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Implicit Metastatements:

Domestic signs in the architecture of Mathew and Ghosh Architects, India.

- Shaji K. Panicker  /  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The architecture that this paper investigates is primarily residential. Apart from being a recognisable type, the house, more than any other project type in India (as in any other place), represents a microcosm of the ever-changing culture and society. Moreover, the younger generation of Indian architects has come to terms with the changing social order embodied in the home and is attempting to evolve a different architecture that rejects the romanticised attachments to the past and associated nationalist feelings. Frampton has noticed this development in the new generation of architects in Asia. He argues that "many young Asian architects seem to have gone beyond the aporia of 'post-coloniality' to create subtly differentiated, transglobal, architecture that is equal to the best being produced anywhere." [1]

Despite its relatively small size, at least compared to other architectural programs, the house figures large in the cultural imagination. It has been, and continues to be humanity's fundamental building block; its most irreducible component, providing for the essential daily need of shelter. Despite this, the broad appeal of the home cannot be considered a function of necessity alone. The house, while closely identified with the individual and the nuclear family, has been frequently viewed as an expression of widely held, even universal, values. Conversely, the private house has also been emblematic of more subjective desires that change not only from person to person but from generation to generation. [2]

Soumitro Ghosh of the firm Mathew and Ghosh Associates (MGA), recognizes this new phenomenon in architecture, especially in residences that are imagined to be predominantly "working in a context that is typically for the urban people with the memory that does not include any of their traditional typology due to generations of movement away from their rural ancestors." [3]
An important factor that this quote reveals is that the young generation has the confidence to practice anywhere - not necessarily in their own birthplace or homeland, or in the place of their education. This could also be seen as a direct consequence of the changes wrought in society as a result of globalisation. This dimension is emphasised by Soumitro.

Built by architects like us who do not belong to a specific region without any typological memory of house type/ technology (but equipped with the understanding of typologies within different regions of India and various efforts by recent generations of architects in India through their ideas/ built works). [4]

The following section briefly examines a residential project completed by MGA in 2000-2001 in the city of Bangalore. But before that, a small introduction to Bangalore city would help understand better the later texts.

Bangalore is one of the 27 districts of the south Indian state of Karnataka and has a population of more than six million people. Bangalore is a relatively new city and presently ranks as India's 6th largest city. [5]

It has a moderate climate with annual mean maximum temperature of 28.8° C and annual mean minimum temperature of 18.4° C; the relative humidity varies between 30% and 80%. [6]

Bangalore in the early twenty first century is no longer a colonial "bungalow" dotted landscape, as has been generally perceived, replete with British imported styles like Gothic, Greco-Roman, European classical, English renaissance, residency and British colonial. While the colonial roots of the city in part explain its international character a recent event was an even more dramatic catalyst for globalisation. In 1996 Bangalore hosted the Miss World contest where, according to one report, the number of police and paramilitary forces far exceeded the 8000 people who were involved in the pageant. [7]

Since that time Bangalore has hosted stage to a range of international artists and performers (including Michael Jackson, Bryan Adams, Deep Purple, Roger Waters and Elton John). Interestingly, the same events have also sparked a range of protests by a faction of the nationalist vanguard which believes that such events are negative influences on Indian culture. The end result of this tension between globalisation and nationalism is that Bangalore can be easily identified as a microcosm of contemporary urban Indian society. [8]
As such, Bangalore is also a "Postmodern" society -- as is defined by Jameson - where any sense of history is fast diminishing, and where a "perpetual present" in "perpetual change," does not allow the preservation of any kind of tradition. [9]

From this overview of Bangalore it is apparent that the city presents a challenge for the architect who is interested in the qualities of regionalism. The strategies developed by the earlier generations of post-independence architects are unable to operate effectively in such a cosmopolitan centre. However, as we shall see, Tzonis and Lefaivre's "Critical Regionalism" seems well suited to interpreting architecture designed with an awareness of regional characteristics yet situated in an increasingly global city.

The first house designed by MGA, which is discussed in the following section, is the Dr. Santosh Benjamin House (hence referred to as Benjamin house), which in October 2002, won the prestigious J. K. Cements award for the best residential design in India.
Dr. Santosh Benjamin House

In the poem "Notes on the house," Nisha Mathew-Ghosh writes that;

The first gesture of the house is
About walls
Captive Walls of Light
Reflecting communicating
Perceptible fragments of an order. [10]

This fragment from the poem aptly describes the key features of the Benjamin House; the dominant role of brightly coloured walls, fragments and light.

