Monday, December 29, 2014

ARCHITECTURE OF BRANDS















When question is raised on ideological rooting within the moral stamp & canonical paramount of architecture, the resultant cultural manifestation, very often remains aloof and outside the discourse on architectural criticism and its responsibilities. It can take various forms and finds its treacherous escape from its representational responsibilities. The most didactic forms of cultural manifestation becomes most material & subservient expression of product. Architecture oscillates between two extremes condition of shaped and being shaped. The recent visit to Vitra Campus (Germany) & Novartis Campus (Switzerland) revealed collection, consumption of most branded & signature architecture. The ideological grounding of place for production of knowledge, innovation and interaction seems way beyond the didactic meaning. 

The presentation and guided tour outrageously proclaimed the need for brand architecture and design as a symbol and expression of moving with time & innovation. In the process its assuming to be philanthropic mentoring of diverse and international bandwidth of knowledge & culture, which perhaps may go beyond the secular & critical range of architectural appreciation.



Credit: www.arcspace.com

















Credit: en.wikipedia.org
















Credit: Manoj Parmar Architects




























Thursday, December 11, 2014

MINIMUM (RITUAL) CITY


The city arrives through stark landscape of mountain range from distance and large reservoir. The stark landscape of rock formation makes city fabric far more humble and humane. The entire city is walk-able and it maintains its minimum infrastructure. The formation of bazaar within its main spine is distinguishable form many other similar ritual cities. The recent development of new, generic building types & enterprises are marginally visible. The homogeneous facade and perforated interior spaces still have charm of carefully preserved spatial value. 

It is one of the most sacred city of India with wonderful rock formation as arrival feature to the town, abundant water resources adds to its character. The belief to attain salvation as per mythology from the depleted deteriorating fabric,  type & characteristic of ritual city, are perhaps another reality of such minimum city.
























































Monday, November 3, 2014

OBJECTIVE DOMESTICITY

CARTESIANISM: OBJECTIVE DOMESTICITY                       

Intellectual revolution and theoretical objectivity in contemporary architecture.

“Historical & Comparative”

The French philosopher Rene Descartes contributed to the doctrine and principle of historical objectivity compounding to the theoretical foundation of “Cartesianism” through his treatise “Discourse of Method”. It began to emphasize the historicity in light of conceptual objectivity. The relationship of mind and corporeal sensuality is subjected to objective rationalism of forces that shapes the production (object). The objective historicism brings about substansialism of matter by dividing the existence into mind, matter & nature.

Along with Descartes, Montesquieu through his treatise “Spirit of Laws” discarded the theological interpretation of existence and paved the way for scientific history of human culture. In spite of the intimate connection between nature and culture, the reason determines the nature of responses.

The “Discourse of Method & Spirit of Laws” began to revive the renaissance significance of anthropocentric space along with the essential qualities of critical spirit, objectivity & secularization of thought that has pervaded into the contemporary thought pattern of objectivity for architectural paradigm.

Houses have always remained as theoretical excursions medium to set new cannons for contemporary practice in Architecture. The re-invention of house, “Machine for Living” became metaphoric object of modern life.

The minimum form and maximum function sets new alignment to the aesthetic of house form. The rationality & vitality of program remained constant victim for seeking new language of Architecture per se. Architecture of houses always dealt with duality of transfer of form Vs regard/disregard for the program. The harder the contrast the more it sets the challenge to the contemporary living.

House as a simple appliance was operative metaphor sets new experiment in methodical cartesianism of architectural thought in attempting to locate the aesthetic (space) of houses. The houses has always remained as product of systematic theoretical & rational research into formal field of architecture

Such research into nature of objects leads to the resultant forms that determined all the modern method of production and construction. The formal handling of volumes nevertheless convincingly demonstrates the aesthetic presence in architecture of houses while locating the parallel drawn from reading of “Discourse of Method”


CONSIDERATION OF SCIENCE: RAUM PLAN (VOLUMETRIC PLAN)

“It renders the power of judging aright and distinguishing the object of truth from error which brings good sense of reason & by nature it’s equal in all men.”

The outragious rejection of ornamentation and the draw of the parallel with crime is a clear indication of aesthetics that is principly objectified and resulted from scientific investigation of form. Adolf Loos work sets away from formlistic tendencies of form to plan in space. The sequencing of spaces was the determinant factor of organizing house program.


