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LA CITTÀ DELL’ UOMO023

November013

Volume 03 / Issue 01

INDIA

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Milano, by DelTongo , in a combinat ion of gl ossy l acquer and l amina te un its. Design by Prospero Rasulo .

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11

An anthology on women in Indian photography

The advent of photography broughtmany changes especially in termsof how we document the historical,social, gender and political aspectsof a society in which the imagestems from. Prior to photography,it was only painting of portraits

that could capture an aspect of aperson or place or culture that wasclosest to what reality was, but it wasnowhere close to the accuratenessof photographs. As it provideda real-time image, it was moreobjective than subjective, and manypreferred the exactness of science.The British in India introduced manyimportant technological/scienticinnovations and photography wasone of them. In fact, as early as the1850s photography was availablein India. In a recently held exhibitionby Tasveer in collaboration withSaffron Art threw light on an

absolutely rare aspect of Indianphotographs — the women. Aptlytitled Subjects & spaces, women inIndian photography showcases rarephotographs taken from the 1850sto 1960s, of women from differentbackgrounds posing for the latestdevice of that time — the camera.Initially photographs were mostlyclicked by the British for archivingpurposes, and some photographed asamateurs for their personal albumsto take back to England as memoriesof India and its people. Mostly theportraitures were clicked insidestudios with elaborate backgrounds

of architectural elements and thepostures were mostly a reectionof Western style and design. Theseimages were meant for displayingat home or private spaces ratherthan for public display. The collectionshows an interesting aspect of howthese women interacted with thecamera with a stranger behind thelens clicking those photographs,especially during the 18th and the19th century Indian society, wherewomen were mostly behind veilsand were not accustomed to meetor talk to strangers, let alone posefor the camera. But, in the imagetitled Group portrait, c1875 showinga group of presumably Marathiwomen is quite interesting, as thesubjects defy any form of femininityin their posture or even the waythey look at the camera, rather theyexude dominance and power. Ittakes a while to spot the little boystanding next to them. Also, onemust remember that in the 19thcentury, it was extremely difcult tophotograph large groups of people,getting them to stay still for the longexposure time. A photograph titledPalanquin with bearers ; c1860 is aninteresting one, as these were thecarriages that women used to travelin, so that no one could see them inpublic spaces. Another image thatdraws attention is The Reclining

lady; c1870 shows an Indian womanposing in a sensuous manner buther face holds a blank expression.Since it has been clicked in a studio,one can see in the background thecolumn and the posture has a hint ofWestern inuence in the photograph.Other works such as a scene fromthe movie set Dahej , 1950 showswomen performing their respectiveroles in the household; another scenefrom Boot Polish , 1954 portraysthe woman as a mother. Also, aphotograph worth mentioning is ademure image of Maharani GayatriDevi , c 1945 that reects the image

N E W S

of a woman that was acceptable tothe Indian sensibility of the mid-20th century society in terms of herexpression and attire. Looking at thegroup photos; Ladies in a bathingghat , c1870, Group portrait, c1880and First lady cyclist , 1920 describesthe country and its people in realtime and makes one wonder how lifein those days was for the women ofIndia. The images from this exhibitionare for sale, and are sold as a limitededition boxed folio of ArchivalPigment Prints. Kalyani Majumdar

www.tasveerarts.com

Group portrait, c1875

Ladies in a bathing ghat , c1870

The Reclining lady; c1870

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domus 23 November 2013NEWS

N E W S

Keeping the storyteller safe

A media workshop on the twinthemes of Women & Safety: Howcan the media tell that story better and Safety in the Field: Keeping thestorytellers secure was organised bya Mumbai-based magazine, TimeOut. Though it was targeted at

journalist and photographers who areconstantly negotiating unfamiliar andpotentially risky territories due to thenature of their work, almost anyoneand everyone would have related tothe workshop.Conducted by journalist, writer andresearcher Sameera Khan, theprogramme on ensuring objectivemedia reportage was aimed atsensitising media persons on theethics of reportage relating to sexualassault cases. As a ‘reporter’, oneis simply expected to ‘report’ factsobjectively, without introducingsubjectivity or personal prejudices.

However, Khan showed an alarmingnumber of media reports on sexualassault cases that clearly reectedthe reporter’s opinion, or plainignorance and insensitivity, on thematter. Most categorise the ‘survivor’(in cases of rape and sexual assault)either as the ‘good girl’ who did notdeserve it, or a ‘bad girl’ who, byvirtue of ‘actions and circumstances’,was ‘just asking for it’. By that logic,women in ethnic wear, from ‘cultured’families, who are home by the timethe sun sets should not be raped ormolested, while those who choose to

smoke, drink, wear western clothing,and are out way past the ‘good girl’sbedtime’ probably deserved it.What one doesn’t take into accountwhile writing such reports, Khanadded, was how this bias, no matterhow subtle, introduced by the writertrickles down to the reader, colouringtheir judgement of the issue at hand.Thus, in essence, the reader startsquestioning whether or not theassault is credible — or justiable, insome cases — and instantly judgesthe survivor, eventually hampering theactual process of justice.In addition to addressing thecomplexities involved in tellingthe story of sexual assault, theprogramme also concerned itselfwith the storyteller – in particular,dwelling on safety mechanisms thatcould be incorporated at individualand organisational levels to better

protect reporters and photographerson assignment, in the Safety inthe Field: Keeping the StorytellersSecure segment. Photographer andlmmaker Ashima Narain shared tipsand tricks she learnt over the years,reinforcing the need for a practical,common sense approach to navigateunfamiliar territories safely whileat work.As a photographer, Narain mentioned,one needs to learn how not to drawattention to oneself in order to trulycapture ‘moments’ on lm. But onthe ipside, a camera always attract

attention, often unwarranted andunwanted. Narain recounted incidentsof stalking, verbal and physical abuse,

and how she managed to nd a wayaround these problems to get thephotographs, while ensuring personalsafety — to get the job done to thebest of her ability.Women, in India, have a strange,bittersweet relationship with publicspaces. While one must negotiatepublic spaces to get to places orwork, education and other suchcommitments, one is also faced withthe harsh reality of being unsafe— practically everywhere. Theworkshop, thus, was topical, given therise of assault cases in recent times,

but more than anything, compelledwomen to think about their ownsafety and take necessary measures

to stay alert and avoid getting intopotentially harmful situations, ifand when they have a chance to.Sharmila Chakravorty

An exhibition of new bronzesculptures by the esteemed artistbased in New Delhi MrinaliniMukherjee is on till 23 November2013 at Nature Morte. Mukherjeehas become known for a fearlessinvestigation of materials over acareer now entering its fth decade.She made her mark in the 1970s and80s with ambitious works of dyed andwoven hemp bers and went on toinvestigate ceramics and cast bronze.Her most recent body of work takesthe bronzes to new levels of technicalprociency and commanding scales.

www.naturemorte.com.

Palm scapes byMrinalini Mukherjee

Announcing the new Jury Chairman

We are pleased to announce thatKaiwan Mehta, Managing Editor ofDomus India has been elected asthe Jury Chairman for the fellowshipcycle 2015-17 by the board ofdirectors of the Akademie SchlossSoitude, Stuttgart, Germany, on therecommendation of its director. TheAkademie is considered one of theve best artist residency programmesinternationally. The Akademie SchlossSolitude is a public-law foundationthat offers an interdisciplinary andinternational fellowship program forartists and scientists. Since 1990,the Akademie has supported artistsin the disciplines of architecture,visual arts, performing arts, design,literature, music/sound and video/lm/new media with residencyand work fellowships. Since 2002,young people from the science andbusiness sectors are also eligible forfellowships within the art, science &business program. The AkademieSchloss Solitude is nanciallysupported by the German state ofBaden-Württemberg. Mehta in hiscapacity as Jury Chairman will beinviting, and working with jurors,

selecting fellows, setting up thematicideas, in the elds of visual arts,architecture, design, literature, video/lm/new media, music, humanitiesand economics. This internationalprogramme has had Fabrizio Gallanti,Renate Ackermann, Phillip Ursprungand Corinne Diserens as some oftheir Jury Chairmen in the past. Someof the Jury Members in the pasthave included Dan Graham, Jurgen

Mayer H, Catherine David, EyalWeizman, Stan Allen, Peter Zumthor,Ivan Vladisavic, Hans Ulrich-Obrist,Sarat Maharaj, Herta Muller, TeresaHubbard/Allan Sekula, J M Coetzee,Beatriz Colomina, Harun Farocki,Yves Behar, Saadane Af, amongstmany others.

