First published in Domus India 46
December 2015
Reproduced with kind permission of the editor
Without the benefit of hindsight
In
conversation with Rahul Mehrotra, Ranjit Hoskote and Kaiwan Mehta
Mustansir
Dalvi
Looking back
to the time architectural practices first began to proliferate in India, one
sees that they always operated within an ecosystem of practice, academia and
association. We can trace this to the 1930’s, when the Indian Institute of
Architects (IIA) was set up, which in turn emerged from the alumni of the
Bombay School of Art. Teachers at the school were the most prolific
practitioners in the country, and students made the easy transition from
learning, to apprenticeship, to setting up their own practices. Even patrons,
largely non-state (in the penultimate decades before independence) aligned themselves
with the architects in a collegial association. The Journal of the Indian
Institute of Architects and their annual lectures became the mouthpieces of
collective praxis, as the many presidential speeches show. Everyone knew what
everyone else was doing, knowledge flowed centripetally.
In the years
after independence, these bonds became looser as the nation-state became the
chief patron. While private wealth and industry provided steady work for
architects all over the country, the IIA still continued to remain the platform
of discourse and dissemination- an internal professional rumination, largely
distanced from changing politics and culture in the country, especially from
the seventies onwards. While students of architecture did briefly take political
stances during the Emergency, practice remained unaffected.
By the end
of the eighties, with the rise of the patron as aspirant or speculator, and, a
few years later with the effects of liberalization made flesh, the erstwhile
associations started to crumble, the ecosystem became unstable, and in some
ways unsustainable. Architectural practices became myriad and diffuse, working
centrifugally, aligning into various smaller constellations. The influence of
the IIA waned, while the Council of Architecture, mandated to look after the
concerns of practice in the early seventies through an Act of Parliament, by
and large, came to focus on monitoring architectural education that had, by the
turn of the millennium, boomed with colleges springing up in all parts of the
country.
Education
too, dispersed in the wake of overarching Modernism’s eclipse and the
acceptance of pluralism fuelled both by the rise of critical theoretical
positions in architecture as well as a dilution of the rigor that functionalism
once imposed on its practitioners. Critical discussions on Indian architecture
have since been restricted to a few conferences and the odd polemic in
architecture magazines (which also proliferated since the eighties, but have
mainly been showpieces of architecture for the rich and famous). Books on Indian
architecture, when concentrating on the contemporary are in the form of
monographs, vanity publications or, when serious, about urban change. Vistara, the exhibition, in 1984 was
comprehensive, but an overview of Indian architecture. Three decades on, there
has been no serious review of the state of the architectural profession in
India.
That is what
the exhibition ‘State of Architecture’ (SOA) seeks to redress. Scheduled to
open at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai and other associated
venues the SOA exhibition will be open to the public for around three months
and will take a comprehensive look at our architectural present. The curators
of this challenging endeavor are Rahul
Mehrotra- architect, academic, author and researcher, professor at Harvard
and one of the foremost architectural practitioners (RMA Architects) in the
country; Ranjit Hoskote- cultural
theorist, art critic, curator and author and Kaiwan Mehta- the editor of these very pages, of Domus India, also
an author, academic and urban theorist. As the exhibition reaches its final
stages of preparation, the curators had a free-wheeling conversation with
Mustansir Dalvi about the exhibition, its objectives and the larger state of
architecture; its practice and production, in retrospect and in prognosis;
covering many issues from praxis to patronage, from theoretical positions to
political stances.
DALVI:
Why is this the right time to
take stock of the state of architecture in India today?
MEHROTRA:
For several
important reasons:
The first is
clearly to correct or compensate for the absolute silence in the discussion of
architecture in the last decade or two. For good reason, our discussions and our
focus have been on urban questions, or at least we have approached our
discussion about architecture through the lens of the city.
Further, the
architecture that has been celebrated in India since the liberalization of our economy
has been the ‘architecture of indulgence’- weekend homes, restaurants, resorts
and corporate offices; and, as an extension of this limited spectrum of what is
celebrated, the discussion is focused on material, craft, and texture in an
almost fetishistic manner. While this is productive in its own way – it removes
the perception of the usefulness of architecture away from the public. All such
programs that, while they are crucial crucibles for architectural innovation,
touch a very small fragment of our population.
