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Rahul Mehrotra and Friend
credit: RMA Architects
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This conversation was first published in
Tekton: A Journal of Architecture, Urban Design & Planning;
Volume 1, Issue 1, September 2014; pp. 106 - 119
Published with kind permission from Tekton.
www.tekton.mes.ac.in
www.tekton.mes.ac.in
All images published with kind permission from Rahul Mehrotra and RMA.
www.RMAarchitects.comThe Agency of Architecture:
In Conversation with Rahul
Mehrotra
by
Mustansir Dalvi
It is inevitable that any interview with Rahul Mehrotra
is going to be multi-disciplinary in nature. In his person and in his practice
Mehrotra straddles several spheres with ease- architecture, planning, urbanism,
history, conservation, research, social concerns, socio-urban activism, writing
and pedagogy, all this with a critical eye on the present. He has been an
initiator of the architectural conservation movement in Mumbai that set an
example for the rest of India and (with Sharada Dwivedi) the primary narrator
of the history of Mumbai. In his work, Mehrotra explores beyond the obvious,
‘beyond binaries’, as he puts it, making each project a transformative one for
the users and the immediate physical context. He has been teaching full-time for
the past decade and his practice and research come together and are forwarded
by his pedagogical interests. This conversation covers many of his interests
and becomes a dialogue of ideas and possibilities.
DALVI
In your
architectural projects at RMA, you have frequently gone beyond the conventional
limits of site, even immediate context. You have tried to incorporate the
intangible, addressed socio-cultural immediacies, and sought new significance,
whether in projects like Hathigaon in Jaipur, the more globalized offices for
corporate houses or even single-family dwellings.
MEHROTRA
For me understanding the ‘context of the context’ is the
starting point. I think the physical excavations of a site are the more obvious
parameters to extricate – climate, geology, materials availability, local craft
and building practices etc. The more challenging, but perhaps far more
nourishing excavation is making the relationships between this obvious set of
excavations from the site with the more intangible, the deeper histories,
implicit cultures, the broader contemporary flows etc.
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Kala Ghoda Art District
Constructing new
significance for historic public spaces - the evolving Kala Ghoda art district.
credit: RMA Architects
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DALVI
Could you tell
describe the processes that allow you to, as you say 'localize the global and
globalize the local'? How do these impact design?
MEHROTRA
This establishing of the ‘context of the context’ allows
one to go beyond simplistic binaries and, sort of, invert categories in an
exciting way. For me the questions of significance, identity etc. are not found
categories – these have to be constructed and the only way one can do that as a
designer is to situate the site and its reading within the larger, ever
evolving context. In this same way the global and local as a binary is not productive
and the challenge then is how we invert them, because by localizing the global
you get these flows to be more invested in the local. Inversely, the local as a
caricature of itself is less useful in comparison to when the local resonates
globally or is at least networked globally. Thus for me the exercise of
writing, research and teaching in that sense are completely part of the
practice as they become the forum for this kind of excavation and research
which becomes the basis for practice.
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SPARC Public Toilet
Prototype
A prototype for
public toilets in Mumbai slums - project for SPARC and SDI.
credit: RMA Architects
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DALVI
Can you elaborate
on the idea of ‘inverting categories’?
MEHROTRA
At the urban level, an example of this inverting of
categories to blur binaries is the case of the Kala Ghoda Art district.
Situated within a historic district this zone was never an art district. If one
had approached the problem using the narrative of the culture that created this
environment – such as the canons that determine conservation practise in the UK
– we would have frozen this space in time – probably written up its significance
and been rather dogmatic about what we should allow there or not. However, when
the custodians of an environment are another culture – we have to find other
ways of engaging with this process – especially in the post colonial situation
of Mumbai.
By constructing a new significance of the Kala Ghoda are as an Art
District allowed the historic and contemporary to blur. The symbolic and
ideological significance of the space was drained in a sense to allow the
occupation of new use– ones that ultimate drove the process of conservation. In
this condition the responsibilities that rest on the architect are even greater
as they have to walk the thin line between constructing a new significance and
keeping the illusion of the historic built form intact!
Another example is the Slum Dwellers international (SDI)
where its very local experience through its international networks resonates
globally in terms of lessons, approaches and attitudes emanating out of
something that is such a specific condition - life in a Mumbai slum! One could
have fetishized and caricatured the local as it is seen as specific, but the
moment it is ‘globalized’, in this case through a network, its resonance
amplifies in productive ways.