www.akademie-solitude.de/en

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domus 23 November 2013NEWS

© P h o t o B M W G r o u p

New culinary rituals

“Food in Movement” was thetheme of the rst edition of theBMW Creative Lab, conceived byBMW Italia and the BMW group ofDesignworksUSA (in partnership withFratelli Guzzini) to highlight the talentof young international designers.After seven months of meetings anddiscussions and having to explorevarious avenues – including lm,interviews and market research –winner Attila Veress and the fournalists all showed great attentionto the symbolic value of exchange

NEWS

but also the technical and practicalaspects of their projects. The bestresults were a container for eatingin the workplace, a reworking ofthe traditional lunch box (by AttilaVeress) and a system of modular,coloured “telescopic” containers thatarticulates and interprets dishes,food and culinary rituals (by MichelaVoglino).

www.bmwgroup.comwww.designworksUSA.com

Accessorial space

Shelf-Y is the very rst accessory forspiral staircases: a shelf conceivedto exploit the space under the stairsthat is generally under-used, a usefulspace for storing books, magazinesor objects of various kinds. It is asymmetrical structure that is madeup of two elements in plexiglassthat once in position enhance thestaircase not only from a functionalpoint of view but also bring addedaesthetic value. Designers Marco

Vantusso and Paolo Colombohave paid particular attention tosustainability – via the use of FSCwoods, recycled plastic, naturalglues, water-based paints – so asto make Shelf-Y 100% recyclable.It is produced in two sizes for spiralstaircases with a diameter from 120to 140 cm.

www.fontanot.it

Les Turbulences

The Fonds Régional d’ArtContemporain (FRAC) celebrated its30th anniversary with the openingon 14 September in Orléans ofthe much talked-about building/sculpture by Jakob + MacFarlane.In front of the 18th-century formerprison that has been housing thecentre’s activities since 1999, threesteel and glass tentacles emerge,known as Les Turbulences. Theyare the result of a computerisedalgorithm that, deforming the

Art beneath the veil

The new building at the SerpentineGallery in Kensington Gardens,designed by Zaha Hadid, openedon 28 September. The rst artist topresent his work under the whitefabric tensile-structure was AdriánVillar Rojas of Argentina.The new outdoor pavilion, thatextends over approximately 900m2,doubles the already generousexhibition space in the gallery thatup until now, despite only 43 yearsof existence has hosted works by

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k l e r

G a l l e r y

b y Z a h a

H a d

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h i t e c t s

© Z a h a

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over 1,600 artists. The SerpentineSackler Gallery, named after thephilanthropists Mortimer and TheresaSackler who made its realisationpossible, further consolidates theimportance of this London site in theworld of contemporary art.

www.serpentinegallery.org

pattern of the historic building, hascreated a structure of lightweightpre-fabricated metal tubes withthe function of accommodatingvisitors. A light installation by the duoElectronic Shadow completes theproject. The “party” continues until 2February with the 2014 edition of theArchilab festival entitled “Naturaliserl’architecture”.

www.frac-centre.fr

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NEWS domus 23 November 2013

First lady cyclist, c. 1920

Tasveer in collaboration with Saffron Artshowcased a collection of photographstaken from 1850s to 1960s in anexhibition titled,Subjects & spaces,women in Indian photography

(Also see page 11)

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NEWS domus 23 November 2013

Two young Parsi ladies, c. 1910

Tasveer in collaboration with Saffron Artshowcased a collection of photographstaken from 1850s to 1960s in anexhibition titled,Subjects & spaces,women in Indian photography

(Also see page 11)

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PROJECTS domus 23 November 2013

Projects / Sitting as glazed boxes(See pages 86 – 91)

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domus 23 November 2013PROJECTS

Projects / Discernable Patterns(See pages 92-97)

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Sometimes your hands

could use a hand.

Sometimes your hands

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domus 23 November 2013PROJECTS

Projects / Poetic link, tectonic integrity(See pages 80-85)

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devices. With their brilliant touch displays, they enable convenient controlof the entire building technology with a single nger. In doing so, the intuitiveuser interface, the Gira Interface, allows quick access to the complete rangeof functions.Fig. lef t: Gira C ontrol 19 Client, glass black / aluminium,Fig. right: Gira Control 9 Client, gl ass black / aluminium

Central control using the Gira Control ClientsIt is possible to control light, heating and blinds automatically, distributemusic to every room, and switch off all electrical devices at the press ofa single button. The Gira HomeServer makes buildings more convenient,ensures more security and helps save energy at the same time. It controlsall functions of the KNX installation and integrates door intercoms, multi-media systems, cameras, household appliances and much more seamlesslyinto building control. The Gira Control Clients act as the central oper ating

Mobile operation using smartphones and tabletsConvenient mobile operation of the complete building technology is possiblewith the Gira Home Server/Facili tyServer app —using an iPhone, iPad or iPodtouch, and now also Android devices. The user interface in the uniform GiraInterface design provides easy-to-understand and intuitive menu guidance

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C ON TE NT S 3 5domus 23 November 2013

Cover: in the Jaisalmer Airport by studioVanRo architects, an element like the ja-ali weaves colours, forms and light in thebuilding, without much value differencebetween the element and the structure

LACITTÀDELL’UOMO023

November2013

INDIA

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ContributorsJasem PiraniSuprio BhattacharjeeEkta Idnany

PhotographsRohit Raj MehndirattaRajesh VoraBharat Ramamrutham

AuthorsKenneth FramptonHistorian

Alan Fletcher

Shanay JhaveriVisual Arts Researcher

Marthand KhoslaArchitect Arpita DasWriter & Publisher

Mustansir DalviArchitect & Historian

Smita DalviArchitect & Historian

Edurdo Souto de MouraArchitect

Alberto Campo BaezaArchitect

Werner OechslinArchitecture Historian Hans KolhoffArchitect

Author Design Title

Kaiwan Mehta 38 EditorialTwo years of Domus India

Nicola Di Battista 42 EditorialDomus, the human city

Kenneth Frampton 44 Towards an antagonastic architecture

Alan Fletcher 47ConfettiBeware wet paint

Kalyani Majumdar 48 Many hands, many forms

Shanay Jhaveri 52 Interlocking the magical, the marvellousand the mystical

Martand Khosla 54 The workings of architecture

Aprita Das 56 Captial between the coversMustansir Dalvi 58 A sense of reposeSmita Dalvi 60 Collating a journeyEduardo Souto de Moura 62 An unscientic autobiographyAlberto Campo Baeza 64 An idea in the palm of the handWerner Oechslin 66 Man as intellectual

Kaiwan Mehta 69 studio VanRo architectsProjectsPandora’s jaali

Jasem Pirani 80 SJK Architects Poetic link, tectonic integritySuprio Bhattacharjee 86 Malik Architecture Sitting as glazed boxes

Ekta Idnany 92 DCOOP Architects Discernable patternsHans Kolhoff 98 Hans Kolhoff Two ministries in The HagueHans Kolhoff 108 For an architecture of the city

110RassengaBathroom

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domus 23 November 2013

Domus Magazine founded in 1928

Publisher and managing editorMaria Giovanna Mazzocchi Bordone

EditorNicola Di Battista

Art directorGiuseppe Basile

Brand manager Anna Amodeo

International directorSoa Bordone

Licensing & SyndicationCarmen Figinit +39 02 82472487 gini@edidomus.it

The College of MastersDavid ChippereldKenneth FramptonHans KollhoffWerner OechslinEduardo Souto de Moura

Study CentreMassimo CurziSpartaco Paris

Andrea Zamboni

Special projectsLuca Gazzaniga

Websitewww.domusweb.it

Facebook www.facebook.com/domus Twitter @domusweb

Domus Local Edition Mexico, Central America & Caribbean −China − India − Israel − Germany

Editor and PublisherManeck Davar

Managing EditorKaiwan Mehta

Senior Assistant EditorKalyani Majumdar

Senior Sub-EditorSharmila Chakravorty Art DirectorParvez Shaikh

Senior Graphic DesignerYogesh Jadhav Digital & GraphicsNinad JadhavRohit Nayak Mangesh Rahate

Director, Marketing and SalesGeetu Rai

Marketing TeamParth Bal

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Domus, magazine of Spenta Multimedia, is printed and publishedby Maneck Davar, on behalf of Spenta Multimedia.Printed at Spenta Multimedia, Peninsula Spenta, Mathuradas MillCompound, N. M. Joshi Marg, Lower Parel (W), Mumbai 400 013.Published from Spenta Multimedia, Peninsula Spenta,Mathuradas Mill Compound, N. M. Joshi Marg, Lower Parel (W),Mumbai 400 013. Editor - Maneck Davar.The views and opinions expressed or implied in Domus arethose of the authors and do not neccessarily reflect those of

Spenta Multimedia. Unsolicited articles and transparencies aresent in at the owner’s risk and the publisher accepts no liabilityfor loss or damage. Material in this publication may not bereproduced, whether in part or in whole, without the consent ofSpenta Multimedia.