Lastly, in
India, the State has more or less given up the responsibility of projecting an
‘idea of India’ through the built and physical environment as it had done in
the post- independence era when several state capitals, government and educational
campuses were built across the country. Today the major state-directed projects
are highways, flyovers, airports, telecommunications networks and electricity
grids which connect urban centers but don’t contribute to determining or
guiding their physical structure. The State is now obsessed with a statistical
architecture – GDP, etc. So the idea of this exhibition, through focusing on
public architecture is to bring this issue into focus and question the State’s
role as patron for architecture, or more broadly the role of the architect in
contemporary India society.
DALVI:
Do you project the exhibition as
a historical unfolding or a critical deconstruction of Indian architecture?
MEHROTRA:
The
exhibition is interestingly both a historic unfolding as well as critical
deconstruction - a productive hybrid, which we believe, results from multiple
curatorial hands.
MEHTA:
The
exhibition should be imagined as a diagram of the curatorial team’s own
experiences as practioners, critics and theorists - at one point it emphasizes
memory and history, but on the other it also makes tangible and hopefully
discernable the living chaos of the present. We are at the threshold of
classifying and clarifying the chaos that maybe accorded to the present state
of architectural manifestations and, rather than a rush to classification, it
is important to understand what the presence of chaos or multiplicity means.
Naturally this creates an ambiguity in terms of our roles and our
instrumentality as designers and so this is a condition that’s worth
interrogating productively. In that sense the exhibition shuffles between the
protocols of established histories and establishing arguments in light of
dramatic historical shifts and the need for newer criteria or lenses of
analysis.
The
architect as a professional figure will also be drawn out in the exhibition and
the events that surround the show, as against only talking about architecture
and buildings, per se. The architect as individual needs to be recovered, not
as a hero or a socialite, but as a technocrat, a social being, a political
entity, a professional contributor and a public intellectual.
DALVI:
Could you briefly take us through
the three parts of the exhibition you have envisaged- ‘the State of the
Profession’, ‘Practices and Processes’ and ‘Projections and Speculations’.
MEHROTRA:
The first
section, ‘The State of the Profession’ will present data on the profession all
the way from education, to the media’s representation of the profession to
issues that face practioners today.
The second
section is an historic overview sliced by three milestones: the first-
Independence, the second- the Emergency and the third- economic liberalization.
We believe these three moments had a fundamental bearings on the DNA of the
profession and a clear sway in its agenda, from one of national identity
construction to much more of a regional obsession starting in the 1990s.
The third
section is focused on the present generation of practioners – broadly under 50
years of age. In this section we have curated approximately 80 projects that we
think signal the contemporary issues as well as aspiration of society in India,
but more importantly also register the talent of an emerging generation of
practioners in India.
DALVI:
What is the more significant, in
your opinion- the product or the praxis?
MEHROTRA:
Clearly,
what is more critical is the praxis. The modes of engagement and the forms of
patronage that support these different models of architectural practice are
thus going to be privileged in this exhibition. The three parts we have
envisaged will take the viewer through both a historical perspective as well as
confront them with the present state of the profession, while in terms of the
pure data what the present generations of practioners are producing.
DALVI:
Do think that the architect today
has a more muted voice and lesser agency than in the last century? To extend
this line of thought- is architecture in the county driven more by the patron
than the architect?
MEHROTRA:
Architecture
is largely being driven by patrons and the voice of the architect, at least as
we see it, is muted – far too muted, sadly so. Since the liberalization of our
economy, architects are pandering to Capital in unprecedented ways – creating
what we could call the Architecture of Impatient Capital.
Capital on
account of its impatience creates architecture that is often whimsical, most
often vendor driven, for ease of speed of construction, with new roles emerging
for architects who now interface with technology but also exchange and access information
in a renewed relationship, sometimes productively and often in a subservient
way. This then, by extension, is a critical issue for practioners – the
ideological stance of most patrons, which is largely based on and invested in
Capitalisms.
DALVI:
Twenty-five years after the
processes of liberalization commenced in the country, the State has loosened
its stranglehold on the production of infrastructure, preferring to outsource
that which it once mandated to the entrepreneur/speculator, transforming, in
the process, the consumer from occupant to aspirant.
MEHROTRA:
Interestingly,
in today’s world no ideological stance can be singular or clear. Through the
last 25 years we have the simultaneous experience of transitioning out of socialism
and transitioning, simultaneously into capitalism (or some form of it). Thus
there have been other patrons, trusts, faith-based organizations, NGOs and
civil society more broadly that has also supported architecture and recognized
its role in the well-being of society. We hope we can celebrate this other half
of architectural production in India that is, equally or if not in greater
measure, altering and making the ‘new landscape’.
