> Shaji K. Panicker on December 9, 2002 11:28 AM

The most noticeable poetic devices of defamiliarization in MGA's Santosh Benjamin House are the yellow coloured angular, masonry wall (in plan), and the floating canopy of the veranda roof.

The angular masonry wall, which rises gradually as one enters the house through a linear veranda and then becomes a part of the house, remains a seemingly detached entity that suggests a deliberate insertion into the otherwise solid character of the building. This perception is a result of its differentiating 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 meeting the roof and completing 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. Here Ghosh is implicitly alluding to the now discernible rupture [01] in contemporary Indian society, where generations have moved away from their original regions and all that is now left are memories and memorabilia. Such memories are now the screen through which the past is viewed a screen that is inspired or enhanced by the all-powerful role of the media, which subsumes all sections of contemporary Indian society. [02] This play of allusion, this poetic device of defamiliarization is a departure from the earlier modernist and high-modernist ventures of the masters including Doshi, Correa, Raje and others [03] and thus it does not claim to be radically different in trying to forge an identity. On the contrary, the wall transforms itself into a site for consideration of the loss of this sense of region, or place, in contemporary society, and hence; becomes the generator of the house plan the point of departure, and thus the post-modern icon. Alternatively, the wall de-automatises perception (to use a concept derived from Tzonis and Lefaivre's Critical Regionalism [04]) by warning the viewer to take notice of this loss of region and tradition while it is occurring.

Mathew and Ghosh's Santosh Benjamin house is also an investigation into the idea of separating the elements in the body of the building. This operation of fragmenting and transforming the elements effectively springs from MGA's understanding of the shift, taking place in contemporary society away from the traditional, resulting in the feeling of losing not only one's identity but also identity constructions occurring in architecture. Mathew and Ghosh believe that many characteristics of context or identity are subconscious [05]. In addition, Mathew and Ghosh try to re-organize the elements and spatial hierarchy of a traditional house, by critically reflecting on the contemporary society. For instance, as an explicit statement Mathew and Ghosh critically examine the post-colonial relationship of 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. [06] Further, as an implicit metastatement (as will be soon explained), the street side of the Santosh Benjamin House is a stark wall hiding a private world behind the wall, with a prominent street court lifted to an upper level, which enables the dweller to make a connection with the outside world by choice. This is, alternatively, supportive of Jameson's writings, where he observes pastiche as one of the most significant features or practices, in post-modern art productions. [07] According to Jameson, pastiche imitates a peculiar style, but the mimicry plays a neutral role without any satirical impulse whatsoever. According to him, pastiche in postmodernism capitalizes on the non-existence of and/or non-adherence to any normative reference points or styles in history, which can be seen to have developed as a confrontational approach to the immense fragmentation of styles and norms caused by modernism and high modernism. [08] Appadurai, in his Modernity at Large, agrees, referring to Jameson's bold attitude of designating pastiche and nostalgia the status of central modes in post-modern identity productions. [09]

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. [10]

Returning to the Benjamin house, MGA's desire is perhaps to break away from classical modernism and high modernism, started in India by Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn, and followed up by a generation of inspired Indian modernists (and their later attempts to get out of their self-created inspirational archetypes). [11] The seemingly severe and forbidding entrance facade of the Benjamin house reminds one of Le Corbusier's Shodhan house which is a cubical concrete (and comparatively much larger) structure, realized by the maestro himself in Ahmedabad in 1951-56. As Soumitro relates in an interview with this author, living and studying in Ahmedabad (CEPT, School of Architecture), facilitates the absorption and retention of knowledge apart from the one achieved in the School. Soumitro is tacitly admitting to the fact that a student of architecture cannot remain uninspired by or unaware of Le Corbusier's architecture in Ahmedabad. [12] Therefore, the blank front facade of the Benjamin house can be considered at once as either a romantic reference to, or as a pastiche of, Le Corbusier's Shodhan house in Ahmedabad. However, the gesture by MGA is unlike Le Corbusier's violent disjunction the desire to radically [separate] the new utopian space of the modern from the degraded and fallen city fabric. [13] It is in effect achieving a peculiarly placeless dissociation from its neighbourhood, and at the same time integrating within the city in its own microcosm MGA's idea of the world is folding within the body of the building. [14] It is in fact celebrating the incapacity of our minds 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. [15] This alternatively reinforces that Critical Regionalism, as one important component of postmodernism, may 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. [16] The mention of imagination here again resonates with Appadurai's idea 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. [17]