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Country and city: everyday strangers , 2013

Artist: Arunkumar H.G

Detail

EDITORIALdomus 23 November 2013

The photo frieze shows workers standing on foot-paths in urban space. This work-forceassembles in huge numbers and then disappears within a short time. Everyday, at aspecied time and place, they wait to be taken to an unspecied destination for work. Theyare migrants from villages who come to the city for temporary employment. The moneyearned helps to keep their meagre farm practice alive. In cities their work is mainly hardlabour; even so, I can no longer sense the pain and harshness of their lives in the word‘labour’. Perhaps I should call them ‘toilers’. How do we identify this scene, this order, whichis visible yet so transient as to become invisible?

Arunkumar H.G

Medium: Digital print on archival paper, mounted on dibond panels

Size: 60 x 352 cms. 2013

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With this issue we begin the third year of Domus in India. It has beentwo years of dening architectural journalism and criticism in India,opening a space for discourse in the elds of architecture, design and

visual culture in India. It has been an attempt to recover as well as

shape the space for discussing architecture, which has been absentin many ways, or existed only intermittently, in a very rareed way.We only hope these attempts are useful, and contribute to these eldsproductively, and creatively.Those involved in the practice and eld of architecture ofarchitecture directly, as well as the others rstly need to understandhow architecture is way beyond building and shaping buildings.Within the community of architects itself there are many ways ofthinking about architecture – for some it is business, for others itsabout juggling sizes and looks, and for some it is art, philosophicalengagement and a way of life! This situation puts a certain kind ofpressure on how one discusses architecture within a journalisticspace like the magazine, which is also the crucial critical space. Amagazine has to mirror the profession and eld it represents on theone hand, but also has to challenge it harshly, critically, responsiblyand creatively. To showcase the debates and dilemmas of the

profession, the ideas and thoughts in the eld and the struggles ofproducing buildings within the architectural eld is what a goodarchitectural magazine should be engaged in. Architecture, andits object – the building – exists within a plethora of practices andideas; it is an aspect of historical and philosophical or ideologicalconuences as well as a result of building material and technologicaldevelopments and availability of patronage, an economicenvironment, and so on.

At one level we understand the building, and the designed objectfrom within the eld of architecture and design, but what is also

very necessary is to understand how other subjects and disciplinesapproach the building as the object of architecture, and rather thebuilding or the designed object as a subject within the cultural andpublic sphere. Architecture and design are elds that belong to theeveryday world, as much as they can be the objects of philosophicaland historical debates – and within the practice of journalism and

criticism this has to be essentially acknowledged. In many ways for Domus India , to engage with architecture and design is a way toaddress many questions regarding the world and culture we occupyand live in. We begin engaging with architecture but it soon turnsinto an investigation of everyday life, the worlds of philosophy, historyand politics that shape our individual and public lives. The journey isone that is intellectually investigating our roles as professionals, ourresponsibilities as creators of objects in a large and complex world, aswell as our thinking as human beings occupying and using space aswell as resources in a rich and challenging society.The architecture magazine is not an interior decoration catalogueto browse through to select your next sofa or table-lamp, nor is it alifestyle magazine to be skimmed through while getting your haircoloured, and it clearly need not spend time on discussing whichcelebrity has built what house, and shopped furnishings from whichinternational trade fair, and it cannot fall prey to real-estate anddevelopment promotions. And yes, at the same time all of the aboveare part of this trade – the making of buildings and shaping itssurfaces – and the magazine will need to acknowledge all of that, butnot become a handmaiden to any of them. The magazine should neverbe seen as the competitive space, at the professional level, but onethat is creative and challenging. A magazine will need to establish ascale of standards but also dene approaches towards a productiveand rich profession and practice. It should not be about claiming whatis good or what is bad, but about understanding how the professionand eld is developing and what should be focused on to generate adialogue within, and outside, the profession.With these principles and intentions one makes an attempt to frameevery issue of Domus India as a cohesive document that month aftermonth will build up a rich narrative of architectural and designpractice, as well as visual culture in India. At all levels this remainsan attempt, and may be only a drop in the ocean, but we hope thisworks as a trigger, encouraging debates and arguments in theprofessional and philosophical discourse in the eld.We look at individual projects but always within the context of thepractice, the process and culture that produces it. We evaluate and

challenge processes as much as we discuss and try to understand themaking of individual projects. The magazine often discusses projectswithin thematic or typological frameworks, such as leisure homes orbuilding skins and facades. At the same time engaging with history –

recent and distant, is very important for us; and history is not limitedto monuments, conservation or nostalgia, but evaluated for its senseof the contemporary. The magazine works in many ways as a museumin paper, a museum that is being built up every month, issue by issue;and this museum is no commentary on the past, but on the present.In fact, our section ‘Museum for Architecture in Contemporary India’consciously documents forgotten moments and histories, objects andideas, which the contemporary is made up of. The form of the essay is

very important to us, as it keeps alive roaming ideas, bringing themto a momentary story-line for discussion and rumination, and thenallowing them to oat in many more minds and, in the process, grow.

Another area we have focused on is the printed word – books onart, architecture and design, as well as those on urban cultures andpolitics. New ones are discussed, while old ones are pulled out tounderstand their continuing relevance. Their making, design andproduction are as important to us as much as their content. And

from this issue we launch a new series ‘Pages through my mind’that invites, and welcomes architects, designers, urban theoristsand researchers, artists and critics to visit books that marked animpression of some sort in their intellectual and professional life.In this issue we have contributions from Delhi-based architectMartand Khosla; Shanay Jhaveri, who is a researcher in the areasofart and lm, living between Mumbai and London; and Arpita Das-Rebeiro, who is a writer and publisher based in Delhi. Architects andresearchers, Mustansir Dalvi and Smita Dalvi look at two recentlypublished monographs on two architects from India, Anant Raje andShirish Beri; and these ruminations contribute to our ‘museumon paper’.In the ‘Projects’ section we look at an infrastructure project, theairport at Jaisalmer, which helps us discuss a classic motif andarchitectural element – the jaali; and along with it, we continue ourdiscussion on the typology of leisure homes.This issue is also the beginning of a ‘new look’ for Domus , with NicolaDi Battista heading the international Domus as its new Editor nowonwards. The following details from our Milan ofce inform you of thenew avatar and working under the editorship of di Battista – ‘NicolaDi Battista was born in Teramo, Abruzzo, on 20 October 1953. In 1986he established his own ofce in Rome, where he currently resides.From 1989 to 1995 he was the deputy editor of Domus magazine.From 1997 to 1999 he was a professor of architectural design at ETHZurich. He teaches at various Italian and overseas universities, andhis work in education and research runs parallel with his designpractice. Di Battista is a professor at the Faculty of Architecture inCagliari, Sardinia. Projects currently underway include the renewalof Castello Fienga in Nocera, Campania, and the renewal of theCastello San Michele in Santa Maria del Cedro, Calabria, both withEduardo Souto de Moura; the Natural History and ArchaeologicalMuseum in Vicenza, Veneto; and the Lewitt Foundation in Praiano,Campania. These commissions testify to his awareness of the pastand his desire for continuity between elements of history andcontemporary innovation. In 2011 he won a competition to designan extension for the National Archaeological Museum ofReggio Calabria.The new Domus under the editorship of Nicola Di Battista will beprimarily a means of deeper investigation. Its main objective willbe to recreate the collective conditions indispensable to a brighterprospect of architecture and related discipline. The ambition of this

Domus is to forge, month by month and issue by issue, a new outlookon contemporary architecture. It will be a non-sectarian magazineaddressed to an ever-wider readership. The new Domus under DiBattista will be focused on the readers, emphasising the magazine’smission to engage and expand the vast eld of knowledge and broadcultural horizons that are essential to the architectural profession.In addition to a restyling of contents and graphics, Di Battista willlaunch an innovative concept of editorship. The magazine’s owntraditional valuable editorial department will be backed by twonew groups of specialists: the College of Masters , with ve of themost important and recognised representatives of contemporary

TWO YEARS OF DOMUS INDIA Kaiwan Mehta

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architecture: David Chippereld, Kenneth Frampton, Hans Kollhoff,Werner Oechslin and Eduardo Souto de Moura, and a Study Centre ,a team of young professionals who have been selected for their abilityto offer a fresh perspective on contemporary architecture.