The Benjamin House is a double storey northwest-facing structure with most of the upper floor construction situated towards the front of the house (see figures 1 and 2). The main areas of the house are offset from an angular corridor abutting a yellow coloured masonry wall. The living and the dining areas, which open into the south facing garden (which functions as a veranda) towards the rear of the house, grow from the end of the corridor. The kitchen and the pantry are directly opposite the living and the dining areas. The main bedroom is beside the car park towards the front of the house and a study is sandwiched between the two areas in the centre of the house. A staircase through the study leads to the upper floor, to another bedroom and a terrace (which functions as a street court) that looks down to the street. The caretaker's room occupies the floor above the kitchen and pantry areas of the house, and is not connected with the other upper floor areas.

The most noticeable poetic devices of defamiliarisation in MGA's Benjamin House are the yellow coloured masonry wall, which angles across the plan, and the floating canopy of the veranda roof (see figure 3).

But before we go any further, it is necessary to examine defamiliarisation, a word borrowed from Tzonis and Lefaivre's 1981 theory of Critical Regionalism. I'll try to briefly explain the main themes of Tzonis and Lefaivre's original theory; necessary, as it drives much of the analysis in this paper. The technique of defamiliarisation, according to Tzonis and Lefaivre, seeks to achieve the quality of self-reflectiveness in architecture. The "self-reflective" quality of Critical Regionalism is initially defined in the writings of Habermas and the Frankfurt School, where as Raymond Geuss records there are three results.

1) Self-reflection 'dissolves' a) 'self-generated objectivity,' and b) 'objective illusion'.
2) Self-reflection makes the subject aware of its own genesis or origin.
3) Self-reflection operates by bringing to consciousness unconscious determinants of action, or consciousness. [11]

For Geuss, the intent of a critical theory lies in "making agents aware of hidden coercion, thereby freeing them from that coercion and putting them in a position to determine where their true interests lie." [12] Tzonis and Lefaivre propose that this same quality of disillusionment can be achieved in architecture through the development of Critical Regionalism.

Translating the idea of Critical Theory into architecture, Tzonis and Lefaivre propose that Habermas' "dissolution of objective illusion" occurs in architecture when a building contains in addition to "explicit statements", "implicit metastatements". [13]

Tzonis and Lefaivre use "explicit statements" to describe the direct association with the past, or some historic traditions, made by architects in contemporary works. Such statements need not demand any "hard cognitive negotiation" [14] in the minds of the viewers. The use of explicit statements is common in Romantic Regionalism where, for example, the use of signs or "typified folklorist motifs" as explicit statements relies on symbolism for its function as a signifier, which, leads to "overfamiliarized, 'as if' settings," without any necessary relevance to the meaning of the symbol used for the process. [15]

As an example of this practice in contemporary Indian architecture, we may consider Charles Correa's Jawahar Kala Kendra (JKK) building in Jaipur. In such projects, regional elements "linked in memory with forlorn eras" are selected and inserted into new buildings creating "mawkish, gushing, sentimental regionalism". [16] According to Tzonis and Lefaivre, this renders the viewer insensible as it employs the seductive overfamiliarisation and does not "prick the conscience". [17] What is principally different in Tzonis and Lefaivre's Critical Regionalism is that the regionalist elements are incorporated in a "strange" manner rather than in a "familiar" manner. [18]

This attitude does not allow the automatisation of perception, and hence activates a metacognitive state in the viewer's psyche by making the selected regional elements in the building "appear distant, hard to grasp, difficult, and even disturbing." [19] Tzonis and Lefaivre refer to these regional elements as "appropriately chosen poetic devices of defamiliarization". [20] This invariably means that there are no "physical design criteria" or "design rules" to be followed for producing a Critical Regionalist building. These poetic devices of defamiliarisation depend on the way in which an architect perceives and interprets history, and then uses place-defining elements or concepts drawn from past traditions. Tzonis and Lefaivre stress the universal applicability of Critical Regionalism when they say that,

[t]he operations of identifying, decomposing, recomposing regional elements in a "defamiliarizing" way is part of the universal set of skills of architects. They can be carried out by any knowledgeable, responsible, competent architect committed to the understanding of local constraints not only by "local" ones. Critical Regionalism does not imply professional parochialism. [21]

