A perpetual state of trauma

People Energy

In your society or high-class society or classless society,

of Industrial Civilisation, comprised of individuals,

as if no one is born of biological parents,

but everyone is a product of high-class-culture

of science–technology–trade–consumption,

laced with aesthetics of hedonism by your overbearing senses;

touch, hearing, taste, vision, smell, sex and terror (fear).

For you the rest of humanity just belongs to the Underclass Incognito.

And your high-class-culture (or dharma!) turns everything –

Earth, Waters, Air, Life at large… including Other Humans – into a commodity

for the consumption for your high-class-society,

and for the display extravagance of your high-class-culture.

Your high-class-culture developed (but never evolved?)

out of five thousand years of civilised society,

knows no option

either for the revival of Life,

which, of course, is not in your hands,

or you allow anyone or anything but a natural death,

but is left to live a life of an invalid,

by benevolently pumping drugs and chemicals

to leave a body —

from the Earth and Waters to Plants, Animals and Other Humans —

in a perpetual state of trauma.

Note: Sadly, fragmented split personality that I am, I address this to myself though a negligible fragment that I am of Industrial Civilisation. Originally published in blog ARCHETYPES INDIA

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© Remigius de Souza. all rights reserved.
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TERRA INCOGNITA INDICA

People Energy

Soil Unknown-Undiscovered Indian

INDICA: I deliberately use the word ‘Indica’, a biological term, instead of ‘India’. It is precisely to indicate a ‘region’ and not political boundaries that associate with the State. In the historical time political boundaries have been subjected to change, anywhere.

 

TERRA: literally ‘soil’, which I refer to ‘Land and Waters and People, and Biotic and Abiotic Nature’. The biotic and abiotic nature is intrinsic in the life, therefore also in their culture, of the people – the daughters and the sons of the soil.

 

INCOGNITA: the literal meaning is ‘unknown – unexplored – unrecognized’ alike the medieval (European) map showed the known world encircled by ‘Terra incognita’ where monsters roam.

Indeed even in the twenty-first century, the ‘soil’, in my way of comprehensive meaning, still remains ‘unknown (to the world) – unexplored (by the pundits) – unrecognized (by the so-called Authority or the State)’, whom I fondly call my ‘anonymous’ kin, from whatever glimpse I have had through my six decade journey in the Third World India and the Fourth World India.

 

Social and Cultural Sub-groups of India

INDIA has almost a continental size. Broadly there are about 50 – 60 cultural and social sub-groups (as illustrated). No. We are not referring to the castes or cults or the creeds. We are not taking of, in American lingo, of the Class or 'the classless society'. We are speaking of the ethnic and adivasi – tribal – communities (that is the cohesive collectives), not the civilized advance societies (that is the fragmented collectives in the modern times).

She indeed is a thousand-petal lotus, our national flower. There have been as many topographic and climatic regions – bio-regions – that have great hand in shaping the culture, expressed in food, clothing, shelter (or architecture!), visual and performing arts and crafts, languages an folklore… and thus as a result a superior quality of sustainable living. I call it a model for the modern world, a world heritage, now facing a wipe-out.

 

Unfortunately in the global race to make India an industrial power by the petty imitators – the ruling minority – comes at cross-purposes with the survival of the agrarian society and the diverse bio-regions. The petty imitators are out to homogenize them with monoculture of industrial civilization. The industrialization here, so far, only helps the power mongers and profiteers through their invisible tentacles.

Indeed one lifetime is not enough to see and to assimilate and to understand this phenomenon for any person or even a group of persons. Any documentation, even a fraction, would reveal great treasures of wisdom and knowledge and skills, across these diverse bio-regions, accumulated over generations of anonymous People of India. 

India is such a vast country with diversity that it is impossible to manage even the welfare of the people (for the lack of understanding) for any centralized power, even with an iron hand. This is true of any region in the world which has been proved time to time. Decentralization of powers, down to earth in practice, (power in the hands of peasants) is the only answer to this malady; M. K. Gandhi came very close to it in his concept of Panchayati Raj – power to village self-rule.

 

(10-05-2009)

Note: Map- Social and cultural sub-groups of India, after the cover page of 'Seminar', Issue 226, 1978, New Delhi.

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© Remigius de Souza., all rights reserved.
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Problem of "scale-up" in architecture education

DURING MY STINT WITH TEACHING ARCHITECTURE, I wouldn’t loose an opportunity to bring up the issue of “scale-up”, a major lacuna here in architecture education. It was no different forty years ago when I was a student. Obviously the problem of scale up continues in architecture and planning.