The establishment of a college reects a clear choice. Masters areindispensable for their presence, opinions and incitement, but also fortheir advice. We are convinced that between them and the youngergenerations a special, friendly relationship can be re-established,containing the capacity to carry the discipline forward. We wish to“examine our contemporaneity through the eyes of these masters,who make their discoveries where others have ceased to look”,explains Nicola di Battista.On the other hand, the purpose of the Study Centre , operatedby young architects and scholars, is to carry out research for the

magazine, in order to explore the many issues of our past andpresent and to develop materials useful to architects today in theirefforts to progress into the future. The Study Centre will give aid tothe editorial staff, will be responsible for keeping our website up to

date and for organising such exhibitions and events as the magazinemay wish to stage in the course of time.’

At Domus India , we are not only happy to belong to a rich andlong tradition like Domus , but we are excited to work with thenew directions set out within the new avatar of the internationalmagazine. We enjoy working towards developing a magazine thatwithin the intellectual framework of Domus magazine can scan theeld of design and architecture in India, developing a structure andlanguage appropriate to this scan. km

Mumbai

Alibaug

Goa

HampiManipal

Karjat

Hyderabad Vijaywada

Warangal

Cudappah

Boisar Valsad Veraval Timba

Raigarh

ShirpurLonavala, Pune,Wadeshwar

Bengaluru

CoimbatoreCalicut

Coonoor MysoreMadurai

Chennai

Dharmapuri

Kochi, Muziris

AhmedabadGandhinagar

Surat

DelhiGurgaon

RishikeshChandigarh

VrindavanJaisalmerJaipur

UdaipurMandar

Sanchi

Tal Chhapar

BhavnagarBatanagarKolkata

Manipur

Bhopal

Madanapalle

An indication of places and cities covered in Domus India over the last two years

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2

3

4

5

6

1 7

8

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10

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12

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Diagrams that introduced the lead features from November 2011 to October 2013

13 18

14 19

15

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22

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In the Italian language, the word arrivederci is certainly a beautiful one.It naturally expresses a farewell, hence a parting. At the same time, itimplies the prospect of a later encounter, of meeting again. So it is a keyword and a convincing one, indeed by now so familiar outside Italy thatit needs no translation. With immediacy and precision, it conveys a senseof association that speaks of Italy and Italianity.In truth, that was not quite what I was thinking way back in January1996, when I saluted Domus readers with a cordial and highlyimprobable arrivederci , then written more out of regret, I believe,than real conviction.So today, to have been asked to direct the prestigious Domus magazinells me with pride, though I have to say it also makes me feel abit nervous.

It lls me with pride that the publisher, Maria Giovanna MazzocchiBordone, or la dottoressa Mazzocchi, as everybody always calls heraffectionately, has with a great act of trust appointed me to presideover her oldest and noblest magazine, which has even given its nameto the whole publishing house, Editoriale Domus. My warmest thanks,dottoressa . I sincerely hope to full the trust you have placed in me.

Yet the challenge is a daunting one: to edit a magazine that has publishednearly 1,000 issues over a span of 100 years, that has represented,interpreted and promoted an impressive number of stories, facts, works,aspirations, dreams, battles and utopias pursued by humans for otherhumans. The pride and joy of my new responsibility is thus tinged witha certain trepidation, in the awareness that my rst task is to continuethis history.

Domus is not only our own history, but also a collective one that belongsto all people. I’d like to get back to the word arriverderci that I spoke notin the conviction that I might actually return to my readers, but as acordial farewell and especially as a placation of my discomfort for havinghad to break off abruptly and irremediably something that had been builtup so assiduously, with patient effort. The arrivederci was in reality anexpedient to make that parting less traumatic.Coming back to Domus unexpectedly enables me to honour that promisenow. At the same time, it forces me into the shoes of the person who madethat promise lightly, in the certainty that the circumstances that mightcompel him to keep it would never arise.Today, therefore, my rst thought is for those readers to whom I saidgoodbye back then with an arrivederci . If I could, I would call them oneby one. I’m sure I would nd them similar in spirit, for if they sofavourably received a magazine patiently created for them with suchdeep attachment and involvement, it was because we endeavoured toforge, for and with them, an outlook on the architecture of that time,on its urgencies and successes, but also its doubts and difculties.Our project had become, above all, theirs.Of course that was a long time ago. The world has changed completelyin the past 20 years, and the changes have been so rapid and frenzied

The truth, to be precise, is that the soilon which people live is neither the earthnor any other element, but a philosophy.

Human beings live on and in a philosophy.

Translated from José Ortega y Gasset,On the Darmstadt conference , 1951

as to give us the feeling of an unstoppable, almost crushing vortex.New media, new technologies, instruments and ideas have shaped ourtime in an entirely different way to that of the recent past, giving thestrong impression that everything has changed, that nothing is as itwas before. Well, this is certainly true. If we pause to look at theextraordinary technological innovations in our everyday lives, we realisethat we are in the midst of an incredible revolution, certainly one of thebiggest in the long history of humanity. But if we ask ourselves whetherthese formidable conquests by technology have actually helped to changeour lives radically and for the better, we might begin to entertaina few doubts. Architecture should serve to create places where people canlive, work and enjoy themselves fully, freely and poetically.How much more prosperity is the mighty contemporary technological

machine contributing to the lives of human beings today?There is no doubt that people now live better and longer, but is thisenough? Is it we who govern technological innovations, or do they imposetheir rules, pace and contents on us?On this old continent of ours, the gap between north and south, rich andpoor, class A and class B citizens, is more glaring than ever.Dramatically, our beloved Mediterranean seems to no longer enjoy peace,and actually be headed toward self-destruction. And the bystandersare many, too many. So where are the architects? It would seem thatcontemporary architecture has no good answers for humanity today, thatit is no longer capable of claiming a role for itself in designing the presentand envisaging a future full of hope for the construction of a betterworld on a human scale, tailored to our needs. Against the contemporarybarbarism of built space, can architecture adopt and claim an active new,propulsive role at the service of the collectivity, in order to recognise in itsdisciplinary knowledge something indispensable and necessary to its ownexistence? It would seem that the role left for architecture is a secondaryone, where it acts on things already decided and xed by others.For these reasons – and also as an homage to Ernesto N. Rogers, whowhen he was appointed to the editorship of this magazine in 1946 addedto the title Domus the words “man’s home” – we have chosen a newmotto: “the human city”. With this we also refer to Giuseppe Lazzati and

Adriano Olivetti, who were chronologically the last convincing expandersof this approach.We believe that the words “human” and “city” along with the word“domus” constitute a ne point of departure. They allow us to emphasisethe priorities that must once again become the base for innovations inarchitecture today, the solid and robust foundations of a renewed seasonof progress and civilisation. As such, our goal is specic: may everyoneconcerned with the designing of houses, furniture and tools put peopleback at the centre of interest.However, I must say that “the human city” is also meant to act as acontrast to what might be dened as “the clients’ city”, which appearsto have become the only type possible: a city globally recognised from

Nicola Di Battista

DOMUS, THE HUMAN CITY

DOMUS, LA CITTÀ DELL’UOMO

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It is indeed unfortunate that human society shouldencounter such burning problems just when it has becomematerially impossible to make heard the least objection tothe language of the commodity; just when power – quiterightly because it is shielded by the spectacle from anyresponse to its piecemeal and delirious decisions and

justications – believes that it no longer needs to think ;and indeed can no longer think. Would not even thestaunchest democrat prefer to have been given moreintelligent masters? It is sometimes said that science today is subservient to

the imperatives of prot, but that is nothing new. What isnew is the way the economy has now come to declareopen war on humanity, attacking not only our possibilitiesfor living, but also our chances of survival. It is here thatscience – renouncing the opposition to slavery that formeda signicant part of its own history – has chosen to putitself at the service of spectacular domination.Guy Debord, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1988) 1

