A Timeless Way of Living
By Ar.
Christopher Charles Benninger
In
architecture we are passing through a period in which the baby who cries the
loudest gets the milk. What I mean is that architects are screaming and yelling
like babies to grab attention. Façade architecture – the packaging of buildings
in trendy wrappings – is popular. Fashionable western architects are ‘selling
styles,’ not making architecture. Each building they make looks like a copy of
the one before it.
These
architects are playing on only one sense, the visual, leaving touch and
textures, smell and sound, volume and proportion to the winds. Common sense,
context and integrating with nature have become passé. In other words
architecture is at one of its low historical points where most of its
practitioners are chasing style and crude popularity. This bad taste is
media-driven from cities, outward to the smaller towns. It works on the
center-periphery phenomenon where more and more energy builds up at a central
point until the system explodes. While this is happening at the center, there
is more calm, thought and reflection out on the periphery. Often more creative
works can be expected from either Ahmedabad or Pune than from Mumbai, and from
Mumbai more than from New York. But young architects always look into the
distance to find local truths. When they seek truth at the center they will
only find opaque theories, not relevant processes and methods to create true
art.
Over the past
decade young architects have grown up in a digital world. Their experience of
architecture has been in virtual reality: 3D on a 2D computer screen. While
this has helped to push the limits of the visual world, it has suppressed
experiential architecture that finds its true measure not only in vision and
sight but also in touch, smell, sound, sequence and movement. In the resulting
cacophony we even find young architects wondering: What is Architecture? They
want to know what the reality of architecture is.
Continuously Educating Ourselves
Education in
architecture is a search for the reality of architecture. There are several
‘givens’ about this reality that form the basis of education and practice. I
list a few of them:
Architecture is built; it is construction; it is
technology.
Architecture is a response to functional needs;
it is a product with performance standards.
Architecture is social action. Every building
either gives to or takes from the social milieu. At the most basic level the
exploitation of the maximum Floor Space Index - a commercial factor – becomes
an indicator of the architect’s ‘social commitment.’ Architects can also create
new public domains. They can make schools into places that stimulate learning.
They can bring nature into people’s everyday lives. They can create social
housing.
Architecture is an exercise in economic
analysis. Every client has a budget that is an estimate of the value of the
economic operation of the building in producing something - at least happiness
in a home or inspiration in a school.
Architecture is history as it is a part of a
behavioral pattern which persists over time. It is a process in the present,
which draws on the past and creates the future
Architecture is poetry, because in the end it
must go beyond the programmatic. It must say something about the human
condition that is not explicit. It must raise people’s spirits and spark their
curiosities.
Architecture
exists just one step outside materiality. It dwells in our sense of experience,
our immediate memories and in the identity of a place.
Critical Regionalism
I feel each
country in the world, and each region in each country, has its own unique
expression of architecture. There are elemental concerns (confused as global
concerns) that attract the efforts of all sincere architects of good intention.
All true architects seek the honest expression of materials, the employment of
human scale and proportion, integration with nature, a belonging within
context, a gift of meaning and sense of place for the inhabitants. All of these
characteristics can be discovered through the study of traditional buildings
and neighborhoods in their own contextual settings. One need not go to London
to find architecture. Every regional context holds the secret of good
architecture. Bangalore, Kochi, Aurangabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata,
Delhi and many other such places are regional centers with strong local
contexts to draw architectural lessons from. Why not begin one’s search for
architecture by studying the vernacular structures in one’s own vicinity? Maybe
all of the secrets lie within a ten-minute walk? In vernacular cultures there
is a lot of variety and self-expression that comes from within people and
projects out. In global culture there is a homogeneous mono-culture oppressing
in on the individual and stifling creativity.
Vernaculars: Attitudes/Components/Elements
Thus, when a
young architect is searching for his unique identity as a designer, that search
for a language can begin within a hundred-kilometer radius from his home! Maybe
it begins right at home!
Every
architect must have a language, and in fact I believe each region enshrines an
architectural language, or its own dialect. This is part of a cumulative
heritage that can be studied, imbibed, and used as a vehicle to catalyze new
and relevant design ideas. Such an approach generates a fellowship between
local competitors, as a common and mutually shared approach emerges in their
way of doing things. I am proposing that regional architectural languages can
be defined by seeking out regional attitudes toward space and place making; by
searching for and defining basic components; and by understanding the elemental
characteristics that persist through and
gift meaning to local structures. Let me further elaborate on these aspects of
regional styles and languages.
