generation of de-territorialized and de-localized people. For example, Soumitro. Ghosh of MGA, whose Bethel Baptist Church project is discussed in this paper,.
Criteria for Critical Regionalism? A case of contemporary Indian architecture in the age of globalisation. Shaji K. Panicker School of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design, University of Adelaide
Keywords:
Contemporary Indian Architecture, Regionalism, Critical Regionalism, Globalisation, architecture, society, design.
Abstract:
This paper, while drawing attention to the almost parallel development of regionalism as an important trend in both contemporary Western architecture and Indian architecture, recognises Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre’s Critical Regionalism as a viable alternative in the practice of regionalism in contemporary Indian architecture. Taking the case of the post economic-liberalisation society and the profession of architecture in India, the author posits that Critical Regionalism (if needed at all) needs to be provoked as a rightful attitude in navigating through and selecting from both the cultural excesses of the acknowledged past and the ever-changing influences of the present, and that it should be done so with a stronger emphasis on the “criticality” in Critical Regionalism. A paradoxical doubt is also therefore, hinted on the very practice of regionalism (romantically, picturesquely or critically driven) in this age of globalisation. In this regard the author, with a project from a recently established architectural firm in contemporary Indian architecture, tries to highlight the subtle but critical transformation in the new generation architects’ works (noting their critical ways of addressing climatic factors, “region” and the now changing/changed socio-cultural factors). An implicit intension of this paper is to continue the critical inquiry into the very idea of creating and/or maintaining a pan-Indian architectural identity in the age of globalisation.
“Culture does not imply difference, but the differences now are no longer taxonomic; they are interactive and refractive, […]”(Appadurai 1996) In this above statement from Arjun Appadurai’s Modernity at Large, Appadurai is alluding to the situation in India where globalisation, apart from being an international phenomenon, is also affecting small geographical and cultural regions. Here Appadurai is primarily talking about deterritorialisation on a global scale. The 1990s were essentially an era of change in traditional Indian social orders, and these changes are reflected in architecture pursued by a younger generation of architects. However, before engaging in the issue of identity in this phase of contemporary Indian architecture, it would be worthwhile to briefly examine regionalism as it developed in Indian architecture in the post-independence years.
iNTA Conference 2004 Full-Paper Submission: Shaji_Panicker The general consensus, that colonisation was responsible for the disruption of traditional social structures (and hence architecture) of India, led to a strong nationalist attitude of re-inventing the supposed lost traditions in the early 1900s. Beginning as the colonisers’ attempt to put an end to this growing Indian nationalist architecture, modernism was largely imported to India in the early 1920s and was widespread in its various forms until India achieved independence in 1947. Later in the 1950s, Le Corbusier’s arrival in India commenced a different trend among the new generation of Western trained Indian architects. Sunil Khilnani believes that this revivalist trend, which conformed with “Nehru’s idea of a modern India” wherein “the sense that India must free itself of both the contradictory modernity of the Raj and nostalgia for its indigenous past” was initiated by the design of Chandigarh by Le Corbusier.(Khilnani 1997) However, while international Modernism was a strong influence on Indian architecture in the1960s, it also came under increasing criticism throughout this period. It was only in the late 1960s and early 1970s that Indian architects began being “concerned with the Indian context to an even greater extent.”(Khilnani 1997; Bhatt and Scriver 1990) One line of criticism which arose in the 1970s, and which focused on Modernism’s disregard for vernacular traditions, generated a kind of neo-vernacular architecture. A substantial amount of architecture in this era looked back into the Vedas and Shastras of traditional towns and building design. Such archaic conceptual forms were used as devices to express architecturally a national or regional identity.(Bhatt and Scriver 1990) This resulted in the growing use of traditional or regional design elements as legible symbolic codes. For instance, Uttam Jain’s works at the Jodhpur University campus (1968-79) display the use of traditional elements such as thick stone masonry and stone slabs, showing a concern for building materials and construction techniques which are locally derived. During this time the north Indian cities of Fatehpur Sikri, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur and Udaipur also became common examples of Indian architectural traditions in the past. A certain “Indianness” was derived from the architectures of the said areas due to this renewed interest by the architects and architectural academicians working within a regionalist/revivalist paradigm. Still romantically inclined toward the past, such architects were also focused on historic forms to examine how such designs solved regional issues of climate and housing. This does differ from the pre-Independence Revivalists who used the historic forms as devices to express a regional identity. In the years that followed, architecture in India even adopted a range of different approaches including aspects of Brutalism. Lang, Desai and Desai, in their book, “Architecture and Independence”, define this period as the era of neo-modernism in Indian architecture.