How can architecture respond to post pandemic times?

Authors

Binumol Tom, Conservation Architect and Academician

Monolita Chatterjee, practising architect and sustainable environment and gender activist.

Built spaces have never seemed more important in these strange times of an unprecedented global scale lockdown. Our cities have been questioned for their resilience in times of pandemic, our homes have become our safe space, and our workspaces lie empty.

Space has never been at a higher premium. And all of yesterday- when we sold space at the highest monetary gain, all the decisions we took for the greatest profitability have suddenly been trumped by the greatest of all premiums – life, health, living. The time has never been more opportune to revisit and rethink these approaches to our lives as we try and construct our post Covid world.

 

Architecture is in a curious place today. As construction sites struggle to start up a nosediving economy and massive loss of jobs, we grapple with the huge energy and resource grabbing nature of this industry to try and understand its need to reform for a sustainable future which is resilient in the face of pandemics, lockdowns and social distancing.

Our Homes – Our safe spaces

The world has been ‘at home’ for the last one month. At least all those who have a home. While romantic illusions about home prevail, it is also an unsafe place for many women and children. Questions of ownership of spaces, conflicts within household, and sharing of domestic duties have been major parts of WhatsApp communication in groups. Hushed tones have whispered about the streaming of child sexual abuse and pornography and the increased spike in domestic violence.

The elderly and the vulnerable suddenly find themselves trapped in cramped apartments many floors above ground – either alone, or with many members of the family. Suddenly everyone is invisible as streets remain empty and buildings opaque. The disconnect of single floor apartments with single corridors where you see no one as you enter or exit denies you of the only allowed social connect. The value of yesteryears or small towns, where we could talk to our neighbours across our fences while watering our gardens or look into each other’s homes from across the streets suddenly feel precious.

Our Homes Today

Human residence is a unit of societal existence – deeply influenced by the natural environment around us, either through use of locally available natural materials or connections with nature as our only means of creating climate comfort. But contemporary human society transformed through two fundamental forces – galloping urbanisation and globalization.

Cities in India over the last 2 decades have grown vertically and opaque to its streets, discarding the unique street to buildings relationship which our traditional settlements had. We live in an intricately connected web – from a home to a street to a cluster to a neighbourhood. But this connectivity and porosity of our built forms have been disrupted and plugged with concerns of safety making us turn inwards.

Eyes on the street – we can stay connected while social distancing

Picture Courtesy Ar. Monolita

Residences specifically have evolved in two ways in recent times – the insular, spatially minimalist, inward looking disconnected individualized house or the shoebox like stacking of life holes with little windows for sunshine. And in all this somewhere at the periphery of our conversations prevail the home of the urban poor, residing on top of a waste drain, with a single door as its only entry for humans, light and ventilation, and a floor occupied by multi functional needs of 3 generations.

 

Lessons from the Pandemic

Covid has shown the importance of self reliant homes where a family needs to learn to live together, share chores, and live in convivial relationships across generations. Food – so long whipped up by magic and appearing almost Hogwarts like on our tables has become a point of conversation as the family now has to witness and share the labour of this critical human survival activity. Thus the kitchen needs to be reviewed for its centrality in our residential functions and at last claim its due position.

Overcrowded apartment units without patios/ balconies or terraces put the residents in very precarious mental conditions. Access to an open green space where they, especially the elderly, can take some exercise becomes an imminent need for physical and mental health of people. These spaces can double up as small urban farms so that each household can be food sustainable during such calamities.

Our new office is a corner at home with a laptop on unlimited broadband, a table and chair. Workplaces are realising the power of work from home. Yet are our homes designed to accommodate a safe, happy and delightful office space – energised by large windows bringing in natural light and ventilation?

The technological advancements of our modern times have brought us a fast-paced life with luxuries at fingertips. But how do we enable our homes, our apartments, the common spaces with layers of these technologies which allow easy communications and assistance, especially for the elderly or contactless operations which are disabled friendly – that supports us every day and specifically in times of crisis.

Central air conditioning systems are being understood as a major contributor to Covid spread. Centralised systems which are energy intensive and maintenance heavy need to be dialed down in favour of natural climate responsive decentralised passive systems. We must relearn how our designs need to be climate responsive and not climate controlling.

