Memory and architecture

MEMORY AND ARCHITECTURE

SYED SHABEEB RAZA BILGRAMI B. ARCH- IV YEAR A/2106/2009 GUIDE- PROF. MANOJ MATHUR CO-ORDINATOR- MR. PRABHJYOT SINGH SUGGA

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DECLARATION The research work embodied in this dissertation titled 'Memory And Architecture' has been carried out by the undersigned as part of the undergraduate Dissertation programme in the Department of Architecture, School of Planning and architecture, New Delhi, under the supervision of Mr. Manoj Mathur The undersigned hereby declares that this is his/her original work and has not been plagiarised in part or full form from any source.

(Signature) Name – Syed Shabeeb Raza Bilgrami Roll No. - A/2106/2009 Date - 12/11/2014

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This dissertation is an outcome of a lot of help and guidance received through a lot of people around me, from framing the research question to finding its answer, at every step there have been people showing the right direction through there valuable inputs .

Amongst them I would like to first thank my guide Mr. Manoj Mathur who kept me on the right track and kept showing interest in my discussions with him, kept boosting my moral for me to finish this dissertation well. Second of all Mrs. Parul Kiri Roy who was a constant support for me and provided me with very crucial reading materials.

I would also like to thank my friends and family who have been very patient with me while listening to my dissertation over and over again and yet kept showing interest in it.

Without all the support I have received this dissertation would have not been complete. I am grateful to all them for their valuable contributions to this research.

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CONTENTS

Synopsis 

Introduction

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Research question

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Aim

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Scope

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Need identification

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Limitation

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Methodology

Chapter 1 – Human Memory and Its Ways- A brief research on the types of memories and the affects each has on a human remembrance. 

What is memory?

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Sensory memory

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Short term memory



Long term memory

Chapter 2 - Senses and Architecture- Discussing the values of all sensory perceptions in architectural experiences and their importance in strengthening our memories. 

Memory formation through the five senses

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Ocular centric biases

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Cohesion of the five senses

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Chapter 3- Memory Corruption- Analysing the ways memories have been channelized and the incorporation of symbolism in architecture 

Since the very childhood

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Symbolism the major source of memory corruption

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The built and the surrounding (through an analytical eye)

Chapter 4 – Architecture and the variable memories 

Architecture as the container of memory

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Architecture as a producer of a memory

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Architecture and its inability to reflect a certain memory

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Architecture with no memory.

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Example explaining each of the above(CASE STUDIES)

Chapter 5 – Conclusion Bibliography

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INTRODUCTION Memory and architecture are two sides of the same coin, one is physical the other, mental. They both are providers of identity. Architecture is the reflector and memory is the reflected. But in the present times we are suffering with lack of architectural ability to connect to our memories or create new memories which could define our present in future. The unfortunate existence of the overpowering dominance of vision and the way it affects our observation skills, in turn hampering our memories is a concern at present.

The architects today have lately started to talk about the sense of a place as architecture is not only about the built but also about the experience of the built.

“Sense of a place goes hand in hand with creating memories”, says Maria Lorena Lehman in her article “sensing architecture”. Further elaborating on the topic she says our memory of events may depend upon a strong sense of place, and by extension, our sense of place may be influenced by the integrity of memories formed there. (Lehman, 2010) The memory of an event or a happening always has a surrounding background or a physical built around it. If this background has a particular character or a sense attached to it then it helps the memory of that event/experience grow stronger. The term “physical background” is not limited to the hard physical materials used but also to the spaces they generate and the way our senses respond towards these various elements and the way these materials and spaces alter and shape our sensory perception.

Why is it easier to remember certain routes as compared to the others, is it because they have less number of turns or is it simply because one can associate with them more easily?

Being a resident of Jasola Vihar, New Delhi, why is it that every time I guide someone to my house, I end up describing them as “the grey DDA flats near Appolo Hospital”?

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It’s an unconscious effort of creating a sense of association with your surroundings, be it a land mark or a peculiar character of a place (sense of a place).

It is now in the world of globalisation that we, in the name of braking boundaries, have decided to let go of our identities. With the global architecture picking up its pace, it is becoming hard to distinguish between places and therefore the formation of a strong association and an irremovable memory of place is being put at serious risk.

