RE-CONSTRUCTED INSTITUTIONS: 2ND YEAR JURY

2ND YEAR JURY

In general history is believed to be more misused and abused in process of reconstructing. Philosopher speaks of the truth in moral sense, poet in fictional sense, historiographer in context of event and interpretation. However within the profession of architecture the reconstruction of historical truth is often about nationalism, identity, strangely framed within the acute form Vs wider form of parochialism. Unlike socio-political thinkers like Hegel and Karl Marx came forward with a theory that historical processes proceed according to ideological, material or class struggle.

The knowledge of history interprets and illuminates the human activity through variety of manifestation. The knowledge that is reflected the state of society and thus in institutions that has grown from it. The transformation of an institution reflects the modesty, priority and freedom of choice. The institution is a biology of society, metaphorically elucidates the process of ideological stand in survival, choice and breeding. The evolution of institution and its framework can be traced in its political history, constitutional history, economic history, social history. The social history is reflected in origin and development of institutions progressing towards rationality. As social history is more comprehensive in nature and G.M.Trevelyan correctly pointed out that social history as “the daily life of inhabitants, economic relationships, attitude to nature, conditions of various class, culture of each era and its value, changing form of religious practices ,literature” which are intricately reflected in architecture of history of institutions.

The second year project attempt to relocate the role of institutions in its trajectory of evolution. The evolution and growth of institutions is slow and subtle in nature, obeying its own law, hence influencing & shaping the social and political sphere.  In short the institutions are an expression of societal ideas for its existence and sustenance. The institutions reflects the descriptive geography and its ideological stem reflects the narrative of historical evolution, within which the notion of identity attempting to fill up the circumference of our perception, limited geography of space and its relationship with society. Hence identity is a trajectory of perception whose history is embedded in phenomena and reference to time where architecture has limited scope to arrest the phenomena and its reference to time as a tool to arrest identity.

The project brief has potential to extend into a larger discourse and perhaps question the notion of identity, breaking the monolith, recapturing the porosity of unyielding space.

SOCIAL MISSION: DAHANU SCHOOL

Dahanu is a small town, approximately 60 kilometer from Virar. It is also well connected by Local trains and due to train connectivity,  the place has visible transformation in last two years. Traditionally the place is known for Chikoo plantation, due to abundant water resources and soil condition. The majority of of the land resources are reserved for either for Chikoo plantation or forest. 

The frequent visit to dahanu for house construction site visit has revealed the living dimensions of the town in manifold. The agrarian society, adivasi settlements, reserve forest, industrialization of non agricultural land, privately owned farms along with the earlier inhabitant of the city, broadly defines the character & landscape of the town. The bi linguistic nature of local habitant makes the place unique as majority of them are Maharashtrian and Marathi speaking  population, yet conveniently adopted Gujarati dialect. 

It also has revealed the various social entrepreneurs that existed within the central and periphery of the town, attempting to contribute to social development of either by skills, traditional cultural and social values, education and health. One of the organization is run by Mr. Babu, who is attempting to contribute to social development through education of adivasi children through innovative system of school academics.

The campus is located in skirt of dense vegetation, touching large water stream, partly in reserve forest and partly habitable land. The school imparts education up to 8th standard in English. However the real difference is in the method of educating children through holistic system revolves around making/doing and learning. The students are required to come at eight in the morning and leaves late in the evening. The books, food, study & sports material is supplied by the schools.  The students engages into agriculture, cooking, and all other activities that are part of their daily life. 

As part of their everyday activities, the building of campus infrastructure is also incremental in nature, i:e, build along with study. The typology of building also demonstrated the bare minimum-ness along with surprising accuracy of detailing. The material canvas is restricted to bricks, mats, metal and manglore tiles. 

The house also stated stoic simplicity with intricate understanding of construction and details. The load bearing walls, recycled wooden roof, doors and windows, courtyard, terrace garden, all of them on first glance appeared to be template of sensitive architect. But the entire house is build by the owner with help of labours, along with bricks  moulded and baked in situ, doors and windows, roof are entirely recycled. The finishing materials are Kotah stone, yellow oxide floor. 