 

Our Homes of Yore

The nurturing graceful spaces of a home – which created the connect of a family, and contributed to health and wellbeing of its residents through good cross ventilation and climate sensitive architecture, right down to the details of planting trees creating microclimates comfortable to us, has been relegated to the past with our over dependence on artificial environmental controls.

The traditional nalukettus of Kerala or the Tamil Agraharams both had a unique spatial disposition of sequential transitions from exterior to interiors. The format included front porches or verandahs designed for community interaction, secluded interior spaces which could be isolated by just shutting off a door, open or semi open spaces for social interactions within the joint family and even small spaces for periods of isolation.  The spatial sequences gave the user the liberty to open up or shut down as situation demands even within the housing units.

The ‘Nalukettus’ even had a pond and a sarpakavu – a sustainable ecosystem of its own. Such design patterns can be reviewed and placed in modern context to improve our habitats.

We hear that this is just the first of many global pandemics. Climatic events have shown us that it is time to correct our ways. Humans live in built environments and if we want to co-exist with nature, it is time to relook at our approach and find a new way forward, learning from the old.

The amazing cube houses of Rotterdam

Thrilled we proceeded to the array of “Cube houses of Rotterdam”, the famous architectonic experiment of Piet Blom in which form, aesthetics and spatial configuration and effects take upper hand over functionality of the buildings, on our way to Amsterdam. From a distance we could see the string of cube houses of Rotterdam straddled above roads and intertwined amongst themselves, each tilted at an abnormal angle of 55 degree. Great things occur only when there are challenges. Cube houses narrate the story of such a challenge which in the 1970s, the city planners of Rotterdam in the Netherlands had encountered. Two small pieces of land on the northwest and southeast sides of Blaak Street in Rotterdam zoned as residential had to be somehow connected. Architect Piet Blom had a creative solution to this problem and thus came up this idea of building a pedestrian bridge atop the busy road using 38 regular cubical units and two larger cubes supported by hexagonal pillar.

I approached the urban cluster with an apprehension about how the function of a house would actually fit into a tilted cube without much compromise. Luckily an owner who has opened his house as a Show Cube Museum (Kijk-Kubus) gave us a chance to take a tour around and through a fully furnished Cube House. From the ground level, we took a narrow staircase to reach the first floor, which consisted of a tiny, triangle-shaped room functioning as a living room and a kitchen. A flight of stairs took us up to two bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor, and then to the top floor which is a small free space, used as a garden , a green lung for the urban house.

The cube house museum displayed all that is required for the functioning of a small house hold. Each space was exhilarating, though the narrowness of the spatial volume created a kind of claustrophobia at times. The minimalism brought in for every bit of space within the house was exciting to the onlooker in spite of it reminding some of the everyday challenges the residents might face, such as procuring fitting furniture for a structure without straight walls and also psychological acceptance of slanting walls. A panel exhibited the detailed drawings of the cube house and I noted that each house sprawls to about 100 sq mts of area of which almost quarter of floor space had to be left unusable because of its specific alignment and form. Despite all this the visit to Kijk-Kubus was indeed a remarkable one filling one’s mind with a youthful energy as I found everything about it was really exciting, fresh, and vibrant…. Felt happy to realize that it is not just the Architect in me who went through these emotional upheaval but also my companions Dr. Pushpa Maliekal a post Doc from KU Lueven and senior official at GSK, her husband Siju Joseph an Electrical Engineer and MBA at Atlas Copco and their 8 year old little princess Alexia…..

We walked out of the cube house alas to read the short poem by the Architect himself:
He’
wat is dit?
Is dit nou
een paleis
of is dit
een kermis?
(Translation –
Hey,
what is this?
is this
a palace?
or is this
a carnival?)