PRINCIPLE RULES OF METHOD: “BAUHAUS SCHOOL OF THOUGHT”

“The indiscriminate juxtaposition of values of time where perfection of work composed of collective is poised against the object perceived by cohesive method of assemblance.”

The Bauhaus attempted to contribute to the development - appropriate to the time of housing, form the simplest appliances to the finished dwelling & they must relate to each other rationally.

The school destined to achieve the systematic theoretical and practical research into formal, technical and economical field - to derive the form of an object from its natural function & limitation.


RULES OF MORALS “NEW CONSCIOUNESS OF THE AGE”

“The provisory code of morals composed of maxims and actions based on probable when power to determine object of truth is low.”

The metaphor of universality of art form over individuality.The rigorous rejection of all representational reference, including the cubist and purist.Nature was too material, too individual, universal art allowed only for abstract composition, as equilibrium of position and weight of colour.

The De Stijl were concerned with the calculated of unequal masses in an anti-cubist system which exploded the closed contours of volumetric body. The de-composition of cube led to the de-composition of program as universal & flexible, anti-dogmatic.

The contemporary practice that exists throughout the world is unified & inclusive, not fragmentary and contradictory like so much of the production of the first generation of modern architects.
The minimum form & reduction of program, construction confirms the ideal of anti- individual & architecture that precariously trapped between art & Kitsch of fifties.


REASONING OF SELF AND METAPHYSICS “MACHINES FOR LIVING IN”

“The objects that are perceived awake had no more truth in them than illussion as dreams. The self is a substance whose whole essence or nature coexists in thinking.”

The modern life, the world of activity has created own objects: pen, typewriter, furniture, ocean liner, likewise house needs to be re-invented from clutches of pilasters, crowns etc.The house is a machine for living in, it acquires clean air, full sunlight, and beauty in harmonious proportions.

The Architecture of time passionately demonstrated the nature of contemporary architecture of houses through industrial principle of construction (Dom- Ino), and exaggerated sequencing of program.

“The Mathematics of the the structural grid and a similar proportioning system with relationship to a higher (mathematical) order were some of the paradagmatic shifts from the precedence.They consisted the spaces with fixed forms and harmonic interrelationships composed of horizontal layers of free space defined by the floor and roof slabs. The rooms varied in shape and were asymmetrically arranged at each level. The plan insists on dormant centrality, while asserts within the self imposed square. I.e.Spiraling quality of asymmetry


ORDER OF PHYSICAL QUESTION & CHAIN OF TRUTH “INTERNATIALISM” SYNTACTIC MODEL

“One who unable to dertermine the object from nature of material or unable to represent equally well on single surface with all different facets of obejcts tend to select one facet in effect of light and rest in shades.”

Whiteness allows stark contrast of light & shadow, solid & void, it heighten the purity of visual form.
Engaging quotational elements, layered façade, conceptual homage to the design program of whites, but slowly mutating the cubist & purist syntax by influence of pop.

It refers to the syntactic model of interrelation without external referance. It has dialectic relation between writing (transformation) and reading (implicit and explicit relation).
It represents a radical confession of faith in an autonomous architecture, which entirely frees itself from criteria of habitability.
The contemporary practice that exists throughout the world is unified & inclusive, not fragmentary and contradictory like so much of the production of the first generation of modern architects.
The minimum form & reduction of program, construction confirms the Mies ideal of anti- individual & architecture that precariously trapped between art & Kitsch of fifties.

INVESTIGATION OF NATURE: “OBJECT OF NATURE”

“The truth to object of nature seems apparent on sphere of resosn when departed from obejct of speculative science who endeavoured to regulate the actions of thought”

ARCHITECTURE OF DOMESTICATED NATURE

Nature is defined as direct component of living; House is viewed as a retreat, isolated fragments of light that illustrates the whole of nature. Architecture of domesticated nature through concrete walls offers unexpected architectural challenge. The decisive factor now become topography, wind direction, position of the sun & expectation as regards spatial program
Architecture must be “a counterpoint to nature, a dialogue with nature, Architecture can pay tribute to nature is by confrontation, by creating new equilibrium.


BIBLIOGRAPHY: WORK CITED
1.     Descartes, Rene. “The Principle of Philosophy”. Part 2. The Philosophic Works of Descartes.
2.     Lefebvre, Henry. “Introduction to Modernity” London: Verso, 1995.