The last conversation with the owner on his understanding on architecture revealed the basic trait that " building has to breath" instead of ventilation. The word breath is metaphor of existence and architecture is essential part of existential reality. The last detail that missed out completely was the roof was detached from wall, allowing glow of day light scooping, and en living the space, making architecture worthy of its existence.

MASTER SEM: II STUDIO-DMIC

The current semester II explored the housing studio as housing typological formation, its delivery system and responses to the various regional and environmental conditions which shall be affected by Delhi- Mumbai industrial corridor. The initial group study of Jaipur and Vidyadhar nagar explored the various geographical aspect that connects the urban form as large and as a result typifies the housing forms. The subsequent three site conditions (Jaipur, Palanpur, Bharuch) adds to the immense diverse conditions in design process, raising the expectation to be responsive to the existing settlement patter, environmental constraints and attributes, livelihoods, various possibilities of delivery systems. 

Inshort the divers site conditions sets an diverse/ appropriate response to specific ecological and socio-economic contexts which were required to have diverse articulated methodology for mapping, analysis and strategy making. 

The interesting aspect of the studio that revealed the diverse forces that may get influenced by the perhaps uniform policy of industrial corridor and edge out the local responses and needs that ought to be integrated in overall vision plan. The Jaipur case revealed the land acquisition policy based on incentive model, yet ignoring the geographical constrained, its people, livelihoods. As a result one can see the strange yet remorseless nature of development attempting to iron out the social and morphological tendencies of our cities.

The Palanpur site demonstrated the agrarian based thriving economy, which may not have any stake in the overall corridor plan. The agrarian economy needs its own set of attributes that facilitate the development and its contribution to the overall vision. 

The Bharuch site clearly seeks the gentry & task forced based housing conditions and needs infrastructure and amenities subservient to its own traits. It is perhaps clear the cities that are emerging along the corridor shall conveniently overlook the micro networks and indigenous properties of each site conditions to have strange template based urban development of tomorrow.

" City needs Housing or Housing needs City"

KS

The known Indian English writer Kushwant Singh position in public domain would remain unoccupied even if he had departed at 150. He is known as a writer in slightly formal way, but would more formally known as editor and journalist. However he never claimed to remain clamped in formality box because he has attained his image through aggressive writing on social, cultural habits and customs of our society with wit imagination and nascent promise.

In less formal sense he was a not a critical writer but could bring essence in his powerful wit and narratives. The book title “The Sex, Scotch & Scholarship” intended to portray the contradictory relic of our values and institutions with sarcasm and imaginary stories. On other side he could write wit on his own and community without any encumbrance or religious historical treatise.

A proud shikh, but staunch satirist and blatantly outspoken. He could relentlessly criticize the policy on golden temple attack or react by returning the highest citizen award. These are perhaps the imagination of  freewill writer, who believed that free to react, free to democratize, free to renounce. He supported the emergency but reacted sharply on policy of communal politics.

He remained subservient to Illustrated Weekly for many years, but never did he once change his opinion or reaction on anything that once he reacted upon. As matter of fact he gave new lease life to the magazine and demonstrated that how journalism can be instrumental in setting up democratic space. He engaged the various opinions on one issues, in spite of being varied and opposite, by various groups and class. 

He would make mockery of himself by stating that if one sends post card stating address ..KS, Bastard, India… I am sure I would get it without delay…. His important publications were “ Train to Pakistan” & History of Sikhs”, of course the last four line that he wrote on himself few years back” Thank lord, he is dead, this sun of a gun”.  Perhaps a parody & tribute to Sardar with smile.

KRVIA: FOURTH YEAR JURY

The fourth year jury was refreshing from the point of view of change of scale of projects. It enables to comprehend the contextual complexity,  micro-urbanism & resultant architecture. After reviewing the 10 presentation it was perhahps clear that architecture can not be afforded to get relegated to an object anymore. The distinction between regional and modern are always at conflict somehow. The resolution of both may be an ideal conditions. The regional is an condition that is embedded in our context and modernism that needs to be dealt with. I think we are exactly doing the reverse: modernism is assumed to be embedded and imagined that regional that we can deal with. The resultant manifestation is not unknown but our inquiry is still seems to be strangely obscured & contaminated with imagined elsewhereness.

