Letters To A Young Architect

by Christopher Benninger

  1. Bronowski, Jacob (1978): The Visionary Eye: Essays in the Arts, Literature, and Science, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  2. Sekler, Eduard F., et. al. (1965): Proportion, a Measure of Order, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University.

  3. Waterfield, Robin [tr] (2002): Plato: Phaedrus, Oxford University Press (Oxford World’s Classics), Oxford.

  4. Jackson, David and Janice (1984): Tibetan Thangka Painting: Methods and Materials, Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, New York.

  5. Chakraverty, Anjan (1998): Sacred Buddhist Painting, Roli Books, New Delhi.

  6. “Sanskrit Literature”, The Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. 2, p 263.

  7. Oë, Kenzaburo (1969): A Personal Matter, Grove Weidenfeld, New York.

  8. Gropius, Walter (1956): The Scope of Total Architecture, Harper, New York.

  9. Thompson, D’Arcy Wentworth (1959): On Growth and Form [2 Vols.], Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

  10. Kundera, Milan (1984): The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Faber and Faber, UK.

  11. Elderfield, John, Peter Reed, Mary Chan [Eds.] (2002): Modern Starts: People, Places, Things, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

  12. Marx, Karl (1867): Das Kapital, Gateway Edition (1996), Regnery Publishing, Washington DC.

  13. Anderson, Donald M. (1961): Elements of Design; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.

  14. Kotz, Mary Lynn (2004): Rauschenberg: Art and Life, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York.

  15. Benninger, Christopher (2010): Gleaning Pune’s Future from Pune’s Past, 13th June, Sunday Pune Mirror, Bennett Coleman Group, Pune.

  16. Lynch, Kevin (1960): Image of the City, Harvard-MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies, MIT Press, Boston, Massachusetts.

  17. a. Foucault, Michel (1970): The Order of Things, Pantheon Books, New York.

  b. Saïd, Edward (1979): Orientalism, Vintage Books, New York.

  18. Barthes, Roland (1975): The Pleasure of the Text, Hill and Wang, New York.

  19. Butler, Christopher (2002): Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

  20. Rudofsky, Bernard (1964): Architecture without Architects, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

  21. Venturi, Robert (1966): Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

  22. Reid-Paris, James (1993): Otto e Mezzo [81/2] in James Reid-Paris (Ed.), Classic Foreign Films From 1960 to Today, Carol Pub. Group, New Jersy.

  23. a. Headrick, Daniel R. (2009): Power Over Peoples: Technology, Environments and Western Imperialism, 1400 To The Present, Princeton University Press.

  b. Morrison, Elting E. (1966): Men, Machines and Modern Times, MIT Press, Cambridge.

  24. Cipolla, Carlo M. (1982): Guns Sails and Empires: Technological Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansion 1400-1700, Thomas Y. Crowell Publishers, New York.

  25. Benninger, Christopher (2010): ‘Poona Papers’: The Margaret Mead Lecture, World Society of Ekistics, Athens.

  26. Freire, Paulo (1968): Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Penguin Books, London.

  27. Benninger, Christopher (2010): A Tale of Two Cities, 22nd August, Sunday Pune Mirror, Bennett Coleman Group, Pune.

  28. Pagila, Camille (1990): Sexual Personae, Penguin Books, London.

  29. Benninger, Christopher (2007): The Science of the Absurd, in Biblio, May-June, Vol. XII Nos. 5&6.

  30. Metcalf, Thomas (2004): Ideologies of the Raj, Cambridge University Press India, New Delhi.

  31. a. Sarukkai, Priya (2009): Generation 14, Penguin India, New Delhi.

  b. Benninger, Christopher (2002): Imagineering and Creation of Space, Graz Biennale.

  32. Kundera, Milan (1986): The Art of the Novel, Perennial (Harper Collins), New York.

  33. Rudofsky, Bernard (1964): Architecture without Architects, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

  34. Benninger, Christopher (1995): Hope in the Midst of Despair, in Biblio, May-June, Vol. I, Nos. 5&6.

  Letter

  The Importance of Curiosity

  My passion for life has not really come from architecture. It has come from adventure and exploration, and I see architecture as just one vehicle through which I can explore the human condition. It is a way to study culture, history, society and our place in civilization.

  I feel one can be an explorer sitting in their study, or in their living room. Exploring is searching within unknown contexts, finding things new, different, or maybe just appropriate. A train of ants moving up the wall could lead to speculations and evoke curiosity. Where do they come from and where are they going? What brings consistency into their work and processes? What are they carrying and who tells them to do so; maybe no one? Maybe I am like one of the ants climbing up some wall mindlessly doing the work of civilization, thinking it is very important, while maybe that is not so? As with those ants so with peoples. I am driven in my inquiries by a curiosity about their traditions and the environments that support them. Architectural design is a composite analysis of those things, leading to alternative options for sheltering and maybe inspiring people. The work of writers and journalists is very much like mine as an architect. They too are looking at life, analyzing the human condition and chronicling it. Maybe curious people wonder if we are just trying to amuse them through small gestures of uniqueness or something ‘new’. If life were so mundane then there would be no purpose in our being or in our existence. As people who do things and ‘make things’ we should be asking many questions whose answers would temper our thoughts, ideas and designs. We are not factory workers, bankers, or accountants who just sit at a work place and repeat routine functions. We are supposed to be designing a transforming culture and tempering the structure and nature of civilization. Our tiny gestures hold vast implications for mankind.