T O W A R D S

A N A G O N I S T I C

A R C H I T E C T U R E

1. The State of ThingsDas Spiel ist aus (“The game is over”) 2 is the title of a poemby the Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann, by which I believeshe meant the project of the European Enlightenment,the vision of Schiller, Goethe, Hegel, Schinkel, Marx andFreud, in a word, Jürgen Habermas’s unnished modern

project, which, it now seems, will never be realised, noteven partially; not because we lack the resources and thetechnique to do so, but because we are unable to muster thenecessary political will to effect a decisive change, for weare totally deluded by the Society of Spectacle and therebyrendered impotent as a body politic, and by the repression ofalternative modes of being, by which we might still be ableto save ourselves.Le Corbusier’s elegiac vision of une vill e rad ieuse of 1934,his erotic project of Baudelaire’s L uxe, calm e et volup té ,will never materialize, not because we lack the essentialwherewithal, as the oil-rich, instant city of Dubai makesabundantly clear, but because the “species-being” hasbeen unable (so far) to make the ethical and political leapnecessary to engender a society capable of living within anecological domain of homeostasis. Instead, we seem to be

transxed by the auto-destructive task of laying the worldto waste and ourselves with it, as rapidly as possible. Thehegemonic power of the “universal” West is such that thereseems to be no other model than the proigate project of

Americanising the entire world, the limitless consumeristdream by which all are equally mesmerised – the symboland instrument of which is the automobile. It is this devicesurely that has proven to be the primary apocalypticalinvention of the 20th century, with result that the world nowconsumes in a few weeks the amount of petroleum it used toburn in the course of a year in the middle of the last century.This is the heart of the Pandora’s box from which much else,equally deleterious, patently stems, even if we hesitate toacknowledge the cumulative evidence. Thus one may readilyclaim that the mass ownership of the automobile is the oneagency from which much else follows: the advent of globalwarming; the melting of the ice cap; the phenomenon of

extreme weather; the elevation of the sea (now projectedas becoming as much as one metre by the end of thecentury); the pollution of the oceans and the destructionof the rainforests in our reckless pursuit of oil reserves;the suburbanisation of the planet, surely to be followedby its eventual abandonment and desertication; theinsupportable air pollution of our megalopolitan centres; thesubtle corruption of democratic processes in terms of bothgovernance and the prosecution of justice – these aporiasoccurring equally at both an international and nationallevel. Much of this is surely due to the overwhelming power

of global mega-corporations, accompanying worldwideelectronic surveillance and concomitant restraint on theexercise of investigative journalism. Needless to say, Ihave in mind the global oil, chemical and pharmaceuticalcorporations, the industrialisation of agriculture, 3 thegenetic modication of food 4 and the maximisation of thesupermarket system – the latter effectively inducing thedemise of main street and with it the provincial city as a stillremaining potential for local culture and direct democracy.In short, the globalised maximisation of prot as an end initself, at no matter what cost to biodiversity, 5 or even to thesurvival of Homo sapiens, the extinction of which is now,for the rst time, distinctly foreseeable. Perhaps no one haswritten more succinctly about our current paradoxical stateof hyperactive paralysis than Jean Baudrillard, who, at asymposium entitled “Looking Back on the End of the World,”

staged at Columbia University, New York in 1986, remarked:

Two current news items merit our attention in this regard.

The rst of these is the decision taken by the Chinesetechnocratic elite to forcibly move, over the next decade,250 million rural people from the agrarian hinterlandinto dense, high-rise urban fabric. This ironic reversal ofthe precepts of the Communist Manifesto of 1848 has theostensible purpose of creating a consumerist base uponwhich to expand an internal Chinese economy comparableto the current production/consumption cycle obtained in theUS. The second item concerns the equally draconian decisionby the Ecuadorian president, Rafael Correa, to abandon,for lack of international commitment, his attempt, via aUN-backed trust fund, to raise 3.6 billion dollars, in orderto preserve 4000 square miles of virgin rain forest from theravages of oil drilling. These seemingly unrelated incidentsare symbiotically linked by a recent commitment on the partof the Chinese Republic to consume some 40,000 barrels aday of Ecuadorian oil. 7

K e n -

n e t h

F r a m - to n

W e a r e p l e a s e d to

p r e s e n t

o u r r e a d e r s w i t h

K e n n e t h

F r a m p to n ’ s g e n e r

o u s

i s s u e o f t h e n e w

D o m us

T h e B r i t i s h c r i t i c

p r e s e n t s

a v i b r a n t a n d co n

c e r n e d

m a n i f e s to t h a t i s

a n e t h i c a l

w a k e - u p c a l l, no t

j u s t fo r

a r c h i t e c t s.

W e h e r e b y t h a n k

h i m

p u b l i c l y.

n

We are no longer i n a state of growt h; w e are in a stat e of excess. Wear e li vin g in a society of excrescence, meani ng th at w hi ch incessantl ydevelops wi thout bein g m easurable agai nst i ts own objectives. Theboil is growi ng out of contr ol, recklessly at cross purposes wit h i tself,it s impacts mul tip lyi ng as the causes disintegrate. [… ] Thi s satiati onhas nothi ng to do w ith the excess of whi ch Batai ll e spoke, whi chal l societi es have man aged to produ ce and destr oy in u seless andwasteful exhaustion. [… ] We no longer know how w e can possibl y useup al l t hese accumul ated thi ngs; we no longer even k now w hat theyar e for. Every factor of accelera ti on and concent ra ti on bri ngs us closerto the point of inerti a. 6

1 Guy Debord, Comments onthe Society of t he Spectacl e,

Verso, New York 1998, p. 39.2 Cited by Anselm Kiefer inhis speech on the occasionof receiving German BookTrade Peace Prize inFrankfurt, 2008.3 See Wendell Berry, TheUn settl ing of Ameri ca:Culture and Agricul tur e ,

Aron, New York 1978, pp.39-95.4 The corporate tyranny ofgenetically modied seedas evident in the ongoingstruggle between the Indian

environmentalist VandanaShiva and Monsanto chemicalto preserve the rights ofIndian farmers to keep their

seed for re-sowing.5 It is estimated that some30,000 animals and plantsare becoming extinct everyyear. Among the threatenedspecies are pollinatinghoney bees. It is obvious thattheir extinction would havedisastrous consequences.6 See Looking B ack on theEnd of the World , editedby Dietmar Kamper andChristoph Wolf, Semiotext(e),Columbia University, New

York 1989, p. 29.7 Clifford Krauss, Plan to BanOil D ri l l ing in the Amazonis Dr opped , in Th e New YorkTimes , August 17, 2013, pp. B1and B3.

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2. What are Architects for in a Destitute Time?This paraphrase of Hölderlin’s question can be applied tocontemporary architecture, since the bulk of contemporarypractice is global rather than local, with star architectstravelling incessantly all over the world in pursuit of theequally dynamic ow of capital. Herein we are witnessthe vox populi’s susceptibility to the mediagenic impact ofspectacular form which is as much due to the capacity of“superstar architects” to come up with sensational, novelimages as to their organisational competence and technicalability. Hence, the advent of the so-called Bilbao effect,where cities and institutions compete with each other inorder to sponsor a building designed by a recognisable brandname. In recent years this has been nowhere more evidentthan in Beijing, where diverse architecture stars rival eachother to design one spectacular building after another.Hence Herzog & de Meuron’s sensational National OlympicStadium of 2008, which was followed by Rem Koolhaas’sequally sensational 230-metre-high CCTV tower of virtuallythe same date. We are informed that the latter is destinedto programme some 250 “spectacular” TV channels a dayto an audience of one billion people. Given the sensationalaestheticism sought in both these works, it is surely noaccident that they would each make a totally irrational andstructurally uneconomic use of steel.Koolhaas’s “catatonic” atypical skyscraper is symptomaticof a world in which cities rival each other for the dubious

honour of sponsoring the highest building in the world, thetitle being held, as of now, by Dubai which, while barelya city at all, has nonetheless to its renown the 160-storeyBurj Tower. In this vein the Manhattanisation of the worldproceeds without redress, in which each successive high-rise (no matter where) is little more than another free-standing, abstract cipher testifying to the presence of globalspeculation. As Tadao Ando put it some time ago: “I thinkover a certain height, architecture is no longer possible.”In the meantime, any kind of ecologically coherent, rationalpattern of land settlement continues to elude us, despite allthe efforts made in the 1960s and ’70s8 to arrive at low-to-medium-rise densities as alternatives with which to resistthe unending expansion of commodied urban sprawl, whichis still being sustained by subsidised motorways servingsuch low densities as to make any kind of public transiteconomically unfeasible.Here and there, there are exceptions to this pattern: thedesignated bus lanes of Curitiba, Brazil; the high-speedtrains of Japan and the European continent; and thetechnological lyricism of the Zurich tram system. But inthe main, the automobile prevails. Moreover, after thespectacular travesties of Milton Keynes and Marne-la- Vallée – the non-place urban realm par excellence – in bothinstance, we have virtually abandoned the idea of projectingnew cities. As Mies van der Rohe put it in the early 1950s:“There are no cities, in fact, anymore. It goes on like a forest.That is the reason why we cannot have old cities anymore;that is gone forever, planned city and so on. We should thinkabout the means we have for living in the jungle and maybedo well by that.” Such resignation would not be shared bythe distinguished Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza, whoremarked to me some 20 years ago: “Yes, I have many

projects, but I am not happy. How can one be happy whenEurope has no project?”In 1983, following Alex Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre’s essayThe Grid and the Pathway (1981), which was inspired byPaul Ricœur’s post-colonial thesis distinguishing betweenUn iversal Civilization and Nati onal Cultures ,9 I elaboratedthe Tzonis/Lefaivre concept of Critical Regionalism in mySixPoint s for an A rchi tectur e of Resistance . This text appearedin Hal Foster’s anthology of essays on postmodern culture,published under the title Th e Anti -Aesthetic .10 Eight yearslater Fredric Jameson, in a brilliantly critical overview of

various postmodern architectural stratagems entitled TheSeeds of Ti me , put paid to any illusions that we might stillentertain as to the geopolitical possibility of a regionallyresistant culture, despite the fact that it was precisely thismythical promise that exercised an inuence on manyperipheral architects. In his comprehensive critique of mynaïve proposition of 30 years ago, he wrote:

Despite Jameson’s sensitive appraisal of my interpretation ofthe Critical Regionalist thesis, he nonetheless arrives at theprecipitous Marxist conclusion that any vestige of regionalotherness and identity has preciously little capacity toresist the subtle spectacular domination of corporate power.However, the fact remains that regional differences continueto be cultivated, above all, at the level of regional cuisineand viticulture, even though such cultural differences havealways remained open to subtle forms of hybridisationthroughout history. Even if we have no choice but to foregoany naïve assumptions as to local sovereignty, regionallycounter-hegemonic tectonic form surely still retains atthe grass roots level the capacity to resist the variouslyreductive forms of stylistic postmodernism with which thehegemonic power of the centre prefers to surround itself.12 Thus, for me, a liberative promise for the future resides inan agonistic architecture of the periphery as opposed to thesubtle nonjudgmental conformism of ruling taste emanatingfrom the centre. I attempted to suggest exactly this in mymarginal participation in last year’s Venice Biennale. Myanthology Fi ve N orth Am eri can Architects , displayed inthe Arsenale, asserted the presence in North America ofa counter-hegemonic “otherness” cultivated mainly on theperiphery of a vast continent, as opposed to the pluralistic,aesthetically reductive false differences patronised in subtleways by hegemonic power.13

8 See Roland Rainer, LivableEnvironments , Verlag für Architektur Artemis, Zurich 1972; also SergeChermayeff and Christopher Alexander, Communi ty and Privacy:Toward a New Archi tectur e ofHumani sm, Anchor Books,New York 1965.9 See Paul Ricœur, UniversalCivil izat ion and National Cultures ,in History and Tru th , NorthwesternUniversity Press, Evanston1965.10 See Kenneth Frampton, Towardsa Crit ical Regionalism: Six Points for

an Ar chitectur e of Resistance , in TheAnti-Aesthetic, edited by Hal Foster,Bay Press, Seattle 1983.11 See Fredric Jameson, Th e Seedof Time , Columbia University Press,New York 1994, pp. 202-203.12 See Kenneth Frampton, Rappel à L’Or dr e, the Case for the Tectonic , inArchitectural D esign, 50, no. 3/4, 1991.13 See Kenneth Frampton, Five NorthAmerican Architects, Lars MüllerPublishers and Columbia University,New York and Zurich 2012.

Fr ampt on’s conceptual proposal, however, is not an i nternal but r ather ageopoli tical one: it seeks to m obili ze a pl ur ali sm of ‘regional’ styles (a term selected,no doubt, in order to forestall t he unwant ed connotati ons of the terms nati onaland i nternational ali ke) with a view towards resisting the standard izations ofa henceforth global l ate capit ali sm and corporat ism, wh ose ‘vern acular ’ is asomni present a s its power over local decisions (and i ndeed aft er the end of the ColdWar, over l ocal govern ments and ind ivi dual nati on states as well ).It is thus politi cally im portant, returni ng to the problem of parts or components,to emphasize the degree to wh ich t he concept of Cr it ical Regionali sm i s necessari lyall egorical. Th e in di vid ual bu il di ng here belongs no longer to a uniqu e vision of cit y

to a distin ctive regional cultu re as a whole, for whi ch the distinctive individ ualbuil di ng becomes a metonym. 11

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One of the most surprising and gratifying aspects ofcontemporary practice over the past two decades has beenthe way in which accomplished architects from the so-called“rst world” have found themselves building from timeto time in the equally eponymous “third world”. This, initself, may not be that unusual, but what has been uniqueof recent times is the exceptionally rened sensibility andrigour that has invariably been applied to the regionaland, at times, aboriginal situation, so that one has theuncanny sense that the outcome could not have been morepractically and poetically achieved if it had been handled by

locally rooted architects rather than outsiders. One of therst instances of a work of this order is John and PatriciaPatkau’s Seabird Island School, built for a Northwest-PacicIndian band in Agassiz, British Columbia over the years1988-91. A number of things are notable about this work.First, it was commissioned by an exceptionally enlightenedcivil servant from the Canadian Ministry of Education;second, the architects realised that for the band to be ableto construct this school by themselves, a model wouldhave to be prepared since it was evident that they werenot able to read drawings, particularly for a work of suchextreme geometrical complexity. Finally, there are strikingtopographic and cultural aspects to this work: above all, thehumpback form of its shingled roof, which echoes the proleof a nearby mountain, and the canted outriggered timberspans of its portico, which overhang the southern front of the

school. The latter makes a subtle reference to the sh-dryingracks that used to feature prominently in front of the Indianhouses in wood that line the coastline.

A comparable, reciprocal work for a prominent member of anaboriginal Australian tribe was built in Yirrkala in NorthernTerritory of Australia in 1994 to the designs of GlennMurcutt. I have in mind the Marika-Alderton House, builtfor Banduk Marika who was then a tribal representativein the Australian parliament in Canberra. This two-storey,

virtually all-timber house stands elevated one metre off theground in order to avoid ooding and provide a clear view ofthe horizon – a traditional defensive feature of importancein the native culture. Situated 12 ½ degrees south of theequator, where humidity reaches 80 per cent, the house hadto be capable of being completely opened up so as to facilitatecross ventilation. This is the primary reason behind the

storey-height, hinged timber shutters which, when raised,also provide sun shields for the veranda of the house. Sincethe house is located on sand dunes close to the ocean, it isprovided with a slatted timber oor to allow sand to fallthrough. The main volume of the house was made equallypermeable by virtue of pivoting metal roof vents, oriented byweather vanes, so as to align their vents with the prevailingairow. These devices were installed so as to equalise thepressure within and without whenever the house is subjectto winds of cyclone force, which raises the risk that internalpressure will blow the house apart. As in the case of SeabirdIsland School, this house makes an allusion to the nativedomestic tradition without the slightest attempt to replicateit. With its metal standing-seam roof, metal roof vents andmetal structural frame and tubular uprights to stiffenthe timber frame and its cladding, it is an unequivocaltranslation of the traditional hut into modern form. In thisregard, one should note that the building was prefabricatedin Sydney, and trucked overland to its site in the north. Ineffect this building established a totally new standard for

Australian aboriginal housing in the region. Prior to this,the native populations of the area had been settled by thegovernment bureaucracy in inadequately ventilated concreteblockhouses. Another remarkable contribution to aboriginalculture in the post-colonial era was made in the mid-’80sby the remarkable Finnish gure of Eila Kivekäs whobecame involved with the Finnish reception of the Guineaintellectual Alpha Diallo, who rather remarkably had electedto translate the Finnish national epic, Th e Kal evala , intoFula, his native language. After Diallo unexpectedly died inFinland, Kivekäs arranged for the return of his remains toGuinea and soon after went to Guinea herself to establisha local craft centre which had the aim of improving thestatus of women in the country, along with the overallhealth of the society. To this end, Kivekäs founded the

