Primitive, Vernacular and Urban

These thoughts are inspired from reading ‘House, Form and Culture’ by Amos Rapoport.

In the book, it is mentioned that societies have been categorized into primitive, vernacular and industrialized sections. None of these terms are derogative - they only suggest a process of conceiving or imagining a space of living and the process of getting it constructed. Each society conceives things differently.

In India and in many parts of the world, all three kinds of societies exist. By looking at these societies with a critical lens, there is a lot to learn from each other. We often make a terrible mistake of assuming that the “urban” situation and the definition of ‘development’ is the only way to progress ahead. The urban situation is marked by super specialization of trades, extremely high premium of novelty, individual vocabulary of value systems, abuse of resources, exclusivity of urban spaces. There is nothing left to agree on!

The other two societies by varying degrees constitute a shared notion of life, optimum use of resources, multiple uses of spaces, non recognition of novelty, incremental changes by trial and error, direct and simple approach to use of technique , material and climatic constraints. In effect, the response to architecture is unsophisticated and non self conscious. Where did people learn such skills? The answer lies in dependence on geography or the necessity of survival. Years of trials and errors have optimized a response towards architecture which we term as history or culture. By looking at the response, we come to decode some philosophical values of dependence on Nature, sustenance, respect and dignity of work and so on. These responses shown by people are so direct, that they may not be even aware of their profound values! To learn architecture of these peoples, is to understand their complete life patterns of agriculture, animal husbandry, social structures, art and culture – these are all interrelated. Art is not done only for the sake of art – they don’t sing only for the sake of a soothing tone and they don’t build just for the heck of it or for some commercial gain. Hence, all such expressions of their lives are very serious/ unsophisticated and pure. Another thing to be noticed in such societies is the concern of the past to shape the present and lead to a stable future. There is no rupture anywhere and the whole thing seems continuing and evolving slowly. All these tendencies indicate a process of imagining and doing architecture. The ‘form’ of architecture is shaped by such forces. It will be useful to realize that visual form (and its discussion) may not be the focus while being engrossed in the process of conceiving and doing architecture. The visual form (and its visual aesthetics and spatial experience) is a direct product of socio-cultural-climatic-technological factors. The definition of contextual response means this.

In urban setting however, much effort is misled by focusing on the form and judging the book by its cover. There is no question of considering socio-cultural obligations as well, as each person in the urban scenario acts like a total stranger and high end technology has already made the consideration of climatic forces redundant. Adding to the disconnect, the recent dependence on Artificial Intelligence has made it all the more possible to implant any kind of an idea at the fastest possible speed onto the local soil. So the imagery of architecture in urban setting does not necessarily present an honest response to the local social, climatic and technological constraints.

It is not my intention to criticize urban scenario and to romanticize rural scenarios. Changes are bound to happen. However, we must realize what is at stake here and what fundamental values need to be retained and continued into the future while conceiving and doing architecture? The answer to this question will offer clues to connect the primitive-vernacular-urban conception models.