DALVI
The millennium is
now almost a decade and a half old now. Do you see trends/tropes in Indian
architecture that will have a long-term impact on design, beyond quotidian
practice?
MEHROTRA
The kind of architecture we are seeing perpetuated by an
infusion of footloose capital is resulting a hardening of the disparities that
exist in our society. The built form manifestations of these inequities
actually create deadly polarities. Perhaps these inequities have always existed
but were less evident in the past. Sometimes the just the illusion of equity is
perhaps more productive in the long run in terms of how different parts of
society slip into each other’s domains in space. But when architecture begins
to play a role in dissuading and perhaps even preventing that blur, that
transgression– I think we are setting ourselves up for a highly polarized
society.
It is a condition where architecture becomes the
instrument to create forms of exclusiveness. In this condition, as architects
we have to be mindful of how we create expressions of form and spatial
arrangements that don’t get co-opted in a process that is exclusionary. If we
have to maintain our relevance to society as practitioners we have no choice
but to press architecture to the service of society in more rigorous ways. I
think questions of inequity and the role of architecture: place making and
dealing with orchestrations of the built environment more generally will have
to once again become the focus of both the teaching and practice of
architecture.
DALVI
Are you optimistic
about our architectural futures, or has 'impatient capital' overtaken us
completely?
MEHROTRA
The architecture of Impatient Capital is brittle – its
fault lines are already becoming evident – its obvious detachment from place
and its unsustainable consumption or resources. Surely as human being we are
more intelligent that to be seduced by this paradigm.
I think the greatest role architecture can play in the
coming decades in India is to resist strategically the remaking of our cities
and built environments in a singular image (like China has done). Instead I
think architecture will and should remind us in our daily lives about the
richness in India of the pluralistic society we live in.
DALVI
We seem to have
opted for this singularity ourselves, as in this current election.
Overwhelmingly, or so it seems, those aspiring impatiently for capital, or
those impatiently wishing to express
themselves through their capital have elected a government that will attempt to
re-jig Indian plurality into a single image.
MEHROTRA
Thank you for this– an incredibly important as well as
complicated question!
Whether we have opted for a singularity or not only time
will tell. In our system even a majority like this in terms of seats in
parliament does not indicate a popular vote of more that 35 or 40%. But yes, it
does indicate a singularity of power and its deployment. How this power will be
manifest in the built environment we can only speculate about for now. Clearly
the rhetoric of the elections has caught the imagination of the vast portion of
the country – where aspirations of stability and an increased role of the state
in delivering services is clearly what created such a majority for the new
government. I think this is more pointedly driven by middle class aspirations
for more stable and predictable services – all the way from education and
healthcare to mobility and employment.
Thus as a response to this, I believe in this case, with
a BJP majority, it will be the deployment of centralized forms of
infrastructure- which will support the creation of these crucial services that
people aspire for in their daily lives. Completion of ongoing highway projects,
perhaps railways and other modes of communications, hospitals, Universities
etc. It will be the Chinese model of centralized power structures and the
infrastructure that supports that kind of operation.
The effects of this will be two fold. Firstly, the
destruction of many existing urban fabrics and also the natural landscape. This
will perhaps make cities efficient in terms of mobility and basic
infrastructure like water and sanitation but will create many social
disruptions. The second will be through the new networks that will open up the
vast hinterlands of our many urban centres in the form of small towns growing
rapidly and new towns which will be fuelled by the rampant liberation of capita
deployment through real estate development in the these fragile locations. This
sort of development model can be transformational for a majority of the
country’s population but has some obvious disruptive tendencies – the
trade-offs and the contestations that involve these trade-offs is what will
characterize our politics in this coming decade.
DALVI
Do you think
architecture has a role of resistance in this current dispensation? How should
it function?
MEHROTRA
Naturally, the question for us is- what is the role of
architecture in resisting or facilitating this process? It is here that the
role of education becomes critical. Erasing the plurality of our landscape can
be resisted at many levels – local and national. So more than ever before we
are going to need the profession to simultaneous play many roles: of
practitioners, of well organized large scale practitioners, of activists, of community
organizers, of inter-disciplinary facilitators, etc. Pluralism can only be
reinforced through architecture by encouraging multiple modes of the practices
of architecture through a spectrum of scales across the nation. The several
hundreds of small town across in India, for example, don't have architects even
living and working there– if at all we have any influence currently on these
places, it is through professionals in our megacities – this will have to
change if architecture has to have any agency as an instrument to resist the
rampant remaking of our cities in one image.