Development Association Indigo in Mali, a small town of1000 people in Guinea, the name of the institution beingderived from the traditional indigo-blue cloth produced bywomen in the region. Eventually Kivekäs would commissionthe Finnish architects Heikkinen-Komonen to build threeworks for her in Guinea; her own house in Mali (1989), thePoultry Farming School in Kindia (1990) and a local healthcentre nearby. One should note that the school came intobeing largely because of Diallo’s conviction that the mostimportant priority for the future well-being of Guinea societywas to increase the amount of protein in the daily diet. In

all three buildings Heikkinen-Komonen used inexpensivematerials, which were readily available, such as bambooscreens, concrete blocks, large bricks made of stabilised earthand roof tiles made of cement, reinforced by glass bre.From the point of view of the poetics of light and the regionalaura, the single-storey Villa Eila in Mali is perhaps themost “aboriginal” building of the three. Here a continuousmonopitch tiled roof and a long woven bamboo screen wallcovering the southern face serve to enclose four volumesunder a single roof. By contrast, the Poultry FarmingSchool is almost classical in its minimalist composition,assembled about a square courtyard. This square is enclosedby two single-storey volumes situated to the south and thenorthwest corner of the court.The buildings are made out of blocks. The rst is thepermanent dwelling for the instructor/caretaker, while the

second consists of three separate, four-person dormitoriesfor students. The dominant element situated on axis to theeast of the square is the double-height lecture hall with itsmonumental timber portico. The latter is a tectonic tourde force in lightweight timber construction built out oftransverse beams, elegantly and economically stiffened bywire cables. Finland was also involved in the realisation ofa women’s centre in Senegal in 1995, located just outsidethe city of Rusque. This single-storey building, made outof concrete blocks dyed bright red, consists of a simpleU-shaped enclosure. It is tting that this women’s centrewas designed by three young Finnish women, trained asarchitects in Helsinki, namely Saija Hollmén, Jenni Reuterand Helena Sandman. Here the powerfully expressive imagestems from the theatrical form of the protective enclosure,from the red colour and the subtle perforations here and

there in the perimeter’s block work.I would like to include in this essay on the potential scope ofagonistic architecture a comment on the extraordinary workof Studio Mumbai in Bombay, founded in 1995, under thedirection of the architect Bijoy Jain. Studio Mumbai seems tobe on a Kropotkinian approach to building culture, harkingback to the workshops of William Morris and even furtherback in time to the carpenter as the rst architect. In manyrespects, Jain, although trained as an architect, has becomea kind of latter-day master-builder whereby he serves as acoordinator of carpenters. Through a kind of transgressivecreativity, Studio Mumbai has demonstrated its masterynot only over carpentry and joinery but also over ceramics,coloured plasterwork, masonry and milled stonework.

All the same, one has to acknowledge that the beautiful housesthat Studio Mumbai has built in the state of Maharashtra are,in the last analysis, rather expensive, bourgeois residencesthat could hardly be more removed from the more modestworks I have touched on here. Nevertheless this is still a kindof reciprocal, “other” architecture, wherein, by denition, Jainhas chosen to distance himself from the brand architecture ofour society in all its aesthetic guises.

By the term “agonistic”I wish to evoke the ideaof an architecture whichcontinues to place emphasison the particular brief andon the specic nature of thetopography and climate inwhich it is situated, while

still giving high priorityto the expressivity andthe physical attributes ofthe material out of whichthe work is made. I havetaken the term itself fromthe political theory ofChantal Mouffe, recentlypublished under the title

Agonistics. Thinking theWorld Politically (2013).While architecture,obviously, cannot actpolitically, by appropriatingthe term I wish to evoke apluralist architecture thatis categorically opposedto the stylistic, hegemonic

spectacularity of theneo-liberal worldview,that is to say the falsely

sensational and supercialaestheticism of our time. Inmy view, it is precisely thisever-changing fashionableemphasis on the decorativeor minimalist envelopethat has effectively robbedarchitecture of one ofits most fundamentalattributes, namely, thetime-honoured mandate to

organise and orchestratethe space of publicappearance in a culturally

signicant manner.Mouffe’s agonistic politicaltheory also mentions areappraisal of the region asa counter-hegemonic entitycapable of countering toan equal degree both thefaltering nation state andthe overarching force ofan indifferent globalisedeconomy. 14

14 See Chantal Mouffe.Agonist i cs : Th ink in g the Wor ldPol i t i ca l ly , Verso, London2013, p. 57. As she put itafter Massimo Cacciari, “Themodern state is torn from theinside under the pressureof regionalist movements,and from the outside as aconsequence of the growthof supranational powersand institutions and of theincreasing power of worldnance and transnationalcorporations.”

K e n -

n e t h

F r a m - t o n

Kenneth Fra mpton(Woking, U K, 1930) isa cri t ic, historian andtheorician of architecture.He is War e P rofessor ofArchitecture at the Gra duateSchool of Architecture,Planning and Preservationat Columbia University,New York.

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J u n

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Marcel Duchamp used the phrase“Beware Wet Paint” to emphasisethe fact that it takes time to judgethe value of a work still in progress.

Alan Fletcher quotes him asa comment on his drawingin the book Th e Ar t of L ooki ngSideways , Phaidon, London 2001

Alan Fletcherdrawing for the cover of Domus,no. 734, January 1992

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Marcel Ducham p used th phrase“Beware Wet Paint” to e pha sise

etc ering for the cover of Domus,

4 anuar 1

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o m

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utensils and pots for livelihood. Whenthe East India Company decidedto build Fort William at Gobindapurvillage, the inhabitants of thatarea migrated to Sutanati and it isbelieved that under the instructionof the Company, John Holwell wasgiven orders to designate areasaccording to the nature of professionof the inhabitants; Kumartuli was onesuch area that was designated asa residential area for all the pottersand craftsmen. In those days thesekumors were invited by the old andnouveau rich Indian households —mostly the Zamindars who were alsothe rst few patrons and organisedDurga puja in their houses — tomake clay images of Durga andother idols. These houses hadthakurdalans/thakurbaris (separatebuilding used for annual festivals).The thakurdalans were high-ceilingedat-roofed buildings. Apart fromthe autumn festival, the artisanswere called round the year to sculptornamental elements such as thefairies, foliages, other patterns andinlay works on brackets and columnsof the houses as many modelledafter the Western inuence, thusgiving rise to a fusion of Indo-Bengalform of ornamental art for residentialbuilt forms. With time, as Durgotsavshifted out of the thakurdalans andbecame a community festival, the

common people became the newpatrons of Kumartuli. Also, every yearone can easily predict the currenttrends in vogue by looking at theidols; this time it was Mahishasurs’six-pack abs and chiselled faces thatwere in popular demand — straightout of a Greek mythology.From its humble beginning to post-Independence, Kumartuli has risento become the exclusive exporter ofidols of the goddess to the Bengalissettled in different parts of the world.Clearly, Kumartuli is more than justan urban space in Kolkata thatproduces clay idols for Durga Puja.It has been an active participantfor more than two centuries inmaintaining a continuity of culturaltradition and craftsmanship, andhas witnessed the trajectory ofthe changing socio-economicand political climate of the city— the transition from pre to Post-Independent India and from Calcuttato Kolkata.

Left: one can see the idols at theirdifferent evolutionary stages, some

standing with the straw frames andwaiting to be shaped with clay coatingsat a potter’s shed

Below: the diyas (clay lamps) are spray-painted in order to save time to meetcommercial deadlines

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Right: the exterior spaceof this traditional housein Kumartuli is beingused by potters duringthe busy months.Below: in the old days,the house number andthe name of the ownerwas usually engravedwith lead on stones

All photographs byKalyani Majumdar

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Guided only by personal affect, I havechosen Raghubir Singh’s (1942-1999) River of Colour: The India ofRaghubir Singh (Phaidon, 1998).A number of the concerns thatpresently preoccupy me, consumeme, possess me, ragingly convergenot only in Singh’s effulgent images,collected in this volume from acrossthe length and breadth of hiscareer, but also in his own words,its introduction,River of Colour: AnIndian View , now a seeming andtting epitaph.I feel uncomfortable in that myselection of River of Colour , shouldsuggest that it is or must beconsidered essential. It, along with anumber of other titles, such as GeetaKapur’sContemporary Indian Artists (Vikas Publishing, 1978), or the two-volume tomeMasters of India Painting,1100–1900 edited by Milo Beach,B N Goswamy, Eberhard Fischer(Paul Hoberton Publishing, 2011),the catalogue of Charles Correa’sVistara exhibition (Festival of India,1986), early issues of Marg magazine,Bhupen Khakhar’s self-producedcatalogue Truth is Beauty and Beautyis God (Gallery Chemould, 1972),to name a few, are part of a privateitinerary, that have and continue tocontribute to my own intellectual andemotional growth.Singh’s articulation of his ownindividual negotiation of being anIndian artist and drawing, borrowingfrom the West, nding modernismand attempting to develop a bi-focalvision, while xated on the geographyof the subcontinent, resonate stronglywith me and my current endeavours.By selecting this one book, I amalso gesturing towards Singh’sentire catalogue, and practice, hiserce commitment to colour, andthe specicity of its place within ahistorical Indian tradition and wayof being.Singh writes: “Before colonialism and before

photography, Indian artists did notsee in black and white, thoughthey made delicate drawings

lled in with colour. The mediumof drawing, as it is known in theWest, has never existed in India-neither aesthetically or technically:India has never had a Leonardo,Rembrandt or Goya. Even theexquisite drawings of the Moghulcourt are far different from thedrawings of the West in that theyare heightened with colour, or withtan washes known as nil kalam…. Unlike those in the West, Indianshave always intuitively seen andcontrolled colour. Our theories, fromearly in antiquity, became a owing

and rhythmic entity of India’s river oflife — its river of colour. According to

Below: cover of the book,River of Colour , 1998

INTERLOCKING THE MAGICAL,THE MARVELLOUS AND THE MYSTICAL Exploring Raghubir Singh’s articulation of his ownindividual negotiation of being an Indian artist anddrawing, borrowing from the West, nding modernismand attempting to develop a bi-focal vision