(Lang et al. 1997) However, the growing ambiguity in Indian architecture at this time is also observed by Lang, Desai and Desai when they argue that Neo-Vernacularism, Brutalism and Postmodernism overlapped in the years following the 1960s. In Powell and Ozkan’s “A Taxonomy of Regionalism”, neovernacularism forms a part of historically derivative regionalism (the other category being, “historically transformative regionalism”).(Powell 1989) This line between neo-vernacularism and regionalism (or abstract regionalism according to Powell and Ozkan) becomes more complex in discussion of Indian architecture of the late 1970s and the 1980s — the second generation of modernism in Indian architecture. Both neo-vernacularism and abstract regionalism involve a critical application of regional 2
elements, and though the former suggests the use of a regional vernacular, the latter is more open towards the selection of elements. For example, the importance of a street as a design element has been explored extensively by architects like B. V. Doshi, Charles Correa, Raj Rewal and Uttam Jain in many of their architectural projects. The critical use of this element in their architecture (to provide intricate environments and territorial hierarchies) is seen as an approach, which confronts Modernism’s universalistic tendencies. Nevertheless, despite the efforts of those trying to understand the underlying ethos of a spatial form, sometimes architects used elements too directly or too superficially to be critical in any manner. An example of a direct association can be seen in Charles Correa’s Jawahar Kala Kendra Complex (JKK) in Jaipur where, in attempting to show the metaphysical aspects of the sky, Correa literally copies the plan of Jaipur in his design to form an association with the region. This process of copying and scaling the plan of a city into the plan of a building lacks critical intention because Correa’s response is seen as a literal mimicry of an original aesthetic response to a topographical problem.(Chand 2000) This situation in contemporary Indian architecture makes any kind of specific classification difficult to sustain. The development of the importance of regionalism as a trend in Indian architecture during the mid-1980s, interestingly, parallels the growth of regionalism as an issue in contemporary Western architecture also. Chronologically, Tzonis and Lefaivre link their concept of Critical Regionalism to the essays and lectures of Lewis Mumford who, from as early as 1924, has made reference to regionalism.(Lefaivre and Tzonis 1991) Tzonis and Lefaivre find Mumford’s “inclusive and anarchist reinterpretation of the ‘region’” sufficiently “alive and vital” for the present era that they developed their theory of Critical Regionalism from his writings. They developed the idea of regionalism from Mumford’s writings and lectures, and in 1981, coined the term “Critical Regionalism” in their essay, “The Grid and the Pathway.”(Lefaivre and Tzonis 1985) All three writers, Mumford, Tzonis and Lefaivre, share a similar concern for the domination of technology in Modernist architecture and the representational limitations of the International Style. As has been previously discussed, the 1980’s witnessed the rise of Indian architectures’ dependence on history as a device for the re-cultivation of a supposedly lost culture or tradition. Probable reasons for this growth of regionalism range from a renewed romantic patriotism (at a national level) to a desire to create a dubious contemporary stereotypical “Indian” identity.(Prakash 1997) In contrast, in the West, according to a research, historical imagery is optional in the quest for regional identity.(Jadhav 1998) In the case of Indian architecture prior to the 1990s, regionalism invariably meant the resurrection of past traditions that were often thought of as lost to Modernism’s intervention in Indian architecture. At that time, the result was typically a romantic and picturesque regionalism. Yet this changed in the 1990’s when the dependence on history ceased to be the major issue in the production of identity. In the late 1990s the production of identity is being questioned by the new group of architects who see themselves as belonging to a generation of de-territorialized and de-localized people. For example, Soumitro Ghosh of MGA, whose Bethel Baptist Church project is discussed in this paper, believes that history and historical traditions, especially those reliant on memories, 3
