Letters To A Young Architect

by Christopher Benninger

  I am not a postmodernist. I look back with nostalgia to a modernist tradition filled with Wright, Le Corbusier, Alto, Kahn, Sert and other expressionists. Modernism was hijacked by bureaucrats and commercial developers to save and make money, and this boorishness was then appropriated by the postmodernists as their antithesis. The postmodernists have misrepresented modernism in order to appear ‘new’ to a gullible public, when in fact they are all guilty of an ongoing degradation of architecture. I insist that the roots of modern architecture lie in social purposes, in spatial movement, in nature, in urbanism, in technology and in visual and mental stimulation. Let me quickly look at several small design studies at the Mahindra College which have their own poetry, are aggressive pieces of art, but don’t yell and scream for attention.

  The Mahadwara

  The Mahadwara, or ‘grand entry’, has its own unique shape and mass, much like the entrances to Egyptian hypostyles along the Nile. A directionality is set up within a complex composition, adding a ‘sense of place’ to the campus. It sets one in motion, establishes a landmark, fixes a cardinal point and lays out an axis. One enters along the auspicious north-south axis. The central Academic Quadrangle is like the inner ring of Jambudweepa in a mandala, and the various structures are like the rings of sacred islands spread out in the oceans of salt water, ghee, milk and honey. The portal thus takes on meaning from its greater role in a meaning system. By itself, it would be just a folly.

  The Spanish Steps Amphitheater

  The Amphitheater is a link on the north-south axis between the Academic Quadrangle and the Multipurpose Hall. This interlocking space is divided by a wall, placing a ramp behind it with cutouts to peep through. Young people like to look at each other, and to be looked at. They are at an age where physical beauty and beautiful ideas vie with one another for attention. It is like the Spanish Steps in Rome which are always crowded with young people sitting about. A college campus must address this urge to ‘be seen’ and ‘to see’, as it is an important aspect of personality development. It makes the experience of architecture very personal and very real. Perhaps only the Greeks understood this. Steps are more than a way of going up or down. They are an event. The Amphitheater is a popular venue for informal speeches, debates and drama presentations. Such elements are ‘land-locked beaches’ where people can gather to sun themselves in the winter.

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  Site Plan

  LEGEND:

  1. Mountain Road from Valley

  2. Entrance (Mahadwara)

  3. Science Center

  4. Administration Building

  5. Academic Quadrangle

  6. Library

  7. Art’s Center

  8. Multipurpose Hall

  9. Catering Center

  10. Pathway

  11. Play Field

  12. Forest Land

  13. Swimming Pool

  14. Students’ Center

  15. Residential Cluster

  The Multipurpose Hall

  This space is used for yoga, dance, music, drama, lectures, examinations and convocations. The high ceiling with 160 small coffers set within ten larger ones generates a hierarchy. There are ten skylights in the system. The result has a honeycomb effect, articulating the larger area into human scale modules. The four towers housing mechanical equipment, the sloped roofs over the verandahs and other elements reflect the dramatic landscape, and tie this large structure with the theme of the campus. All of these elements are deployed effectively to break down the mass, on a lower elevation, keeping the roof-line below the level of the adjoining building profile.

  The Student Center

  The design is based on a folded retaining wall, which holds the hill slope. The wall is composed of six vertical light shafts reaching up into the sky. Each shaft holds a room, or large niche, for activities. The harsh basalt stone wall is intersected by an entrance porch. Inside, a folded sheet of glass separates these rooms from a generous verandah, which frames a dramatic view of the Sahyadri mountains. Large skylights are cupped in the stone shafts, such that they follow the arch of the sun moving from dawn to dusk.

  Aerial view of the Campus located in the cool western Sahyadri Hills

  The Anjali Anand Art Center

  While I belong to the Rationalist School of design, I want to extract tremendous variety out of very logical paradigms. The three studios of the Art Center fly out from a central courtyard like the huge wings of a mysterious, prehistoric bird, building up to a crescendo the visual gymnastics of the campus, yet maintaining a very logical organizational fabric. The studios are used for multi-media work – painting, print-making, and sketching. There is an office, a store room, a small pottery court and a kiln tucked into the composition.

  The studios are made up of tandem walls culminating in grand glass windows, letting in tempered north light. These studios are joined to a low verandah, which wraps around a planted courtyard, stepping down to the mountain edge. Though the larger window masses are fabricated from modular pieces, each one appears to be a single glass sheet.

  The result is a very powerful, apparently free form; composition which epitomizes my thoughts at the time, more than any other structure on the campus. It is functionally tight, while being visually free-flowing.

  My work at the Mahindra College carries on a ‘language of build’ evolved over several decades. But the patterns and experiences are radically new. These spaces and forms provide a community with an underlying public bond – a ‘collective conscious.’ The recognition of a collective conscious is one of the intangibles that breathe life into true architecture. It turns spaces into ‘places’.