Once I gave a curtsy call to A’s town planning class. They were discussing on the drawings of a large housing project in Mumbai. It was for a few thousand residential units of various standard sizes, in high-rise buildings with roads, open spaces, amenities, FSI (Floor Space Index) and so on.

I thank them all for sharing, and asked, ‘Whatever may be the numbers and statistics, how do you deal with the toddlers, children, youth, working and non-working women, the aged and the unemployed?’ 
Of course, none, including A, had thought about it. I asked A, ‘What kind of poison are you giving the students?’ They were treating people as if objects.

I once asked my final years students in design studio, ‘You are working at 1:100 scales. Tell me, how much the thickness of one of the wall lines will amount to actually on site?’ Predictably they were harassed at the bizarre question and fumbled at calculations: 0.5 mm lead line 100 times.

WE GO BY CONVENTIONS, perhaps, without stopping once to question, even though the social, economic, political, environmental conditions keep changing, now at a faster pace. Slowly, imperceptibly, a bureaucratic attitude of "status quo" and to treat "people as objects" creeps in the students.

Students live, go in and around, and work at buildings, like all others. Do they notice how the lines on the drawings get translated at the work site? Yes, of course. There must be workshop facilities at some of the colleges. Some students document the existing buildings in drawings for the NASA (National Association of Students of Architecture) Conventions.

They draw and see pictures on flat paper, or on the screen: cinema/TV/computer, which are either stills or moving in frames by selection. They make paper/wood/plastic models at a sale to fit standard size sheets. A project may be worth a few lakhs or crores of rupees.


THE QUESTION IS, whether the project is scaled-up on their mental screen to its real size on the ground? What and how many dimensions of architecture would they notice, or assimilate, or explore during the learning period, and thereafter?

A biotechnologist illustrates the problem of “scale-up” giving examples of a lion and a flea:

‘by comparison with its length, if a flea were the size of lion, it would be able to jump a mile. However, weight increases more rapidly with increasing size than strength, so that the scale-up flea would probably be unable to move. …It should be noted that such design is appropriate to its scale, and flea-sized lion is as impractical as lion-sized flea’ (‘Principles of Biotechnology’ Ed. Alan Wiseman, Urre University Press, 1983, p 96).

This classic problem of scale-up is faced when laboratory operations are to be carried out at industrial plant to process several hundred tons of material. This may be evident when the Regional Plans look like blown-up Land Use City Plans. It may also be evident in other areas such as, government policies, projects and laws, if examined without bias.

ONCE I GAVE A QUIZ to my students in final year.
By now they were familiar with Secretariat building at Chandigarh by Corbu. I told them to go to seashore at any of the bays in Mumbai. They should sketch the bay with two land ends and place the building floating on the sea at any distance they chose. I also gave them an option to place the building against the backdrop of any chosen mountain near Mumbai. Anyone could predict the result!

On the drawing board, straight lines follow the Tee and Triangles. Now erotic curves appear in fashion, perhaps without a thought to how sight – sound – light – air work.
Whispering galleries! 
Under the Millennium Dome everything is fitted in straight lines. 
A square peg in a round hole! 
Now computers draw the lines at a command.

Now there is CAD-CAM: a fine tool for multimillion rupee projects or for mass production of thousands of prototype units/buildings for the mass of people of the mass society, like china made at ceramic factory. 
This, of course, facilitates the centralization of power and monopoly and grandiose. Otherwise about 30000 architects in the country of a billion people would have enough work anyone for more than one lifetime. 
What happens to the growth and economics of people and buildings is another matter.



IN THE PROCESS OF DESIGNING, production, and also the maintenance, of a building, how does one read a fine print produced on a drawing board or by CAD-CAM? 
We are reminded, without malice, few classic examples. 

1. Sydney Opera building languished for some time during its construction; not knowing how to make it on the site, leave aside the city coffers went dry.
2. Engineering Building (by Sterling and Govan) at Leicester University, suffered freezing internal temperature in the winter of 1960, due to the glass curtain walling failure (Bill Holdsworth, Antony Sealey, ‘Healthy Buildings’, Longman, 1993). 
3. The Pruit-Igeo flats in St. Louis, Missouri, which had won award from the American Institute of Architects only seventeen years before, were blown up in 1972 at the unanimous request of the residents, because they had proved impossible for daily living (Graham Green, ‘Philosophy of the Arts’, Routledge, 1997). 

We learn from mistakes. (Not being a celebrity I don’t quote my failures. However, one could guess they are embedded in here: the reason to write this paper.)