iNTA Conference 2004 Full-Paper Submission: Shaji_Panicker are sometimes lost over time by a family coming from displaced or de-localized generations.(Ghosh 2002) Thus history, in the form of memory constructions, is now a critical consideration for a new generation of Indian architects. However the latest generation of Indian architects are also prone to absorbing external influences in the absence of a resistant ideology. The phenomenon of initial exposure to, and the later adoption of different architectural styles, is compounded by the development of electronic media (including the internet), which is similarly transforming other sections of Indian society.(Appadurai 1996) A further determinant of architectural production in India –– the practice of the architectural profession itself –– can also be considered as an important factor in the education of the new generation architects. K. T. Ravindran, a practicing architect who also teaches at the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi, describes this problem in stark terms, “The poor profits we make, the miserable pay that is offered to the bright young fresh architect compared to other professions are camouflaged in imaginary freedom to create and the sheer kick of design. Besides most agencies that we deal with in construction are unreliable and hardly accountable. Materials are poor and a highly exploitative building labour market sucks competence out of the building workers. The promoters and the contractors ride the waves of exploitation. The servility of the architect to the unfriendly system is augmented by the complete fear of being unceremoniously removed from a project.”(Ravindran 1997) Ravindran’s view highlights an important factor which still afflicts the production of architecture in India. A recently published article further highlights a new phenomenon in the practice of architecture in contemporary Indian architecture. The paper, “Routine production or symbolic analysis? India and the globalisation of architectural services” argues that contemporary Indian architectural historiography has ignored the recent information technology (IT) driven internationalisation of architectural practices.(Tombesi et al. 2003) The authors’ concerns range from doubting the entire phenomenon as “harbingers of a new, emerging structure of architectural production” to questioning the status of regional professional traditions in the wake of “the globalisation of design workforce”.(Tombesi et al. 2003) They further doubt the viability of such global ventures as representative of an “up-dated form of professional internationalism” and wonder if it they are suggestive of “forms of techno-economic colonialism”.(Tombesi et al. 2003) Indeed, contemporary Indian architecture must now be viewed within a highly dynamic and mutating scenario, dependent not only on regional or national concerns but also highly influenced by the dynamism of global incidents. Contemporary Indian architecture, therefore is difficult to be classified, as it is fast blurring the regionalist (romantically, picturesquely or patriotically driven) concerns of the older generations of post independence architects in India. Regionalism if at all need be practiced or invoked in architecture, then, must be done with a critical intent. Regionalism today must question the very doctrinaire regionalism. This recalls the theory of Critical Regionalism as proposed by Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre. In the following section, this paper attempts to explain main points of the theory with a project from the office of Mathew and Ghosh Architects (MGA). MGA was established in 1995 in the south Indian city of Bangalore. Bethel Baptist 4
Church, a project completed in 2001-2002 by MGA in Bangalore, is a project that can be read as an implicit metastatement reflecting the ad hoc growth of Bangalore. The concept of implicit metastatements is similar to the intent of a critical theory, which lies in “making agents aware of hidden coercion, thereby freeing them (the agents) from that coercion and putting them in a position to determine where their true interests lie.”(Geuss 1981) According to Tzonis and Lefaivre, this may be achieved by defamiliarisation in architecture. Defamiliarisation, like the intent of critical theory, encourages the viewer to be aware of the ideologically false presumptions in their own consciousness, and of their viewpoint as mostly selfimposed. Unlike the process of surrendering consciousness in the shift from familiarisation or over-familiarisation (as is often the case with romantic regionalism), Critical Regionalism promotes a “hard cognitive negotiation” between the viewer and the building.(Tzonis and Lefaivre 1996) In this process Critical Regionalism alerts the viewer not only to the “loss of place and community, but also to the viewer’s ’reflective‘ incapability to become aware of this loss while it [is] occurring.”(Tzonis and Lefaivre 1996) Defamiliarisation seems to be the driving principle, then, in the design of the Bethel Baptist Church. Primarily orthogonal in character, the north facing Bethel Baptist Church is located on a site where notions of neighbourhood are undefined (see figures 1 and 2). In such a location, the public perception of neighbourhood is limited and is relational. Thus, this “quasi-public” institution was, for MGA, an “opportunity to design an event that can suggest a restructuring of public perception of their [changing] urban space.”(MGA 2002) In this project MGA have tried to interpret the new conditions of neighbourhood where any indication of a boundary is blurred. In such a situation, this blurring becomes instrumental for MGA in the production of any aesthetic expression.
