary, but it's more important to
understand everyday life.

where do you get news from?
t: we're always the last ones to receive news!

You can read more at:
http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/tezuka_architects.html

"Doobara Mat poochna... Damn Phool!"

Well, this is the first post coming on this blog! I know, I know, I had promised it will come in a month... but... Anyways, now that I have decided that I will post something by tonight itslef and stop procastinating, I am left with the most important thing; what to write about?!! Like that, I can write about anything, but since this being the first post and all, I kept thinking. And this conversation with my sister-in-law came up to my mind.
I was designing their house at that time and was trying to understand what they were looking for and my sis-in-law said, "Navu, I would like to sit on sunday afternoons and look at rain falling on these huge glass windows, with a small garden of flowers, something like that 'citibank' advert." At that time I thought it was more of an 'image' driven desire. As in, the media had created this 'image' of a lifestyle, which she wanted to follow.
But as I kept thinking it sort of threaded with one other thought of mine, which always springs up whenever i look at these amazing renderings of almost all 'famous' architects. Well, I actually mean almost all of our renders, but lets for now stick to these architects. Its actually like I am nitpicking them, for two reasons. One, they are 'rich and famous'! and Second, more importantly, at some point or the other in our life, we all want to be like them, think like them, live like them...
Anyways, coming back, whenever I see all these renderings, I can never see or feel what my sis-in-law expected me to design for! What she said, was an 'experience' that she expected from being in her home. What all people in and around a building expect, invariably, would be some form of 'experience'! (Coming to think of it, it would be great idea to just go and talk to all those people on the street and listen to their aspirations of buildings coming near by.)
But, in all those renders, which by the way, is the 'most potent tool' of communication of ideas for the Architect, I hardly ever saw or felt those expectant experiences. Infact, all I could ever see was the architects' 'vision', which more often than not is her 'Super-ego'. The dramtic angles, perspectives, confusing lines and detailing all depict the inherent desire to be 'god'. One might argue that, since, we are 'creating' something, why cant we be god? Right, but 'god' has lot of 'sensibility' ;-)

Anyways, coming back again, I dont understand this almost carnal desire to show a 'birds eye view' of a building! I mean, how many of us will fly in a helicopter and look at a building? We might have to foricbly do it in Bangalore, the way the traffic is stuck nowadyas, but still... Also, most of the exteriors images are all 'conceptual' or dramatic, hardly giving out any feeling of space - the experience. And the interiros, are more confusing, with blurred ghosts of people and these photo freezes of planes and angles, as if people have only one sense of eyes and which act as a digital camera, without video option!


So folks, keeping it as an open thread. I have put forth the questions... so think about it and let your thoughts flow down here, without inhibitions of what you feel;

That I am damn fool, one of that clormint's "doobara mat poochna" types? Is it the attitude that we look at architecutral design as a higly elitist creative art? Whether Building renders themsleves are very flimsy to communicate our ideas, and we should look at some other communicating means? If so, why do people say Image speaks more than words?!!!

well keep them coming and coming...

B.L.Naveen

2004 passout, GIT architecture.

(This would be a sort of unofficial format for signing off, as this being a blog with lot of authors, hopefully, it would help to sign off giving our names and all. The people in the comment section would atleast know the target of their frustrations.)
To become an author of this blog, which all of you can, you have to log in (please contact Prasad for username and password) and invite yourselves in the 'add authors' section of the 'settings' of the blog. And if you just want to comment, you can go right ahead, and if you are one of those who stand back and enjoy the show, you are also welcome, but I promise, I will pull you in the dirt with me ;-)