DALVI
You have lived,
researched and practiced out of Mumbai for several decades now. You continue to
be Mumbai's foremost architectural and urban chronicler. In our complex and complicated
present, is it possible to effectively preserve its urban integrity, and to
function as a cultural custodian of our city?
MEHROTRA
It is. I think the challenge is to not worry about the
parts of the city but focus on how one facilitates connections between the
parts – makes the adjacencies of disparities and of plurality to cohesively
coexist. It is this in between spaces of connections that will lie the most
fecund possibilities and potential.
These spaces also become the site of the construction of
new cultures and this where the role of architecture and that of the
construction of new cultures, new significances in our society and finally
identity is formed.
The spaces that I am alluding to more particularly in
Mumbai are the post-industrial landscapes, the public spaces that we are
reclaiming and safeguarding (all the way from the green spaces in the city and
waterfronts to the spaces around our railway stations and public institutions)
and more importantly in the interstitial spaces that approximately half our
populations resides.
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Hathi gian- Elephants
and keepers
Image from
Hathigaon - Project for Elephants their Keepers. View showing a mahout arriving
home to his family after a day of work with the elephant.
credit: Rahul Mehrotra
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DALVI
Where is the place
and relevance of memory in the post-industrial city?
MEHROTRA
It is scattered and fractured, but it does exist. The
form and space takes in this post-industrial condition in Mumbai is at two
levels. One where the fracture becomes more acute – work and living gets
situated in multiple locations and this is not a neat category. Memory takes on
a more temporal form in this condition– not necessarily through architecture
only. That’s why I believe festivals have now an amplified role in the life and
identity formation process of the city of Mumbai. The second (and probably
polar opposite) is the creation of
exclusive gated communities in the city, sometimes in the form of extreme
imaginations that have been facilitated by the cluster development idea and at
others just as vertical gated communities in the heart of poorer
neighbourhoods. In both cases, it is about the occupation of interstitial space
within the city, not at the perimeter.
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Hathigaon- Home
Image from
Hathigaon - Project for Elephants their Keepers. The intimate relationship of
the elephant and mahout drives the scale and layout of each home. One of the
many considerations to balance was to accommodate the elephant's requirements,
while providing a safe environment for children.
credit: Rajesh Vora
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DALVI
Your current
research is focused on evolving a theoretical framework for designing in
conditions of informal growth. In a city like Mumbai, which seems to be
slipping into a 'post-planning' phase, what strategies emerge to deal with such
conditions?
MEHROTRA
I believe the State cannot absolve itself the
responsibility of planning. Planning in fact is intrinsically a state subject.
Having said that the question is how can state reengage and at what scales?
Naturally the obvious scale for the state’s involvement would need to be
infrastructure and facilitating the governance structure that make possible
urban form at local levels.
However the state’s imagination about what the city
should be limits any effective intervention at any scale. Essentially our
narratives about the city set up non-productive binaries – the rich and poor or
formal and informal city etc. These force us as designers to ally with one or
the other imagination. I think for design to be effective it must consciously
dissolve these binaries and I believe design can play a crucial role in doing
this.
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Ganesh Immersion in
Mumbai
Architecture is
not the ‘spectacle’ of the city nor does it even comprise the single dominant
image of the city. In contrast, festivals such as Ganesh Chathurthi shown here
have emerged as the spectacles of the Kinetic City.
credit: Rahul Mehrotra
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DALVI
Has your research
given fresh directions to address issues of inclusivity, and to redress the
polarization that is the consequence of the state outsourcing those processes
that we traditionally associated with welfare or socialist governance?
MEHROTRA
My current research looks at this condition of dissolving
or blurring these binaries and I describe the current condition of urbanism in
India as the Kinetic City. This Kinetic City framework has the potential to
allow a better understanding of the blurred lines of contemporary urbanism and
the changing roles of people and spaces in urban society.
In most Indian cities, the increasing concentrations of
global flows have exacerbated the inequalities and spatial divisions of social
classes. In this context, an architecture or urbanism of equality in an
increasingly inequitable economic condition requires looking deeper to find a
wide range of places to acknowledge and commemorate the cultures and
environments of those excluded from the spaces of global flows. These don’t
necessarily lie in the formal production of architecture, but often challenge
it.
