Stories about Architects and Architecture

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. Maybe 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.

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. 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. It is this lesson of history that we need to present as teachers.

Does Context Matter?

Architects consider themselves as creative professionals and take great pride in the visual quality of the built form of their creations – the only part of architectural design that the rest of the world understands.

Unfortunately, this has resulted in identifying architecture only with its visual form, at the cost of all the other finer aspects of design. In most of the cities today, there seems to be some kind of competition amongst architects in trying to make their designs strikingly in contrast to their contexts, without a second thought as to the effect this would have on the overall urban landscape.

The more outrageous the form, the more the project gets talked about. The developer is happy as a building in news gets more buyers and more rate, the architect is happy to be in the limelight, may even get awards, and if the city becomes more chaotic, neither the architect nor the developer have to live or work there anyway; what we really preserve are the photographs on the day of the inauguration.

I recollect a photograph of Hongkong documenting the resultant chaos, in a presentation by Jimmy Lim, with his typical dry comment about how you need to shout in order to be heard in a scenario where the background noise is too loud.

Of course, saner voices too prevail sometimes, calling for conformity to the context and providing a sense of belonging to the context, but when they become institutionalized in the form of guidelines or regulations, they tilt the scale to the other extreme, refusing to accept any variation in the theme, putting a virtual stop to all creative interpretations of the context.

It is no wonder that architects resent this. The urban design guidelines for Chandigad are a case in point. The interpretation of the context of Chandigad is frozen in a set of regulations so rigid that they have effectively killed all creativity and made the city monotonous in character.

The correct response to any physical context must lie somewhere in between these two extremes, though not always in a manner directly apparent. Sometimes the new project itself may redefine the context. When the Eiffel Tower was being built, there was a lot of opposition to this ‘monstrous’ building, and it subsided only when it was clarified that this was a temporary structure anyway and would be eventually dismantled and shipped away. But its continued presence has redefined the context and has equated it with the image of the city, so much so that you cannot think of Paris now without the Eiffel Tower.

And there are many more examples all over the world. The Sydney Opera House, which has become an icon of Sydney now, was built over a site which had an existing structure with heritage value. Conservationists may now have an academic debate over the virtue of promoting current iconic architecture by demolishing the heritage of the past, but there are no clear-cut conclusions or solutions.

Indians in general have scant regard for the historic setting which most of our old cities have, but there are exceptions too. First we had the Delhi Urban Arts Commission Act and then the Mumbai Heritage Precinct Regulations and the regulations for protection of French Quarter in Pondicherry. But these are very typical and interesting exceptions. Perhaps we have some kind of awe still left over about our colonial rulers, and the remnants of western classical architecture which they have left here as legacy of that rule.

So, when Charles Correa designed the LIC Building in Connaught Place, New Delhi, people derided it as they felt that the huge concrete and glass tower would deface the heritage quality of the place. Little is known about the original design by Correa in which he sought to integrate the huge plaza at the ground level as an extension of Connaught Place, making it directly accessible from the street. This was not acceptable to the authorities, brought up in the British tradition of treating the common people of the city as an undesirable element. Hence, they put up a high compound wall and an entrance gate with armed security personnel. It was much later, in the design of the city center for Kolkata, that Correa would actually realize the creation of a truly accessible public place for the city.

What Correa was trying to do was to reflect the ambience of Connaught Place as a democratic public place; without following any of its architectural styles, which are British versions of the renaissance architecture in India, like the rest of the Lutyens Delhi.

The problem with such an approach is that it is a bit too difficult to understand on paper and hence may get caught up in the regulations about conformity to context. Delhi Urban Arts Commission, had it based its approving process on the basis of Chandigad regulations, would never have cleared Correa’s proposal. Correa, being a much acclaimed and respected architect, has been credited with the statement ‘the context of Connaught Place begins with the new LIC building’, though I am not sure whether he himself said this or any one his ardent admirers. However, I agree totally with the sentiment, and I think we must give him credit for now redefining the context of Connaught Place, in spite of the fact that his original scheme was not fully executed.

But in general, we are not much bothered about all these issues, most of them are debated only in academic circles. Contrary to this, the journalists of the first world are quite active about this as I have remarked earlier. A case in point is the shifting of Apple Flagship retail store in San Francisco. Apple Inc., an American multinational corporation headquartered in Cupertino, California, is the world's second-largest information technology company by revenue and the world's third-largest mobile phone maker. Fortune magazine has named Apple the most admired company in the world. Naturally, people in California are proud of its achievements.

Apple recently submitted plans for its new retail store in the Union Square in place of the Levis Stores that now occupies the site. Initially everybody thought it would be a welcome addition to the place. San Franciso’s Mayor Lee described the new Apple Store as “quite simply incredible” and that he could think of “no better location for the world’s most stunning Apple Store than right here in Union Square”.