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Here is an example of Tokyo (left) and Chicago (right), two cities from the opposite corners of the world yet hard to distinguish

Fig. 0.1 (Anon., 2014)

Fig.0.2 (Anon., 2014)

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Here is another examples of Venice (left) and Banaras (right), two cities having certain features in common but yet they stand with independent identities and honest to the memories and associations attached to them.

Fig. 0.3 (Amaly, 2012)

Fig. 0.4 (Sharma, 2010)

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Does architecture of today, enrich our memories? Should it not be the most important task of it, beyond form and function?

AIM This dissertations aims at understanding the kind of memories formulated through architecture today and what are the ingredients that can help in strengthening the process of remembrance.

NEED IDENTIFACTION Human memory has been the answer bank to some basic question related to our evolution and existence. Answers to all the complex questions related to our journey through ages lies in this bank of our memory. “Memory” has always been important in the world of discussions not only because it is the “record keeper” of events but also because it is a provider of identity. It is our memory that tells us who we area, where we come from.

Architecture has always been one of the strongest protectors and projectors of different identities of the different places and people it belongs to, but why is it necessary to involve memory with architecture? Why can’t we keep making new things and moving on, forgetting the old ones? What we build in the present is the need of the hour as well as a step towards a desired future and the desire of the future is linked with the past and the past is what our memory is. Hence it is our memory that feeds the future and to keep the cycle of evolution continuous we need to have continuous memory generating points. Every today, should be a memorable yesterday to have a tomorrow.

Since the beginning of civilisation, our architecture has evolved with us.

Therefore this study is meant to identify and bring out the elements of the built that actually formulate a certain association and a sense of perception amongst the experiencers, leading us to acknowledge the strength of architecture in going beyond form and function and evoking our sensory perceptions for providing us

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with a memory of the bodily experience rather than the more common bodiless experience.

SCOPE The study shall cover the use of the sensory organs in the understanding of different spaces both at the settlement level and at individual space level. It shall be a comparative study between different places/spaces on the personal interview basis regarding places in Delhi.

LIMITATIONS Memory generation has not been one amongst the deliberate attempts of architects, the dominating focus on “form” and “function” leaves with majorly conjectures in field of memory. To say a particular architect wanted to generate or formulate a particular memory in nearly impossible. Memories of place are usually subjected to personal perceptions and interpretations and hence to generalise a conclusion is in doubt. Hence this dissertation very modestly hopes to identify if certain architectural examples hold any sort of memory in them or not and why?

METHODOLOGY The existing literature prevailing on memory and architecture shall be identified, gathered and reviewed. The review shall with an arsenal of theories and ideas that have been contemplated on the subject in the past. The study shall then be applied to the Indian context.

The acquired knowledge through the literature survey shall be used to identify particular cases in Delhi taking an example of various types of architecture and their variable abilities of memory formations. A study shall be conducted in the form interviews and personal experiences to completely understand the kind of memories held in each of these places to clearly reflect the theories derived from

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the literature survey. The case studies shall then be closely looked upon and scrutinised and conclusions will be derived.

Finally the topic of memory and architecture shall be discussed with practicing architects, faculty members and their views shall be acknowledged and documented. All results learnt shall then be compiled with an attempt to derive to a conclusion in the end.

Certain frame work of research shall be set which shall cater to the following aspects: 

Look in to the aspect of memory formation in humans.



Finding a correlation between space, physical built and memory.

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Find the value of the use of body senses in memory formation.

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Link sensory perception with memory formation.

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See the variability that exists in memory formation.

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Cater to the aspect of memory corruption.

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Ability of a space to form memories and the reasons behind it.

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Its understanding through certain examples.

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CHAPTER-01

HUMAN MEMORY AND ITS WAYS

What is memory?

The mental faculty recording the past experiences based on the mental process of learning, retaining and recalling. But is this it?

Let us begin with a brief understanding of the types of memories that exist and the process of their formation.

Fig. 1.1 (Mastin, 2010)

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What we generally perceive as memory in our day to day lives is actually the long term memory but there also exist the sensory memory and the short term memory, which usually go unnoticed by us in the rush of our everyday lives.