If the
developer is playing a role in the building of our architectural physical
fabric, then we will have to see where and how we can engage with that set of
players. Real-estate is as much about planning, policy, and culture as much as
it is economic and finance - this reality has to be elaborated, researched and
explained, while as a profession we have to negotiate these forces for the
larger good of our built and natural environments.
Architectural
education has a massive role to play in articulating and negotiating these
conditions. Building appropriate capacity and training a generation in the
various modes of engagement with practice, etc. But the media more generally
must also make this more central to its imagination and agenda. We don’t see
enough of this discussion in the mainstream media in these critical terms.
DALVI:
The last significant exhibition
on architecture in India took place in 1986. Vistara was part of the Festival
of India, and brought new paradigms and a new vocabulary into the architectural
mainstream.
MEHTA:
Yes, no
doubt Vistara is important - it is a landmark, it is iconic, and the more we
view it with historical distance it emerges as a turning point. This event has
been visited at least at 3 points in the pages of Domus India. The other
exhibition designed and curated for the Festivals of India, curated by Raj
Rewal in 1985 called ‘Architecture in India’ was also very important.
DALVI:
Do you think that Vistara has
cast a long shadow (particularly on the SOA) or was that exhibition a product
of its time?
MEHTA:
We actually
think that SOA will compliment what the previous exhibition did in a productive
way by actually narrowing the lens to the time since independence where these
exhibitions more or less stopped. In fact, Vistara was also trying deal with
the confusions of its time, or dealing with the predictions of confusion in the
immediate decades to come- it established concepts and narratives as a way of
talking about architecture for India. Having recently revisited some archival
photographs of the exhibition, it is also clear that Vistara was a
manifestation of anxieties and ideas that many architects were concerned with-
in some way a community of architects contributed to the exhibition, in spirit.
The exhibition was possibly a manifestation of many collectively discussed
issues.
MEHROTRA:
Vistara was
very much an exhibition of its time. One could say it was the last significant
event in the history of architectural discourse in India that attempted, in an
extremely successful way, to construct a meta-narrative about and Architecture
for India, a pan-Indian identity construction. The State of architecture (SOA)
is about Architecture in India not for India as an instrument of national
identity construction. SOA, we believe will signal this shift and thus it
consciously takes the moment of nation statehood as a starting point but unfolds its narrative to show
how these deconstructs over the last few decades.
Of
significance is also the fact that Vistara was a state-sponsored show as part
of the Government of India’s exhibition for the Festivals of India held between
1983 and 1986.This was a nation attempting to reclaim its glory and traditions
after the devastation of its image through the period of the Emergency. These
exhibitions intended to show case the deep traditions of India to the world
outside and presented a narrative of India’s rich architectural traditions. SOA
on the other hand is clearly about internal introspection and reflection. It is
a critical stocktaking of the role of the architect and architecture in India
from, in a sense, within the
profession. We hope it will be the first of a series of events over the next
few years to interrogate the State of Architecture and the profession in India.
DALVI:
What is the state of architecture
in India today? Does the exhibition offer us tools by which we can appreciate
or assess contemporary Indian architecture?
MEHTA:
The precise
problem is that architecture is floating in murky waters, that is indeed its
'state'- fluid and ambiguous!
From a point
in the early twentieth century when architects fought to stand apart from
engineers, and projected themselves as designers and thinkers, participating in
the cultural landscape of society, today architecture has slipped into modes of
luxury or vanity commodity - pretty houses and rich interiors! Today architects
are introduced as lifestyle-producers - handmaidens to a demand for style and
fancy living! This condition was the urge behind setting up tents whenever and
wherever possible to discuss architecture. Lack of valuable and critical
discussions on architecture and the simultaneous pressure on urban development
resulted in discussing architecture as an aspect of urban studies or
regional/rural studies (often as the counter-story) to perhaps symbolically embrace
the social sciences and their humanizing effects.
But then,
what does it mean to bring architecture back into focus - and how would we
study this object-space which it is, as well as occupies? In framing
programming at Arbour: Research Initiatives in Architecture or the editorial
intentions within Domus India, one struggled on experiments to develop the
tools and system of understanding, analyzing, and discussing architecture, and
whenever necessary, to understand architecture in India!
DALVI:
Do these struggles imply that we
may be chronologically too close to making useful readings?
MEHTA:
It is now
important that we stand within today and talk about today!