Here the idea of a city is an elastic urban condition,
not a grand vision, but a grand adjustment. The Kinetic City obviously cannot
be seen as a design tool rather a demand that conceptions of urbanism create
and facilitate environments that are versatile and flexible, robust and
ambiguous enough to allow this kinetic quality of the city to flourish.
Architecture and design more generally play a massive role in how this happens.
In fact we should not use the word ‘inclusive city’ –
what we should ask is how through design we can make our cities less exclusive
or excluding of people and especially the poor. I am hoping to capture and
articulate these observations and approaches in a way that it might useful for
the next generation to intervene in these spaces more effectively.
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Inequalities in Mumbai
As can be seen in
Mumbai, architecture and urban design can heighten inequalities that exist in
society.
credit: Rahul Mehrotra
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DALVI
The state seems to
abhor elasticity, and, as you say, is comfortable within binaries. Will
architects therefore have to go beyond their current limitations as interveners
in the urban landscape, and establish new roles for themselves?
MEHROTRA
Absolutely!
Architects will have to find new modes of
engaging with influencing the built environment. Naturally this will depend on
if architects are motivated to change the polarization that might occur with
the state perpetuating the binaries. It will depend on how idealistic we want
to be. In a boom economy architects can also get very comfortable with lots of
easy projects and a general affluence which is seductive. So as a community we
have to construct the correct narratives that will keep us engaged, responsible
and connected to the realities that will evolve around us. I believe society
invests in us to safeguard and imagine the best spatial possibilities for a
society to exist and thrive in. So it is contingent, if we are concerned about
our relevance, to not forget this essential role we play in society.
DALVI
Could you give us a
brief history of your career as an academic? What are your main concerns in
architectural pedagogy today?
MEHROTRA
I entered academics rather accidentally through a chance
meeting with the Dean of the University of Michigan who offered me the
opportunity to come teach for a term. I loved it! Essentially could not believe
I had not done this before and I subsequently returned a couple of years later
to the University of Michigan and one thing led to the other and brought me to
my current position.
In retrospective my 11 years of teaching have been the
most satisfying moments in my career as an architect. In some ways I am glad I
went into the academy after a good 15 years of practice as this besides giving
me some experience to talk from also allowed me to reflect on a body of work.
And in fact this has been the single most valuable thing for me – that is
reflect on my practice as I teach. As a teacher you have to make your talk
walk.
But more critically, coming from India after 15 years of
practice also gave me a different perspective on pedagogy. Coming from a highly
pluralistic conditions where many cultures, ways of doing things and many times
exist simultaneously, made me think critically about the simultaneous validity
of this difference. The way this extended itself into my approach to teaching
was to think about different models of engagement and practice and how one
might actually build that into a curriculum. Of course this is a complicated
and an ongoing project and I do hope I can share this when it’s evolved a
little more.
DALVI
How do you approach
the teaching of architecture and urban design in India, as opposed to teaching
abroad, as in the Harvard Graduate School of Design?
MEHROTRA
In today’s world I think we see similar challenges
whether it’s in India or the USA. In fact in India, you see the same conditions
in extreme form and thus testing these Ideas in India would actually create
better or at least more extreme conditions. I believe theory comes from action on
the ground and it is in places like India, China, Latin America and Africa that
the action is today.
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credit: RMA Architects
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RAHUL MEHROTRA
Rahul Mehrotra is a
practising architect and educator. He works in Mumbai and teaches at the
Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, where he is Professor of Urban
Design and Planning, and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design
as well as a member of the steering committee of Harvard’s South Asia
Initiative.
His practice, RMA
Architects (www.RMAarchitects.com), founded in 1990, has executed a range of
projects across India. These diverse projects have engaged many issues,
multiple constituencies and varying scales, from interior design and
architecture to urban design, conservation and planning. As Trustee of the Urban
Design Research Institute (UDRI), and Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and
Research (PUKAR) both based in Mumbai, Mehrotra continues to be actively
involved as an activist in the civic and urban affairs of the city.
Mehrotra has written and
lectured extensively on architecture, conservation and urban planning. He has
written, co-authored and edited a vast repertoire of books on Mumbai, its urban
history, its historic buildings, public spaces and planning processes.
He is a member of the
Steering Committee of the Aga Khan Awards for Architecture and currently serves
on the governing boards of the London School of Economics Cities Programme and
the Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS).
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