Monuments & the Vernacular

I remember debating the monumental character of Le Corbusier's work and its impact on modern architecture in India, when I first visited Ahmedabad with my fellow architects from Aurangabad. But when I visited Ahmedabad again with my students, after a gap of 22 years, I could discern something totally different - the influence of the Indian vernacular traditions on the design by Le Corbusier in all of his work in India, while he was in the process of creating new monuments for modern India.

When discussing the aspects of a 'Monuments' with the students, I used to list the physical characteristics of the Monuments as setting, elevation, scale, symmetry, use of durable materials, cutting edge technology (relevant to the time period) & ornamentation based on the cultural background. The quality of space in and around the monument is the combined effect of all these factors.

It was easy to identify most of these factors in the Mill Owners Association building, as the building is set off at a good distance away from the main access, the entrance is directly on the first floor, approached through a large ramp, exposed concrete is used (conceived as the most durable material at the time), and if you can call huge cantilevers & curved roofs in concrete as cutting edge technology of the time, it is all there, striking you as the main feature of the built form.

Ornamentation is conspicuously missing, but that goes with the philosophy of modern architecture as postulated from Adolf Loos to Walter Gropius. What you find instead is the conversion of the mundane elements like the handrail of the ramp converted into an art object, and the security window at first floor has a cantilevered concrete slab projection like a stone block projecting out in a temple.

All these elements notwithstanding, what strikes you primarily is the complete absence of walls on both the front and rear ends of the building, with a series of huge fins in the front and a series of cantilevered slabs in the rear to demarcate the edge of the building. In the rear, this is enhanced by a small gap between the edge of the building and the huge projecting chajjas.

It is interesting to note that most of the foreign architects who have worked in India have tried to make their buildings compatible to the Indian climate unlike many irresponsible Indian architects who borrowed wholesale the glass-box form of architecture vogue in the European and American cities, without any thought to its fate in the Indian climate.

It is probable that if you visit India from abroad, the first thing that strikes you when you get down at the airport is the harsh tropical climate, with realization that is impossible to design any building in India in the way you would do in a temperate climate, and then you would try to find the most appropriate design responses to this climate.

In the Mill Owners Association building, therefore, what you see is the reflection of the Indian vernacular, which is basically a minimal shelter, with proper protection from sun, and a provision of walls where strictly required. The climate is user friendly, and you can enjoy the breeze, you need not enclose the building at all. The building has a view of Sabarmati River on the rear, and all that you need is just an opening to enjoy the view. A small informal space is provided here like a platform around a tree, and you do not need any other piece of furniture.

In the lobbies too, the seats are made from concrete, and are as stark as the temple platforms, the only possible difference is the ornamentation. All this is a direct reflection of the minimalist approach of the Indian vernacular. The ambience is that of a place of contemplation, a simple, uncluttered space, very much like the traditional house Gandhiji lived in on the banks of Sabarmati.

Corbusier's design of the building is thus more in line with Gandhiji's concept of trusteeship, wherein the Owners of the Mills would be acting as trustees of public money and are expected to live a spartan life and lead the society by their own example. However, all thorough my visit I kept wondering about the expectations of the present members of the Mill Owners association and whether they match the Gandhian philosophy as reflected in the image of Corbusier's building.

The current image of Ahmadabad is a direct reflection of the aspirations of the elite class with McDonald outlets, Malls & Multiplexes with a large glass & aluminum expanse - a typical Indian version of an American downtown area. We have come a long way from the spirit of the Gandhian philosophy, and all that Corbusier's design stands for is a part of history we may not like to remember now.

It is not surprising therefore, that there were proposals to pull down the building in favor of a fully air-conditioned glass-enclosed skyscraper, but it seems saner voices have prevailed and the building is now listed as a World Heritage Site, as an outstanding contribution by Le Corbusier to the modern movement.

It may be that UNESCO's designation as a World heritage site may help in its preservation in future, but I would always remember it as a monument that followed the vernacular.

A Winning Entry Resurrected from Trash

A great many of global architectural icons of today are results of architectural competitions. St. Peters Cathedral at Rome, the greatest monument in Christianity is one such example. Of course, all competitions are not alike. Some competitions ended up with no clear winner. In the competition held for the League of Nations Headquarters at Geneva the jury was unable to reach a verdict and selected five leading entries. Ultimately, the five architects who had submitted these entries were asked to collaborate and come up with a final design.