We have to discuss
our times as our experiences of political realities in everyday life - and here
we draw in architecture, as one of the primary modes in which everyday life is
lived and experienced. The production and consumption of architecture, as
function or symbol, it is an everyday lived reality. The task is then to
produce tools that will understand architecture as a material reality as much
as it is a cultural topography. So in fact to ask questions of 'today' while we
occupy 'today' - may indeed be the important position to adopt - to asses, and
make useful readings - and make architecture realize what it is, what it has
come to be, what it could potentially be, what it has missed or lost, and where
can it (maybe) recover!
MEHROTRA:
Here is a
counter question to your question – how do we even decide when is a good time?
We don’t
believe any time is right but different distances from the present give you
different readings. This is also why we have consciously constructed a
curatorial team that brings different pulses to our readings – one of an art
critic, architectural critic as well as a practioner. We bring different lenses
to view the trajectory of architecture in India and our perspectives will offer
different readings of time and distance. Each of these lenses is inherently
better equipped for different distances!
Besides this
multiplicity of curatorial lenses, we believe the structure of the exhibition
move from an objectivity of presentation in the first section to a
subjectivities reading or curatorial reading in the third section. The second
section is a bridge from where we can look at the past with some distance.
As a
generation passes it becomes in some ways easier to read the immediate past,
while in other ways harder because even for the immediate past we do not have
an adequate culture to archive, capture and reflect on the production of
architecture. So the chronological proximity can be used in both ways- to
construct robust links and a sense of the continuity with the past but also to
interrogate it with the ambiguity that the proximity to reality allows us.
The
exhibition will hopefully invite a discussion through provocative questions
that will try to clarify the ambiguity that naturally fogs our reading of the
contemporary and immediate past. The many events we are organizing around the
exhibition are as critical as the exhibition itself – in fact they are intended
to deconstruct the artifact of the exhibition so that more nuanced readings
emerge for the profession as a whole!
DALVI:
What is the position of
contemporary Indian architecture in the larger discourse of nation building? In
the first few decades after independence there seemed to be a synchronicity
between the aims of the architects and that of the fledgling nation state. Even
private patronage seemed to follow a similar mindset. Now in the liberalized
present, there seems to be a greater priority on the rights of individuals
rather than on collective responsibility especially in the urban environment.
How do you assess this transition?
HOSKOTE:
This
transition in the nature and role of architecture in India clearly reflects the
arc of political change in the country, from the primacy of the State as engine
of social, economic and cultural transformation in the early decades after
Independence to the gradual withdrawal of the State from this dirigiste
position and the emergence of private capital as the source and reference point
for the formation of social values, the direction of economic policy and the
texture of cultural production.
In the earlier
phase, architecture was clearly aligned with the utopian, nation-building
ambitions of the postcolonial State, whether the patron was the State or
private enterprise. In the current phase, architecture is equally clearly
aligned with the aspirations of an emergent class of financiers, speculators
and investors, with the State often following this cue in any projects it
commissions.
The premise
of the earlier phase was the Leviathan-like delegation of decision-making by
individuals and communities to the postcolonial State, which would guarantee
the greater good. The premise of the current phase is the contrarian equation
of individual liberty with private property, and thus with the individual quest
for personal happiness, with the greater good falling by the wayside.
MEHROTRA:
There is a
difference in the geographies of the location of the new patronage that has
emerged. There is an explosive growth of building in the southern states of
India. The traditions and cultures of building in these new geographies is very
different from the contemporary building culture that had formed in what has
been referred to as ' the spine of architectural awareness' stretching from Chandigarh
to Goa via Delhi, Ahmedabad and Mumbai, as well as Pondicherry which had, for
other reasons, a robust architecture culture developing there even before
independence. Interestingly this new form of patronage comes in a post-socialist
era where the individual is at the center of the decision-making through an
empowerment that is the result of capital accumulation. So this is a new form of
patronage but also coming out of specific cultural and physical geographies.
DALVI:
What role does the globalized/liberalized
economy play in shaping the localized/socialized urban sphere?
HOSKOTE:
The
globalized economy operates through a complex circulation of global goods,
services and imaginaries that are threaded through a local set of conditions:
the relationship between these is parsed through a variety of modes including
translation, mistranslation, reflection and refraction. The urban sphere that
is thus produced is characterized by inchoate and often volatile aspirations, a
pursuit of images that seem always out of reach, and also a culture that
emphasizes the primacy of privatism rather than solidarities of any kind.
