Time flies and we fly with it.
A year in the DRL glimpsed through in a blink of an eye. Opinions changed, thoughts moulded and what have I gained? This passage of mine is going to address 3 agendas starting with my experience of education in architecture followed by an analysis on contemporary education and finally revealing a known truth of my understanding of architecture. I must confess that through this article there might be harsh comments but I feel it necessary to say it as the truth is always uglier than the reality projected.
Opportunities
The Design Research Laboratory at the AA DRL was indeed one of the most diverse programs i have known so far with opportunities and liberties (in the right sense) which widens up the horizon of people from various nationalities who come together and work collectively. And this experience however is combined with intense workshops and one big thesis agenda in groups of 4 that one chooses. The platform this year was not just my project but in total 5 different studios addressing different issues. During this we used the latest available machines i.e. laser cutting, cnc milling, 3d print and at times building your own to present ideas and concepts which could project the possibilities of buildings/systems through research from the studio, calling engineers and flashing online Google searches.
Education and youth
However, through all this I was left with more curiosity than ever with a simple question – What does Masters in Architecture really mean? Or does it mean anything at all more than ‘awareness’. It’s not the AA i am pointing at but in this period of 16 months in London, I was fortunate to find time and meet the MBA’s and PHD’s. It can be summed up into 2 categories – a> people doing the study to reach higher position at work and b> people in mission to gain higher intellectual status in terms of competitive argumentation and also to receive awareness of the availability of material around, both being equally justified for a contemporary human survival 2010. However the world we know today from iPods, F1 cars and the fantastic buildings which we click touristy pictures of, did not create from either of the above categories of thought. It came from the 3rd group of people who believed in physically experimenting and working through their ambitions or chasing a belief. They are neither leaders nor followers but people who are not scared to test... the test of reality. Mysteriously most inventions came from the sudden accidents at work as the mind cannot invent thoughts, it has a potential to only reconfigure existing. But yet look at all the things we have built around us. The credit goes to constant tests, obnoxious beliefs and accidents than the individual mind as portrayed in books, cinema, news and institutions around us - they share a common value of either entertainment or employment.
Patience and architecture
Architecture is not entertainment! It has to do more...it is an art that reveals a truth- the truth of our existence, the truth of a material, the truth of structure and also the truth of a belief no matter how crazy it is. It is an art that goes beyond a canvas, an art that needs all real sides and not one photogenic angle for sale, an art that creates reality but yet is compassionate enough to accommodate the user and deliver spaces we never experienced before. It has every need to be REAL!
Every building is not architecture, yet they all will exist and rightly so as society needs both- construction and architecture. But, one needs to honestly choose and if the choice is architecture then the universe is still unexplored. It requires a personal belief in the kind of work, time and patience to follow it through the reality of being (real buildings). Universities/institutions are only platforms of awareness and if I did become aware of something in past 16 months ....it wasn’t architecture but understanding that I must find my own pace, rhythm and vocabulary...To follow-up something that i believe in – 'there is no such thing as architecture but what will always exist is ‘my architecture’ through my work – on earth'.
“Who so shall be a man, must be a non conformist, Nothing is at last sacred, but the integrity of your own mind”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
That was a little brief to get introduced to the terminology - widely used in the contemporary design strategies. If one was to define the resultant of such equations, it is to provide a definition to complex forms seen in nature that can measure the ‘change’ in form, function or of any nature by defining them as variable parameters.
a defined curve based on parametric equations - butterfly curve. -source:wikipedia
If the list is endless the how can we select the parameters for designing a city as we have constraints?
A city exists in an interrelationship between various parameters; social interaction spaces, economical development, availability of land, number of people and sometimes from its relation to other cities (e.g. recent the hit on European cities due o collapse in American leverage system). The Design parameters although could be restricted to more physicality with a data driven approach as a constant feedback mechanism can alter the design time and again to produce a set of changes that in turn allows the city to be more responsive than the earlier formats of city design which were driven by the zoning laws and basic initial masterplans (city of Chandigarh).
Parametric Urbanism - AADRL[ii]
In the initial 19 hundreds when first cities were designed with Howards idea of city design (on a clean slate of land all over the world) was realised due to a very necessity in the change in social structure. The origin of automobile as a form of transport forced to enhance the road width which completely changed the profile of the cities from the medieval era which had narrow streets and 3 storied houses. Today it seems no different to see cities zoned out in various housing, commercial and industrial sectors which during the early emergence from medial towns looked as huge surprises. Similarly, parametric urbanism today gives a similar impression that it is advanced from the traditional planning of zoning which works with techniques on a data feedback system are by far more efficient than the planning of today’s cities as the data inputs can give a more intelligent and efficient behaviour of overall cities performance. However the question of realising these designs is not a question as much to design but rather a question of social necessity –
‘For the Garden cities the invention like the automobiles and industries brought about the major switch. What is going to drive the contemporary city design system to be replaced by parametric urban design schemes if they were to be realised on clean a slate again? ‘
“...all you touch and all you see, is all your life will ever be.