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Figure 1. The Bethel Baptist Church (site plan), Bangalore 2001-2002. MGA
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Figure 2. The Bethel Baptist Church (Sanctuary level plan), Bangalore 20012002. MGA The location has also few basic amenities and therefore the church presents itself as a strict self-contained form. The street façade of this church does not have a boundary wall, although there is a street deck which forces a visitor to become a spectator (perhaps of global developments). The lack of boundary wall makes the street deck a place for dialogue and for introspection (see figure 3). This is the only space in the building which forges a direct reference to the surrounding context. The street deck brings the outside into the atrium of the church in an attempt to bring order to the amorphous site conditions. It also operates as a poetic gesture wherein the church becomes “a beacon in the area through its various out reach programmes.” Other than this gesture, the building stands mostly as an abstract configuration of the self-contained neighbourhood, whose condition it tries to reflect (see figures 3 and 4).
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iNTA Conference 2004 Full-Paper Submission: Shaji_Panicker
Figure 3. The Bethel Baptist Church (view of the street deck from the east), Bangalore 2001-2002. MGA
Figure 4. The Bethel Baptist Church (view from the south), Bangalore 20012002. MGA However, near the last flight of steps leading to the sanctuary, this cubic form is transformed into a series of shifting planes leading to different zones of the church 8
(see figure 5). Passage up to the sanctuary, follows the irregular steps of the street platform and is perhaps the only indication of a ritual in the church. The other spaces are mostly stark and in MGA’s words, “suggest the experience of the worship of Christ, shorn of any ritual or compulsion other than the simple beauty of it” (see figure 6). The only substantial embellishment in the church are the Biblical words inscribed on the altar wall (see figure 7).
