Whose City is it Anyway?

Who does a city belong to?

Who occupies a city?

These are some of the most basic questions that every urban designer or town planner thinks about while working today. But Jane Jacobs around 50 years ago posed the same questions in her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The book questioned the many urban policies implemented during the time in New York City, which was also being used everywhere else in America. The book is her single-most influential book and possibly the most influential book on urban planning and cities.

The early 1950s in New York saw rapid urbanisation and growth post the Second World War, a period when capitalism was on the rise. The cities grew bigger and more congested. This put a great deal of pressure on the natural resources and infrastructural facilities of the cities.Urban decay became common place. This is when Robert Moses was working in the Public Parks Commissions. He was later called the “Master Builder” of New York. He cut across the existing city fabric by building many expressways which displaced roughly half a million people, public parks and bridges connecting Manhattan to the rest of the city. He believed the city was meant for cars. This shows light on the far reaching effect the invention of the automobile had on architecture and urban designers. It changed how people looked at buildings and cities. Moses has even said that, “The cities are for traffic”. Moses came from a time when driving a car, was just not seen as a necessity but it was seen as entertainment. By proposing expressways across the city, he also in turn controlled the development that happened alongside these expressways. He introduced the idea of collecting tolls for using newly constructed bridges, something that is till date used in countries all over the world. He was a hard core modernist in his philosophies and ideals. For the construction of some of his proposals it required the removal of some historical buildings, like the Penn Station. This led to a huge outcry among the general public.

Jane Jacobs, in her book vehemently criticises the methods and ideals of Roberts Moses who believed in a clean city with priority given to the roads. She believed in a system where the city belonged to the people who inhabited it. She discussed how the architects and planners had a ‘paternalistic’ view towards cities, how no one is directly held accountable for the decisions made. She not only criticises but also gives valuable suggestions about how from a private realm the planning of the city has to move into the public domain. She had some valid suggestions like using mixed landuse development, adaptive reuse, higher population densities with shorter blocks, ‘social capital’, ‘eyes on the streets’ and ‘sidewalk ballet’. She spoke about the street as the spine and life giver of the city. She contradicted Robert Moses’ opinion that the city belonged to the people, pedestrians rather than to the cars. Jacobs concludes the book on the stance that cities are formed from organised complexities. These complexities are not simple but are intertwined with each other. She made valid points about how the city was not just one single system working in singular, but many smaller systems all working in unison.

Jane Jacobs was instrumental in creating a design language for urban designers, a language of equality and fairness. It is by far one of the most influential books written by a non architect about urban design and planning policies. Even though Robert Moses’ ideas ideals for the city were highly critiqued, he was also instrumental in making New York City what it is today. Both these visionaries in their own ways, help built the city of New York as we see it today!

Architecture 1.0

The names Vers une architecture and Charles Édouard Jeanneret-Gris might not resonate as much as names Towards A (New) Architecture and Le Corbusier does to an architect or student of architecture. These are names that every single architect or student of architecture the world over recognises. Le Corbsier is one of the most famous and influential architects of the 20^th century. He influenced millions of architects themselves to perceive architecture and actually design differently later on. He was able to do so through his manifesto of sorts called Towards An Architecture which he wrote initially wrote in French in 1923. Six out of the seven essays in the book were first published in a French magazine by the name Le’Spirit Nouveau, which only reached out to the rich elite of France. Then it was later translated into English in 1925 for a more far reaching effect.

During the First World War, Switzerland remained neutral and hence it became the breeding ground for intellectuals and thinkers, a place for people escaping the war or protesting against it. Corbusier moved to Switzerland around the same time and wrote the manifesto at around the same time. People were shifting focus from Cubism. This period was also called the period of Ecclastism or of confused styles. Corbusier believed that a certain “cleansing of design” was essential. When he published this manifesto his agenda was to reach out to everyone, the rich and the poor equally because during this period only the rich were hiring architects or living in designed dwellings. The French typeface of the original manifesto was highlighted somewhat like a pamphlet. This must have been an intentional idea to get through to more number of people. This manifesto could also be seen as an indirect influence of the Futurist Manifesto, which influenced a large number of people and gave them the courage to make a statement.

