Letters To A Young Architect Read online

  Legacy

  These values were passed on to me by my teachers. I learned from being with them, seeing how they dealt with issues and understanding how they resolved problems. These values were woven into the fabric of everything they said, and underpinned their worldview.

  Now it is my legacy to hold these ideas as my only wealth, and it is my duty to pass on this wealth. I have chosen to call these messages ‘letters’ as they are like post cards sent to family and friends while on a long journey. They are not chapters in a story, but rather serendipitous discoveries along life’s path.

  (Based on the First Professor Akhildutt Dadkar Memorial Lecture delivered on the 30th of January 2010 at the Twelfth International Conference on Humane Habitat, Mumbai, India.)

  ... it was more important to ask the right question than to know the correct answer.

  Beginnings

  Beginnings

  Letter

  Omens of a Magic Gift

  As a child I spent my days drifting in confusion. Nothing inspired me. Neither my teachers nor my studies inspired me to seek knowledge. My parents thought by going to school I’d be educated; by taking part in sports I’d become athletic; and by going to church I’d be in touch with the Ultimate Truth! They confused religion with spirituality; sports with health; and qualifications with knowledge. Most of what transpired in these institutions seemed like a dull black cloud hovering over me.

  What did move me were the autumn leaves in reds, yellows and oranges. The nude winter fingers of trees reaching into moody skies depressed me as the beautiful leaves fell away. Come snowfall, the black branches and twigs would morph, covered with a white powder of snowflakes, melting momentarily, and then freezing the black stick trees into gleaming ice-glass candelabras, glittering upside-down in the bright sun. Amazing beauty emerged from angry darkness. These were the things that grabbed me and fascinated me.

  My personal life was composed of all things natural and my friends were the squirrels in the trees and the rabbits in the fields. All these were portents of an organic truth to be revealed! Springtime full of growth, flowers, transformation; summer full of form, shape, insects, fruits; autumn with its withering, death and destruction; and the long winter’s sleep: all these made a full cycle of reincarnations, the one manifested in the many. From disaster emerges realization, renewal and transcendence. The flocks of birds flew in formations: south in winter, north in spring. These were ‘signs’.

  Thus, I was composed of two different parts, each amplifying the meaning and the meaninglessness of the other. Like the yin and the yang, a white and a black force intertwined within me, chasing each other. The black made the white more pure and beautiful, and the white made the black more foreboding and ominous.

  One Christmas morning my eyes were drawn to the one gift I had not stumbled upon in my parents’ usual hiding places. I knew all of the others from looking under beds, crawling up in the attic, or peering over the high shelf above my father’s cupboards where he hid his condoms and porn magazines. So I reached for this first, as my family members all gasped with hypocritical surprise, opening boxes and small parcels they’d secretly discovered only days before. Like all children, on that fateful morning I reached out for the most intriguing gift first; for the unknown. But unlike the others this gift turned out to be a talisman of my future. It was a magic book that would change my life forever.

  As I read the first words, sentences, paragraphs and pages of Frank Lloyd Wright’s The Natural House, I discovered who I was, and what I wanted to be. I gained my first insight into the nature of my life’s meaning and search. Reading the pages I felt like a reincarnated person discovering who he had been in previous lives, and what he would be in the future.

  It was not just that I liked the designs, the drawings and the photographs, or that I gleaned meanings from the words; it was a testament that unfolded a truth within me: a truth that in fact had dwelt deep inside. Something that had always been there, slumbering, concealed from my consciousness, was now unfolding. I suppose this is called inspiration, or even self-discovery. From the moment I opened The Natural House I did not put it down until I had finished reading the last page. In a sense I have never put it down. I am still reading it in my soul, discovering and searching for what inspired me on that Christmas Day over fifty years ago.

  When I closed the book just past midnight I had been transported into a different world. I walked out of my house into the freezing night air with thousands of stars glistening in the vast nocturnal heaven. The air was amazingly fresh and the sky was wonderfully transparent. Everything I saw looked different, fresh and new. It was not only nature that was singing a song in my heart, but my soul had switched on and my mind had started to think.

  The black made the white more pure and beautiful, and the white made the black more foreboding and ominous.

  In the days that followed I ‘saw’ things I had never comprehended before. Finely carved balustrades caught my fancy. Sculptured stone gargoyles made me smile. I noticed that one wood was different from another in its color, grain, density and use. I was drawn to ‘feel wood’ and to slide my fingers across it, appreciating its inner soul. I noted that a wood floor was warm in the winter and cozy to look at, while a marble floor was cool in the summer and soothing to sit upon. Stained glass windows, fine brass handles, and well thought-out paving patterns were my companions. Grasping materials with my hands I could hear their inner voices and I spoke to them. I began to argue with sloppy workmanship and clumsy details. Unnatural, synthetic and artificial finishes fired a sense of anger in me. I developed a self-righteous sense of the right and wrong uses of materials; good and bad expressions of functions, and revulsion toward exaggerated applications of expensive finishes. Monumentalism annoyed me. Motifs crafted in Plaster of Paris to look like marble carvings repulsed me. I divided the world of artifacts into those of honest expression and those of lies. There were the master architects, and there were hacks who churned out ugliness for money. I realized that my ‘holier-than-thou’ attitudes were verging on fundamentalism. But I loved the order, the devotion and the balance these thoughts brought me. A new passion had entered my soul and fired my spirit.

  Wright taught me that the human mind is a huge analogue for all things beautiful and all things ugly. He taught me that a human being is both a monster and a saint all rolled up into one; capable of creating incredible beauty, or of inflicting deplorable destruction and ugliness. It is the human mind that separates humans from other animals, which makes us the monsters of terror and the creators of poetry, art and architecture. We alone can know the exhilaration of transcendence. Humans are the only species that creates values which temper and modulate its behavior. They employ values to design and create their habitats.

  After I had read The Natural House the yin and the yang within me merged, no longer playing out against each other, exhausting me. The black force empowered the white beauty. I was now driven by a passion in whatever I did. I gave up on education and embarked on an inner search. Something magical had gripped me. I stopped attending church and I found spiritual moments in fits of creative discovery.

  Such a moment of self discovery is what I call INSPIRATION. It is a flash of wisdom that calls out to us, telling us what we want to be and forces us to yearn to be that. It catalyzes life’s search; it embeds an urge; it creates a desperate need to seek what we do not possess; it beckons us to know our inner soul; it leads us on a path from which we cannot deviate.

  Wright taught me in that simple book to seek the generic order in things and to see beauty in truth. I understood that buildings are merely mirrors of the people who live in them. They reflect how people behave, how people think, what their aspirations are and how they deal with materiality. Built form illustrates how evolved people and societies are in their spiritual realizations, whether they live for mater
ial things or employ material artifacts to reach transcendence. Buildings place people and societies somewhere on a scale between beasts grabbing at survival and sages blessed with transcendental awareness. Architecture distinguishes people who only ‘take’ from patrons who nurture and ‘give.’ Buildings indicate the extent to which people are in touch with the environment in which they live; the extent to which they are part of the places in which they build, and are in harmony with the social traditions and modalities which bring bliss and peace.

  But life is not a fairy tale. It is a maze of choices and we have to learn as we go. We make some good decisions and some bad ones. But I believe we are driven by our GENERIC INSPIRATION to learn from our mistakes and move on. We are guided to recognize lessons when they come our way and to learn from them. With the fire of inspiration inside us, life itself becomes a great university of learning. We are learning all the time.

  With the fire of inspiration inside us, life itself becomes a great university of learning. We are learning all the time.

  So today, almost half century later, those portents of a magic gift still inspire and guide me. I pray that all young architects have had, or will have, such an inspiring moment that gifts them a sense of meaning and direction in life.

  What I learnt from Wright was very simple: find the generic order in things, seek out the truth and see beauty in the truth. What he meant by ‘the natural house’ was the natural self and the natural life. He used the word ‘organic’ as an idea with many meanings. He meant that everything has its own putative nature; that architecture is part of nature; that each material has its essence, its nature and its unique potentials and limitations; that there is an innate truth to each thing; that each individual has an organic personality, a generic originality and unique character; that one must be true to the nature of things and to one’s own nature; that there is a lie in misusing materials, ideas and facts; that there is hypocrisy in misrepresenting oneself for what one is not; that everything has its organic opportunity and potential to contribute, and that is nature’s journey and purpose. He meant that each and every person has a unique opportunity and potential to contribute, and that is nature’s journey and purpose.

  Wright ended his book with a Credo (Latin for ‘I Believe).’ I state Wright’s simple credo as follows:

  ‘I believe a house is more a home by being a work of art.’

  ‘I believe a person is more a human by being an individual, rather than a committee meeting.’

  ‘For these two reasons I believe Democracy (though difficult) is the highest known form of society.’

  ‘I believe Democracy is the new innate aristocracy our humanity needs.’

  ‘I believe success in any form consists in making these truths a reality according to ability.’

  ‘I believe all agencies tending to confuse and frustrate these truths are now continuous and expedient – therefore to be exposed and rejected.’

  ‘I believe truth to be our organic divinity.’

  Wright was for beauty, for democracy and for the honest individual. He was strongly against fake, mercantile and feeble expressions, like the commercial glass-clad buildings we see today. About this effete architecture he commented, ‘Our architecture is the significance of insignificance only. We no longer have architecture; at least no buildings with integrity. We only have economic crimes in its name. Now, our greatest buildings are not qualified as art.’

  In revolting against the ugly Greco-Roman Plaster of Paris fakery of his time, Wright provided me with an example of the struggle against false art and aesthetic lies. I realize that Wright’s struggle a century ago is our struggle today. Wright’s voice arches across the decades, calling out to us today. In revolting against the status quo, Wright talked of five great integrities. These were influenced by the 18th-century Chinese philosopher Ong Giao Ki who insisted ‘Poetry is the sound of heart.’ In other words beauty is in the essence of true feelings.

  Wright’s five integrities were:

  First, ‘The room must be seen as architecture, or we have no architecture.’ What Wright means is that architecture is not just a decorated box, but a group of interrelated, integrated spaces that interlock, one within the other, creating a relevant form. He echoed the dictum of his guru Louis Sullivan: ‘Form follows function.’

  Second, he continued that line of thought saying, ‘We no longer have an outside and an inside as two separate things. They are of each other. Form and function thus become one in design and execution, if the natures of materials are all in unison.’

  Third, he proposed the concept that design grows from the site. The ‘space’ and the ‘interior’ and the ‘form’ all rise from the ground into light. The fact is that contemporary culture is in bits and pieces, not organic, integrated or natural. Cities were, as they are today, growing against nature. Wright believed that light-architecture-culture-happiness-work-faith all lie in the ‘natural’. He revolted against conspicuous waste and insulting artificiality as being oppressive to our own intelligence.

  Fourth, Wright proposed that the idea of ‘organic architecture’ is that the reality of a building lies in the space within it, to be used and to be lived in. Wright rejected the idea, so popular today, that a building is an ‘envelope’ or a decorated package.

  Fifth, Wright felt this organic idea was the essence of democracy too. He believed that democratic societies unlock the essence of the individual, to flow forth in an honest manner. He believed each of us has an organic reality that is the integrity of the individual. Honesty, comes from within, not in what one wears or looks like. Integrity is not something to be put on and taken off like a garment. Integrity is a quality from within and of the person himself. This internal integrity cannot change from external pressure, or from outward circumstances; it cannot change except from within because it is ‘that in you’ which is you and due to which you will try to live your life in the best way possible.

  Wright began to rebel and protest against the idea of ‘façade’ architecture and ‘façade’ people. He reversed the decorative idea of façade architecture, employing a new paradigm that form emerges from the inside. He took inspiration from the Japanese philosopher Okakura Kakuzo who, in his Book of Tea, proposed that the reality of a room was to be found in the space enclosed by the roof and the walls, not in the roof and the walls themselves.

  Wright was a collector of oriental art and an admirer of Lao Tse and Taoist thoughts. His work on the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo brought him closer to this culture. His concept of organic architecture sprang from the ancient concepts of the essence of things, rather than the superficial, often dishonest appearances. He insisted, ‘what is needed most in architecture today is the very thing that is most needed in life – Integrity.’

  What is true for people, integrity, is also the deepest quality in a building. Wright felt that integrity is a natural human characteristic, but with the advent of consumerism a craving for possessions emerged. The urge to become a ‘success’ has destroyed this precious quality, because success has been overshadowed by greed and materialism.

  To build a man or a building from within is always difficult, because ‘deeper is not so easy as shallow’. Naturally you would want to live in a manner and in a place that is true to this deeper thing in you, which you honor. That place you live in must also be integral in every sense; integral to site; integral to purpose; and integral to yourself. This concept seems to have been forgotten. Houses have become a series of anonymous boxes that fit into row upon row of bigger boxes in mass nuisance. But a house in an ‘interior’, or a deeper organic sense, may come alive as organic architecture, just as human personality comes alive as honest character.

  Our sketches and our designs are paths to self-realization. Buildings reflect how we behave, how we think, what our aspirations are, and how we deal with materiality. Scholars like Liane Lefaivre
and Alex Tzonis have reinforced this credo, through their work on what they call Critical Regionalism, in which new functions and technologies are honestly integrated with cultural contexts, climates and cultures. This concept was embedded in Wright’s ideas of ‘organic architecture’.

  Young architects, I implore you, please understand and imbibe this great philosophy. It will send you on a wonderful journey full of joy and discovery.

  (Based on the Lecture at the Inauguration of IAB at Chennai Saturday, September 30, 2006)

  Letter

  Legacy and Endowment: An Architect’s Self Discovery

  An Awakening

  After The Natural House, I read A Testament, An American Architecture and anything else by Wright that I could lay my hands on. Broadacre City, An Autobiography and The Story of a Tower were consumed in rapid succession. Wright ignited an energy within me that burns until this day. Decades later, his designs and his ideas follow me. It was not just the brilliance of structures embracing the vast, undulating American landscapes, but the rationalist’s principles of ‘honest expression’ that grabbed my soul. The truth of Wright’s thoughts became my credo – a beacon showing me the direction to my future.