run rabbit run dig that hole, forget the sun
and when at last the work is done, don’t sit down
its time to dig another one...“
Breathe, Dark side of the moon- Pink Floyd
-Subharthi Guha
[i] source: wikipedia
[ii] AADRL.net
Technology is everywhere in use and is inconsequential of you adapting it or not, as the matter of fact, it is a part of the civilization in so many ways that its effect is seen in a every household computer today that is faster than the one that took Neil Armstrong to the moon.
From music , art and architecture, there have been drastic steps of reformation in the global saga of understanding and appreciation of these art forms. The differences are stunning. The music industry went through interesting steps reforming the commercial zone by introducing electronic media which produced tracks much faster and used various experimental sounds. It revealed a new world of progressive house and others that have taken over the commercial industry of music completely (almost).
But lately it is observed that due to the increase in network and piracy, the commercial structure has taken steps to introduce live performances of a few tracks in public after the launch of the albums to regain profit. One might argue here that the necessity of such a step and in a direction back to the live performances, maybe not so much like the rock era of the 80’s, but to a certain extent gives a touch of humaneness back to the field of music. Hence the band picks a few tracks....practises it for a live show(with real instruments) and performs it in public which somehow is different from the original but keeps the people interested to look upon them and produce something for the promoter. From the music of the traditional bands with musical objects we now have a parallel line of electronic ones producing tracks at a much faster and effective rate. The participation of people in concert or the idea of seeing a live performance cannot be ruled out. The use of real instruments thus is inevitable, however could have been actually done with if seen theoretically.
In contrast to music, architecture has a problem. Where music can deal with in in-between condition where it holds both the live stage performances with real instruments as well as electrical objects, architecture always needs to produce in reality, outside the box of the computer- for a constant scale – the human. This new method in architecture has the capacity to produce forms that are unimaginable to the human creativity as the brain can only calculate or imagine certain number of dimensions at a time. The computer methods show results of forms and possibilities within a range which are incapable of the human understandings (like the large digit multiplication done by a calculator).
Now, when we look at designs that have such bottom up approaches which allows us to use control and produce the final product as per the changes and drifts introduced, the act of live performance in scale is still relevant in architecture just like the music shows that need to be made with real instruments for a complete electronic album. The architecture hence has or needs to look at two constantly new scales with probability of using the human vision in the larger picture scale, maybe is just a necessity that cannot be ruled out. Although the other techniques would help in creating objects of design but the idea of space however would might have to remain in control of the mind based design approaches which take into account the human scale, structure, methodology and other perception of senses in consideration.
Here we have a situation today with a constant conflict between which of the tracks to move on....technology .....or the strokes of the mind based designs. Being on the edge is a critical condition in which the decision on that point of time could affect changes and history for a period of time, although one would argue that over a longer period (1000 yrs) of time the consequences of the performance is irrelevant of decisions. However, design has been achieved in both terms but the concern of architecture is the scale that cannot and should not be altered. Computer aided design does have an immense potential in object design however which do not comply with cost effectiveness and sometimes as decorative pieces like the screensaver and sculptural. But the stroke of the brush of a painter .... indeed cannot be replaced.
-Subharthi Guha
2 January 2009
View of our solar system from inside our Galaxy
All the dreams we have ever dreamt, the wildest thoughts that have ever occurred; from the largest of cities ever built to the biggest machines that are made for use; including you and me; are all confined to our planet earth. Beyond which lies a universe... unknown, which has never been experienced. We have made constant attempts to understand what lies beyond, for over 10 thousand years.
We cannot appreciate the climax of a story unless they have built it up a thought through the entire movie. It creates an impression and hence the climax becomes an emotion. The Taj Mahal for example is a beautiful building but probably more so because of the story of a great king who built a monument in memory of his loving queen. One needs to build a memory to translate an emotion. The new born child has no emotions he just responds to his senses but as time goes by, he has memories and then the understanding of the emotions follow. An old man carries a lot of thought and associates it with anything he sees as he has gathered a lot of memory through time. The mind is then our SIXTH SENSE that once opened lets you into the world of emotions.
Some spend their whole life gathering emotions while others live to recall a few good moments. A few travel over the Himalayas to train the mind in order to understand both the rationale and the subjects beyond it. In many parts of the world still today people leave their homes and follow the path of the Buddha, to become one perhaps.
A picture of the earth from Apollo 17
Subharthi Guha
14th July 2008