Thus, the use of such an entrance facade, as a poetic device of defamiliarization in the Benjamin house is an implicit metastatement, which, in Tzonis and Lefaivre's own words, make[s] the beholder aware of the artificiality of her or his way or looking at the world. [18]

Finally, in the Benjamin house, the form of the canopy, above the re-located veranda or sit-out, is reminiscent of the pitched roofs of south Indian vernacular architecture. 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. This sense belies the pressures of globalisation by allowing such pressures to flow through, like local air and weather patterns sometimes supporting them, sometimes resisting them. It is also suggestive of a symptom of cultural mutation, where to quote again from Jameson, what used to be stigmatised as mass or commercial culture is now received into the precincts of a new and enlarged cultural realm, [19] which in effect [raises] questions in the mind of the viewer about the legitimacy of the very regionalist tradition to which they belong. [20] For this reason, the roof is intended as both a physical and a poetic gesture. As Nisha Mathew-Ghosh, writes poetically in 2000, court of west light, pool of eastern reflections, confrontation sometimes leads to introspection [21].

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 adjoining properties (which may appear in the future). It is a fragment, which a visitor must experience before experiencing the whole, thus acknowledging Appadurai's theory of rupture. The front facade of the Benjamin house could be seen as representative of one of the poetics of Critical Regionalism, pastiche, which is exemplified in Jameson's writings on postmodernism. [22] 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 in fact, the canopy reflects globalisation in an implicit manner, and questions regionalism per se. The regional element is seen to be incorporated strangely, rather than familiarly, obeying one of the precepts of Tzonis and Lefaivre's Critical Regionalism. Formally the roof lifts away from the sit-out below, floating in the space between the garden and the house.

About the author: Shaji K. Panicker is completing his Masters in Architecture from the University of Newcastle, Australia. Under the guidance of Professor Michael Ostwald and John Moore, his thesis examines the works of a couple of architects in post-liberalization India, with the framework of Critical Regionalism

References:

1. 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.
2. Johnson, Kirk. Television and Social Change in Rural India. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000.
3. For details, refer chapter 2.
4. Tzonis, Alexander, and 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.
5. From an email discussion with Soumitro Ghosh, of MGA (date)
6. Ibid.
7. Jameson, Fredric. "Postmodernism and Consumer Society." The Cultural Turn. London, New York: Verso, 1998. 4.
8. Ibid., 4-5.
9. Appadurai, Arjun. "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy." Modernity at Large. Eds. Dilip Gaonkar and Benjamin Lee. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. 30.
10. Ibid.
11. Detailed discussion in chapter 2.
12. 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.
13. Jameson, Fredric. "Postmodernism and Consumer Society." The Cultural Turn. London, New York: Verso, 1998. 12.
14. Ibid.
    
15. Appadurai, Arjun. "Here and Now." Modernity at Large. Eds. Dilip Gaonkar and Benjamin Lee. Vol. 1. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. 3.
    
16. Jameson, Fredric. "Postmodernism and Consumer Society." The Cultural Turn. London, New York: Verso, 1998. 7.
    
17. Appadurai, Arjun. "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy." Modernity at Large. Eds. Dilip Gaonkar and Benjamin Lee. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. 31.
    
18. Tzonis, Alexander, and 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. 488.
    
19. Jameson, Fredric. "Theories of the postmodern." The Cultural Turn. London, New York: Verso, 1998. 31-32.
    
20. Tzonis, Alexander, and 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. 488.
    
21. Lines from Notes on the house, a poem written by Nisha Mathew-Ghosh, sent to the author, dated, 19th December, 2000.
    
22. Jameson, Fredric. "Postmodernism and Consumer Society." The Cultural Turn. London, New York: Verso, 1998. 1-20.

> Architexturez Editors on November 30, 2003 2:59 AM

Panicker comment expanded in essay: "Implicit Metastatements: Domestic signs in the architecture of Mathew and Ghosh Architects, India"

PDF: http://www.layermag.com