There is nothing outstanding about the final design, and the 'Palace of Nations' as it is called now, seems to be a part of the Neo-classical architecture in vogue at the time. In fact, the entry submitted by Le Corbusier, which was rejected because the jury did not favor its modern look, is more fondly remembered in the architectural circles now.

Another competition, held for the Chicago Tribune headquarters in Chicago, is also remembered for the seemingly outlandish entry submitted by Adolf loos, where the entire building takes the form of a giant classical column, and another by Walter Gropius, with the Bauhaus philosophy of unadorned rectilinear office block. The winning entry by John Mead Howells and Raymond M. Hood is an eclectic design, adorning the skyscraper with elements borrowed from the classical tradition, and is considered a success. The building is now a part of the famous riverside townscape in Chicago.

The story of the famous Sydney Opera House is slightly different. The jury had rejected a great many entries and were unable to come up with the final decision. It was only when one of the judges, Eero Saarinen, who arrived late, decided to re-examine the rejected proposals. John Utzon's entry was thus resurrected from trash and awarded the first prize.

Utzon's design was inspired by natural shapes, but the free-flowing curves of the shell roof were initially found to be unbuildable, and Utzon had to re-do the working drawings to follow a clear spherical geometry for all the shells.

The project also encountered many problems in its execution and overshot both its budget and completion date. Originally estimated to be completed by 1963 at a cost of $ 7.2 million, the project was finally completed in 1973 (ten years late) at cost of $ 102 millions (more than 14 times the original budget).

And that was not the only controversy. Utzon was criticized for the escalating cost of the project well before its completion as well as his choice of plywood as the material for the shell roof and Utzon resigned in protest. The project was completed by Peter Hall, an Australian architect. It seems Utzon resented having to resign and did not attend the inauguration of the Opera House at the hands of Queen Elizabeth II, who did not mention the name of any architect at the opening ceremony.

Aesthetics overriding Function

The visual qualities of an architectural design have always had popular appeal. All through the history, architects have borrowed heavily from the classical tradition in order to replicate its visual appeal. All this is quite acceptable in case one is designing a building type that was part of the classical tradition like a church, as the function of the building remains unchanged. But when someone tries to design a corporate building in the classical tradition, there are bound to be problems with the functional aspects of design.

This is what happened when an architect tried to design of a bank building based on Parthenon. This was the Girard Trust Corn Exchange Bank (now part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art) in Philadelphia, designed by architects McKim, Mead & White in the early 20th century. The building was explicitly modeled on the Parthenon style, featuring a massive, open, columned banking hall (or "cella") on the ground floor to maintain classical purity.

The manager of the bank wanted to have his cabin and partitions for the staff on the main floor, but the architect refused to subdivide this space with modern partitions, believing it would violate the aesthetic integrity of the classical design. The owner sided with the architect's vision to maintain the monumental, open-floor "temple" aesthetic. As a result of this refusal to disturb the open hall, the bank manager was reportedly forced to have his office in the basement.

The second story is about La Scala, an Opera House in Milan, Italy, which was designed by Giuseppe Piermarini. After it was opened in 1778, people found out that there were a number of seats in this theatre which had no view of the stage. When the architect was asked about the flaw, he argued that in an opera theatre it is impossible to plan for everyone to have a look at the stage and some people will have to be content by listening to the music alone. Though the acoustic design of the place was good, this kind of reply by an architect would be unimaginable today.

It was buildings like this which led to the modern insistence on function, and the reason for F. L. Wright to specify 'Form follows function' or for Le Corbusier to define 'house as a machine to live in'

A fountain that challenged Apple

There was once a Levi's store in the Union Square of downtown San Franscisco which is now replaced by a large Apple store. The Levi's store had a famous bronze folk art fountain behind it, named Ruth Asawa Fountain after its creator, and the Levi's store had a triangular plan form, reducing its width in the rear, and thus providing a good setting for this fountain.

When Apple submitted its plans for its new retail store in place of the Levis Stores, it was considered as a welcome change. San Franciso’s Mayor Lee described the new Apple Store as “quite simply incredible” and that he could think of “no better location for the world’s most stunning Apple Store than right here in Union Square”.

But then people realized that this new proposal would eliminate the fountain, there was a huge public outcry. The mayor retracted his statement and admitted that he didn’t realize that the plans called for the elimination of the Ruth Asawa fountain.

