Letters To A Young Architect Read online

  What I am presenting to you is the idea that we are all one, but also that we are many.

  We are all one because we share binding values. We are many because we each have our own personality and our sense of destiny. But, again, we share optimistic hopes. Asked to paint a picture of paradise, we may all paint the same image, though in different tones and hues.

  Values, idealism and anything that hints at an ideology is unpopular and even suspect today. It is suspect because effeteness and mercantile mindsets have become our gods. But we are not fools or idiots; we are professionals. To be professionals we must ‘profess’ values.

  What I am presenting to you is the idea that we are all one, but also that we are many.

  What are these values?

  I wish to propose a few generic beliefs, themes and causes that have taken us all on an exciting journey. I am doing this with the explicit hope that students and young architects may see sense in what I say and join our mission and carry the journey forward.

  In the ‘letters’ that follow I would like to explore this journey, and then look into the future. I believe that in the past and in the future, we are all there. Like a flame from a candle that lights the next candle, the body changes but the spirit remains the same, and the journey continues. What is important is that our mission becomes more explicit and clear from generation to generation. It is important that we all speak with sure voices. It is important that we have an impact on the society around us. These ‘letters’ are passed on with that one purpose in mind. Let me introduce them by laying down the values I learned from my teachers, which are elements in what I have to say.

  They include attitudes toward truth, objectivity and equality; toward justice, a worldview and respect for regional contexts; love of liberty, fraternity and modern ideas; trusteeship and planning; embracing knowledge and openness to new ideas.

  Truth and Objective Reality

  Underlying all our work and fundamental to our personalities is our commitment to TRUTH. By truth I don’t mean a middle-class sense of right and wrong, but an intellectual commitment that ‘what we see to be true is true’. This commitment extends through a faith in the empirical method and a distain for superstition, nostalgia and romanticism. It means going to the field and using life as a laboratory for learning. In the end it means acting on OBJECTIVE REALITY. This is what is called intellectual honesty and it first involves a dialogue with ourselves, assuring us that what we speak is factual and rational. If there is one value we all share, it is a commitment to truth. It demands introspection. It makes us ask, ‘How can architecture be dishonest, or honest?’ Do we believe what we speak? Are we true to ourselves? Can we see what we know?

  Equality

  The EQUALITY OF ALL LIVING THINGS, particularly human beings, is also fundamental. This can be distilled into a slogan (paraphrasing Marx): From each according to their abilities and to each according to their needs. I feel we all believe in some kind of social net that does not allow anyone to fall below a minimal level of dignified human existence. This means access to medical care, a minimum sustaining diet and ‘humane’ shelter. It also means access to opportunities to develop ourselves to do things in life that bring us joy. It means that everyone has equal right and access to opportunities that exist within society. This makes us ask: is there a ‘social contract’ between an architect and society that transcends the client-architect relationship? Can architecture and urban planning further the cause of equality amongst all people? Can our design skills act as channels and paths of access and opportunity for others?

  Justice

  These values evoke a need for JUSTICE and FAIRNESS. A rule applied to one must be applied to all and there must be no exceptions to a rule meant for everyone. We have questioned whether it is ‘just’ to destroy the ecosystem in our own lifetime at the cost of future generations. We have asked if it is fair for one city to consume twenty times the energy of another. We have pondered over the excesses of a minority at the cost of a majority. These are concerns we all share. Do such values impinge on how we design humane settlements? Are they a part of our personal plan of things?

  World View

  The times we live in require us to have a WORLD VIEW and understand that we cannot survive in isolation. Be it climate change, sustainability, human rights, nuclear war, terrorism or trade, they affect all our shared global space. A sense of geography, history and culture must temper our passions and grant us love and understanding. We must respect diverse cultures and co-exist with many beliefs. Can we validate our own ideas without their being vetted by minds from many lands? Can we design habitats for others without an articulate world view? Can we understand our own reality without understanding the people around us?

  A sense of geography, history and culture must temper our passions and grant us love and understanding.

  Regional Context

  At the same time we have to build and to design contextually. We have to draw our inspiration from styles evolved from the past that have addressed climate, local materials, craftsmanship and culture. The design of any artifact begins with an understanding of ‘place’. How does context become the starting point of design? How do the functions reflect the culture of the users? Do the footpaths and public domains we create gift conviviality to their users? What lessons do we learn from the history of the site and of the people who will occupy our structures? How are we contributing to, or detracting from, the regional culture?