  When I take up a new design, it is that same sense of challenge, of curiosity and exploration which drives me. The people who patronize my studio are my real work. They are the ‘stuff’ of my passion. Their design briefs, their sites and the patterns of human behavior expressed in their lists of functional spatial requirements, and the relations between them become a kind of pattern which organizes complex materiality and building systems. It also raises questions about the implicit functions and purposes that are not explicitly stated in the brief, the building programs and the budgets. A good functional solution for an office or a factory becomes the template through which non-programmatic ends are realized. These are the unseen truths of architecture. They are the nonverbal, unspoken necessities of humanity; call it conviviality, community or the social patterns that our template facilitates and empowers. Call it a sense of place, a feeling of belonging or gifting identity, but these are all part of the measure of immeasurable architecture. No one is going to tell an architect about these hidden dimensions and secret attributes. An architect has to be driven by curiosity to observe the ants and wonder what drives them. An architect has to look behind the material requirements and create immaterial experiences.

  A curious person who is creating spaces for many users has to imagine what it is like for the users to enter and to walk through his building. Then the designer has to become the man who cleans the building and the secretary who smiles at the boss as he grimaces on his brisk morning walk to his chamber. He has to be the visitor who is asked to sit and wait and think what that visitor will think while he is sitting alone, concerned about the impending meeting. He has to be the youngsters working in the building and consider whether they can feel the seasons change and live the day with the sun as their timekeeper. Do they know it is raining and does it bring them a sense of joy? Do the spaces of the inanimate structure come alive as one moves through them, under a low ceiling that emotionally explodes into a large hall, and then directs one’s attent
ion to a landscaped garden where a patient, alert kingfisher waits to swoop on his prey in a silent pool of water? Did all of these experiential emotions just happen, or were they the orchestrated choreography of some thinking mind that was curious to know of all of these imaginary people and their behavior in the designed spaces? Did the designer talk to them in his mind and walk with them through the spaces, like an actor who plays all of the roles in a one-man performance? This, my young friends, is the essence of being an architect. It is grounded in curiosity and in imagination.

  My passion for life has not really come from architecture. It has come from adventure and exploration, and I see architecture as just one vehicle through which I can explore the human condition.

  I fear that the internet generation is being robbed of their curiosity, discovery and wonderment. Instead of having to search for things and the connections between them, young minds are overwhelmed by images, emotions, ideas and facts. As every young man knows, whatever is left of his curiosity is instantly gratified by the click of his forefinger and like magic the most forbidden fruits can be tasted, at least in his jaded imagination. The luxury of boredom does not challenge him to think and to seek. He was born into a hyper-world. Like a chef in a restaurant, he no longer yearns to taste food; only to produce a flood of new menus and exotic dishes and thrust them ad nauseam onto a client’s plate. Drawing and drafting software have robbed our youth of the talent and the skills of sketching; the ability to instantly juxtapose one design idea over another on transparent sketch paper has gone. Architects have ceased to be designers and are now clever machine operators, unless they arrest themselves and start to think with their hands. The real problem is that drafting is not architecture and buildings are not architecture either. Architecture is the magical spatial aura and the experientialism contained in the material shell; it is not the shell.

  In the United World College of India the Mahindras wanted to create a new learning culture in which people from various societies would seek common values and a common vision to which they could devote themselves later, in their adult lives, through various callings. On the face of it they wanted some buildings in which they could teach some courses.

  Though they could not articulate the other dimensions, they were sophisticated patrons who could step beyond materiality and imagine the unspoken, the unseen and hope for transcendental experiences in spatial complexity. This shared curiosity about the nature of a campus, of a designed community and of a little society we would all create generated a vibrant dialogue and an adventure.

  In the new capital of Bhutan and the buildings that make up the National Capitol Complex, the Royal Government seeks an abode for democracy organized within the Buddhist and Bhutanese tradition. It is a country with living traditions of Himalayan culture. It is unlike many of its neighbors where more powerful nations have taken over and created fossilized ‘museum piece’ cultures – a kind of a static amusement park for tourists; a physical shell with no soul. The bane of globalization is that it tends to homogenize dynamic vernacular experiences into preordained amusement park experiences, like the New Urbanist townscapes in America referring back to a romantic small town past that existed only on Hollywood sets. In the valleys of Bhutan culture is alive, with its own style and vernacular. Vernaculars are always changing, morphing and unfolding as new technologies, information and functions diffuse within the society. What is important as democracy and its related new institutions emerge, along with the buildings that house them, is to conserve the essence of Bhutanese culture, while expressing it through contemporary buildings. This challenge was not articulated in the architect’s brief, but this problematique was certainly in the mind of Lyonchen Jigme Thinley, the country’s first elected Prime Minister. It drove my thinking too. But none of this was ever written down or expressed in budgets, bills of quantities or specifications. This most important aspect of the work lay in the realm of curiosity, speculation and a bit of magic. Much of the work we are doing employs wonderful traditional woodcarving, massive white masonry walls, overhanging roofs to protect the walls from rain, and the traditional iconography that instills meaning. We are speaking a clear Bhutanese architectural language that has grown out of a particular history, climate, economy and society. We have to speak that language while designing.