I) Attitudes
Attitudes
toward spatial arrangements and place making are embedded in the experiential
use of architecture. What is sacred in a place and what is profane depends on
local culture. Is there a difference between a mundane door that provides
security and a profound ‘portal’ that is a transition into a sacred space? Does
every place have its own sacredness that must be celebrated? Does a central
courtyard define movement from the public realm of the street to the private,
more personal realm of a dwelling? How does a door ‘proclaim’ the transition
from an impersonal street to a special place? Does the courtyard catalyze
conviviality? Does it demarcate the domestic sphere from the occupational
sphere? Does it tell outsiders to temper their behavior to a more respectful
and considerate mode of interaction? Do murals, statues, paintings and
artifacts begin to speak about the particular likes, nature and concerns of
inhabitants? Are they cues telling visitors who they are meeting and what behavior
would be appropriate? Different regions use and modulate attitudes toward
‘space and place making’ in different ways. There can also be significant
shared ideas and concepts between regions. Attitudes are not exclusive, they
just exist. Think of the various doors you have seen in your life. Imagine
their sizes, materials, colors and shapes. Some are set back in shaded niches
or are introduced by a cozy porch. Some have an alcove inside where one can sit
and play chess on an otta built within the niche. Some are so large that they
have a small door within a larger door. Some focus a view on a statue in a
courtyard to draw you within. Some hide what follows, creating a sense of
mystery, and then surprise. Various regions express their own attitude toward a
door, an entry, a portal and the ‘in-between space’ separating the aura of one from that of another.
There are
major themes or attitudes toward built form from which regional languages can
be understood:
Attitudes towards Nature:
‘Fallingwater’
by Frank Lloyd Wright is striking in the way it integrates with its natural
setting. It exhibits an attitude of being a part of nature. On the other hand,
Le Corbusier’s ‘Villa Savoye’ floats in solitude, detached from nature. It is
an attitude of abstract reality. A Rajasthani mud house rises from the earth,
while a Rajput palace towers magisterially over its domain.
Attitude towards Proportion and Scale:
If you stand
in front of the High Court at Chandigarh you feel dwarfed by the immensity of
its portal. If you enter ‘India House’ there is a scale that is intermediate.
It shares the intimate experience with a hint of a larger realm of things. It
startles with its combination of roles as a home, a studio and a public
institution. Entering Dr. Oswal’s Center for Health, Life Sciences and
Medicine, one is made to feel at home, intimate and secure. Scale and
proportion are used in different ways in different regions, be it the Chola
temple complexes of South India or in the great Mughal tomb gardens of North
India.
Attitude towards Materials:
Each region
has its own local building resources which can be used and expressed in
different ways. In Karnataka one finds wonderful granite fit for columns, beams
and roof slabs. In some areas there is abundant clay for bricks, hollow tiles
and roofing tiles. In Himachal Pradesh the abundance of sturdy wood generates
its own attitude to how slate, wood and stone can be harmoniously employed.
These are not
building technologies or techniques. They are commonly held concepts of how one
crafts spaces and forms places. The work of Shankar and Navnath Kanade, Jaisim
and Shashi Bhooshan emanate from their distinct regional attitude toward
materiality.
Attitudes towards the Sacred
In New York
City there are churches, synagogues, mosques, temples and meditation places.
But these highly revered andIn New York City there are churches, synagogues,
mosques, temples and meditation places. But these highly revered and sacred
places are small events in the larger functioning of the city. In Paris the
historical and heritage sites take on a character of sacredness. These are very
special and cherished common properties that form an important part of the
French psyche. In Indian cities like Pune, Old Delhi or Varanasi one finds
thousands of small, medium and large temples that texture the urban fabric.
Each shopkeeper has created a small temple within a shelf over his cash
register, in every wall there is a niche with a deity, or a symbolic hint of
one. Sacredness is kind of omnipresent and omnipotent. Even a house in India is
made up of sacred space and place elements forming a sacred whole. The
direction of the entry, the location of the kitchen, the alignment of the
temple in the kitchen and the sacredness of the kitchen itself, are all part of
local attitudes that must not be disrespected. The work of Girish Doshi, Sanjay
Patil and Deepak Guggari in Maharashtra speak of this attitude.