Every event/incident goes through a registration process in our sensory and short term memory first, before being stored permanently in our long term memory. Therefore the stronger the impact of an event on our sensory and short term memory the better is the chance of that event being remembered for a life time. (Cherry, 2014

SENSORY MEMORY Sensory memory is what we relate to ‘perception in an instance’. It is the shortest form of memory generated at a reflex rate through any of our five senses of smell, sight, hearing, taste and touch. The time span of such memory is not more than 300-500 milliseconds and maximum to a second (rare cases) and therefore it is more of an instinct based memory. Our brain is trained to register only a selected part of the information which has the chances of being useful in future and hence most of the time our sensory memory goes unrecorded. For an event or an experience to have an impact on our memory at the sensory (instantaneous) pace it needs to have a very strong contact with our either of our five senses. (Mastin, 2010)

Like for example: when you do a trek to Kheerganga through those thick forests and the soft slippery Shivalik mountains of Himachal Pradesh you can never guess what will come next and then suddenly you enter into this vast vacant valley absolutely untouched and pure, surrounded with huge mountains all around and you stand in the middle like a speck of dust.

Or, when in the city of Ajmer, if you decide to travel all the way up to the Taragarh fort, away from the chaos and the hustle bustle of the city. You reach the top of the hill and then you look back, down onto all the twinkling lights and

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a huge void (the lake) amongst them, the contrast and the amazement, cannot be ignored.

Or, the moment you enter the building of the National Institute Design (Ahmedabad) through its low height reception/gallery/display area and you suddenly find yourself into this huge courtyard where the building just opens itself to you, the courtyard filled with cold light and a huge tree growing right in the middle of it.

Or for that matter the same building managing to maintain the sensitivity towards the natural environment to an extent that we can find exotic birds like peacocks roaming in the campus like pigeons in Delhi.

Such experiential places do not require a long process of remembrance and familiarity to develop an association and permanence in ones memories. These encounters generate a sudden shock, opening themselves as a surprise box and get absorbed by ones sensory perception, instantly sticking to his/her memory.

But the limitation of such a memory is that it can only be generated with a firsthand experience as it requires the most instantaneous response of our senses in the purest form which can only be generated when we ourselves are physically involved in the event.

SHORT TERM MEMORY (WORKING MEMORY) The next stage of our memory process is the short-term memory or the working memory, functioning on the basis of temporary recall.

It is the memory formation working parallel with the understanding of the event.

We can take reading as an example. When we read, in order to understand the sentence we are reading we need to remember the previous sentence we just read. Brain is basically recalling the prequel and understanding the sequel at the same time, but the brain can be forced to shift the sentences to the slot for long term memory be repetitive readings or by deliberate attempt to consciously

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remember the reading through concentration and understanding. (Mastin, 2010), (McLeod, 2009) This is how our brain processes navigation, be it through pages or through roads.

So why is it that we remember certain routes clearly and tend to forget a few others again and again? There can be two answers to this question: Either we travel a certain route more frequently so the repetition or the timely reoccurrence of the same event makes it stick to our long term memory.Or while travelling through certain routes we witness such landmarks which just cannot go unnoticed and they simultaneously form a mental map of that route.

Metro in Delhi is a perfect example of this. They not only provide the commuters with a new mode of transport but also end up guiding many traveling on the roads, metro pillars in specific are an example of this. The cut to Preet Vihar where my uncle stays is right opposite the pillar number 100 of Anand Vihar metro line. Now how do I remember this? As soon as I made the turn into Preet Vihar through that dense, confusing road of Anand Vihar my brain tried to simultaneously recall the most eminent and the closest thing around which my sense of sight absorbed. The pillar number 100, written with black in a yellow circle on a grey concrete pillar.

LONG TERM MEMORY Long term memory is the one that acts as the major storage unit in our brain.

Events that proceed into becoming long term memories are often considered to become permanent. Research is still being done on the fact that, do we actually ever forget? Or is it that our memories somewhere just get suppressed due to the continuous formation of new ones. When we find it hard to recall certain happenings, is it because we have forgotten the event or is it because that event has not been able to have an impact strong enough on are brain due to its lack of relativity?