IS THERE A TOOL to blow a whistle time to time during the design process? 
Yes, there is a professor. 
Perhaps there may be such a software package for a learner. 
Or, a checklist! 
We, perhaps, learn from mistakes (if they are made public) rather than instructions, if it is a part of the discipline. 
How does one foresee a room or a city that gets cluttered, crowded and starts over spilling with people, goods, furniture, and garbage, in a few years time, or be dead?


EXPERIENCING ARCHITECTURE AND MEASURING ITS MULTIPLE DIMENSIONS at first hand can only be realized by ‘field-work’ at a real event. For this, one has to keep aside one’s judgement, prejudices, dogmas, status, and likes–dislikes; indeed they have no place in the public realm. More the dimensions more elegant and simple architecture is, like Kabir’s “Sakhi” – a verse form.

Starting to learn architecture at that age, however, has its own problem/s to negotiate. The curve of learning ability, which is upward from the birth as the brain is growing, sags substantially after the age of 17/18 years, and at the old age it either deteriorate or even picks up. Developing perception by “anushasan” – rigorous practice, however, could compensate the slow rate of learning, as if “Life” matters.

IT (Info Technology) and multimedia may pump up or dump as mush information as period of time allows. But validity of any information (including this paper) must be scrutinised at ground level. Besides there is need to ruminate the swallowed information. 
However looking at the present the trends, there is greater need to balance the quantity and quality, with major emphasis on quality, of the output and the reward – both in scholastic and profession areas, by popular demand.

THE ISSUE OF “SCALE-UP” BEGINS from the very inception of a thought /idea / concept that appears in our boundless inner space. Where does it come from? Does it come from within – mind – brain – conscience, or from outside – say, from some glossy magazine or an authority? But any thought / idea/ concept must be examined without believing, before it takes to a demonic scale, like Nazism, either directly or by proxy, and swallows or eats us away.
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NOTE:
I restore this article that was hacked sometime ago from other blog: ARCHETYPES INDIA.


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Remigius de Souza
Mumbai (10-05-2007)


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South Asian Jazz (Review)

South Asian Jazz in Architecture (Event Review)

Event: disContinuous Threads: Memory, Freedom and Architecture in Contemporary India, Conference at National Centre for Performing Arts [NCPA], Mumbai, December 10–12, 1997

Traditional Warli House, Thane Dist. Maharashtra, India

Warli hut built by self-help and community participation; it is truly green, organic and sustainable; its technology standards are unsurpassed any civilized society until now.

What is Architecture

Architecture is Mother of All Arts(!)

Proverb among Indie-architects

PEOPLE ENERGY

Key Words: Indian Westernized Architecture, Contemporary Western Architecture, Biodiversity, Culture

‘THREADS’ certainly bring to our mind Kabir the weaver and Namdeo the tailor, and others of Indian high culture. This is in contrast to the present Western and contemporary westernized Indian notion of wealth, consumption and market economy.

EMPERORS PASSED AWAY, but Kabir, Tukaram likewise other saint-poets continue to rule for centuries. However, history books made by the British-made Indian schooling, are crammed with wars, murders and murderers. Even an unassuming village traditional doctor is cautious to give away his formulas of traditional herbal medicines to guard, of course, against misuse, namely by moneymaking, desecration, exploitation… This is in contrast to western culture of ‘Intellectual Property Rights’. A question of morality!

THE ARCHITECTS who gathered for the conference came from India, Pakistan, Bangla Desh and Sri Lanka. They belong to the First World of minority. We are well aware the architecture, modern architecture, in the subcontinent is an extension, a tail end of western architecture.

IN MODERN ARCHITECTURE there is neither North nor South, nor West or East. It is a one-dimensional world where the world is flat for the architects who struggle to create two-dimensional images of three-dimensional space, unaware that they are being manipulated by the Super-strings of Corporate Powers.

The professional ladies and gentlemen here, gathering and splitting threads at the conference, were speaking alien language, and referring to Kant, Kahn… aesthetics, technology… cults and post-modern-cults, and reflecting western concepts mostly at a gross level of existence.

Some tried typically to capitalize on poverty in fashion. Language matters when one speak of regions. Language and culture are so intimately entwined; they are “almost one and the same thing” (Pagel) [1]. Yet when we dig the buried past (Harappa etc.) we try to read cultures of the bygone times from its artefacts, architecture irrespective of its being good or bad.

IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT there are about fifty - sixty social and cultural sub-groups, a great warp and weft, and numerous mother tongues, many more times than the officially recognised and state-supported languages. As is said, the shades of languages change at ten miles.

As the ecologists have long known, that from the poles to the Equator the number of different species of flora and fauna increase… so also in the size of territory the species range over… both these ecological rules also apply to languages [2]. This is perfectly in harmony with rich biodiversity of land and waters of the sub-continent.