The reason for this turnabout lies in the history of the fountain. It is designed by Ruth Asawa, a Japanese American sculptor, who was the driving force behind the creation of the San Francisco School of the Arts, which was renamed recently as the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in tribute to her.

The fountain was Installed in 1973 and was made of baker’s clay and cast in bronze. According to Asawa herself, “The fountain depicts San Francisco, and approximately 250 friends and school children helped in its making by contributing self-portraits, cars, buildings, and various San Francisco landmarks.” The fountain was part of the public memory in SF for 40 years now.

Apple’s proposal therefore evoked strong resentment. Moreover, the initial proposal for the building was a characterless box of metal and glass that contributed nothing unique to the local landscape and had no identity except the Apple symbol in the center of the huge glass façade on Post Street.

San Francisco Chronicle urban design critic John King pointed out the absurdity of “a company renowned for design innovation hiring one of the world’s most acclaimed architecture firms, only to unload a box that would look at home in Anymall, U.S.A.”

But this is not the only issue: in trying to reflect the corporate brand identity we tend to convert architecture itself into a product, relinquishing its primary role in place-making in an urban setting. As a respondent on the article in arch.daily commented, ‘the world would be better off without the generic chain stores of drive throughs, gas stations, shopping malls etc. that plague our cities.’

Fortunately, in this particular case, Apple bowed to the will of the people, and made a revised proposal, which incorporated the fountain, but reduced the size of the open plaza, as the apple building is rectangular and covers a part of the earlier triangular plaza.

This gesture could not have come at a more appropriate time - Ruth Asawa died on 5^th August, 2013. So, it became some kind of tribute to her. The news item in SFGate starts with the line - ‘Ruth Asawa fans can rest easy - the artist's beloved bronze fountain near Union Square is staying pretty much right where it is.’

The design of the building, however, has not changed, it remains a tall, taut cube of glass and steel, except for a large 'window' in the center of the East wall, which continues over the roof, becoming a skylight. Both these changes – retention of the fountain & the opening up of the east façade have been generally appreciated. And here the matter rests. As it happens, the last item on the SFGate online news is an announcement of the Public Memorial service for Ruth Asawa.

Monstrosities that became Icons

Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder. One would think that this does not apply to public perception of what constitutes a beautiful building, but there is a gradual shifting of public opinion when a building with seemingly bizarre aesthetics becomes part of an urban scene. A structure described as monstrous may eventually be described as path-breaking and iconoclastic after its continued presence and familiarity on the urban scene.

The most famous of such examples is the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It was built as an entrance gateway for the International Exposition in 1889, to mark the centenary of the French Revolution. The exposition committee selected Gustav Eiffel's design from as many as a hundred proposals.

However, when people found out about the proposal, there was an outcry. A few artists and intellectuals derided the tower as 'a monstrosity that would disfigure the Paris landscape'. The opposition subsided when it was revealed that the structure was temporary and would be eventually dismantled.

But when the tower became a major tourist attraction, plans for dismantling were shelved, and it has now become an icon of Paris, so much so that you cannot now think of Paris without the Eiffel Tower.

The story of another icon in Paris, the Pompidou Centre, is not much different. The building, designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, who were two young architects in their thirties, is the first major example of an "inside-out" building. The reason for the name is that with its structural system, mechanical systems, and circulation are all exposed on the exterior of the building. With introduction of color coding for the various services, the building had a shocking, bizarre appearance, and evoked reactions similar to the Eiffel Tower, when it was inaugurated.

An article in Le Figaro declared: "Paris has its own monster, just like the one in Loch Ness." National Geographic described the reaction to the design as "love at second sight." However, two decades later, the New York Times noted that the design of the Centre "turned the architecture world upside down" and that "Mr. Rogers earned a reputation as a high-tech iconoclast.

Today it is widely regarded as an artwork in its own merit. When Richard Rogers was awarded the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 2007, the jury commented that the Pompidou Centre "revolutionized museums, transforming what had once been elite monuments into popular places of social and cultural exchange, woven into the heart of the city."

Both the examples go to show that our ideas of aesthetics are based on what we are accustomed to believing as beautiful. Great architecture shatters such beliefs and establishes its own definition of aesthetics, becoming iconic in its own right.