Memory of 22nd September 2018

Celebrating the making of Dutch towns – Tale of two cities “Leiden and Alleppey”

A journey to Netherlands was always there on my bucket list due to the main reason that everytime I visited Alleppey (Alappuzha) in Kerala, popularly called the “Venice of the East”, I felt that this land has nothing to do with Venice, rather it has close relation to a Dutch town in its planning. According to history about 5000 and odd years ago the waters of the Atlantic forced its way t o join the Orth sea, and by doing so it scoured sand from the southern shallows and swept it up to form a continuous bank upon which the prevailing south and west winds built the dunes that constitute almost the modern coastline of Netherlands. By the first century AD the coastal dunes had consolidated into a fairly firm, though not always effective, barrier against the sea. Behind them developed belts of geestgrond (which is a mixture of clay, peat and archaic sand dunes). I always wondered thinking about the unflagging energy and patience Dutchmen applied themselves to the heavy tasks of pushing back the sea and draining lakes and marshes to form highly productive pasture and arable lands.

The art of town planning has been defined as the art of creating the kind of environment needed to produce and maintain human values balancing and harmonizing public and private needs. The important determinant in Dutch town making is the choice of site which had safety and stability and possibilities for trading. Dutch towns are classified as Dike towns, Dike and dam towns, Bastides, Grachtenstad (water towns built largely upon land reclaimed from marsh or lake), Geestgrond towns (towns built partly on firm ground and rest on waterland) and high ground towns. If any urban activity can be said to have reached that ideal, it was the making of the dutch towns.

Leiden as the name is derived from Germanic “leitha” meaning canal or to be more precise a water system which is a human-modified natural river, partly natural, partly artificial. The site of Leiden is at the confluence of the old and new Rhines and the city consists of various phases of development is found in city planning which is essentially characterized by the Dutch layout forms, viz a Burcht (old fort) and dike and water town. The first planned extension of the Burcht started as early as 13th century diking to control the new Rhine. A typical dike street with not much depth on its berms for large buildings, where the church St. Pieterskerk, and the Gravensteen ( a residence for the counts of Holland) were sited on the lower ground. Four parallel canals, the most northerly being later drained to form a street, and one street the Middleweg, all intersected by series of narrow lanes, subdivided the reclaimed land. The layout form in toto is that of a Grachtenstad with canals as the chief routes of communications, long and shallow building blocks, narrow streets, rows of houses and canal edges and their adjoining streets where bridges cross the canals interspersed by public buildings.

Much similar experience one gets in the canal town of Alappuzha (Alleppey) in Kerala, India. Alappuzha may be glossed as ala (wave) and puzha (river). Alam means water according to the dictionary of Dr. Herman Gundert. Coastal plains of Alleppey were formed of quaternary sediments and are characterized by series of dunes and ridges marking the repeated regression and transgression. The land form possesses ridge and swale topography probably belonging to the late Quaternary geologic period. Normal ecological functions of these swale wet lands are controlling the floods on the coastal plain, preventing the salinity incursion, recharging the ground water table and providing perennial source of water on the coast, to the creeks originating from the micro wetland areas which defines an intertidal condition in coastal areas. The town of Alappuzha is located at the confluence of the Arabian sea and Vembanad lake where six major rivers spread out before joining the 80 km coast line of the district. The nucleus of Alappuzha was built since 1762 to function as port to facilitate trade in the region of the erstwhile princely kingdom of Travancore. There is absence of a dominant spatial form imparted by the presence of a temple, a church, a mosque or even a palace to express and symbolize the character of Alappuzha, instead the canal networks connecting the backwaters and the sea symbolizes this town. Alappuzha has everything that tourism looks forward to viz. the sea, the beaches, the canals, stretches of excellent canal front historic architecture, breathtaking landscapes, ample greenery, lazy backwaters, the rich cultural products and a great variety of reminiscence of religious and domestic vernacular architecture of the place.