Shanay Jhaveri

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THE WORKINGS OF ARCHITECTURE

Three lesser-known but seminal literary titles, with varied approaches to architecture and urbanism,attempt to outline the overarching role of the ‘builder’

Martand Khosla

The broader architectural discoursewill no doubt cite the seminal worksof architects, critics, philosophers andwriters such as Corbusier, Frampton,Jenks, Koolhaas to Bachelard,Tanizaki, Correa, Jacobs and Calvin.However, I have chosen threelesser-known works which werepath-dening at critical moments

in my architectural education. Whilethe three books vary vastly in theirapproaches to architecture andurbanism, they hold the idea ofthe community central to the roleof architecture and through thislens assess the role of the builderpolitically, socially and materially.

‘Lubetkin and Tecton –Architecture and SocialCommitment’ (Arts Council ofGreat Britain, 1981) was broughtout to accompany the rst exhibitionof the complete works of BertholdLubetkin from his student days tillhis disillusionment and voluntaryretirement from architecturein the early 50s. The essayscontained within this book addresscore ideologies of the place ofarchitecture within society. Lubetkinestablishes the need for good designto be available to all, and most of allto the poor. As the architect of someof England’s most key public healthand housing projects during the preand post war years from the Finsburyhealth centre to the High pointand Halleld estates, Tecton underLubetkin is shown to the reader ata transformative moment in shiftingpolitical attitudes from welfare stateunder Labour government policies toconservative attitudes in the mid 50s.

This trajectory is mirrored in thecurrent Indian condition in severalways. The book very astutelyillustrates the determined socialand political stance of Lubetkin inhis dealings with the state and itsarchitectural institutions. Howeverappealing it may be to identifyLubetkin primarily with his sense of

social justice, the equally compellingvalue of this book is its emphasison the importance of intuition andbeauty within a larger context of artand architecture, particularly whenfunctionalism dened architectureat the time. Overall, this book isan excellent documentation ofa brilliant architect and thinker(perhaps unfairly overshadowed byhis contemporaries like Corbusier)and his incredible commitment to theprofession without compromising hiscore values.

Local code – The Constitution ofa city at 42° N Latitude (PrincetonArchitectural Press, 1993). Asmall fantastical book written byMichael Sorkin and published by thePrinceton Architectural Press,LocalCode sets out a constitution for animagined city at 42 Degrees NorthLatitude using a code of bye laws.In addition to its unique form, thegreatest innovation within the book’scontent is that Sorkin does notsegregate the physical infrastructureof a city or community from itssociological and emotional capital.While establishing at a very basiclevel the constitution of a city,it manages to touch upon everyaspect of the city and the lives ofits residents.

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For me, this book managed toachieve bringing together two criticalaspects in the development of acity: It offers a holistic approachto what a city and quality of lifeof its inhabitants must be whiledemocratising accessibility to thecore components of urban design.The benets of the code and the city

are intended to be accessed by everycitizen, thus creating awarenessand eventually an active role forindividuals within the evolution of thecity. The book’s utopian approach assuch becomes insignicant, becauseits content (not necessarily in its aimbut in its manner) is a framework forthe critical building blocks of newcommunities in our extremely rapidlyurbanising planet.

Before object after image,Koshirakura landscape 1996-2006 (AA Publications, 2007)is an extensive catalogue of tenyears of a workshop held in theremote village of Koshirakura inNiigata, Japan under the instructionof Architectural Association tutorShin Egashira. The book providesan insight to, and lesson in, anincredible commitment to self-reection of the individual architect.On its rst level, the book exploresand documents materiality and theindividuals’ tactile relationship withconstruction. It sets up paradigms totest macro theories of architecturewithin real communities and re-asserts the signicance of timewithin architectural practice. Theworkshop was an exceptionalarchitectural experience, primarilydue to the repetition of returning

Pages through my mind is a section initiated on the occasion of our secondanniversary where we invite architects, artists, critics and writers to brieydiscuss books that contribute to their intellectual journeys in special ways

to the same place every year forover a decade. This continuity ofplace allowed the author and theparticipants to be able to createobjects (from furniture to smallbuildings) for a community andthen return to re-assess them,alter them materially as well as intheir approach to construction and

design. This approach is completelydifferent from the current practicesof architecture where there aretwo conditions: before buildingdesign and post-completion.Egashira’s workshop questions theidea of completion and exploresthe role of the designer/builderwhen they are embedded withinthe community for whom theyare building. This book is vitalfor its self-critical assessment ofits failures and successes whileattempting to establish an approachto architecture, at both a microand macro scale, within a world ofmultiple truths and realities.

Opposite page: covers of the books Before object after image, Koshirakuralandscape 1996-2006 , Local code – TheConstitution of a city at 42° N Latitude,

and Lubetkin and Tecton – Architectureand Social Commitment .This page: right, pages from Beforeobject after image, Koshirakuralandscape 1996-2006 ; below,pages from Lubetkin and Tecton –

Architecture and Social Commitment

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CAPITAL BETWEEN THE COVERS

An exploration of the city of Delhi and its multi-faceted descriptions through literary works over theyears — the same city, interpreted and perceiveduniquely by all those besotted by its charm

Arpita Das

A few weeks ago, I was happilyengaged in paperwork for anew book for my publishing list,

a translation of Intizar Husain’sforgotten classic about the capital,Dilli tha jiska naam (Sang-e-Meel,2003). The book begins with Husainreminding his reader of how Mir haddescribed the city, that ‘it’s not anyother town’. As I read about Husainsaying the fatiha over Ghalib’s derelictgravesite, I realised that, having beena student of history, most of myreading on Delhi lay in the realm ofthe city’s medieval and early modernhistory. I knew more texts and factsabout Mehrauli, Shahjahanabad andprovincial and imperial Delhi thanthe making and planning of the cityfollowing Partition. My shelves werefull of older books by Gordon RisleyHearn, Percival Spear, StephenBlake, R E Frykenberg and NarayaniGupta and more recent ones by SunilKumar and Mahmood Farooqi. Butfor this piece, I decided to step outof my comfort zone and look insteadat more recent books which engagewith matters that have become partof our current understanding of thecity — oral narratives pitted againstmaster narratives, refugees andrehabilitation, evictions andbastis ,and the city’s invisible communities.

Debunking master narratives

Ravinder Kaur’sSince 1947: PartitionNarratives among Punjabi Migrants ofDelhi (OUP, 2007) is a rare book in

that it looks at how the Indian stateconducted itself vis-à-vis the Punjabirefugees in Delhi as perceived by the

refugees themselves. It is a focusedethnographic investigation whichlooks at the experiences of hithertomarginalised groups like widows anddalit families in terms of rehabilitationafter reaching Delhi. In many waysthe book makes clear for the rsttime how these groups and the élitenegotiated the tectonic shifts ofPartition differently — for instance,the former actually travelled acrossborders at the last minute by land,while the latter largely planned theirmove much in advance and many ofthem travelled by air. Prepare to leaveaside a number of well-establishedimages and myths as you read Kaur’sexcellent unravelling of the Partitionmaster narrative. The refugee inKaur’s work is not lacking in agency— the Punjabi refugee made Delhihis/her home engaged deeplywith its politics and economy, usingthe label of ‘refugee’ strategicallywhen the occasion demanded it.In a more recent work on Delhi byRanjana Sengupta, Delhi Metropolitan (Penguin Boo