Does Context Matter?

Does Context Matter?

Architects consider themselves as creative professionals and take great pride in the visual quality of their creations – the only part of architectural design that the rest of the world understands. Unfortunately, this has resulted in identifying architecture only with its visual form, at the cost of all the other finer aspects of design. In most of the cities today, there seems to be some kind of competition amongst architects in trying to make their designs strikingly in contrast to their contexts, without a second thought as to the effect this would have on the overall urban landscape.

The more outrageous the form, the more the project gets talked about. I recollect a photograph of Hongkong documenting the resultant chaos, in a presentation by Jimmy Lim, with his typical dry comment about how you need to shout in order to be heard in a scenario where the background noise is too loud.

On the other hand, if conformity to the context becomes institutionalized in the form of guidelines or regulations, they tilt the scale to the other extreme, putting a virtual stop to all creative interpretations of the context. The urban design guidelines for Chandigad are a case in point. The interpretation of the context of Chandigad is frozen in a set of regulations so rigid that they have effectively killed all creativity and made the city monotonous in character.

The correct response to any physical context must lie somewhere in between these two extremes, though not always in a manner directly apparent. Sometimes the new project itself may redefine the context. The Sydney Opera House, which has become an icon of Sydney now, was built over a site which had an existing structure with heritage value. Conservationists may now have an academic debate over the virtue of promoting current iconic architecture by demolishing the heritage of the past, but there are no clear-cut solutions.

Indians in general have scant regard for the historic setting which most of our old cities have, but there are exceptions too. First, we had the Delhi Urban Arts Commission Act and then the Mumbai Heritage Precinct Regulations as also the regulations for protection of French Quarter in Pondicherry. Interestingly, all these areas boast of architecture built by our colonial rulers in their heyday, and we seem to have a complex love-hate relationship with our colonial past.

So, when Charles Correa designed the LIC Building in Connaught Place, New Delhi, people derided it as they felt that the huge concrete and glass tower would deface the heritage quality of the place. Little is known about the original design by Correa in which he sought to integrate the huge plaza at the ground level as an extension of Connaught Place, making it directly accessible from the street. This never materialized simply because like our old colonial masters; our current rulers also treat the common people of the city as an undesirable element. It was much later, in the design of the city center for Kolkata, that Correa would actually realize the creation of a truly accessible public place for the city.

What Correa was trying to do was to reflect the ambience of Connaught Place as a democratic public place; but excluding the visual character of Lutyens Delhi. The problem with such an approach is that it is a bit too difficult to understand on paper and hence may get caught up in the regulations about conformity to context. It is actually surprising that the Delhi Urban Arts Commission, cleared the proposal. It is doubtful if such a proposal by any other architect would have been cleared under any of the heritage guidelines mentioned above.

It is now said that ‘the context of Connaught Place begins with the new LIC building’, and we must give credit to Correa for redefining the context of Connaught Place, in spite of the fact that his original scheme was not fully executed.

Public places in an urban setting are what makes a city memorable for generations. Architects, as creative professionals, need to be sensitive to this intangible aspect of our public spaces.

Introduction

As a subject in architectural schools, I am aware that history ranks somewhere below the theory of structures in popularity, and considered the dullest of the subjects ever, dealing with things from the dead past.

Thirty years ago, when I started teaching history as a subject in architecture, the first question I had in mind was not how history should be taught but why it should be taught at all - what is its relevance to the present-day architectural education?

According to Italian Architect and Historian Manfredo Tafuri, 'architectural history does not follow a teleological scheme in which one language succeeds another in a linear sequence. Instead, it is a continuous struggle played out on critical, theoretical and ideological levels as well as through the multiple constraints placed on practice. Since this struggle continues in the present, architectural history is not a dead academic subject, but an open arena for debate'.

Architectural history is not buried in the books but is ever present in the form of buildings existing side by side with the current development in most of our cities today. They create a sense of place, and many a times dominate the urban scene by their presence. Hence all the attributes of the historical buildings: concept of space & place-making, impressions of scale, grandeur, choice of form and detailing become part of the vocabulary of architecture even today. The choices open for architectural design in this context for any new project, become an open area for debate, as remarked by Tafuri.

The stories of great architects who have successfully dealt with these issues are interesting in themselves, but they also serve as guidelines for architectural design today. This, in fact, is the reason for this blog in the first place.