LITMIR.BIZ

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sensible than sitting inside a stuffy old box. So these variations of open spaces, that is, verandas, pergolas, etc, that we are discussing, are not just cheap ad hoc substitutions for solidly built construction—as is too often misunderstood by the casual observer. On the contrary, at certain times of the day, and at certain times of the year, they provide the most pleasant and appropriate environment for these activities.

      This, of course, makes for a difference in our perception of what is architecturally desirable and significant. If one lives in a cold climate and is continuously involved in the production of boxes (and mutants thereof), then one becomes obsessed with the surface-patterning, the coding, the tattooing of those boxes. And architectural photography, in journals and books, reinforces this obsession—since the printed image dramatizes two-dimensional patterns, but is quite incapable of communicating any sense of the ambient air.

      Which is indeed a great pity. For to walk on a seashore in the evening, or to cross a desert and arrive at a house around a courtyard, is a human experience beyond the merely photogenic. At these moments, certain responses are triggered off in our minds—responses conditioned by thousands of generations of life on this planet. Perhaps they are the half-forgotten memories of a primordial landscape, of a lost paradise . . . ? In any event, as we approach the open-to-sky end of the continuum they condition very powerfully our perceptions.

      This is why, in Europe, the great wellspring of architecture has always been the region around the Mediterranean Sea. Here the colonnade is not just a heavily ‘coded’ screen through which you see the built-form behind, but a perfectly pleasant spot to saunter around for much of the day. And the monumental Hindu temples of South India—at Madurai, Tanjore, Sri Rangam—are experienced not just as a collec­tion of gopurams and shrines, but as a ritualistic pathway (a pilgrimage!) through the sacred spaces that lie between. In fact, this open-to-sky processional movement is of the utmost relig­ious and symbolic significance. It is found through out the warm regions of the earth, from the sun temples of Mexico (which consist of pyramids, and—more importantly—of the sacramental open spaces they define), to the temples of Bali (with their ritualistic pathways up the hillside, through knife-edged doorways).

      Religious ceremonies in Asia have always emphasized this movement through open-to-sky spaces—and the quasi-mystical sensations they generate within us. Thus, while the cathedrals of Europe are all variations of the closed-box model, the great Islamic mosques in Delhi and Lahore are at the other end of the spectrum: they consist mainly of large areas of open space, surrounded by just enough built-form to make one feel one is ‘inside’ a piece of architecture. Indeed, they exercise a rare finesse.

      This phenomenon is not confined to temples and mosques. Examples are found in the secular world as well: witness Fatehpur Sikri, which exemplifies so much of what we have been dis­cussing here. They are also found at the scale of domestic architecture: those of you who have travelled to warmer climates might recall early mornings on a lawn, or sitting out on a veranda, when the thought of stepping back into an air-conditioned box appears suddenly claustrophobic.

      Perhaps the most familiar example of all might be the Acropolis at Athens, where the sensations we experience, partly tactile (air movement on our skin) and partly metaphysical, (the ascending progression, under an open sky) move us so profoundly. Unfortunately, as we go northward, we lose these responses. Thus, even if there is a promenade, as for example, in Corbusier’s Armee du Salut in Paris, the cold weather telescopes it into a hop-step-and-jump we must scurry through. The Acropolis, it would seem, is not a moveable feast.

      The Parthenon at Athens

      Dealing with climate in the Red Fort at Agra

      Fatehpur Sikri

      Discussing movement patterns in a warm climate brings me to our second point, viz., the importance of such patterns to the crucial issue of energy-passive architecture. For in a poor country like India, we simply cannot afford to squander the kind of resources required to air-condition a glass tower under a tropical sun. And this, of course, is an advantage. It means that the building itself must, through its very form, create the ‘controls’ the user needs. For centuries now people all over India—in villages and palaces—have invented wonderful combinations of the kind of spaces (from closed box to open-to-sky) we have been discussing here. At the same time, they developed the kind of lifestyles which allowed them to use these different spaces in optimal patterns. Take for example the Red Fort at Agra: in the early morn­ing of the summer months, a velvet shamiana (i.e., canopy) was stretched over the top of the courtyards—thus trapping the cold overnight air in the lower level of rooms, where the Mughal emperor spent his day. By evening the shamiana was removed and the emperor and his court came out on to the gardens and pavillions at the terrace level. In the cold (but sunny) winter, this nomadic pattern was reversed: the terrace garden being used during the day, and the lower levels of rooms at night.

      Hawa Mahal, Jaipur: humidifying and cooling the dry desert winds

      In short: dealing effectively with climate necessitates an inventiveness about living patterns, about lifestyles. Indeed, all truly new architecture and planning is, in the final analysis, concerned with the conceptualization of alternate lifestyles. This was the driving force behind Wright’s Prairie Houses. It is also the real issue—and the opportunity!—of the present energy crisis, both in Asia as well as in Europe.

      The example of the Mughals is not such an esoteric one. Adapting to a quasi-nomadic mann­er, using different conditions of built-form, was a common practice even in the US, where, as recently as in 1950, families still used their porches in summer. By 1960 the mechanical engineers (with the connivance of the architects) had changed all that. Everyone withdrew into their air-conditioned boxes. Somewhere in the process, architecture—and the issues it addresses—has become sadly diminished.

      It is a dislocation apparent in formal architectural vocabulary as well. Con sider, for instance, the house of Ali Qapu, facing the Meydan-i-Shah in Isfahan. An enormous roof hovers over the entrance, creating not only shade and protection, but a great evocative gesture towards the city, exactly the kind of architectural tour-de-force that made Corbusier, that frozen Swiss, come to life when he saw the Mediterranean, and later Brazil. The machine for living! Yes, and always the great sculptural decisions (the overhangs, the double-heights), were placed facing the elements—i.e., at the business end of the habitat (e.g., the Esprit Nouveau Pavilion, the various Unites, the Shodhan house in Ahmedabad, etc.). But as Corbusier’s influence permeated into the colder climates, these heroic gestures had to withdraw into defensible space, into the mechanically heated and cooled interiors of the building. In this retreat they lost much of their rationale: they began to appear rather arbitrary and capricious. Indeed, the bigger they got, the more wilful they seemed—till finally one had the wildly extravagant atrium of a five-star luxury hotel. In these humongous lobbies, despite the spatial pyrotechnics, the ambience seems somewhat artificial, contrived, stillborn. And for a simple reason: they do not connect with any open-to-sky space which could quicken them to life.

      Precisely the contrary is true of the Alhambra—here a structurally decadent, rococo building generates a truly extraordinary experience in us. Why? Because the basic premise of the Alhambra, viz., axially placed courtyards, inlaid with fountains and water channels, under an open sky, evokes an echo in the deep-structure of our minds.

      ‘Fiction,’ said Cocteau, ‘is primordial memory.’ Perhaps so also is built-form. Certainly architecture is concerned with much more than just its physical attributes. It is a many-layered thing. Beneath and beyond the strata of function and structure, materials and texture, lie the deepest

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