  In the mainstream, ‘cutting edge’ architecture of the West these concerns are no longer central to architectural dialogue. Architects there are arguing about isms – modernism and postmodernism. The debate does not conceal the fact that most of the architects are into self-projection and bent upon becoming famous by making spectacular stunts, like a fire-eating trapeze artist in a circus, or like a thrill ride in Disneyland. Put together, all of the notable buildings of the past two decades are nothing but a giant amusement park littered across the global landscape, or perhaps a junkyard of worn out stunts and wrecks left over from megalomaniacal follies. The issues of vernacular, of experientiality and of just plain conviviality are lost to these creatures who are very concerned about their visibility, being watched, being talked about and just plain being famous. It is good to be well known, but let us not smother humanity with the garbage dump we are creating.

  I must confess that at a vulgar level I also enjoy a bit of pornography and spectacularly contorted structures doing things that are not meant to be possible or affordable. I also derive a perverse pleasure from the garish displays of ill-earned wealth and ill-spent income flaunted by rude film stars, corrupt politicians and spoilt princes. But something inside me makes me catch myself and ask, ‘What am I doing?’ An inner voice tells me to step back and think. Architecture over the past few decades has lost that inner voice, and all the critics and art historians have become sycophants of the tastemakers. Even the universities and the museums have become stooges of the global amusement park.

  This vulgar aspect of the human spirit, call it a need for ‘thrill’, triggers a rush of excitement that replaces true curiosity. The crowds that mob to the wreck of an auto crash are driven by a crass desire to see spilt blood, not by any curiosity of what could be done to prevent more such accidents, or even a concern for the fate of the victims. The thrill of the tallest tower, of the most sensuous and seductive curved form and the most audacious structural feat are all ghoulish responses from the animal in us, not the refined considerations of a well tempered mind and a focused society.

  Architecture is not a structural feat, an amusement or a spectacular personal statement. It is a considered, thoughtfully articulated, well-tempered response to diverse desirables, not the least of which is uplifting the human spirit. To discover this truth one must be able to analyze and understand complex situations. The cut-and-paste and the rubber-stamp solutions that typify our urban landscape and the stunts that draw crowds are a travesty of architecture.

  What I am hinting at is what I described earlier as the element of exploration and discovery that architecture entails. It could be the intense curiosity of solving a specific problem right on the drawing board, or it could be the thrill of a serendipitous discovery while browsing through books. Intense curiosity can emerge from travel, writing, reading and just meeting people and exploring one another’s minds. Meetings can be causal encounters. Intellectual companionships can emerge, grow and later fade away. But the element of mutual discovery is what it is all about. In architecture there is always that moment of discovery in each project, where one defines the essence of the work of art, experiencing transcendence and achieving a moment of epiphany.

  My personal interests and hobbies have all revolved around this central theme and passion. Architecture is just my formal work, merely one form of this search that comes in different manifestations. So my personal life involves a number of compelling initiatives in my need to understand what I do not know and do not understand. I want to enter unknown territory, dissect it, take it apart and put it back together again. That ‘territory’ could be a n
ew friend, a vast sand desert, or a novel. Surely each new design problem is a passionate form of exploration, driven by curiosity.

  I find people my most intriguing pastime. Every person presents a new conundrum or puzzle: what are the values which motivate them to be passive or active? What makes them reactive to their context, or proactive to change it? What are their personal visions and their objectives, and what path have they chosen to get there? What gives them a ‘lift’? What makes them laugh? What makes them cry? Why are they afraid to be themselves? I like hard working and focused people who know where they are going and are developing the skills and techniques to get there. I like people who have a grasp of who they are and what their living and working environment is actually like. I like ‘in-your-face’ kind of lively people who wear their emotions on their sleeves. Friendship becomes a kind of mutual exploration of values, patterns of thought and structure of behavior. Friendship is emotional attachment, but most of all it is intellectual companionship, driven by questioning the nature of human existence and by an honesty in proposing answers. From a base of honest expression one can share ideas and study how one idea relates to another. One can see such relationships between ideas as concepts; concepts about the human condition and society shared by intellectual companions. Friendship is my main hobby and I have friends from all walks of life: owners of great industries; drivers; socialites; cooks; professors; attendants; artists and inventors. What they earn, where they come from and how much they are worth are just interesting facts that decorate their search for meaning. Income and social status can be very boring attributes if they constitute a person’s totality. The ‘search’ is where the fire of friendship burns and what we share. At India House that search is a quiet one; it is in the whispers over a drawing; in the annoyed glares exchanged over errors; and in the smiles confirming something beautiful. It is through work and sincere effort that companionship is shared. Everything else is irrelevant.