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“Short-term memories can become long-term memory through the process of consolidation, involving rehearsal and meaningful association. Unlike short-term memory (which relies mostly on an acoustic, and to a lesser extent a visual, code for storing information), long-term memory encodes information for storage semantically (i.e. based on meaning and association). However, there is also some evidence that long-term memory does also encode to some extent by sound.

For example, when we cannot quite remember a word but it is “on the tip of the tongue”, this is usually based on the sound of a word, not its meaning.” (Mastin, 2010)

Long term memory is further divided into: explicit (declarative) and implicit (procedural) memory.

Declarative memory is what facilitates one with facts or events by a conscious effort of recalling or remembrance. This is what is also termed as explicit memory, since it consists of information that is explicitly stored and retrieved, though it is not exactly so, rather it is a further subset of explicit memory.

Declarative memory has further two more subsets: episodic memory and semantic memory. (McLeod, 2010)

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CHAPTER- 02 SENSES AND ARCHITECTURE

It is not only our brain that remembers, our body remembers too and it is through our senses that our body is able to extract memories.

It is the eye that forms visual memories, the ears form audio memory, and the nose keeps a record of the scent, the tongue that provides the memory a taste and the most important our skin, which formulates a tactile or haptic memory. It is through these senses that one unites oneself with the world or the environment around him/her.

Our body is the tool to interact with our surroundings but for this to happen our surroundings need to interact with our body as well. Architecture is what studies into these aspects of social and material co-existence and bares the responsibility of generating interactive and ‘living’ spaces alongside all the other basic necessities like the ones of shelter. It is the ability of architecture by virtue of which it can tap into the past experiences of a body, generating memories which can dramatically increase the body’s association with a piratical place which we at times refer to as a sense of a place. (Morris, 2012) What is interesting to notice is that we do not store judgement free memories instead every memory of ours has a strong flavour of emotions attached to it, generated through some other undefined senses like that of rhythm, life, fear, pressure, happiness etc. These emotional senses are rooted to our basic five senses and hence architects cannot detach themselves from considering, as one of the governing factors in space design. As said by Alain De Botton in his book The Architecture of Happiness: the secret art of furnishing your life, “an ugly room can coagulate any loose suspicions as to the incompleteness of life, while a sun-lit one set with honey-coloured limestone tiles can lend support to whatever is most 18 | P a g e

hopeful within us. Belief in the significance of architecture is premised on the notion that we are, for better or for worse, different people in different placesand on the convection that it is architecture’s task to render vivid to us who we might ideally be.” (Botton, 2007) Architecture uses human memory to help occupants both “do” and “learn”. Yet, what occupants probably remember most are the meaning, sense and emotion that an environment helped provide. These feelings alter the perception of the occupants as well as affect the decisions they make in a space further enriching their memories (Karen A. Franck, 2010).

Verandas of Connaught Place are certainly very inviting but it is more due to the conscious effort laid down by Ar. Robert Tor Russelto provide a rhythm to the circulation of the plaza that somewhere guides the visitors into itself, creating a more embedded memory of the place. It is through architecture that we can bring this multi-foliated aspect of senses into harmony and generate the much talked about ‘sense of place’ to a level of success.

OCCULAR-CENTRIC BAISIS If we look down through history we will discern that there is something that can be termed as a ‘sensory bias’, which exists. Since the time of the Greeks philosopher have come across giving weightage to the sense of sight over all the other senses. Palto regards vision as the man greatest gift (Jay, 1994), Heraclitus has said “eyes are a more exact witness than the ears” (Levin, 1993); Aristotle has stated the sight to be the most noble of all the senses as it is the sense of vision that ‘approximates the intellect most closely by virtue of the relative immateriality of it knowing’. (Flynn, 1993) and later during the time of the renaissance these senses got listed down into a system of hierarchy which resembled that of the cosmos. Starting from the eye and going down, ending on touch. Vision epitomised fire and light, hearing was associated with air, and

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smell was related to vapours, taste to water and in the end touch to earth (Pallasmaa, 2013).