But when people realized that Apple, and the store’s architect Norman Foster had not accounted for the famous bronze folk art fountain existing in the site, it became a point of public contention. The Mayor retracted his statement and admitted that he didn’t realize that the plans called for the elimination of the Ruth Asawa fountain.

The reason for this turnabout lies in the history of the fountain. It is designed by Ruth Asawa, a Japanese American sculptor, who was the driving force behind the creation of the San Francisco School of the Arts, which was renamed recently as the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in tribute to her. The fountain was Installed in 1973 and was made of baker’s clay and cast in bronze. It is seven feet high and a focal point of a triangular-shaped public square behind the Levis outlet. According to Asawa herself, “The fountain depicts San Francisco, and approximately 250 friends and school children helped in its making by contributing self-portraits, cars, buildings, and various San Francisco landmarks.”

The fountain is part of the public memory in SF for 40 years now. Apple’s proposal therefore evoked strong resentment. Not only that, the initial proposal for the building is a characterless box of metal and glass that contributes nothing unique to the local landscape, and has no identity except the Apple symbol in the centre of the huge glass façade on Post street, while the façade on Stokton street is a dead wall with a similar symbol. The Glass façade of the building faces Post street on South, and would be exposed to direct solar radiation for most of the day, a design feature that shows utter disregard to the climate of the region.

San Francisco Chronicle urban design critic John King pointed out the absurdity of “a company renowned for design innovation hiring one of the world’s most acclaimed architecture firms, only to unload a box that would look at home in Anymall, U.S.A.”

About the dead wall of the building on the east side facing the Stokton Street, another critic sarcastically commented that perhaps “Apple envisions that side of the building to be livened up occasionally with lines of consumers around the corner waiting to buy new iPhones”, revoking memories of the long queues of Apple-crazy Americans at all Apple stores at the launch of almost every new Apple product.

However, the news item from arch.daily.com also mentioned that ‘..not every Apple store design is as disquieting as this one. Their store in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington DC, for example, is fairly well-integrated into the existing style and framework of the street while still maintaining its trademark sleek and modern style.’ This was rebutted by a respondent claiming that Apple had no option in the Georgetown site, and can not be given credit for respecting the context there. Indeed, the Georgetown area in Washington DC has a very strong historical character, like many other parts of Washington DC, and has Conservation Guidelines in place. So, the San Fracisco example is what Apple can do, left to itself, while the Georgetown Apple store seems to be something that Apple was forced to do, not what it would have been willing to do on its own.

This in fact is true of all the multinational companies and their views on architectural design at large: they would go at any length to promote a brand and its image and would like to create a standardised architecture that would be identified with the image of the company rather than the urban context in which it is situated. It seems that they are afraid of losing their corporate identity if their flagship projects integrate into the existing streetscape instead of outshining every other building by their forms and structures.

But this is not the only issue: in trying to reflect the corporate brand identity we tend to convert architecture itself into a product, reliquinshing its primary role in place-making in an urban setting. Architectural intervention in any existing context goes beyond merely confirming to the heritage regulations. It is not the treatment of façade or such other features of the existing buildings around that matter in the long run, but the sensitivity to the needs of people and enhancing the quality of public place in an urban setting. This is what gives the place a unique identity and which tends to get destroyed by the imposition of brand images. As a respondent on the article in arch.daily commented, ‘the world would be better off without the generic chain stores of drive throughs, gas stations, shopping malls etc that plague our cities.’

Fortunately, in this particular case, Apple bowed to the will of the people, and made a revised proposal, which incorporated the fountain, but reduced the size of the open plaza, as the apple building is rectangular (the existing Levis building is triangular) and covers a part of the existing triangular plaza. This gesture could not have come at a more appropriate time - Ruth Asawa died on 5^th August. So it became some kind of tribute to her. The news item in SFGate starts with the line - ‘Ruth Asawa fans can rest easy - the artist's beloved bronze fountain near Union Square is staying pretty much right where it is.’

The design of the building, however, has not changed, its remains a tall, taut cube of glass and steel from Post Street (South side). The only difference is that instead of being walled off by steel panels on the Stokton street, the design includes an 8-foot-wide glass "window" in the centre of the East wall, which continues over the roof, becoming a skylight. Both these changes – retention of the fountain & the opening up of the Stokton street façade have been appreciated by the Mayor, as Christine Falvey, Lee's director of communications has been quoted in the news. And here the matter rests. As it happens, the last item on the SFGate online news is an announcement of the Public Memorial service for Ruth Asawa.

Public memory, so it is said, is short. A former head of KGB would never have become a democratically elected President in Russia otherwise. But it seems that when public places in an urban setting have been retained in collective public memory for more than a generation, the sentiments attached to them do not fade. Architects, as creative professionals, need to be sensitive to this intangible aspect of our public spaces.