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INDIA: MANY MODERNITIES – THE JOURNEY OF INDIAN RASAS
PRAXIS 17 | Indigo Architects
An editorial project by Matter in partnership with Şişecam Flat Glass, PRAXIS investigates the work and positions of diverse contemporary architecture practices in India. In this episode, Mausami and Uday Andhare – Principal Architects of Ahmedabad-based Indigo Architects, reflect on the varied roots that form the position of the practice today. Moulded by a meticulous process and inquiry, their approach is pluralistic and explorative. Themes surrounding appropriateness, materiality, endurance, and environmental concerns feature consistently across the studio’s work. They elaborate on the spirit of the practice, viewing it as an ecosystem that broadens beyond the studio — to sites, stakeholders, academia and society.
HINDSIGHT: Suprio Bhattacharjee
Hindsight
Personal Traverses Through the Pedagogical Terrain
by Suprio Bhattacharjee
Architect, researcher and writer Suprio Bhattacharjee looks back at his own education and critically evaluates the paradoxes of the prevalent pedagogical systems in order to create a framework to analyse new, emergent and experimental models in the subsequent chapters of this series he is set to curate.
When I first began teaching in 2002, I was just a year out of the same architecture school – the hallowed Sir JJCollege of Architecture in Mumbai. It was a place that inspite of its terrible flaws and apparent parochial constitution, was able to leave me to my own devices – I dare say ‘aided and abetted’ by less-than-a-handful of teachers who dared to be off the mainstream. The school was surprisingly absorptive of ‘strangeness’ though, if one was strong-headed and persistent. Perhaps, the very ‘otherness’ of these ‘strange presences’ meant that most would not bother – thus as a student one was able to nurture one’s self if one wished to do so and was sufficiently self-driven or self-initiated. This also was the school at its weakest: that as an institution, it lacked a set of ‘values’ or ‘principles’ by which it defined itself and its coursework and output – other than the misplaced mundanity of the ‘practical’ (or whatever was implied by this). Although if one could prove that if one’s ‘strangeness’ would ‘fit in’, one could survive the gladiator bloodbath. Thus, one could sense a surprising paradox – the very systems that seemed to be restrictive and closed gave one enough freedom and space to be one’s own – just as those few teachers taught us to be – within a space of constant negotiation.
Were these loopholes in the system, or was the system robust enough that it did not mind the ‘intrusion’ of a few? One can only speculate. But what it did leave many of us with was the sense of being intrepid and exploratory – to prod along paths that were off the main course.
Continue reading HINDSIGHT: Suprio Bhattacharjee
PRAXIS 16 | Manjunath & Co
An editorial project by Matter in partnership with Şişecam Flat Glass, PRAXIS investigates the work and positions of diverse contemporary architecture practices in India. This episode features B L Manjunath, founder of Bengaluru-based Manjunath & Co Structural Consultants. As one of the few structural designers in the country, Manjunath stresses on the role that co-creation and co-authorship play in his practice. Comprising of a team of engineers and architects alike, the practice intends to cultivate a culture of collaborative learning and collective ownership. The processes in the practice are led by rigorous observation, with design being the driver and structure being the facilitator to achieve a holistic vision. As part of a founding collective, Manjunath instituted Wadiyar Centre for Architecture, Mysuru where he believes his interaction with students encourages a reciprocal exchange of learning.
LE CORBUSIER AND M K GANDHI: AN UNLIKELY DIALOGUE
Riyaz Tayyibji
A Recorded Lecture from FRAME Conclave 2019: Modern Heritage
In this lecture, Riyaz Tayyibji speaks about a fictional conversation between M K Gandhi and Le Corbusier. Through the dialogue, he discusses their relationship with work and lifestyle, and their intimate connection with the inside and the outside.
Edited Transcript
Before I get to the two gentlemen that I would like to talk about today, a short note about the method I have used of juxtaposing two seemingly unrelated people together; this was a method that was first introduced to us as students of Prof. A.D. Raje, who would give students an exercise to imagine a conversation between, say Louis Kahn and Mimar Sinan at a coffee shop in Istanbul. This is certainly not a historian’s method; it is an architect’s method. An approach that would not only require the rigours of research to imagine the content of the conversation but would allow you to play with these ‘facts’ and their interpretations. In Raje’s exercise, the hypothetical context, the coffee shop was important. You had to define the hypothetical time in which the conversation was taking place. Somewhere in the process, it would emerge that this ‘hypothetical time’ was really a mirror of our own time.
Often the narrative of the present in which our history is written remains covert. One of the things that I enjoy about this method is that it ensures that the preoccupations of our own time are integrated into the narrative while always remaining explicit. Given the formality of our gathering today, I have chosen the form of a dialogue between one, Mr. M.K. Gandhi and another, Le Corbusier rather than a causal chat in a Byzantine café.
MATTER 