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Looking through walls: Architecture in the age of McDonalds

 
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    [Gautam Bhatia, "High Raise of Colonial Bunglows"]
    ... from Preface to Looking through walls: Architecture in the age of McDonalds
    Places Made
    I remember architecture is fleeting moments. Over time these moments consolidate into cumulative impression. Places grow from nodding acquaintances to take root in a deepening landscape that stays, not as a fixed image, but whose swaying shifting characteristics create a containment that lingers. At Padmanabhapuram Palace, a place I have visited often, I remember the building gave me constant reminders of the light and landscape within which it was set. In it were hints of my own memories of Kerala - the darkness of its temples, reminders of houses that I had seen, the palm edged sight line that was so much a part of the place. Yet, there was no single correct perception of the place; no one vantage from which the structure was to be viewed; from no place on the grounds could it be experienced as a whole, as complete statement of architecture. The plans' dispersal, and its moments of containment, only created fragmentary experiences. Through constriction and exposure the building acted like a camera - sometimes confining me to a small court, sometimes opening onto a sunlit gallery. Then, when I lease expected it, suddenly enveloping me in complete darkness.
    Places Destroyed
    Architecture in India carries a difficult burden. In a country, where situations and problems achieve a despairing magnitude, is there a way of thinking of architecture, other than as mere problem solving? Should architecture even innovate towards problems? Should it remit to finding solutions to the Bhopal Gas tragedy? Should artistic effort be directed towards making, not just adequate, but thoughtfully imaginative houses for those who need shelter from a cyclone in Orissa?
    Places Imagined
    In India, such thinking is often not possible. Architecture, like other professions, falls squarely in the realm of objective activity directed towards a specific goal, discouraging, so to speak, the tangential view. There are no patrons in architecture, only clients. And theirs is not an exploration of architectural ideas, merely an expression of details for eventual construction. In seeking to express ideas, the architectural task so, becomes harder, if not downright impossible.
    Beebhatsa rasa is employed only in very brief stretches as no one likes to experience this rasa, disgust, for very long, whether reading a book or seeing something on stage. There is not much to describe in this rasa, except to say that it is created when things like vomit, bad odour are properly depicted. A good artiste can communicate this rasa easily and a bad one might create it inadvertently. The other Rasas, Hasya, Karuna, Adbhuta and Bhaya are also sparingly used in specific instances. It must be remembered that these are the lesser rasas.