  When I build in stone I place myself at the mercy of my craftsmen. Though uneducated in the arts, they have a sixth sense about the meaning of their work, good or bad. They are not fools to mindlessly place stones one upon the other. They also seek meaning. When they leave the site in the evening, they always pause and turn around to contemplate what they have done. If they smile in satisfaction, it sends a bolt of joy through an architect’s being. Though they are simple people, they know the difference between ugliness and beauty; between trivia and the profound!

  NOTE : The Mahindra United World College of India has carved a niche for itself by winning the American Institute of Architects’ 2000 Award for Excellence in architecture, sponsored by Business Week and Architectural Record journals. The award is given both to an architect and a client who jointly understand how effective design solutions support progress.

  (An earlier version of this article was published in A+D, issue dated 12th December 2004)

  Aerial view of the Academic Quadrangle from the Southern Side

  Letter

  De-schooling Architecture

  (an interview by Brinda Gill in Inside - Outside)

  “I wanted a different structure…one that would be like a monument without being large and arrogant,” said Dr. Gunvant Oswal, founder of The Center for Life Sciences, Health and Medicine (CLSHM), that treats brain and neuro-developmental disorders, especially in children, based on a holistic system of medicine. From 1968 to 2000, Dr. Oswal operated out of a 800 sq ft clinic in Pune’s overcrowded Bhawani Peth; however as word of the efficacy of his alternative system of medicine spread, he felt he needed a larger space to carry out research and treat children with special needs. For two years Dr. Oswal looked for an appro
priate site, a place where children and their parents would feel at ease. Finally he found a quiet site on a hill in Kondhwa with a sweeping view of the city and adjoining forest land.

  Then there was the search for an architect who would design a premises to suit his practice and patients. Seeing my design of The Mahindra United World College on the outskirts of Pune, Dr. Oswal approached me, carrying with him the tome Frank Lloyd Wright, a Visual Encyclopedia, with Post-it Notes marking pages featuring different architectural elements that he wished to have in his Center. His commitment to his cause of treating special children, not turning away any child for the lack of finances, and the fact that I was also deeply interested in Wright’s architecture, set the pace for the project. Dr. Oswal invested his life savings into the Center, supported whole-heartedly by his wife, as well as his daughter Pooja and son-in-law Shrirang, both doctors, who also practice at the Center.

  I realized this was a project for very special children – eager to live and to learn; lively, loving and observant, but deprived of the normal joys of childhood, growing up and coming of age. My first intention was to reach out to them, rather than to draw them into a dull, rectangular, monumental institution which says: “You don’t belong here! You don’t belong in this world!” So I wanted to make a very different kind of building, but not in a patronizing way that mocks mental disabilities. I had to allow myself – the child in me – to emerge, to let go and to speak out. I had to de-educate myself from Cartesian ways of thinking: the X and the Y axis; the squares, rectangles and boxes, which for ‘normal’ children are called SCHOOLING. I realized that I too had been taught in squares and boxes; taught to think in parallel lines! It was very easy to stick to that tried and tested path, but the result would be a box!

  By thus ‘letting go, in De-schooling myself of the Architecture I had learnt, I traveled a trajectory which intersected that of my user group. This is how I very consciously took on the Behemoth of Cartesian Thinking and tried to break it down the way an ancient army would demolish a fortress wall: battering the closed door of thought; pulling down the walls of false knowledge; destroying the culture of thinking which would put me into a box! In my struggle to de-school myself, I could come up to the beautiful, uncluttered level of existence of these special children where they can see things putatively, naturally and in the essence. I realized that seeing things generically, getting a glimpse of the essence of things, is seeing beauty!

  One day, after spending hours discussing the project over several meetings, looking at my proposed tile roof-courtyard scheme, Dr. Oswal asked, “But how does the wind travel through this structure?” The question itself led to the design solution. In the end it was the westerly winds which ordered the structure into a series of pathways for wind to travel in, which we would also walk in. Air and people would move in the same channels which, like the wind, would meander about. The high walls on the south would provide shade from the southern sun. There would be pocket gardens and secluded places. There would be plantation here and there, and each space would integrate with some outdoor space. The angular wind walls would form a honeycomb of indoor and outdoor spaces and places, generating a lot of energy.

  A hint to the architectural approach of the complex is offered at the main entrance, where flower beds seem to define the compound and the main boundary wall is set back from the road. In Europe institutions are filled with people in the evenings. I wished to offer a similar expression. So the main wall is set within the premises and there are low, broad steps for people and passers-by to sit. Beyond the steps, transparent gates offer entry into the complex, graced with pristine white walls creating a sense of peace and space. White walls are something I have always loved since my youth in the Aegean Sea where the azure waters, shaded white walls, a touch of blue woodwork and shadows everywhere had grabbed my attention. I felt in this project – a small one – stone might be dark and oppressive. So I used white walls. Dr. Oswal shared this concern and the outcome followed naturally.