The manifesto broadly has seven essays that talk about the various guiding principles of architecture, as Corbusier saw it. They are as follows:

• The Aesthetics of the engineer
• Regulating line
• Eyes that do not see
• Mass production housing
• Architecture or revolution
• Architecture
  • The lessons from Rome
  • The illusions of the plan
  • Pure creation of the mind
• Three reminders to architects
  • Mass
  • Surface
  • Plan

Corbusier was from a time period where industrialisation was catching up very rapidly all over the world and new things were being made on a day to day basis. He spoke of the ocean liner, (naval architecture) as the zenith of design. Mass production and factories changed the socio-economic situation and mindset of the people. Henry Ford about the same time started the ‘production line’ and made mass produced automobiles. Corbusier also looked at architecture using the same principle of the ‘production line’ where you are just another ‘cog in a large system’. He started envisioning cities the same way, which led him to re-think economics, labour and manufacturing. All of this had ‘anti-elatism’ in its heart. The city was for one and all and not just the elite. His famous quote that the “house is a machine” came as a consequence of this, smaller systems helping to run a much larger system. Corbusier proposed plans for many cities like Barcelona, Paris, Stockholm and the likes. It was much later that he got the chance to design a city (Chandigarh, India).

When the manifesto came out, it revolutionised the architecture community at its core because this was a text that was so clean and easy to understand, dictating exactly how the nouveau world should be and the role of architects and architecture in this world. It reduced complex ideas into bullet points that anyone could understand. But it was not until the Second World War and Hitler that people realised what a ‘totalitarian’ approach Corbusier had. He envisioned the whole world through the eyes of a single person. Even then Corbusier’s book has been instrumental in changing the path of architecture towards new horizons because out of all the architects of the period, he was the only one who wrote a manifesto which simplified complex ideas like aesthetics, the idea of making, utopian cities and the likes. It is something of a bible for architects world over till date. It became a handy book of sorts. We still follow look at buildings, analyse and understand them through his eyes. He revolutionised how architecture was taught in schools, hence influencing generation after generation of architects to think a certain way. This is one of the best examples where a piece of literature was so instrumental in not just changing but also shaping a whole bunch of people all over the world.

Decoration – A Crime?

Adolf Loos is one of the most influential architects of the early 20^th century. An Austrian architect his buildings are seen all over Czech Republic, Switzerland and Paris. He wrote a lecture called ‘Ornament and Crime’ in 21^st January, 1908 which was presented in Vienna, Austria and then later published.

Adolf Loos had spent some time in the United States of America before he wrote the lecture and was deeply influenced by Louis Sullivan, an American architect who was one of the front runners of absolute Modernism. This essay was written when Art Nouveau, was its zenith. There was a lot of decoration done on the buildings during this time.

The manifesto written by Loos, spoke about the blatant removal of ornamentation from buildings. He wrote about a few basic key notes in his lecture.

1. Morality of excess
2. Evolution of Culture
3. The pleasure of simplicity
4. State recognition
5. Ornament, labour, health and economy
6. Ornament and inefficiency
7. Ornament and clan
8. Ornament is anti progress
9. Ornament vs art
10. The mind body divide

He stressed upon the importance of “passion for smooth and precious surfaces”. He supports his argument by saying how things that are ornate eventually go out of style and render themselves useless or even obsolete. He says, “The evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects.” Such absolute ideas of puritism were unseen at this time. He believed that it was a crime to waste time, effort and money on decoration, which would lead it to be out of style later. He compared the snobbery in food items to that of architecture. When Loos wrote the manifesto, industrial revolution was just picking up speed around Europe and it was the time of change and diversity. Ornamentation made things a lot more permanent according to Loos, who had issues with the idea of permanence. He believed that it would work against progress.  He spoke of an economic model that talks about ‘use and throw’, hence making ornamentation unnecessary. He argued that ornamentation had to do with the process of making and that only art had to do with the process of thinking. He also adds that ornamentation has nothing to do with a modern society and that it served absolutely no purpose. Loos concluded that “No ornament can any longer be made today by anyone who lives on our cultural level … Freedom from ornament is a sign of spiritual strength”

But on the contrary Loos’ work had highly decorated interiors in contrast to the exteriors. It had rich materials and abstracted planes which made it very sublime in nature.

The lecture was essentially very fascias and absolute in nature, but even then the essay was fundamental to the Bauhaus design studio and also helped define the ideology of Modernism in architecture. It was also inspirational for architects like Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.

Even today, Loos’s questions are still significant in the art and architecture communities.

What is the purpose of ornamentation?

Is it simply a function of style?

Does ornamentation induce some meaning to the object?

The Heart of a Futurist

It is believed that the Futurist movement is the brain child of the Italian poet, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Futurism developed out of the contemporary and historical situation. Rapid industrialisation and subsequent riots and social-political unrest set the ball rolling for Futurism.