Figure 5. The Bethel Baptist Church (view of the shifting planes within), Bangalore 2001-2002. MGA
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Figure 6. The Bethel Baptist Church (stark interior), Bangalore 2001-2002. MGA
Figure 7. The Bethel Baptist Church (Biblical words on the wall), Bangalore 2001-2002. MGA The floor of the church has a mottled grey cast-in-situ finish which contrasts dramatically with the luminous white walls and the warm yellow-brown of the pews 10
(see figure 7). Another device — the lifting off of the roof plane from the walls — apart from being a climatic response, also allows natural light inside the church (see figures 3, 4 and 6). The exposed concrete roof also supports a mezzanine (for additional seating) on steel hangars (see figure 7). In another dramatic gesture MGA have cut an incision into the sanctuary roof just above the altar wall to allow lighting of the altar wall at noon (during the sermon). This gesture may be viewed as an explicit way of locating a building in its context and thus may be considered as an explicit statement in terms of its region (see figures 6 and 7). Tzonis and Lefaivre use “explicit statements” to describe the direct association with the past, or some historic traditions, made by architects in contemporary works. The use of explicit statements is common in Romantic Regionalism where, for example, the use of signs or “typified folklorist motifs” as explicit statements relies on symbolism for its function as a signifier, which, leads to “overfamiliarized, ‘as if’ settings,” without any necessary relevance to the meaning of the symbol used for the process. However, by cutting an incision into the sanctuary roof, MGA have not only used “light” as a symbol signifying its importance in religion, but have also literally tied the building to the region by modifying the path of light inside the building. This symbolism therefore serves a dual purpose. Finally, the fellowship hall below the sanctuary is set below ground level. It opens up formally to the streets by a series of pivoted doors that stretch the space out in a gesture of inclusion and acknowledgement of the locality. This is reminiscent of the attitude to creative renewal and transformation, which is based on inclusion rather than on exclusion. The Bethel Baptist Church is an excellent example of a public building that has been located in a region that lacks conventional character. The church, as just discussed, represents the estrangement of any regional attributes in such neighbourhoods. The very concept of region and of regionalism is challenged by such a project. The region in question neither has any affinity towards the local culture nor does it, by its sudden inception, desire to be suggestive of a universal culture. Thus the Bethel Baptist Church becomes a mirror which reflects its surroundings in a critical way; an attitude that is suggestive of Tzonis and Lefaivre’s criticality. However, it must be also kept in mind that this criticality in Critical Regionalism is neither dependent on the past, nor does it aspire to provide a model or an answer for the future. Unlike other forms of regionalism where the main driving force is the confidence and dependence on the past, and a romanticized yearning for a similar future, Critical regionalism is present-specific. Thereby it acquires the status of a highly dynamic concept, answering the questions of identity in a highly mobile society. The works of architects like MGA must therefore be viewed in the context of this dynamism.
REFERENCES Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 11
iNTA Conference 2004 Full-Paper Submission: Shaji_Panicker Bhatt, Vikram, and Peter Scriver. 1990. After the Masters: Contemporary Indian Architecture. Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd. Chand, Megha. 2000. Interrogating the Indian Condition: Some Problems with the Framework of Architect Charles Correa. In The Dissertation: An architecture student’s handbook, Oxford, Architectural Press, 2000, edited by Iain Borden and Katerina Ruedi. Jadhav, Rajratna Uttamrao. 1998. Eastern Regionalism and Indian Identity: A case study of Charles Correa’s ‘Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics’ and Raj Rewal’s ‘Central Institute of Educational Technology’. Master of Architecture thesis. Kansas State University. Khilnani, Sunil. 1997. The Idea of India. London: Hamish Hamilton Ltd. Lang, Jon, Madhavi Desai and Miki Desai. 1997. Architecture and Independence. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Lefaivre, Liane, and Alexander Tzonis. 1985. The Grid and the Pathway: An introduction to the work of Dimitri and Suzana Antonakakis in the context of Greek architectural culture. In Atelier 66: The archtitecture of Dimitris and Suzana Antonakakis. New York: Rizzoli International Publications Inc. Lefaivre, Liane, and Alexander Tzonis. 1991. Lewis Mumford’s Regionalism. In Design Book Review: DBR Winter. 19: 20-25. Powell, Robert and Suha Ozkan. 1989. A Taxonomy of Regionalism. In Ken Yeang: Rethinking the Environmental Filter. Singapore: Landmark Books Pte Ltd. Prakash, Vikramaditya. 1997. Identity production in postcolonial Indian architecture: re-covering what we never had. In Postcolonial Space(S) edited by Gulsum Baydar Nalbantoglu and Wong Chong Thai. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Ravindran, K. T. 1997. Contemporary Architecture: An uncomfortable glance at the mirror. In Architecture + Design. Tzonis, Alexander and Liane Lefaivre. 1996. Why Critical Regionalism today? In Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965-1995, edited by Kate Nesbitt. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
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