3.     Scruton, Roger. “The Aesthetics of Architecture”. London: Methuen, 1979. 

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

LOGARITHM OF EXPONENTIAL HISTORY



KRVIA / KRMLS - 2013
ARCHITECTURE AS CONTEMPORARY HISTORY





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SHADOW OF HISTORY

History is a trajectory whose formative circumstances hinges on the uncontaminated breath of cultural studies. They are beyond the secular range of historicity and theory of knowledge. The historicity is often contaminated as being condition of symphonic narrative & ideological fermentation that undermines the intellectual substance. It is often reimburse the value to history as subtext burden of Theo- political brutalities. 

The empathetic to historical writings and contemplation to indispensible imperatives are conditions for critical spirit in historical objectivity and veracity. The theoretical connectedness and continuity are conceptual possessions in algebraic notation which bestows the history with analogical forwardness and emblematic codes, both in continuous and discontinuous notations, the concept of exponential trajectory i:e historicism. Historicism is philosophical lecterns as systems of autopoiesis, whose reproductive capabilities of values are compounded with time dynamism but renunciation in constant entangle of retrogression. This perhaps encapsulates the theoretical continuity.  

Architectural history is pure and profound and was a result of physical distinctness & manifestation, of derivable & exponential properties of regional geography, social norms, cultural and religious ideology. But its connoted puberty exponentially transforms in persistence in doctrine of endurantism. As cross cultural mosaic surfaced allowing transfer of knowledge & eclecticism of workmanship, the baroque of imagination bolted the anguished time propeller. The resulted history served as archaeological catalyst and disgruntled layer of narcissism, problematizing the autopoiesis of architectural breeding. The gravity of inflated margins and equitable endurantism of history resulted in packaging the shifty byzantine of contemporary.

In contrast to that Modernism was seen as moral impetus of social and technological imperatives but perhaps & unknowingly contaminated with fermentation of anti-historical consciousness. It also presupposes that contextual distinctions are nonetheless intellectual brew, setting the strange seditious propaganda of absoluteness in non- differential modernism.

The history in contemporary mode is combined with endurantism which in turns makes the history continuously progress through time to the contemporaneous. As stated earlier, History is a trajectory, whose comprehension in the variables of memories, fetish, and histories of entities, when disconnect & connect to the present proficiencies is a construct of historicism. The variables usually inhibit contextualized interpretation of the historic events. The historicity thus does not account for the temporal nature of memory and the changes in perceptions and perspectives during the exponential transition to the contemporary.
The historicism is an unfolded conic section of time with an exponential curve of records.  Its construct embodies simultaneity of folding & unfolding of conic section of time. It lies in that very domiciliary object of circadian practice, but the interpretation or viewing the object as part of history and procedural mandate is often relegated to neglected subjectivity of contemporary. The differential graph of history when laid out in time gives the transition of legacy and the passage of which is often expunged. The cause and the effect of historical construct the factual eventuality of historicity and contextual demarcation of historicism combines the trajectory, mapping the trail of presence.

ENCRYPTED NOTATION
The act of writing (encrypted) is a relationship of exponential functions of history. The presence of reading (notation) is in its value of historicism. The act of writing and reading is an implosion whose margins derivatives are in memory. The logarithm of history is a repertoire of encrypted notations.
The encrypted notation is an exponential function of inscribed archaeology. The depth encrypts the degree of notation whose formally defined exponent brings meaning of unforeseen & untold in the process of logarithmic derivation.
The ornamentation and crime is an encrypted notation of affect where ideological position assumes to be anti-historical in thought but relegates the history as exponential function to be mutually exclusive program. Simultaneously the Doric tower by Adolf loose is only a synthesis of distorted effect whose contemporariness is destined to be encrypted act of contrived historicism. Similarly, the inscribed archaeology is often narrated with ambivalent subjectivity, whose transfer from encryption to notation is often imprisoned in the subjectivity of circumstantial contemporary.

The condition of historicity is to articulate the relationship of encryption and notation in a contemporary perspective and construct cohesive amalgamation of exponential history. The contemporary historicism developed historical disjunction between mutually exclusive event of encryption and notation. The expounded & impregnable narrations of literalist set out to institute the continuity between past and the present as historicity; however the exponential historicism was unable to position self in such narrations. Eventually in 20th Century modernist historians precluded the principles of narrations and oral historicity and raised the specter of historical distances. Historical distances differentiate due to passage of time and perceptions of people. History gets distorted due to the effect of past on the present, the rift between the facts and the narratives. The challenge was to create recorded history so as to avoid the historical distance in historicity.
The history is a trajectory than contemporary is a condition of coexist. The trajectory is combined act of writing (encrypted reading (notation) where history and historicism are suspended between contemporary conditions.  The contemporary is logarithm of history whose coefficient of presence embedded in two extremities.