Now the folk languages, rich with traditional wisdom and knowledge accumulated over many lifetimes are on the way of extinction together with arts, crafts and indigenous architecture following the extinction of the plants, birds, animals, insects…following the extinction of indigenous food grains, replaced by hybrid culture.

“Languages began dying in droves from late 15th century onwards as the Europeans colonized the world. Some languages died because of mass killings of ethnic communities. Each time a language dies we lose something we do not even understand (Woodfield)…we loose a way of perceiving the world…a way of learning (Pagel) [3].

Only trade is global; culture and cultural expressions cannot be global. Even the currencies cannot be global. Then how could architecture be global? Architects may have to deliberately and constantly watch out how every point and line put on the paper or computer screen affects land and waters, and the people.

High on agenda of Western high culture of ‘development’ is to disintegrate and dis-empower the people and turn them into zombies – programmed robots of mono-culture of mass-type society for the greed of power and profit.

IS CREATIVITY A PREROGATIVE OF A FEW – Corbu, Kahn, Gehri…? Aesthetics for that matter is a clouded issue due to social-cultural-economic issues, geography, urbanism, high culture, mass culture, and Environment-Ecology-Energy crisis. Centuries ago Kabir – Tukaram – Chokhamela challenged the gross concept of aesthetics by giving examples of plants – sandalwood, clove, sugarcane etc.

Beauty – Truth – Bliss – Love is not the opposite of ugly – lie – pain – hate. But to speak of this area is a taboo. It is so, for simple reason that this area cannot be institutionalized. Discourses by gurus though are institutionalized.

Somewhere in the development process we have lost ‘rt’ – good – the noun was replaced by adjective. However ‘rt’ is beyond definition, though science is not. Science continues to discover the ‘Frontiers of Ignorance’ [4].

Architects of the sub-continent are still chained to, caught up in and victims of orthodox view of modern architecture. “Development of modern architecture suggests it has taken us about four thousand years to progress from pyramid to a box’ says Papworth [5]. While modern architecture seems to have lost direction and people all over the world are facing identity crisis, it displays architect’s signature, sometimes that of the corporate client, hardly of the user.

Merely adopting effects and epithets of vernacular is not enough. It was Einstein who said that you couldn’t expect to solve a problem within the mind that created it [6] (quoted by Edward Goldsmith).

Architecture today is a goldfish in a glass bowl. It is time now to let loose the goldfish into the stream. Rest will take care of itself. But that demands morality, dignity and integrity. Do architects and scientists perceive that they are tools in the hands of empires of development, which control the access to the resources? In search of architecture the major task is to humanize and democratize the community … ‘but you cannot have morality without community. Without community morality becomes humbug’ (John Papworth) [7].

THE CONCLUDING SESSION was a deflated event like afterbirth. It did not reflect the preceding part of this grand South Asian Jazz, which was coupled with occasional Shahanai – Pakhavaj of Shubhendu Kaushik.

There were no issue/s at stake at the event.

It is understood that the participants had to put their perceptions, experiences and references within the limitation of period of time, words and visuals in their presentations, discussions (and this review, too) cannot cover entire gamut of the theme of the conference.

THE MAJOR CHALLENGE today in the context of the theme is to free both, land and waters and community, which are shattered and disintegrated in the cobweb of market and its allies. Let loose the goldfish of architecture from the glass bowl into the stream of community.

Remigius de Souza
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Referances and Notes

1 Vines, Gail. ‘Death of a mother tongue’ New Scientist, Jan 6, 1996, p.25
2 ibid. p 26
3 ibid. p.27
4 Theme of the 125th anniversary issue of Nature, 3.11.1994
5 Papworth, John. ‘Shut up and Listen – A new handbook for revolutionaries’, Academic Inn, London, 1997
6 ibid. Preface
7 ibid. p.4

[Published in Janata Weekly, Mumbai, March 15, 1998, P.11-14.]

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Man And Nature (Within And Outside)

Man And Nature (Within And Outside)

ARCHITECTURE AND BIODIVERSITY IN INDIA: 

A Context to Aesthetics in Our Times

Presentation accompanied with the paper
“ARCHITECTURE AND BIODIVERSITY IN INDIA:
A Context to Aesthetics in Our Times”,

presented to PAITHRUKAM 2004: Seminar/Workshop on “Aesthetics in Indian Architecture: Past, Present and Future”, at MES College of Architecture, Trissure, Kerala.

Author: Remigius de Souza 14 OCT 2004

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Man  And  Nature  (Within  And  Outside)

More PowerPoint presentations from Remigius de Souza

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Note: Link to the full text of the paper ARCHITECTURE AND BIODIVERSITY IN INDIA
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