Shree: Form as being in the world

 

Shree: Form as being in the world

The idea of modern architecture is about coming to terms with search of a form that can convey or express the essence of changing/ changed times by various factors. These factors seem to be external as well as internal. In this, the search for the form is a general idea, the search for which, is an individual process of synthesis of the context.

What constitutes change? Colonialism seem to have resulted in formation of industries, mass migrations, displacement from place, changing attitudes towards cities, way of life, production, relationship with work and education and leisure and healthcare and this change has accelerated over the years. This has resulted in newer requirements for which architectural solutions were required (hence new building types) and by this we also mean new design programs, new sequences, new patterns and new functions. Technology and the process of using technology also necessitated changes as compared to more hands on ways of doing. What seems to have changed is the meaning and the sense of scale, proportions, textures, volumes or massing and through this change the impact on the psychological effects.

To make  a dwelling previously, either at a collective or an individual level meant response to the territory as a whole  (making of a place), memories, collective wisdom, hands on doing and so on – the idea of form making has changed drastically (or forced to change).

Every change necessitates finding different ways of “belonging” in this world. Some architects may have taken the path of industrial aesthetics, others have abstracted principles of design, still others have played with mystical ways of responding, yet others have interpreted lessons of primitive architecture.

We are also talking about the role of architect – having to deal with a ‘site’ (instead of working among the community), architect who maybe from a different place, who is required to deal with universal idea of technology, and who has a different program to conceive. Perhaps he is required to ‘deliver a solution’ rather than express a mode of living.

In all the years of modernism and movements that have followed modernism, there has been a backlash as well and the discourse concerning social dimensions, cultural sensitivity, climate, humane architecture, textural qualities, poetics in architecture, universal feelings, empathy seem to gravitate back into the search for a form. This is a discourse that will continue. Placing feelings, empathy, hands on etc as the core of making has been prevalent in non industrial and pre modern cultures because the sensitivities seem different. At the core is the issue of sensitivity of perceiving ‘space’.

And space is not just an architectonic term, but has human, cultural, traditional, mythical, transcendental dimensions as well.

We live in a strange world of extreme fragmentation and a ‘form’ that can address this experience maybe appropriate for today. A form is a concern/ intent of being in the world – it is not merely architectonic expression.

Hari Om.