With this brief explanation of Tzonis and Lefaivre's Critical Regionalism, we can now proceed with the Banjamin House by MGA. The angular masonry wall, which gradually rises as one enters the house through a linear veranda and then becomes a part of the house, is a spatially detached form which suggests a deliberate insertion into the otherwise self-contained building (see figure 3). This perception is a result of its angle and colour, the poetic way it mediates between the interior of the built form and the approach to it (its exterior), and the steel and glass structure above it which meets the roof and completes the connection. The house, as is evident in the plan, grows from the yellow wall which is, according to Ghosh, the "screen of eastern light" [22] (see figure 5). In this gesture Ghosh alludes to the now discernible rupture in contemporary Indian society, where generations have moved away from their original "regions" and all that is now left are memories and memorabilia [23] (see figure 4).

Such memories are the screen through which the past is viewed - a screen that is inspired by, or represents, the all-powerful role of the media in contemporary Indian (Eastern) society. [24]

The play of allusion found in the screen of light, a poetic device of defamiliarisation, is a departure from the earlier Modernist works of Doshi, Correa, Raje and others in that it does not explicitly attempt to forge a regional identity. To the contrary, the wall transforms itself into a site for consideration of the loss of this sense of "region," or "place," in contemporary society. Thus the wall is the primary generator of the house's plan forming an icon for a new, paradoxically global regionalism. An alternative interpretation is that the wall de-automatises perception (to use a concept derived from Tzonis and Lefaivre ) [25] by warning the viewer to take notice of this loss of region and tradition while it is occurring. As Nisha Mathew-Ghosh's poetry confirms; "court of west light, pool of eastern reflections, confrontation sometimes leads to introspection." [26]

Mathew and Ghosh's Benjamin house also investigates the separation of rooms within a house. MGA calls this project as "The House of Fragments". This operation of fragmenting and transforming traditional elements springs from MGA's understanding of the shift that is taking place in contemporary society away from the traditional. This shift results in the perception of losing not only one's own identity but also identity constructions that are embodied in architecture. Mathew and Ghosh believe that many characteristics of context or identity are "subconscious" . [27]

In addition, Mathew and Ghosh try to re-organise the elements and spatial hierarchy of a traditional house, by critically reflecting on the needs of contemporary society. For example, as an explicit statement Mathew and Ghosh examine the post-colonial relationship suggested in the veranda-street typology by relocating the veranda into the garden. According to Mathew and Ghosh this is "a gesture that seeks to restore that dwindling space and relationship -- a restoration of the balance between man-made and natural in a busy metropolis." [28] Further, as an implicit metastatement (as will be soon explained), the street side of the Santosh Benjamin House is a stark wall that hides a private world, with a prominent street court lifted to an upper level. In this now displaced court the dweller is able to selectively connect to the outside world. Jameson's writings suggest that this is a form of pastiche. [29]

According to Jameson, pastiche imitates a particular style, while mimicry plays a neutral role without any satirical impulse whatsoever. Pastiche in Postmodernism capitalises on the non-existence of (and/or non-adherence to) any normative reference points or styles in history, which have developed in opposition to the fragmentation of styles and norms caused by Modernism. [30] Arjun Appadurai agrees referring to Jameson's "bold" attitude of designating "pastiche and nostalgia" the status of central modes in post-modern identity productions, [31]

The past is now not a land to return to in a simple politics of memory. It has become a synchronic warehouse of cultural scenarios, a kind of temporal central casting, to which recourse can be taken as appropriate, depending on the movie to be made, the scene to be enacted, the hostages to be rescued. [32]

In the Benjamin house, there is also an evident desire to turn away from the Modernism of Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn, which was the norm in the works of the older generations of post independence architects in India. The seemingly severe and forbidding entrance façade to the Benjamin house, especially noticeable from the south-western approach of the main street, reminds one of Le Corbusier's Shodhan house (1951-56) which is a larger, cubical concrete structure in Ahmedabad. As Soumitro relates to the present author, "living and studying in Ahmedabad, facilitates the absorption and retention of knowledge apart from that achieved in School". [33]

Here Soumitro is acknowledging that a student of architecture must be both aware of, and affected by, Le Corbusier's architecture in Ahmedabad. [34] Therefore, the blank front façade of the Benjamin house, though used for an entirely different purpose and with a different sensibility, may be read as either a romantic reference to, or as a pastiche of, the Shodhan house (see figures 6 and 7).

