It was Ajay Kulkarni, a talented young architect and an old friend from Aurangabad, who opened up the issue of connection between history and present day architecture with his presentation at the National Convention of the Indian Institute of Architects. This was held at Nagpur on 6th November 2009, and about 800 architects from all over India attended. On this count alone this was a successful event indeed.
Ajay started his presentation with a review of the historical monuments, and a funny thing happened. Ajay is passionate about everything he does, and his voice may have been raised a bit above the ordinary at some point. A delegate, who was dozing comfortably in the air-conditioned auditorium, suddenly woke up with this, and found himself listening to a history lecture which he resented and registered his protest.
Of course there were many in the auditorium who were impressed with Ajay's oratory and content, and tried to hush down the protester. Ajay is also a good natured person and nonchalant, and continued with his presentation. His work is outstanding, and that naturally commands respect, irrespective of whether you do or do not like the history behind the design.
What Ajay did, in effect, was to explain the process behind his design. Very few architects are capable of doing this, in fact most of the other architects who presented their projects in the same convention were content in describing their work (and showing plenty of visuals), but did not give any reasons about why it was designed that way. May be they thought it was obvious, but it takes a lot of understanding of history to articulate and present the entire process of design.
That brings back the issue of how history is taught and learnt at the schools of architecture. Unless we are able to establish its link to the present day architecture, history would become a tiresome subject indeed. It would then be a boring list of monuments and the kings who made them (with a bit of religious, political and such other background thrown in). No wonder people resent this, and many generations of students have crossed over to the fourth year architecture with a sigh of relief that they no longer have anything to do with history.
What Ajay was talking about is the history as it exists today for us, and the impressions of form and the quality of architectural spaces the monuments have created. We grow up with this backdrop of history surrounding us all over (particularly in India), and it is part of our subconscious. The monuments speak to us (to use the jargon from Ajay's speech), and if you are sensitive enough, you may be able to decipher the language.
Ancients were definitely more serious about architecture, and went about the business of construction of every monument as if it was the last piece of work they would produce in their lifetime. Architecture is always a culmination of all that you are capable of creating - it is not something that you do casually. All architecture is deliberate - with a sense of purpose.
So when Ajay talked about creating a monument for a freedom fighter-it was not words alone, but a whole imagery of how that person lived and worked, his value system and the force behind his acts of patriotism - and how do we interpret all this in the present context becomes the starting point of architectural design. So the attire of the freedom fighter becomes a symbol that can be carried on to the building designed for him and to establish the act of patriotism as a monumental act, it needs to be represented by a monumental structure.
So it is not the historical monuments per se but their interpretation in the present day, which becomes the issue for architectural design. And this is definitely depends on your understanding of history - not as counts of stone or technology but as reminders of the quality of design and architectural space. It is this lesson of history that we need to present as teachers.