The dominant spatial form was determined by the rich urban pattern consisting of two parallel canals which form the “the lifelines of the town”, interconnecting link canal, rich tapestry of streets, and built fabric to accommodate all sorts of trading activities, shipping facilities such as light house, sea pier, signal station, warehouses etc. The urban fabric is interwoven in a definite pattern so alien to our traditional settlement pattern based not on any symbolic values of religion but purely on functional grounds. What mattered was trade and transport, hence the two arteries of the heart the “canals” and their embankments became the virtual core. The important design criteria include the Dutch lineal urban pattern of canal, road and building blocks, skillful location of public buildings at junctions to save from monotonous building facades, streets abutting the building façade which are parallel to the canals, important crossings accentuated by citing a religious building along the canal front etc are a few to mention. The canal precinct of Alappuzha exhibits the basic characteristics of Dutch towns of medieval origin which were orderly, functional and compact portraying bear witness of careful setting out both in two as well as three dimensions. Straight canals providing connectivity between the backwaters and the sea seems to be a logical decision, but the grid iron pattern introduced by the regular arrangement of roads and lanes with dense built fabric is very deliberate profoundly influenced by the Dutch who had a predominant position during the time of origin of the town, as the tradition of human settlement in Kerala was always linear, scattered and never compact in its real form.

Though Alappuzha has been popularly known as the “Venice of the east” due to the intense commercial trading activities in the 19th century which would have resonated with the activity pattern of the then Italian City of Venice, at the town planning level Alappuzha is essentially designed and constructed based on the town planning principles of a Dutch canal town. It has much to do with the Dutch diking, disposition of canals, streets and buildings abutting the streets, skillful location of public buildings, detailing at canal edges and more. Yes Alleppey is indeed a Dutch town truly bearing similarities with cities like Leiden. The difference probably is only in the attitude of the people and the bureaucracy.

22.September. 2018

Golconde, one of the first modern building in India

When Mirra Alfassa, the spiritual seeker and French artist, who came to be known as The Mother, after she joined the renowned philosopher and spiritual guide Sri. Aurobindo and together with him established Sri Aurobindo Ashram, felt the need of having a decent accommodation for the inmates of the ashram, Golconde was born in Pondicherry the only French colony in South India. The project brief given by Mother was just a one liner “We want a dormitory for our inmates, which should be simple, but elegant”. This was just enough for the Tokyo-based Czech architect Antonin Raymond to visualise what was in mother’s mind and build her dream, paving way for modernism in India. The architect visited Pondicherry stayed a period of eight months and found himself to be deeply influenced by the spiritual thinking, order and life of the ashramites’ and localities’. In the backdrop of French colonial and tamil vernacular buildings of Pondicherry, this new building with its block of high, obscure concrete walls stood as the very first reinforced concrete construction in India, beautifully aligned to the tropical climate, built to enhance meditative experience of a group of people finding ecstasy in spirituality.

The building predominantly constituted with straight lines in the form of horizontal and vertical planes constituting the concrete form work, stays quite unpretentious with no name nor signage but beyond the high compound wall decorated with natural plantation, one finds the entire length of the building, on the front façade and back wall, fitted with louvers that can be opened and shut as per the weather conditions outside. A wooden door with a tiny lotus symbol engraved on it and beautifully fitted on the huge compound wall welcomes every visitor, who wishes to experience the building. One can walk in only with a prior permission. I visited a nearby residential unit where the ashramite in charge Subraji stays to take her permission. This graceful lady in white outfit informed me that as she is unwell, she is not in a position to take me around. But, when I informed her that I am a Professor in Architecture and I am visiting this building for the first time despite being in Pondicherry a couple of times before and I need to experience the building to share the experience with my students, she gave a letter addressed to Sumam behan who granted permission and took me around Golconde.

After removing my footwear I walked on the cool kadappa stone cladded floors of Golconde to be mesmerized by the power of how a building could transform a person and enhance his meditative experience. Cool breezes caressed my body and flew through me reminding me that the architects gave this building a number of site and climate sensitive features, including louvered walls and lush landscaping, making it a passive design much to be admired.