While recognising the formal influence of the Shodhan house, in its urban setting the Benjamin house evokes a different response. While, in Jameson's words, Le Corbusier's intentions were to "radically [separate] the new utopian space of the modern from the degraded and fallen city fabric" [35] in the Benjamin House the city is no longer fallen or degraded. As a result, the Benjamin House achieves a peculiarly placeless relation to its neighbourhood, and at the same time integrates into the city in its own microcosm which conforms with MGA's idea that "the world is folding within the body of the building." [36]

This form, which is reminiscent of the Shodhan House, celebrates the mind's inability to see "the world in which we now live -- in which Modernity is decisively at large, irregularly self-conscious, and unevenly experienced -- [suggesting] a general break with all sorts of pasts." [37] This reinforces the idea that Critical Regionalism, as an important component of Postmodernism, does not allow any stylistic innovation. It means that, as Jameson suggests, "all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through the masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum." [38] The mention of imagination here resonates with Appadurai's proposition that,

[i]magination has become an organized field of social practices, a form of work (in the sense of both labour and culturally organized practice), and a form of negotiation between sites of agency (individuals) and globally defined fields of possibility. [39]

Thus, the form of the entrance façade, as a poetic device of defamiliarisation in the Benjamin house, is an implicit metastatement, that, to use Tzonis and Lefaivre's words, "make[s] the beholder aware of the artificiality of her or his way or looking at the world." [40]

After the wall and the entry form of the Benjamin House, the third most important element is the canopy roof. The form of the canopy, above the dislocated veranda or "sit-out", is reminiscent of the pitched roofs of south Indian vernacular architecture. For MGA, the idea behind lifting the canopy above the solid masonry of the rest of the building is to give the building a sense of lightness (see figure 8). This sense resists the pressures of globalisation by allowing such pressures to flow through, like local air and weather patterns, sometimes supporting them and sometimes resisting them.
It is also a possible symptom of what Jameson calls "cultural mutation" where "what used to be stigmatised as mass or commercial culture is now received into the precincts of a new and enlarged cultural realm." [41] This in effect "[raises] questions in the mind of the viewer about the legitimacy of the very regionalist tradition to which they belong." [42] For this reason, the roof is intended as both a physical and a poetic gesture (Figure 8-8).

For Mathew and Ghosh the "yellow sculpted wall" is a place for memorabilia and memories, a screen between the living/dining areas that separates the house from future adjoining properties. It is a fragment which a visitor must experience in isolation before experiencing the whole. The front façade of the Benjamin house is also representative of one of the poetics of Critical Regionalism, pastiche, which is exemplified in Jameson's writings on postmodernism. [43] Finally the canopy roof is suggestive of a regional tradition but resembles it in a way that is not at all traditional; neither in its materiality, nor in its connection with the rest of the house. Indeed, the canopy reflects globalisation in an implicit manner, and questions more traditional regionalism. Formally the canopy roof lifts away from the sit-out below, floating in the space between the garden and the house. The regional elements in the Benjamin house are thus seen to be incorporated strangely (for instance, the shifted veranda and the floating roof canopy), rather than familiarly, obeying one of the precepts of Tzonis and Lefaivre's Critical Regionalism.

From this brief analysis it is apparent that, at least to some extent, MGA's Benjamin House employs several complex devices of defamiliarisation. It can also be seen that pastiche, an important form of postmodernism, also becomes a possible source of defamiliarisation. In the case of MGA the desire for forming, securing or maintaining one singular regional architectural identity is fast diminishing in favour of a multiplicity of identities. The criticality of this Critical Regionalism, lies in the very mode of these kinds of re-representations or re-reinterpretations, where, by creating a pastiche defamiliarisation occurs. The architecture thus created is derived from contexts which are abstract, reflecting contemporary situations, and not literal translations of existing archetypes. Under such a condition, the very idea of context is brought into a position of critical enquiry. As Ghosh relates, "the aspects of context [are] felt unnecessary since one does not feel the threat/crisis." [44]

Here, Ghosh is tacitly referring to the threat/crisis of identity that was reflected in the ideologies of the older generation of Indian architects. MGA's architecture is diametrically opposed to the older generation's notions of region or regionalism. The architecture thus created may even, initially at least be confusing or disturbing like the contemporary city. This architecture, which invariably lacks specific regional identity or style, exudes a sense of doubt about the very idea of authentic regional identity and of the loss of it in the contemporary society.

