Charles Correa. Charles Correa

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СКАЧАТЬ clean slate can, in time, become quite meaningless—even nihilistic—precisely because it does not carry any baggage, or have any umbilical cord. Quite soon, the brilliantly rational becomes the merely commonsensical, and eventually dwindles into the mundane. In architecture, the frisson of the tabula rasa becomes the stupefying banality of one more high-rise glass box.

      In the process, our lives become impoverished. Ivan Illich has written eloquently about the vital conceptual difference between the cleansing waters of ancient myth and the H2O that is pumped hydraulically through our municipal pipelines. The prosaic architecture we create today is not due just to the banality of the forms we construct, but also due to the mundane briefs we address (which in turn, I guess, reflect the kind of lives we all lead). Would the magnificent kund at Modhera have the same impact on us if it were built for some other purpose—say a drive-in theatre? The form might be identical, but where would be the axis mundi connecting the mythic powers of the water below to the sky above? The sacred realm is a crucial part of our environment, but over the last few decades we have increasingly blanked it out of our consciousness. The price we have paid is incalculable.

      III

      Today, perhaps because of modern communication systems, there are many diverse cultures, lifestyles and value systems simultaneously operative in almost every society. This state of affairs—perceived to be unique to our times—causes confusion and despair. Yet, was life in India really much different in earlier centuries? Perhaps because of its pluralistic construct, Hinduism has always had an astonishing ability to absorb diverse myths—to reinvent them, so to speak, so that they gain new currency. This ability has been of decisive importance to India’s history. With time as man’s perception of his context changed (the cosmos replaced by the char-bagh, the Garden of Paradise by the Age of Reason and so on), the new myths had to be absorbed, ingested, internalized—and finally transformed into a new architecture. India offers countless examples of such transformations—we shall examine just two.

      The first is the Diwan-i-Khas, the audience hall for nobles built by the Mughal emperor Akbar in Fatehpur Sikri. The structure is a small cube, in the centre of which is a monumental column connected to the corners by four bridges. It is generally believed that Akbar used this structure for special audiences. Akbar sat on top of the column with his principal advisers at the far end of each of the bridges. The visitor came in at the lower level and spoke about the problem he faced, or the favour he sought. Akbar could then summon any one of his advisers for conference, without the others intriguing with each other. If, as Le Corbusier said, a house is ‘a Machine for Living’, then surely the Diwan-i-Khas is a magnificent machine for Governing an Empire.

      But it is much more than this. For though the square plan came with Akbar from Central Asia (the square being inherent in the deep-structure of the human mind), to the Hindu craftsmen constructing the building, the square would have represented a mandala, i.e., the model of the cosmos. To them, the presence of the central column must have been devastating, for in the centre of the mandala in which bindu, the source of all energy, is located, there was not Brahman but the emperor Akbar himself. Furthermore, in case anybody missed the point, the column he sat on is clearly Buddhist-Hindu in form and, as such, cannot help but signify the centre of the Buddhist-Hindu universe.

      We perceive, then, that the Diwan-i-Khas is a transformation of staggering metaphysical and political impact. In it Akbar was using the myths of Hinduism and Buddhism to proclaim that a new political order had come to town. Yet, he did so not with a gigantic, intimidating structure but through a small, human-scaled edifice. He was acting with great finesse, almost with love—as though he wanted to heal the differences that separate the religions (as in the Din-i-Ilahi he synthesized).

      The second example of transformation is the plan of the city of Jaipur, built in the 18th century in Rajasthan. Jaipur represents a transformation of another kind. Maharaja Jai Singh, who founded the city, embarked on a truly extraordinary venture. He sought to combine his passion for the rationalistic tenets of contemporary astronomy with the most ancient and sacred of his beliefs. The plan of the city is based on a nine-square mandala corresponding to the navagraha, or the nine planets. The void in the central square was used for the palace garden. Because of the presence of a hill, a corner square was moved diagonally across.

      The Diwan-i-Khas at Fatehpur Sikri: a machine for running an empire

      Section

      At the centre . . . sits Akbar

      Jaipur’s plan is worthy of admiration and emulation: for the clarity of its main arteries, the efficiency of its water-management system, the understanding of essential socio-economic patterns—and above all, for the startling relevance to us today regarding the transformation between past and future, between material and metaphysical worlds, between microcosm and macrocosm, that Maharaja Jai Singh sought to synthesize.

      The manthan (churning generated by seemingly conflicting systems of thoughts) is not just a contemporary disturbance; it has always existed, providing one of the prime sources of energy for man’s will to act. At times, even when the mythic values and images remain unchanged, this energy is generated because the building technology alters. When such a change occurs, the architect must transform, reinvent, the old images in terms of the new technology. What he must not do is merely transfer the old mythic images despite their irrelevance to the changed technology—a process which is debilitating both to the architect and to the society for which he builds. The distinction between transfer and transformation is of fundamental importance. For instance, all of Le Corbusier’s buildings clearly are the work of a Mediterranean man, yet in none of them did the architect ever use a sloping tiled roof. Instead, Le Corbusier seems to have taken the age-old images and values of the Mediterranean and reinvented their expression in the 20th century technology of concrete and glass. This is true transformation. It places architecture where it rightfully belongs: at the intersection of culture, technology and human aspiration.

      Another eloquent example of transformation is the work of Alvar Aalto in Finland, but I want to particularly draw your attention to Frank Lloyd Wright and the truly extraordinary houses he created around the turn of the century in the mid-western states of the USA. It would seem that in that oeuvre, Wright singlehandedly invented the way America was going to live for the next hundred years. The builders’ houses constructed in the suburbia over the last four or five decades are really just hand-me-down versions of Wright’s brilliant prototypes, with all the compulsive imagery intact: the two steps up to the raised dining area, the carport, the picture window, and so forth. How did Wright do it? Not because of any dependence on historic ‘quotes’ or ‘references’ (surely architects who study too much history are condemned to repeat it?) but because he intuitively understood what Americans wanted to become.

      In the US, another great generator of populist mythology has been the Hollywood studios. ‘There is no myth known to the human race,’ wrote Gore Vidal, albeit ironically, ‘which did not achieve its apotheosis in the Hollywood films of the 30s and 40s.’ Certainly, to me at least, the recent waterfront renewal schemes in Boston, Baltimore and New York read as transformations of old MGM musicals like Meet Me in St. Louis and Singin’ in the Rain: an innocent all-singing, all-dancing America for which perhaps the majority of citizens yearn. Thus does architecture recycle myth. To build similar waterfront scenes in London or Yokohama would be mere superficial transfer—for Gene Kelly and his ilk are not part of the mythology there. But in downtown America one could argue for their legitimacy.

      Indian cinema has produced its mythic images as well—images that seem to haunt the collective СКАЧАТЬ