Golconde has a simple plan of two long wings, hinged at the middle with a stairwell. Single rooms are lined up along a corridor that runs the entire length of the building. There are three floors, with a half basement that acts as a utilities space and provides a lovely semi-open area for an afternoon tea ritual. The long ends of Golconde are set north to south, leaving only the short ends with their small surface area directly exposed to the sun, keeping heat absorption to the minimum. Though called a dormitory building Golconde is designed to provide 50 single occupancy rooms lined up along corridors that running the entire length of the building in three floors with shared toilet and bathroom facilities. The rooms have only two permanent walls. The other two, one opening to the exterior is a series of openable louvers, and the other opening to the corridor is just a sliding teak wood door. The moment we leave the louvers and teak wood sliding doors open, the room expands into eternity leaving one with no empty imagination or abstract speculation but creating a structurally clean and pure space within extending beyond horizon. Each room is furnished austerely with exemplary woodwork consisting mostly of a bed, desk, and closet. The walls are made very special using chettinad plaster made out of lime, mixed with egg white, ground methi seeds (venthi), jaggery, jute and urad dal, which is mixed and buried underground for 90 days in earthen pots before being applied on walls. The exterior walls though initially were plastered the same manner, got badly deteriorated by the seas breezes. Hence they had to redo it with concrete and pebbles. The half basement present in the building acts as a utility space and provides a lovely semi-open area for an afternoon tea ritual. The long ends of Golconde are set north to south, leaving only the short ends with their small surface area directly exposed to the sun, keeping heat absorption to the minimum.

After setting up the initial design and construction, Raymond left for the US, entrusting the project to his associates, Czech architect Francois Sammer and Japanese-American woodworker George Nakashima, who executed the dream of Raymond to the best of their ability. Golconde was built during 1937-45 and is more a material manifestation of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy that if we have the urge, then we have the capacity to create a spiritually conscious life within the limitations of  earthly human existence striving towards  salvation embeded with honesty and beauty. Despite its concrete construction in material and form, the building aspires to lightness in all its details. Golconde in its ascetic simplicity, unity of materials, removal of anything that is not essential to the life within, harmony of the interior and exterior, emerges as an example of an architecture that makes you more aware of your body, your movements, and thoughts. Just wished it rained so that I could drench my body and soul in heavenly shower, while walking barefoot along the long corridors with light filtering in on one side through the horizontal louvers giving a great feel to my deep and contemplative walk. This made me quite apologetic that I didn’t visit this building before.

Friends, don’t miss Golconde during your next visit to Pondicherry.

A Gothic poetry in stone

It is not possible for me to be entirely dispassionate in writing about this Gothic poetry in stone located in the Pune University campus the Governor’s  house built as the monsoon resort of the Governor of Bombay, which I happened to visit in July 2017. The purpose of my visit though was not to enjoy architecture but to be the external examiner of a PhD viva voce, I didn’t waste the opportunity of being here especially when the topic of this architectural marvel was put forth by my friend Prof. Pushkar Kanvinde.

The Governor’s residence is a must see for all lovers of poetry in stone. The moment we walked into the building what struck me was the famous saying of John Ruskin in his, “The stone of venice”, referring to Man as a creature and Man not as a tool “but out comes the whole majesty of him also, and we know the height of it only, when we see the clouds settling upon him.”  The moral elements that constitute Gothic Architecture the savageness, naturalism, rigidity, grotesqueness, changefulness as well as the redundance did explicitly  mesmerise me and I found it extremely difficult to extrapolate  the order of importance of these characteristics on this building and its serene setting.

The building was impressively designed and built in 1866 by James Trubshawe in the Victorian Gothic architecture and is situated in Ganeshkhind, Pune. Its specialty is the 100-foot tower rising high piling stones one above the other in the most rhythmic manner. The building stands head and shoulder above all as the finest building for a Governor and has a Council Hall big enough for a Parliament of Western India.

Like a smart story teller Prof. Kanvinde narrated the story associated with this building and how it was picturised in the movie 22 June 1897, by Shankar Nag and Nachiket Patwardhan based on real life incidents. The story of the day that Walter Charles Rand, Special Officer for Plague in Pune, who invited the wrath of Pune residents for his atrocities, was assaulted by the Chapheker brothers while he was returning from the Government house after attending  the Queen’s coronation. With great exhilaration I could place the characters and incidents in this real life location, while he was narrating the story.

My excitement further heightened when I was told that my dear old Delhi friend and SPA classmate Abha is doing its conservation works. I am publishing a few photographs I could take on that day for everyone to enjoy this grand poetry written in stone.

I hope you enjoyed…

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