This represents a significant shift and marks the arrival of a confident Postmodernist regionalist tradition in Indian architecture. In the context of the present paper, as has been specifically observed in the Benjamin House, the example may be furthest extent a Critical Regionalist building can reach in elaborating its intentions at the present time. The Benjamin House is a postmodern critical statement about regionalism in architecture.

Notes:

[1] Powell, Robert. The New Asian House. Singapore: Select Publishing, 2001. p. 17.
[2] Riley, Terence. The Un-Private House. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1999.p. 9.
[3] As quoted by Soumitro Ghosh of MGA, in one of the email correspondences with this author. Dated: 08/04/2002.
[4] Ghosh's email, dated 08/04/2002.
[5] Khan, Farzana. "Getting to Know Bangalore." Architecture + Design (1999): 18-22.
[6] Majumdar, Mili. "Residence for Mary Mathew, Bangalore." Energy Efficient Buildings in India. Ed. Mili Majumdar. New Delhi: Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy & TERI (Tata Energy Research Institute), 2001. 173-76.
[7] Dutta, Arindam. "Politics of Space: Bangalore Cosmopolis." Architecture + Design (1999).
[8] Varanashi, Sathya Prakash. "Shifting Images of Bangalore: Pubs, Clubs and Darshinis." Architecture + Design (1999): 38-40.
[9] Jameson, Fredric. The Cultural Turn. London, New York: Verso, 1998. p. 20.
[10] Lines from "Notes on the house," a poem written by Nisha Mathew-Ghosh, sent to the author, dated, 19th December, 2001.
[11] Geuss, Raymond. The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.p. 61.
[12] Ibid., p. 55.
[13] Tzonis, Alexander, Liane Lefaivre, "Why Critical Regionalism Today?" Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965-1995. Ed. Kate Nesbitt. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996.p. 488.
[14] Ibid., p. 489.
[15] Tzonis, Alexander, and Liane Lefaivre. "Critical Regionalism." The Critical Landscape. Ed. Michael Speaks. The Stylos Series. Rotterdam: OIO Publishers, 1996. p. 136.
[16] Tzonis, Lefaivre, "Why Critical Regionalism Today?" p. 489. In this respect, the example of JKK (by Charles Correa) can be considered as a case of Romantic Regionalism.
[17] Shklovsky uses this phrase, pricking the conscience in the essay "Art as Technique," where he discusses Tolstoy's 'defamiliarizing' style of writing. Tzonis and Lefaivre by using this phrase infer to that Critical Regionalism in architecture makes the viewing experience as distant, hard to grasp, difficult, even disturbing.
[18] Tzonis, Lefaivre, "Why Critical Regionalism Today?" p. 489.
[19] Ibid., p. 489.
[20] Ibid., p. 489.
[21] Ibid., p. 489.
[22] From an email discussion with Soumitro Ghosh, of Mathew and Ghosh Architects.
[23] Appadurai, in his Modernity at Large demonstrates the way in which the modern society, in the wake of globalisation, is a result of immeasurable and sometimes inexplicable inter-connections and congruence of the flows of people, of media, of technology, of finance, and of ideologies of states. For a better understanding, read, "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global cultural economy" in Modernity at Large, pg.27-47.
[24] See Johnson, Kirk. Television and Social Change in Rural India. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000.
[25] Tzonis, Lefaivre. "Why Critical Regionalism Today?"
[26] Lines from "Notes on the house," a poem written by Nisha Mathew-Ghosh, sent to the author, dated, 19th December, 2001.
[27] From an email discussion with Soumitro Ghosh, of Mathew and Ghosh Architects.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Jameson, The Cultural Turn. p. 4.
[30] Ibid.,4-5.
[31] Appadurai, Modernity at Large. p. 30.
[32] Ibid.
[33] As relayed to the author in an interview.
[34] Ahmedabad can boast of being one of the cities (after Paris, Chandigarh and La Chaux-de-Fonds) which has more than three buildings by Le Corbusier.
[35] Jameson, The Cultural Turn. p. 12.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Appadurai, Modernity at Large. p. 3.
[38] Jameson, The Cultural Turn. p. 7.
[39] Appadurai, Modernity at Large. p. 31.
[40] Tzonis, Lefaivre. "Why Critical Regionalism Today?" p. 488.
[41] Jameson, The Cultural Turn. p. 31-32.
[42] Tzonis, Lefaivre. "Why Critical Regionalism Today?" p. 488.
[43] Jameson, The Cultural Turn. p. 1-20.
[44] MGA's email, 19th December, 2001.