MEHTA:
The last two
or three decades have been important times and a period that marks a turning
point in not only just the history and politics of India, but the world as
well. The fall of the Berlin Wall, demolition of Babri Masjid in India, 9/11 in
New York, the liberalization of economic policies in India and the shift from
manufacturing to service industry. These decades have also been characterized
by shifts in our cultural imaginations, aesthetic decisions, and political
choices as is evident in the material world we produce and occupy.
There some
wonderful trends within the profession that are becoming evident, a new set of
architectural practices have emerged,
and have established a critical body of work that can be evaluated for
their different ideas and theoretical perspectives. At the same time, today
change occurs at an escalated pace- and to understand the present and future
trajectories for the profession we need to build conversations that can facilitate
this process. A nuanced, critical,
robust and rigorous discourse within the academy of architecture education and
more importantly the profession - we sincerely hope that SOA will be a
contribution to this broader aspiration.
DALVI:
Can you take a brief overview on
the quality of architectural writing today?
MEHTA:
Writing on
architecture is in an abysmal state! But this statement does not take us far.
Lack of writing indicates our lack of critical interest in architecture as a
professional community, as a culture (national or otherwise).
To theorize
a subject for a field is to indeed appreciate its value and existence beyond
its mere need-to-be; and the discussions on architecture have happily slipped
into rhetorics of regionalism or climate, hate-glass or love-brick and stone,
outdated notes on power and architecture - in fact, they seem to be living in a
time-warp! The world changed drastically and rapidly in the 1990s - and we
could not as an architectural profession keep pace with it - unable to
understand what had hit us. Rather than developing newer languages and idioms,
and tools to asses and read the new architectural turns, we often resorted to a
denial of the shape of things, to a rhetoric of rejection, and misplaced
nostalgia.
Politics has
become ever more complex, and architects from once being agents of social and
aesthetic revolutions, now maintain a technocratic attitude, where you fine-tune
your skills, but avoid addressing the very environment (social and cultural) that
you ironically depend on for your daily bread and butter! Until we address the
conditions of our reality, writing will not be effective or incisive - because
the drive to write, argue, shape/unshape will be missing! To write is to create
a world that furthers the meaning and role of architecture in a society. It
should not be imagined as a skill-task of decoding some hidden meaning in an
existing building; it is not supplementary to architecture, or to deliver
formulas for a 'better' design - but to enlarge the existing space and terrain
of architecture productively.
DALVI:
Are there contemporary texts that
can potentially become canonical in the future? Does the SOA exhibition reflect
upon architecture as a discourse?
MEHTA:
I am not
sure if there are particular iconic essays - if we decide to identify some, I
am sure we will find them - but I would prefer to say there is a good enough
cluster of texts. One has also in the Domus experience got more interested in
exploring the forms of interviews and discussions, parallel to the essay format
- as that leads to a nurturing of many voices and many experiences - the
practitioner and the theorist both are heard.
The SOA
exhibition is an attempt to generate/develop the terrain and landscape to
engage with architecture - to produce accounts in a way, even at the cost of
repeating descriptions, to address what exists, to generate the network of dots,
a set of thought-images which will prepare us for a thesis. The final thesis is
the excuse to develop this density of thoughts - finely shaped clusters that
will help us understand fragments that shape a history.
MEHROTRA:
Yes, of
course, some of the contemporary texts on architecture have the potential to
become canonical text. These texts capture the conflicts and conditions of an
era today of amazing transformation and reflections of the emergent condition
will become the framework for any theoretical discourse in the future. Theory,
after all, emanates from insightful reflection of the conditions on the ground.
I think the
quality of writing that we see today is extremely good but there is just not
enough of it! There is such a dearth of writing that the few pieces being
produced today will be precious records of the contemporary condition. Contemporary
writing also represent the conflicts and struggles of the first couple of
generations of architects in post-colonial India – which itself holds the
potential to be a representation of a wider global churning. SOA will capture
the state of writing and the broader discourse on architecture. In fact this is
one of the core agendas of the show and its related events.
DALVI:
Is the architecture of India
today reconciled with its many pasts? As an ideological position, the early
Modernists could willfully reject history in the course of charting
architectural futures. However, considering that a lot of buildings are part of
brownfield developments, often in the heart of some of our ageing cities, what is
the possible positions contemporary architecture should take about precedents
and contexts?
