LITMIR.BIZ

      At the centre . . . sits Akbar

      Jaipur’s plan is worthy of admiration and emulation: for the clarity of its main arteries, the efficiency of its water-management system, the understanding of essential socio-economic patterns—and above all, for the startling relevance to us today regarding the transformation between past and future, between material and metaphysical worlds, between microcosm and macrocosm, that Maharaja Jai Singh sought to synthesize.

      The manthan (churning generated by seemingly conflicting systems of thoughts) is not just a contemporary disturbance; it has always existed, providing one of the prime sources of energy for man’s will to act. At times, even when the mythic values and images remain unchanged, this energy is generated because the building technology alters. When such a change occurs, the architect must transform, reinvent, the old images in terms of the new technology. What he must not do is merely transfer the old mythic images despite their irrelevance to the changed technology—a process which is debilitating both to the architect and to the society for which he builds. The distinction between transfer and transformation is of fundamental importance. For instance, all of Le Corbusier’s buildings clearly are the work of a Mediterranean man, yet in none of them did the architect ever use a sloping tiled roof. Instead, Le Corbusier seems to have taken the age-old images and values of the Mediterranean and reinvented their expression in the 20th century technology of concrete and glass. This is true transformation. It places architecture where it rightfully belongs: at the intersection of culture, technology and human aspiration.

      Another eloquent example of transformation is the work of Alvar Aalto in Finland, but I want to particularly draw your attention to Frank Lloyd Wright and the truly extraordinary houses he created around the turn of the century in the mid-western states of the USA. It would seem that in that oeuvre, Wright singlehandedly invented the way America was going to live for the next hundred years. The builders’ houses constructed in the suburbia over the last four or five decades are really just hand-me-down versions of Wright’s brilliant prototypes, with all the compulsive imagery intact: the two steps up to the raised dining area, the carport, the picture window, and so forth. How did Wright do it? Not because of any dependence on historic ‘quotes’ or ‘references’ (surely architects who study too much history are condemned to repeat it?) but because he intuitively understood what Americans wanted to become.

      In the US, another great generator of populist mythology has been the Hollywood studios. ‘There is no myth known to the human race,’ wrote Gore Vidal, albeit ironically, ‘which did not achieve its apotheosis in the Hollywood films of the 30s and 40s.’ Certainly, to me at least, the recent waterfront renewal schemes in Boston, Baltimore and New York read as transformations of old MGM musicals like Meet Me in St. Louis and Singin’ in the Rain: an innocent all-singing, all-dancing America for which perhaps the majority of citizens yearn. Thus does architecture recycle myth. To build similar waterfront scenes in London or Yokohama would be mere superficial transfer—for Gene Kelly and his ilk are not part of the mythology there. But in downtown America one could argue for their legitimacy.

      Indian cinema has produced its mythic images as well—images that seem to haunt the collective imagination of this subcontinent. In the sparse fare available on the government-controlled television network during the 1960s and 1970s, the Sunday evening movie was watched by millions of families across the nation, with the whole household, including retainers and servants, forming a small community around the set. In such a context, it is indeed chilling to realize how inherently vicious and unjust the relationships between landlord and serf are—rich and poor, powerful and meek.

      For as an architect who has been influenced by the double heights and spatial pyrotechnics of Le Corbusier and Wright, it is particularly mortifying to note the entrance of the grand villain in such a movie. He almost always lives in a duplex apartment, or a house with several double-height spaces, so that he can come prancing down the stairs to deliver a particularly cruel line. Architecture as the expression of power—monetary, political, physical—is a nexus not perceived by most architects, but one which is palpably vivid to Indians gathered around a TV screen.

      IV

      Another area where architecture triggers subtle and metaphysical feelings within us is the phenomenon of open-to-sky spaces. In fact, because of their extraordinary qualities (which we have discussed earlier), these spaces provide the key to one of the most daunting issues facing the nation—the task of providing an environment for the urban poor. Today our towns and cities, like those elsewhere in the Third World, are being engulfed by tidal wave of distress migration from the rural hinterland. Their growth rate is phenomenal. Over the last decade or two, in many of these urban centres, while the overall population has doubled, the squatters have increased five-fold—or more.

      Attempts to deal with this phenomenon through the construction of ‘low-cost’ housing built of brick and concrete have proved abortive, since they are far beyond the earning capacity of the poor and so end up being transferred (often illegally) to the middle class. Nor is it possible to subsidize such construction on a national scale—since there are great many other priorities (food, health, education, job generation) competing for such meagre resources as do exist.

      Which brings us perhaps to the most crucial issue facing architects in India today: how does one create an architecture that is relevant to the millions upon millions of India’s poor? We need not only economical construction that provides basic shelter, but a real habitat that allows them to live with their own mythic imagery, their dreams, their aspirations. And in today’s India, what would these be? The TV antenna? The neon light? The nylon sari? These for the majority of our people, are powerful and legitimate symbols, co-existing in their lives with the yantra on the wall, the bindu on the forehead. For as we have already seen, the sacred realm does not consist only of formalized religion; on the contrary, popular reincarnations of ancient and contemporary myths also act as potent motivators in our society. In fact, just when one fears that in a modern city like Mumbai, all this rehashing of Vedic mythology is not relevant, one suddenly sees, less than a hundred yards away in a squatter hovel, a family making a rangoli pattern on the floor, re-enacting their version of those ancient myths in the real crunch of everyday life.

      Mythic imagery, old and new: