Letters To A Young Architect

by Christopher Benninger

  Beyond the graphic frenzy, somewhere past the Babel of symbols and signs, the abiding force of architecture demands a commitment to human dignity, an honest expression of materials and technology.

  The mountains cast cool shadows over villages, over lakes, across rivers and vast territories. Each shadow points to another; freed from contrived economic impetuses, generating a transcending landscape of immense power. This is not a setting for the fabricated urban packaging, all wrapped in yesterday’s new idea. Architecture in such a setting must take a stance resisting alien, urban conditions, rather than an attitude serving to endorse and perpetuate them. In such an empowering setting, I built my own institute, CDSA and later the Mahindra United World College of India.

  Principles that Guide Design

  The struggle with this awesome landscape, trying to find a meaningful way to build, drew me toward some abiding principles. Guided by these, I felt prepared to address the mountains; to work with nature and to reject fashion. Let me spell out these principles – the values that I feel should rule architecture:

  Context

  A building should be part of its context. It should reflect and extend the scale, proportions, textures and colors of its surroundings. It should integrate into the existing movement system, into the contours, and into the visual backdrop.

  Scale

  Buildings should engender a human scale. An inhabitant, or a visitor, should be greeted by a subdued landscape and portal, enter through low spaces or a small foyer, and then be introduced to larger spaces which emphasize the human scale through counterpoint. There should be motifs like windows and doors which scale down massive walls; or like waterspouts – which are almost anthropomorphic – which throw dramatic shadows over strong stone walls.

  Proportion

  Buildings are assemblies of elements and motifs. These must all relate to one another. The sizes, measurers, placement of things, and locations of elements, must all fit into a system. As in a human body, everything has its place, its proper size, its relationship to all the other parts. What appears to be fanciful must have some deeper logic.

  Simplicity

  A quote often attributed to Einstein is, “Genius is making the complex simple, not the simple complex”. In architecture this quest for simplicity means defining a language. For each element (support/span/enclosure) of a building, or a campus, one must define the simple terms one wants to use and stick to them. For ‘support’ one could say ‘stone bearing wall’; for ‘enclosure’ one could say ‘glass sliding walls’; for ‘span’ one could say ‘sloped tile roof.’ Whatever the terms, choose them carefully and stick to them.

  Nature

  We should use natural materials, expressing their inherent beauty. Climate, budget and context may temper this; we may have to dress a brick wall in plaster clothes and color the plaster with paint. But we should seek out natural colors – earthen hues. Our buildings should not appear like over-decorated and painted harlots. Their natural beauty should be highlighted. This aspect can be enhanced by merging landscape with built form – bringing the outside into the building. Courtyards, quadrangles, verandahs and porches all work toward this end.

  Function

  Buildings have specific functions and also include more important generic functional systems. They demand to be divided into long spans and short spans; into noisy areas and quiet areas; into public areas and private areas. The ‘zones’ must be connected by an appropriate circulation system, separating pedestrians from vehicles and service areas from user areas.

  Motifs/Decoration

  Buildings are not mere machines to live in. They transcend mechanical necessity. But the spirit of transcendence must not be confused with the glitter of costume jewelry, with gaudy make-up – a kind of interior decoration turned inside out. A more relevant search may be for ‘motifs’ or ‘objects’ which solve little problems, and in doing so add an element of delight to our work. These could be waterspouts, columns, steps, seating platforms, little windows, doors, statues, reliefs and lintels. These could be incidental, yet powerful ‘adjectives’ and ‘adverbs’ which describe and embellish our architectural language. These details must be used with constraint and consistency. They must counterbalance the strong ‘nouns’ and ‘verbs’ of the architectural language (support, enclosure and span).

  My struggle to design the Mahindra College was resolved largely through these axioms, or guidelines by which I could check myself. Perhaps every young architect needs to create his own landmarks against which they can check their work.

  (Written in early April 1998 about the design for the Mahindra United World College of India, which later won the Designer of the Year Award in India [1998] and the American Institute of Architects/ Business Week/ Architectural Record Award 2000)

  Letter

  A Timeless Way of Living

  In architecture we are passing through a period in which the baby who cries the loudest gets the milk. What I mean is that architects are screaming and yelling like babies to grab attention. Façade architecture – the packaging of buildings in trendy wrappings – is popular. Fashionable western architects are ‘selling styles,’ not making architecture. Each building they make looks like a copy of the one before it.

  These architects are playing on only one sense, the visual, leaving touch and textures, smell and sound, volume and proportion to the winds. Common sense, context and integrating with nature have become passé. In other words architecture is at one of its low historical points where most of its practitioners are chasing style and crude popularity. This bad taste is media-driven from cities, outward to the smaller towns. It works on the center-periphery phenomenon where more and more energy builds up at a central point until the system explodes. While this is happening at the center, there is more calm, thought and reflection out on the periphery. Often more creative works can be expected from either Ahmedabad or Pune than from Mumbai, and from Mumbai more than from New York. But young architects always look into the distance to find local truths. When they seek truth at the center they will only find opaque theories, not relevant processes and methods to create true art.

  Over the past decade young architects have grown up in a digital world. Their experience of architecture has been in virtual reality: 3D on a 2D computer screen. While this has helped to push the limits of the visual world, it has suppressed experiential architecture that finds its true measure not only in vision and sight but also in touch, smell, sound, sequence and movement. In the resulting cacophony we even find young architects wondering: What is Architecture? They want to know what the reality of architecture is.

  Continuously Educating Ourselves

  Education in architecture is a search for the reality of architecture. There are several ‘givens’ about this reality that form the basis of education and practice. I list a few of them:

  1. Architecture is built; it is construction; it is technology.

  2. Architecture is a response to functional needs; it is a product with performance standards.

  3. Architecture is social action. Every building either gives to or takes from the social milieu. At the most basic level the exploitation of the maximum Floor Space Index – a commercial factor – becomes an indicator of the architect’s ‘social commitment.’ Architects can also create new public domains. They can make schools into places that stimulate learning. They can bring nature into people’s everyday lives. They can create social housing.

  4. Architecture is an exercise in economic analysis. Every client has a budget that is an estimate of the value of the economic operation of the building in producing something – at least happiness in a home or inspiration in a school.

  5. Architecture is history as it is a part of a behavioral pattern which persists over time. It is a process in the present, which draws on the past and creates the future.
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br />   6. Architecture is poetry, because in the end it must go beyond the programmatic. It must say something about the human condition that is not explicit. It must raise people’s spirits and spark their curiosities.

  Architecture exists just one step outside materiality. It dwells in our sense of experience, our immediate memories and in the identity of a place.

  Critical Regionalism

  I feel each country in the world, and each region in each country, has its own unique expression of architecture. There are elemental concerns (confused as global concerns) that attract the efforts of all sincere architects of good intention. All true architects seek the honest expression of materials, the employment of human scale and proportion, integration with nature, a belonging within context, a gift of meaning and sense of place for the inhabitants. All of these characteristics can be discovered through the study of traditional buildings and neighborhoods in their own contextual settings. One need not go to London to find architecture. Every regional context holds the secret of good architecture. Bangalore, Kochi, Aurangabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata, Delhi and many other such places are regional centers with strong local contexts to draw architectural lessons from. Why not begin one’s search for architecture by studying the vernacular structures in one’s own vicinity? Maybe all of the secrets lie within a ten-minute walk? In vernacular cultures there is a lot of variety and self-expression that comes from within people and projects out. In global culture there is a homogeneous mono-culture oppressing in on the individual and stifling creativity.

  Vernaculars: Attitudes/Components/Elements

  Thus, when a young architect is searching for their unique identity as a designer, that search for a language can begin within a hundred-kilometer radius from their home! Maybe it begins right at home!

  Every architect must have a language, and in fact I believe each region enshrines an architectural language, or its own dialect. This is part of a cumulative heritage that can be studied, imbibed, and used as a vehicle to catalyze new and relevant design ideas. Such an approach generates a fellowship between local competitors, as a common and mutually shared approach emerges in their way of doing things. I am proposing that regional architectural languages can be defined by seeking out regional attitudes toward space and place making; by searching for and defining basic components; and by understanding the elemental characteristics that persist through and gift meaning to local structures.

  Let me further elaborate on these aspects of regional styles and languages.

  I Attitudes

  Attitudes toward spatial arrangements and place making are embedded in the experiential use of architecture. What is sacred in a place and what is profane depends on local culture. Is there a difference between a mundane door that provides security and a profound ‘portal’ that is a transition into a sacred space? Does every place have its own sacredness that must be celebrated? Does a central courtyard define movement from the public realm of the street to the private, more personal realm of a dwelling? How does a door ‘proclaim’ the transition from an impersonal street to a special place? Does the courtyard catalyze conviviality? Does it demarcate the domestic sphere from the occupational sphere? Does it tell outsiders to temper their behavior to a more respectful and considerate mode of interaction? Do murals, statues, paintings and artifacts begin to speak about the particular likes, nature and concerns of inhabitants? Are they cues telling visitors who they are meeting and what behavior would be appropriate? Different regions use and modulate attitudes toward ‘space and place making’ in different ways. There can also be significant shared ideas and concepts between regions. Attitudes are not exclusive, they just exist. Think of the various doors you have seen in your life. Imagine their sizes, materials, colors and shapes. Some are set back in shaded niches or are introduced by a cozy porch. Some have an alcove inside where one can sit and play chess on an otta built within the niche. Some are so large that they have a small door within a larger door. Some focus a view on a statue in a courtyard to draw you within. Some hide what follows, creating a sense of mystery, and then surprise. Various regions express their own attitude toward a door, an entry, a portal and the ‘in-between space’ separating the aura of one from that of another.

  There are major themes or attitudes toward built form from which regional languages can be understood:

  Attitudes towards Nature:

  ‘Falling water’ by Frank Lloyd Wright is striking in the way it integrates with its natural setting. It exhibits an attitude of being a part of nature. On the other hand, Le Corbusier’s ‘Villa Savoye’ floats in solitude, detached from nature. It is an attitude of abstract reality. A Rajasthani mud house rises from the earth, while a Rajput palace towers magisterially over its domain.

  Attitude towards Proportion and Scale:

  If you stand in front of the High Court at Chandigarh you feel dwarfed by the immensity of its portal. If you enter ‘India House’ there is a scale that is intermediate. It shares the intimate experience with a hint of a larger realm of things. It startles with its combination of roles as a home, a studio and a public institution. Entering Dr. Oswal’s Center for Health, Life Sciences and Medicine, one is made to feel at home, intimate and secure. Scale and proportion are used in different ways in different regions, be it the Chola temple complexes of South India or in the great Mughal tomb gardens of North India.

  Attitude towards Materials:

  Each region has its own local building resources which can be used and expressed in different ways. In Karnataka one finds wonderful granite fit for columns, beams and roof slabs. In some areas there is abundant clay for bricks, hollow tiles and roofing tiles. In Himachal Pradesh the abundance of sturdy wood generates its own attitude to how slate, wood and stone can be harmoniously employed.

  These are not building technologies or techniques. They are commonly held concepts of how one crafts spaces and forms places. The work of Shankar and Navnath Kanade, Jaisim and Shashi Bhooshan emanate from their distinct regional attitude toward materiality.

  Attitudes towards the Sacred

  In New York City there are churches, synagogues, mosques, temples and meditation places. But these highly revered and sacred places are small events in the larger functioning of the city. In Paris the historical and heritage sites take on a character of sacredness. These are very special and cherished common properties that form an important part of the French psyche. In Indian cities like Pune, Old Delhi or Varanasi one finds thousands of small, medium and large temples that texture the urban fabric. Each shopkeeper has created a small temple within a shelf over his cash register, in every wall there is a niche with a deity, or a symbolic hint of one. Sacredness is kind of omnipresent and omnipotent. Even a house in India is made up of sacred space and place elements forming a sacred whole. The direction of the entry, the location of the kitchen, the alignment of the temple in the kitchen and the sacredness of the kitchen itself, are all part of local attitudes that must not be disrespected. The work of Girish Doshi, Sanjay Patil , Madhav Joshi and Deepak Guggari in Maharashtra speak of this attitude.

  II Components and Connections

  At a very simple level architectural language is made up of basic functional parts. These are nouns, or components which are things. Fundamentally, these are supports, spans and enclosing envelopes. A bearing wall of stone may be both a support and an envelope. A span can be in the form of a beam, vault, shell or a flat slab. Supports can be stone or concrete bearing walls and steel or concrete columns. The possibilities are limited, but we must conceptualize each of these three kinds of components separately. A language is also made of verbs, or connections, ‘hinges’ or stems to move through. Connectors can be arcades, courtyards, promenades, water pools, visual axes, passages, portals, bridges, stairs or ramps. These create experiences as people have to move through them. As people move, all the walls, columns, windows and
objects in their line of sight move in relative terms and architecture becomes kinetic. To me, identifying these components is the easy part of making an architectural language. What are the local support, spacing and enveloping components?

  Identify ten components and use them. What are the typical roofs, shading elements, types of stairs, supports, spans, envelope devices and their connections? How can we draw these components from history and from our contextual surroundings? Can we use them in a manner that employs respect toward and amplifies local attitudes? Architects in Ahmedabad are careful to articulate these components as a regional attitude to architecture.

  III Elements

  More difficult is the understanding of the elements of architecture:

  Elements persist through systems. They are everywhere. A glance at them tells you where a building is located. You see light blue plaster walls – almost white in the bright sun – and you know you are in Jodhpur; pink, and you are in Jaipur; yellow floors and earth-colored stone walls, and you are in Jaisalmer.