  The ground floor serves all the needs of patients – reception room, waiting areas, doctors’ clinics, dispensary, green spaces to relax, a pantry, an area for patients and their parents to dine, a lotus pond, statues of the Buddha as well as of a mother and child in open spaces. These spaces are interconnected as the building is organized along two meandering west-east movement lanes that offer shade and catch the cool westerly breezes and direct them through the structure. The first floor has a bedroom, a guest bedroom, terrace and lobby; while the basement, with direct access from the roadside entry, as well as a ramp, is a venue for seminars. Along with the pockets of flowers and foliage within and around the structure (including a variety of indigenous and exotic plant varieties), the all-natural flooring of Jaisalmer, Dholpur, Red Agra and Kotah stones makes for a tranquil ambience. The gentle mist of water droplets sprayed on plants cools the temperature, offers a soothing sight and its soft murmur calms the nerves. The bonding with nature is conveyed in the slightly sloped water spouts that return rain water to the earth.

  A walk through the building reveals spaces merging with one another. The idea was that each outdoor space would relate to at least two or three indoor spaces! Each indoor space, in turn, would relate on its sides with sequential outdoor spaces. Thus, there evolved a number of sequences, links, chains of experiences which would always be differently iterated, depending on the way you moved in the labyrinth. The skylights, the light wells, the light courts are vertical and horizontal means to achieve this. The columns are triangular, placed to turn spaces into arcades and integrate the spaces as one. They are fitted with small, colored ceramic tiles to enliven them and make them playful.

  Apart from designing a center that would be child-friendly, there is also a commitment to being eco-friendly. No wood is used in the design, solar panels warm the water; and most importantly, the spaces designed and materials used minimize dependence on electricity. Tall glass windows bring in natural light, breeze and outside views. There is hardly any glass on the outside. Users are not inconvenienced when the electricity goes off, because the rooms are all full of natural breezes and light. What do we need fossil fuel energy for? Maybe the gadgets that clutter our modern life need power. But the architecture here is ‘energy free.’ This can always be accomplished if one leaves openings on several sides; uses light shafts and wells; mingles nature in courts and walkways. These things come naturally in India where the climate is salubrious.

  (Interview by Brinda Gill in Inside-Outside, July 2007)

  Letter

  Themes and Motifs in Architecture: The Dilemma of Style

  One of the characteristics of being human, a characteristic not found in other species, is the ability to use symbols and signs to manipulate concepts within one’s mind. Here I do not mean using symbols for the mere communication of ideas. We go beyond the intellectual life of fish and birds and formulate ideas, concepts and constructs.

  Our ability to conceive things is critical to human development. Symbols are used in human thought to stand for things which are not present. Words are symbols we constantly use. Imagination is the human function of making images in the mind.

  Human beings can imagine situations which are different from those before their eyes. A child can remember things not present, but only later in its development can it manipulate them, even adding components it has invented but never seen. We explore a fantasy world and experiment with the rational world in our minds.

  As architects we are interested in the rational exploitation of future experiences. We want to visualize in our minds different images and alternative situations in terms of built form, which respond to the same given conditions (site, regulations, program, geo-climatic context, budget, etc.). Though the constraints are a limiting factor, the variety of images is great.

  Our language of build is full of symbols which allow us to create fabrics of build in great variety.


  Caught in a world of vast choice, how does a designer go about deciding which mental image to pursue through an investment of effort in design? Unfortunately, like a child, most designers can deal intellectually only with things they can remember having actually seen, or something in front of them. They have not developed the ability to manipulate absent symbols. Creating new symbols – perhaps a third stage of imagination – is beyond their capability. Only education can overcome this gap.

  The above lacuna underlies the need for style. Styles present the designer with a ready-made ‘kit’ of images to choose from, in which different assemblages appear ‘new’ or ‘different’ according to how imaginatively they are used. At best the designer puts together in his imagination bits and pieces of absent things that he has already seen assembled according to simple rules, usually seen in magazines.

  Post-modernism is the currently fashionable style for the simple-minded. It is a system of symbols (Greek pediments, Classical columns, Palladian rose windows, ‘period’ windows, etc.) which can be thrown together to make ‘interesting’ façades. Even images from Disney World have been recruited into the lexicon of ready-made, post-modern iconography. Whatever weakness this style may have is overcome by the application of expensive materials (granite, Italian marble, mirrored glass, tinted metals). A kind of make-up, like lipstick, is applied as if buildings, like an unattractive person, can be ‘treated’ for defects according to the occasion, or the time of day.