The Manifesto of Futurism, written by him, was published in the distinguished French paper, Le Figaro on February 5^th, 1909. It was the first of its kind and it was one of the first times when someone wrote about a vision for the future. It is one of the key turning moments in the history of Italy. It sparked a fire in the minds of a whole generation of Italians and even the world over. The first decade of the 20^th century saw the telephone, telegraph, aeroplane and automobile change the very nature of Western civilisation.  The manifesto was written around the same time. It was during the brink of the industrial revolution and industries had just begun to slowly pop up in cities.

The manifesto was all about breaking from the current sad, dark circumstances to move on to or perhaps leap towards a future that is bright, fast and aggressive. People were tired of the declining status of cities and believed that the “Machine age” could change everything. It spoke about speed, youth, war, technology and violence. It was all about anything that was industrious and machine like, anything that could triumph over humanity. Marinetti personified technology and the industries as a demonic being, but literally he celebrated the machine-like quality of the industry.

Marinetti was also joined by a lot of young artists like Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra, Gino Severini, Bruno Munari and the likes. Inspired by the manifesto these artists and philosophers also go ahead and publish various other manifestos in art, painting and architecture. To some extent Futurism influenced the art movements like Art Deco, Constructivism, Surrealism, and Dadaism. The manifesto infiltrates every sphere of life and goes on to become a global phenomenon. Alongside Marinetti, Sant’Elia, the only architect in the group of futurists, also wrote a manifesto where he looked at a city, a city constantly in motion with cars and expressways, dynamic and alive, unlike any other city of its time.

The ideas propagated were very radical in nature, leaning towards fascism. Marinetti was also close to Benito Mussolini and also served in the Fascist party. But he later ended this relationship when Mussolini ended choosing classical styles over modernist styles for the new government buildings.

The manifesto ends by saying, “Standing on the world’s summit we launch once again our insolent challenge to the stars!” Marinetti was less than 30years old when he wrote the manifesto. The rest of the futurists that joined him were also very young. These young men had such far reaching influence spanning several decades and continents. It paved the way for people like Le Corbusier and Pablo Picasso.

This is one of the best examples of the might of the pen over the sword. Something that started out as a simple article in a newspaper sparked a revolution and changed how the world thought and perceived things!

The Art of Looking Side Ways – A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method by Banister Fletcher

 “Architecture…provides a key to the habits, thoughts and aspirations of the people, and without knowledge of this art the history of any period lacks that human interest with which it should be invested.”

Sir Banister Fletcher

As a student of architecture A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method or something we call “Banister Fletcher” is one of the first books we pick up in the school. The first edition of this book was written in 1895 by Banister Fletcher and his son by the same name, Sir Banister Flight Fletcher. The book comprises a very detailed look at the history of architecture starting from the pre historic times to Greek and Roman to the renaissance period and modern buildings. The book along with the history of the period also contains many detailed sketches, drawings and grainy photographs of the buildings of the time.

We can understand a lot about why this book was written the way it was, by understanding the time period it was set in. This book was written sometime during the Enlightenment period. This was a time when people challenged everyday norms, authority of institutions and wanted reforms in the society. The dictionary and the encyclopaedia, as we know of it today were written about the same time. There was this constant need to categorise and structure knowledge for its better understanding.

The book works more like a catalogue of sorts than a regular book on history. Up until the 6^th edition the book contained buildings mostly from the European sub continent. For the 6^th edition Sir Banister Fletcher and his wife added another broad category called the ‘Non Historical’ styles and added information about the buildings from India, China, Japan, Peru and the rest. So since the 6^th edition the book is broadly divided into ‘Historical’ and ‘Non Historical’ styles.

What this in turn did to the book is that it made Western architecture as the yard stick to measure every other building style in the world. This sort of structuring flattened the difference and variety between all the different styles and made it very linear in nature. These categories made Western architecture as the key stone to every other style. Over the past 100 years or so, even with the 20^th edition of this book, we have knowingly or unknowingly accepted these norms of looking at the world of architecture. Unconsciously we have accepted this ‘framework’ to look and ‘measure’ a building.

It is agreed that A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method is undoubtedly one of the most comprehensive and useful books ever to be written about the history of architecture. This unique reference book places buildings in their social, cultural and historical settings to describe the main patterns of architectural development, from Prehistoric to the International Style. What is important is that we use this book for the immense amount of information it gives us and not let it structure your thinking or understanding of what architecture is or what it should be.