  Liberty

  Finally, I think each one of us demands our personal freedom and the LIBERTY to pursue our own fate, explore our own talents, and be ourselves in every creative manner possible. Many of my teachers fled oppression in Europe to be where they had a voice. Their diaspora in fear of oppression became my legacy of freedom. Liberty is also an attitude about the involvement and participation of the users of our works. How do we make our design processes more interactive and more participatory? How do our plans gift humanity more opportunities and choices? Do we see the trampling on the rights of one minority as a theft of freedom from us all? Do we see land grabbing and evictions as affronts to human dignity? Can we allow such things to happen in the name of city and urban design?

  Fraternity

  We have undergone a number of personal reincarnations, explored manifestations and lived different avatars in life’s search. What binds us together is a sense of FRATERNITY – sisterhood and brotherhood that attracts us and makes us want to come together. When I would meet my gurus these were, and are, the kinds of concepts that molded our dialogues and guided our thoughts. The strength of shared values gave us a sense of meaning and assurance. It kept us on a path. By sharing these ‘letters’, I want to expand our fraternal circle. I want each student to think of their life and their values. I want each student to become a teacher casting our gharana’s net much wider. To be a part of our fellowship, of our fraternity and our gharana, all one must do is to imbibe and promote the simple values I am outlining.

  Modern Ideas

  All of us on this path have been deeply concerned about and personally confronted with The Modern Era. This has been a time that took away dignity from the craftsperson; a time that turned self-sufficient homesteads into mono-cropped commercial fields; a time that pushed ill-prepared, illiterate people into chaotic cities. It is a time when a disproportionate share of the earth’s resources shifted into the hands of a few persons and agencies that lacked what Gandhiji called TRUSTEESHIP. Right from John Ruskin, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, through the Deutscher Werkbund, the Weimar School of Art, the Bauhaus, the CIAM, the Team 10 and the Delos Symposia, up until today, our mission has been to bring a better life to humanity. Do we see modern architecture as a mere style, or as a social commitment? Do we see architecture as an agent to enhance the human condition?

  Trusteeship

  We live in an era of greed and self-aggrand
izement. It is an era in which a person’s respect and social position is determined by their wealth, no matter what the methods of its acquisition. Good deeds are thrown to the wind. Perhaps the fundamental error of socialism was that it did not recognize greed as a generic human quality, but construed it as a symptom of freedom, or thought it drew its source from capitalism. The fundamental error of capitalism was that it has not accepted an ‘equal playing field’ as the basis of true competition and the rise of a meritocracy. Greed is in all of us. It is the darkness struggling with the light. Greed is in my nature and in yours.

  Perhaps the following ‘letters’ are my reaction to greed. They may help young architects take a stance on their own values during their difficult careers. We must understand that our talents and our wealth are only loaned to us, in trusteeship, to use toward the greater good.

  Planning

  The issue of the accumulation and distribution of wealth has been one that called for our attention and drew us to the planning of common resources and assets. To me planning is the study of stresses faced by different segments of society, and the rational distribution of investments, creation of incentives and enforcement of rules that alleviate society’s stresses. It is the logical allotment of available resources toward the equitable reduction of human stress. This may result in the creation of infrastructure, services, facilities and institutional modalities. It must result in a humane society.

  The word PLANNING has now taken on a new dimension. In 1971, when I started the School of Planning at Ahmedabad, it was all of these concepts and values that fired the new institution. We were no longer doing colored maps that designated land use zones. We were looking at minimum needs, availability of goods and services and links between human needs and their fulfillment. The word ‘design’ took on a new dimension.

  Architecture and urban planning took on the character of a social tool. All of us saw these disciplines as vehicles of social change. We saw these professional callings as paths to the discovery of truth; for the analysis of objective reality; for the realization of human equality; as harbingers of justice; and as voices for individual and community freedom. We saw not just problems, but their resolution.

  We must understand that our talents and our wealth are only loaned to us, in trusteeship, to use toward the greater good.

  Knowledge

  Ignorance breeds ugliness. Good intentions not informed by knowledge can lead to counterintuitive results. Values lack context unless informed by knowledge. The collection of facts helps us form ideas. Analyzing and understanding the relationships between ideas allows us to form concepts. Without concepts we cannot state problems. Concepts are the seeds of good design.

  Complex systems can be modeled on the understanding of interrelations between functionally interactive concepts. To design a good chair an architect must know the nature of the materials being employed; the weight to be applied at different angles and points of impact; the resulting bending moments, shear loads at connecting points; and, the continually changing dynamic distribution of loads; and the responses from the materials and connectors. Then the chair must feel good, be comfortable and be ergonomically designed. It must be beautiful to look at. All of these facts and ideas lead to the concept: CHAIR. The chair is then put in a house.

  The house must respect its site, fulfill its functions and use appropriate materials. It must be durable and cost effective, sustainable and beautiful. Likewise the house is part of a designed street, which is part of a neighborhood, which is part of an urban district. The urban district is part of a city; and that is part of an interlinked metropolitan region. All of these can be designed if we can gather the relevant facts and their interrelationships; if we can understand the functioning of the resulting concepts in systemic models; and then realize them as actual physical fabrics. We must be analytical to isolate the performance standards of our solutions, creative to generate options to evaluate, and capable of selecting amongst them. This is where the word DESIGN comes in as an elemental process of the use of knowledge and its analysis to create objects and artifacts.

  The preceding discussion raises questions about the theory of knowledge itself and the ‘meaning systems’ that buttress or destroy these ideas. Architects must have a keen interest in and an understanding of technology, and the way it impacts social structure and societal change. They must know the history of technology to understand their place in history and how their own work detracts from or contributes to society.

  It would be arrogant to assume that any architect will change history. But surely every architect, for better or for worse, tempers the cultural fabric of the society they work in. Anyone who builds makes an impact on nature, society and the quality of life offered by the environment. No one is on the sideline. No one who claims to be an architect is an outsider.

  Having a rough idea of the timeline of history is important to ‘fit’ oneself into the scheme of things. Is repeating the Eiffel Tower a contribution to the world, or is it an affront to our understanding of things? Is it progress in technology for the human good, or is it a cheap money-making stunt? Is making the tallest building in the world anything new, or is it gross exhibition of one’s insecurity?

  Architects need to know something of the social structure of their surroundings; something of the stresses felt daily by, and experienced in, their societies; something of the materiality of their art; something of the resources they consume; and they must know how their acts that employ these materials and technologies influence the creation of a humane habitat. They must know how greed and mercantilism distract attention and resources from dealing with the human condition. Under the veil of nostalgia and romanticism, objective reality is disguised and great sins against humanity, realized in built form, are justified.

  Architects must be continual learners. We are all teachers and we are all students. Knowledge makes us wiser as it helps us see the conditions and the points of view of others and helps us to understand their feelings and needs. As designers, we must continually place ourselves in the users’ shoes and walk in them, at least in our imaginations. This could even lead us to wisdom. To be wise merely means to be able to see all sides of issues dispassionately and to reach just conclusions based on that knowledge. Every good design is a just conclusion.

  Lack of knowledge leads to lack of personal identity. It makes people play roles of fictitious characters instead of being themselves and feeling comfortable with what they are.

  To young architects I say, ‘Don’t seem, BE.’ Understand your limitations and your potentials. Speak from where you are and not from where you would like to be. Be humble in your self-appraisal and be bold in doing well what you know you can do. Flaunt your pride and your ego through your work.

  Each young architect must set their own standards and define their own character through the values they adhere to.

  Each of us evolves a unique persona based on our values, attitudes, wisdom and compassion. Do not adopt your persona from people who are mean to you, making you reactive. If you are mean to a mean person you slowly begin to collect all that meanness into your own personality. Instead of mirroring all that is bad in the world, slowly, piece by piece, build upon all the good you see in little slivers in each person. All that good can become your model of yourself. It can be the persona that you project like an aura radiating out to others. That is true knowledge and true wisdom.

  In the ultimate analysis we architects are not just creators. We are builders. We cannot live in the world of mere words and thought; we have to plant our foot firmly on earth and leave our footprint. We are ‘thinker-doers’ whose ideas must mesh with the materials around us and the technology available. We must address the society we live in and build for.

  Don’t seem, BE.

  I often hear architects blaming what they are doing on their context, their clients, or the lack of resour
ces. These are just self-delusions constructed to rationalize defeat. Our role here on earth is to DO GOOD. If we have a bad client we can walk away. That is unless we are driven by greed. It is only through KNOWLEDGE, tempered by values and compassion that true architecture raises its head.

  Openess

  Our debates, dialogues, presentations and even arguments have made us all more open to constructive criticism and self-evaluation. Teaching was never a one-way flow of ideas; it was a back-and-forth flow of sharing and questioning. Most of my teachers taught through the Socratic method of asking questions. They maintained that it was more important to ask the right question than to know the correct answer. Dialogue and questions are more important than monologues and answers.