II) Components and Connections
At a very
simple level architectural language is made up of basic functional parts. These
are nouns, or components which are things. Fundamentally, these are supports,
spans and enclosing envelopes. A bearing wall of stone may be both a support
and an envelope. A span can be in the form of a beam, vault, shell or a flat
slab. Supports can be stone or concrete bearing walls and steel or concrete
columns. The possibilities are limited, but we must conceptualize each of these
three kinds of components separately. A language is also made of verbs, or
connections, ‘hinges’ or stems to move through. Connectors can be arcades,
courtyards, promenades, water pools, visual axes, passages, portals, bridges,
stairs or ramps. These create experiences as people have to move through them.
As people move, all the walls, columns, windows and objects in their line of
sight move in relative terms and architecture becomes kinetic. To me,
identifying these components is the easy part of making an architectural
language. What are the local support, spacing and enveloping components?
Identify ten
components and use them. What are the typical roofs, shading elements, types of
stairs, supports, spans, envelope devices and their connections? How can we
draw these components from history and from our contextual surroundings? Can we
use them in a manner that employs respect toward and amplifies local attitudes?
Architects in Ahmedabad are careful to articulate these components as a
regional attitude to architecture.
III) Elements
More
difficult is the understanding of the elements of architecture:
Elements
persist through systems. They are everywhere. A glance at them tells you where
a building is located. You see light blue plaster walls – almost white in the
bright sun – and you know you are in Jodhpur; pink, and you are in Jaipur;
yellow floors and earth-colored stone walls, and you are in Jaisalmer.
The
characteristics of buildings in different regions and contexts will be
different. In Bhutan the red band around a building declares it as sacred. The
pagoda roof over roof in Kathmandu valley creates a local identity. The
community tanks of Kolkata are the focus of neighborhoods. The tanks of
Tamilnadu are more formal and defined.
Perhaps the
attitudes, the components and the elements are all intermingled. But young
architects must take their sketchbook and document their environment. They must
see how light is employed; how shades of colors are used; how textures in
floors are laid out; how echoes and reverberations of sounds are handled; how
alignments, landmarks and axes generate sequences of modulated experiences.
Each school
of architecture should run a workshop, sending students into towns, villages
and hamlets to document attitudes, components and elements which define a
regional architectural language. These should be looked at critically to assess
their validity and relevance to contemporary needs, functions and lifestyles.
Analogies between traditional and contemporary materials and technologies can
be conjectured. Possibilities and potentials for applying local concepts to new
designs must be debated. Findings should be listed. New prototypes should be
attempted, based on old plan concepts and spatial arrangements.
Gharanas of Architecture
We have in
Hindustani Music the concept of gharanas, and in philosophy we have ‘schools of
thought.’ We need ‘schools of thought’ and gharanas in architecture too. In
ancient regions one can see unique schools of thought emerging. The history of
architecture in a given place is a narrative of the culture of the people who
have lived there. The changes in style mirror the society which has evolved in
that place. The buildings are landmarks along the journey of history that give
meaning to a context. We can have clear attitudes toward nature, materials and
proportion. We can have unique components to create support, span and
enclosure. We can have special motifs for shading stairs, floors, seats and
connections. We can have our own elements and unique ways to employ them. These
will evolve as the functions, technology and the culture of a place evolve.
A wonderful
challenge calls upon young architects to expose the meaning and reality of
architecture in their local contexts. They will discover the identity of their
own culture and begin to enrich and mature that identity. They will find
meaning in their work and purpose in their lives. I challenge you, young
architects of India. Make your own language and your own style.
Ar. Christopher Charles Benninger
Ar.
Christopher Benninger is one of India’s most highly decorated architects.
Benninger studied urban planning at MIT and architecture at Harvard where he
later taught. He settled in India in 1971 founding the School of Planning at
Ahmedabad as a Ford Foundation Advisor where he continues as a Distinguished
Professor. His name appears along side Geoffrey Bawa, Charles Correa and
Balkrishna Doshi as one of the six recipients of the Great Master Architect
Award in India presented every three years.
His recent
book, Letters To A Young Architect which brings to the general public ideas
related to the built environment was on the Top 10 Best Selling Non-Fiction
Books List for 18 weeks in India.