Burgess Vs Maganlal

What constitutes a good history book?

In school we had to study history as part of the curriculum and it was always more or less in chronological order. It was always about who conquered whom, who invaded whom, who was in power and so on and so forth. These texts said very little about the lives of the people of the time, or about their lives. It was very linear in nature and hence a tad boring.

In the recent lecture we were introduced to two key texts that talk about the history of Ahmedabad, but from two very different perspectives. The first is a book by the British historian, Burgess called On the Muhammadan architecture of Bharoch, Cambay, Dholka, Champanir, and Mahmudabad in Gujarat and the second one is Amdavadno itihash : A.D.1850 by Maganlal Vakhatchand ( written in Gujarati). Burgess talks about the chronological history of Ahmedabad, detailed technical accounts of the various architectural monuments around the city and on the contrary Maganlal talks about the city and its people of the time but also uses architecture to base his facts.

As discussed during the lecture, both of them see the city during a particular period through very different eyes. In some places they even talk about the same monument but goes about describing it very differently. For example, Burgess talks about the Juma Masjid in all its architectural glory where as Maganlal talks about it as a place of the city rather than a monument. Burgess talks about the construction of this monument in chronological order where as Maganlal describes it just as he sees it. He goes on to talk about the mosque’s place in the city than the mosque itself.

The same way Burgess takes less than chapter to talk about the Maratha “conquest”, whereas Maganlal almost uses four full chapters to talk about how the Marathas “plundered” Ahmedabad city. This clearly goes to show the difference in how the British saw the events and how the people living in the city saw it. The same way Burgess ingnores the Pols of the city and Maganlal gives a deep, articulate description of the pols and the life and people in the pols.

What we see is the two very starkly different ways of documenting history, one is an objectified account of the city, happenings and the buildings of the time and the other is more like an account of someone who took a walk in the city. Even though both talk about the same period in time, one clearly is a technical account whereas the other is more about the life and feel of the time than the time itself.

We are constantly looking back in history to understand things of today a little better. It is interesting to read and, try and correlate and understand two different books written about the same period in time. It is almost like both these books help in filling the gaps that are in each other. Reading them together gives a well rounded understanding of the city and its people and also lets us  know the sequence of events that followed. History is not just a chronological sequence of events of a city or place but is also about what the place is and what its people are. I think it is key to understand both these things to get wholesome picture of what happened hundreds of years ago. It is also a more dynamic way of looking and learning history and makes it a lot more interesting affair.

The Aesthetics of Architecture by Roger Scruton

A thing of beauty!

What is to like something? What is to enjoy something? What is to appreciate something, what is it that adds value to it?

As human beings we unconsciously or consciously make choices and preferences on a day to day basis but never really think why we do so, why we prefer one over the other. We don’t wonder if there is a logical explanation to this preference, a rational, or a theory we base it on. Roger Scruton in this text tries to bring to our forefront, quite the obvious, how “aesthetics” is at the heart of human nature.

Like every other art form, architecture is also visual in nature. Yes, architecture demands to be experienced, but even then it is primarily a visual form of art and hence aesthetics plays a very integral part of it. It is only second nature to prefer a certain building over the other and we do this based on what we can see and not so much on what we perceive or even experience. The visual value to art precedes every other sensory judgement when it comes to making a choice.

The beauty of architecture is the sheer importance of what context brings to it. Every other form of art in some form or the other can be at some point ‘transported’ or ‘replicated’. Architecture is truly the only form of art where context pretty much is everything. You cannot merely ‘move it’, making it “vernacular”. Architecture unlike the other art forms cannot demand an elite audience. It is for the common man to see, enjoy and judge with or without understanding. A building has to “fix” itself into a pre decided scenario, which may or may not influence the design of the building. Being aware of all these various criterions make judging a building a lot harder.

But over a period of time we as architects have been taught and trained to look at architecture merely as “space” which invariably strips off all the ‘nitty gritties’ to it. This text reminds us vehemently how aesthetics really is at the crux of things and how it is not just an afterthought. But Scruton also reminds us that this book is not in any way a textbook to looking at “aesthetics in architecture” but he uses a lot of examples from the past and also tries to rectify the mistakes of a lot of his predecessors.

Architecture and aesthetics is an intense discussion and Scruton starts the dialogue to this very complex debate, even though he does not make an attempt to quantify beauty or dictate norms to do so, he most certainly provokes a question in us all.