MEHTA:
Both
positions are a problem - excessive sensitivity to a past or a denial/rejection
of it - and that somewhere is our situation today, to be oscillating between
two positions. Some of the interpretations of the past have also been
problematic - where often past is reduced to a monolithic imagination or simply
a set of images, to be cut-and-pasted. To the credit of many architects - some
in the generation that established studios in the 1970s as well as the younger
ones establishing studios between 1980-1990s there has been an expression of
this dilemma - where do I address the present time and its own material
reality, while also caring about a history and heritage we grow up to respect;
at times this has been a dilemma and it has been evident in the architecture,
at times it is purposeful expression of that struggle.
The need is
to struggle in these times and see what languages of architecture will work for
us today, and suit or challenge our political and functional existences. Some
of the younger practices are indeed doing that - they may not be able to
express that all points in time - but they are intuitively struggling with the
present.
There is
also the shameless activity of building - which is more the real-estate end of
architecture - where you binge on building and construction, where architecture
is used to suit greed and some promoted idea of aspirations. Architecture in this
realm can only be countered when some well-meaning and ethically-sound
architects will enter this sphere of real-estate architecture, and try to push
the boundaries from within these specific practices. On the other hand, one
will have to work on the idea of public awareness regarding architecture. There
is no discussion on architecture in non-professional forums, or the popular
media; this is a big lacunae! Architecture is the most public of all arts - it
sits in your face - it has a strong public presence in everyday living space -
but there is no discussion on architecture in the public sphere.
DALVI:
Is Indian architecture today
political? Has it ever been political? Does this exhibition have an ideological
standpoint?
HOSKOTE:
Indian
architecture certainly articulated a politics of rupture and compelling forward
movement in its heroic Modernist phase, when it presented itself as a force
that would clear away the residues of tradition and the compromises of the
colonial period, and would, both literally and figuratively, build a future for
the nation-state that had no precedent in what went before. Even when they used
motifs and devices, or redeployed typologies from the legacies of previous
times, Habib Rahman, Achyut Kanvinde B V Doshi, Charles Correa and Raj Rewal
embodied this spirit in their early work. And when some members of this
generation circled back to the retrieval of the embedded wisdom of regional
building, architectural and visionary lineages, as they did during the 1980s,
that was a political gesture as well– a gesture articulating a politics of
critical retrieval.
The State of
Architecture exhibition does not proceed from an emphatic ideological premise,
but it does bear witness to some of these shifts and transitions. It also, in
its choice of contemporary practices and projects, prefers to focus on work
that is socially oriented, is informed by the relationship between architecture
and other discourses such as conservation and ecological awareness, and in other
ways explores manifestations beyond what is possible in a developer-driven
domain.
MEHTA:
This is
indeed a tricky subject- on the face of it there clearly is a lack of political
engagement that contemporary architecture has today. Having said that, in many
architectural projects today, one can feel the struggle some architects are
going through with this divorce of form, design, and politics.
What we need
is not to mourn this divorce but to try and figure out what is the current
engagement that form and design have with everyday life- politics and culture.
There are many formulaic references established about people and public life,
living and working, and often architects are simply reusing them again and
again. These are no more than rhetoric. However in some cases there are new
adjustments being made, to deal with the political and cultural negotiations of
life in India now. It is probably more writing, more studies that will make
this new forms of anxiety clear and understandable.
DALVI:
Is it still relevant to believe,
as the Modernists once did, that good architecture will inevitably lead to good
society?
HOSKOTE:
All the
Modernists who believed that good architecture– or noble art– would inevitably
lead to a good society have come to grief.
Mondrian
believed that his rectilinear, flattened paintings offered cues to the
spiritual refinement of life; mass culture has reduced them to shower curtains.
Le Corbusier believed that his ideal designs would enable the citizens of
tomorrow to lead lives of significance; his work was flawed from the beginning
by his desire to subjugate all individual will and desire to the absolutism of
the plan. There is no necessary connection between good architecture and a good
society– at best, the former can be an image of the latter; it can gesture
towards the latter. But the best architecture can be distorted by elites bent
on exacerbating the asymmetries in society.
'The State of Architecture: Practices & Processes in India' exhibition
opens at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai from 6 January - 20 March 2016.
The exhibition will present the nature of contemporary architecture in India within a larger historical overview since Independence. It will not only map emerging practices but also discuss the aspirations they represent and stimulate a conversation on architecture among the architectural fraternity, patrons and public at large. Embodying a spectrum of positions that characterize architectural production in India, the content is intended to be provocative and make explicit the multiple, and often simultaneously valid, streams of architectural thought and engagement that truly represents the pluralism of India.