BYZANTINE OF CONTEMPORARY
Architecture is a language construct with idiosyncrasies in its presence, and its ability to generate certain emblematic pattern of responses. These patterns have been altered in its elucidation allowing catalysts of encryption to set in as endurantist mediator. With the exponential changes in historicism of notations, the contemporary conditions stands deracinated unambiguous reality. The byzantine of contemporary has expressions strangely demarcated in residual membrane, having lost their way to condition to coexist. The history of architecture is communicative trajectory which reflects its differential evolution in relation to a variety of domains. If history is a trajectory than contemporary is presence of expounding exponential agent defining the logarithm of events. In such circumstances Architecture is reduce to a self-referencing process which acts parallel and is coefficient of now a closed process of communications of differential agents. The architecture thus obliges to be an ocular centric object for exchanges and transactions.
Contemporary is preoccupied perched conditions between inscription (history) and description (Architecture). It is dialectic of writing and reading. The contemporary is parallel existence of independent variables whose exponent is history.
The contradictions of History & contemporary conditions are often acted as extinguisher to foreshadow the cleavage of deterministic and objective program of modernism. Such anti-moral ascendancy on history and contemporary thought brings about the notion of mutual exclusive program of architecture that is either or not occur at same time.
The notion of history, contemporary and architecture are condition of collectively exhaustive phenomenon where if architecture as logarithm of ideas in realm of encrypted notation than history is exponential function of constant change in the independent variable giving the same proportional change. The contemporary is a condition of  differential equation   that deems to be the  unknown function of one or several variables that relates the values of the function itself and its derivatives of various orders. The rolling of historicism (mode of thinking for specific context, geography, local culture) is imagine to be emanating conditions of contemporary as realm whose component is history and dynamic reality
Architecture and history are not mutually exhaustive mandate and are not also mutually exclusive as contemporary is mediated as unknown functions whose critical presence is deemed to be neither mutually exclusive nor exhaustive; hence its embededness is in exponential functions of historicism Otherwise contemporary is engraving history of apathy, ignorantly adopting nonsensical ephemeral impulses.
History is a sub-conscious act lies below the historicism whose contemporary conditions are parasites of logarithmic fathom of encrypted notations. The disjunction often reduces to facile facsimiles and fractal scaling of technological addictiveness, attempting to traverse the passage of history as architectural apathy.


Friday, October 10, 2014

MASTER'S SEM-I : STUDIO-2014


MAPPING:READING:REPRESENTING
TANGIBLE / INTANGIBLE / EXPERIENTIAL / TEMPORAL

The studio i for the Masters in Urban Design and Urban Conservation introduces the students to ideas of mapping, reading & representation in the city. The mapping & representing is a construct of event through various methods of reading. The reading of event or narratives brings out multi-folds of experiences. The conventional map reduces the complex geographies in to various territories based on static phenomena, while mapping and reading allows the development of new method of investigation through overlaps of ideas & representation. Hence mapping is de-limiting canvas, allowing participation of various forces, represented in peculiarities.  

The mapping, reading & representing allows to capture the static and kinetic forces in simultaneity. The two groups 11 students each were formulated to carry out primary source survey and visual experiences. The series of documentation generated to arrive at basic features of site that could be capture in mapping, reading & representing. The series of drawing production and its method resulted into 7 sub groups, each attempting to construct or represent the irreducible complexity of the city


SITE TRANSECTS:
THE BAZAARS 
CRAWFORD MARKET, MANISH MARKET, MANGALDAS MARKET, ZAVERI BAZAAR, ABDUL REHMAN STREET , NULL BAZAAR,  GOL DEUL,  LAMINGTON ROAD 

BANDRA 
BANDRA FORT, ST MARY’S, ELCO MARKET, BANDRA STATION, BEHRAMPADA,  KALANAGAR, BHARAT NAGAR, BANDRA KURLA COMPLEX. 
































SEM: III JURY (UD & UC)- STUDIO: DAMAN




Ethical and Moral Construct of Modern