The two projects were worthy of note, one with the clear diagram of reinforcing the main road axis and other axis  align with jetty. The resultant form was linear for functional articulation dotted with public spaces. The project had tremendous clarity and had clean urban gesture.

The second project was re-adavptive use of industrial sheds. The alignment of ramp with open space and connection of two old sheds with wrapped movement system, programmatic shelf inserted within are clear indication that architecture with small "a" seeking transition in context. The project demonstrated skill and spatial qualities. 

The quality architecture always has few properties and no matter where, 

Architecture as simple diagram representing context.

The depth of facade

The articulated perforation and spaces

The articulation of wall and roof.

The stylistic overlaying of distinct imagery and programmatic intervention does not amount to a progressive synthesis of contemporary condition of our architecture and cities.

COROLLARY HOUSE

The house is an expression of self imagination of mended undefined reality. The view that imagined to be framed by the window is a corollary to the desired views. The views and viewed are hinged on subconscious activity of mind. The view changes with intense distraction of what is viewed, the existence of window oscillates in ideality. The architecture of house is a subject of window whose existence depends on view and viewed. The subject of architecture and object of window is dichotomy of corollary house. The door that hinged in time, opens in anticipation, the window that frames the unframed in seeking ideality, forms a propelling device that drives the imagination of child. Which in turn pushing emotional and psychological depths of self and space to splintered corollary process.

The framed and frame of stilted space, seamless ground, bridging the intimacy of open and close is an outrageous imagination of child whose aspiration is to write manuscripts of delightful living space. The pilotis defies the corollary of house but subconscious mind builds its subjective truth in fleeting and uncontrollable world. The dream sequence of seamless space and elevated reality continues to be a constructed & forming an enduring image.

The idea of view and viewed continues to be overpowering idea of purity and realism. The chaotic existence brings up sudden calmness and idea of space looses in boundary. The hereness and thereness brings rare freshness to the teen’s imaginations who constantly struggled for its physical space existence. The directness of child attention is fused in passionate spatiality of endlessness. The space brings the object of thereness and subject of hereness, morphed into a strange relation of less is more. The corollary house is strange blend of seamless ground plane and boundless space.

The view and viewed corollary is an invasive percept of framed and frame. The struggles of writing and reading bring the dynamism of uncontaminated space construct. The views and viewed properties of window is subverted and forcing conscious mind move into the realm of orderlessness and unaesthetic corollary. The house determined to proclaim its poetic and formal independence. The corollary house is in state of confused tectonics yet excited with courage of furious motion.

The seamlessness and frame/ framed relation come to complete halt at edge. The clamped framed and frames are unprecedently morphed with time. The precision of time is encompassing the formal invention of house, weathering defines the character of stoicness and space limits folds in itself. The dream sequence of child begins to dwell on dematerialization of self and object. The seamlessness and bounded less condition morphed into the new reality of framed and frame of unseen. The corollary house continues to build as an assemblage of images in a peculiarly silent domain of shadowless world.

ABANDONED ARCHITECTURE

A local train journey reveals different city altogether. It is quite surprising to witness the tidal wave of development surfacing in the horizon while blocks of building remain dilapidated in most of the cases. The stretch between Andheri to Goregaon, from Kandivali till Bhayander, once can clearly imagined the the diverse as well as conflicting social and cultural corollary. The new economic restructuring has resulted in contradictory condition of margin peripherals and dominant centers.

 The city appears clearly as landscape of margins and dominance across the horizon. The rail journey portrays the valuable account of unaccounted part of our city. The profit and investment aspiration is an archetypal urban culture arising from imagined globalizing process.   Such part of marginal city is depriving from such imagined global processes and left over visual characteristic of blocks delineates the contrived notation of being abandoned.

Along the tracks is also the wealth of railway architecture, with immense architectural characteristics, subscribing the wonderful weathering of time. The foot over bridges, railway signal cabins, guard office block, load bearing bridges, railway stations are some of the artifacts of railways, demonstrating the rare freshness of engineering domain of architecture. 

The landscape of city through railway offers the complete new dimensions of overlaps of ideas intertwines of knowledge, intersection of aspirational path, amounting to be a complete city of buildings, tainted with destined texture and engraved in imagination of being abandoned.