The obsession of the Greeks with optical correctness or for that matter the importance given to aesthetics during the renaissance did not necessarily mean ignorance of other senses. These ages could still draw a unique connection of the ‘self’ with the world, producing thick cultures and thicker characters of the surroundings resulting in a stronger sense of belonging and sharper memories.

It’s the pace of technology that invaded our sensory perceptions and made the society all the more ocular centric. The socio, political, economic condition of the world during and after the II world word saw a drastic change in architecture and modernist theory came to full swing. The architects then considered themselves to be more function based away from unnecessary ornamentations and aesthetics but this did not mean that they were away from ocular centrism.

The demand of clean angles, clear spaces, elimination of ornamentations, minimalism was just another form of ‘visual taste’. The presence of the hegemonic eye can be seen in the writings of modernist architects like Le Corbusier when he says ‘I exist in life only if I can see’ (Corbusier, 1991) or Walter Gropius who said ‘he [the designer] has to adapt knowledge of the scientific fact of optics and thus obtain a theoretical ground that will guide the hand giving shape, and create an objective basis’ (Gropius, 1956). Even Postmodernism could not come up with a solution for this, instead it worsen the situation and the society adapted itself to see and just see with the eye.

This line of thought has not only affected the way spaces were and are built but also changed the character of the occupants as well. Now the inhabitants of the spaces are mere spectators rather than experiencers. The privileged and the preferred eye of our time has enabled us to ‘see’ but has blinded all our other senses. Today it’s only our sense of sight and hearing that we share on a community level, smell, taste and touch have shrunken to a very personal self, and it’s seldom that we share these senses on a community basis. How can we

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neglect the accuracy of our tactile senses as well as the fact that the haptic senses are more exact than the vision? It is possible for a detaching sense of vision to be nihilistic but it is not possible for the sense of touch to be so due to its unavoidable nearness, intimacy, veracity, and its power of identification.

(Pallasmaa, 2013) In this fast moving, visually biased world of today our built often just passes by us, generating nothing more than just flash of images (photographs).

Experiences, in the built and of the built, are hard to find. A sense of detachment of the ‘self’ from the ‘world’ is a common experience one can find. As Italo Calvino- ‘an unending rainfall of images’ (Calvino, 1988). Heidegger also writes relating to the same, ‘The fundamental event of the modern age is the conquest of the world as picture’ (Heidegger, 1977).

COHESION OF THE FIVE SENSES We all are aware of the fact that our body works as a single unit where all its parts function together in certain combinations to perform an activity then how can we limit ourselves to only see from the eye alone when all the other senses are present to facilitate our vision and enrich our observations in a more holistic manner, storing experiences through complete sensory perception.

The depth and the height of a place is seen by the sound I make; a shaded cannot be fully perceived until and unless our skin makes our eyes see the coolness of it; an understanding of a tomb or an abandoned building is incomplete if we do not take in account the smell of emptiness it carries ; or looking at certain colours in a building or the smoothness of a finish or the stone used can stimulate a very intimate connection between the built and the observer, so intimate that one can actually taste the smoothness, can taste the stone but its only if we allow our tongue to see (Pallasmaa, 2013). These interrelations of the senses which can actually generate denser sets of memories have actually been left out of consideration in a lot of buildings and spaces that have come up in past few decades.

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My recent visit to a cemetery made me realise that though I was standing in the middle of a crowd of approximately a hundred people, yet I was surrounded by a sense of emptiness. The heavy sound of silence ended up giving the space a unique sense of hollowness, a sensation that only the ears could generate. But on the contradictory, it is the giggles and the screams of joy and excitement that end up completing the experience of an amusement park. If we exchange the sounds generated in the spaces with each other, we will realise that the spaces end up losing their ‘sense of a place’ and further losing their identity.

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CHAPTER- 03 MEMORY CORRUPTION Hence we have arrived to the realization that to understand a place we need all our sensory perception to work in some order to give that place a layout in our memory. We cannot allow the term “look” to jail our understanding of the surroundings. We cannot just look at a street, or just look at a building because till we do that our knowledge of same shall remain superficial and our memories, bleak. But the ocular centrism in the society is not the result of ignorance of the other senses alone but it has also been fed into us through imagery. Images lead to symbolism and symbolism leads to an unintentional memory corruptions.

These symbolisms exist in architecture too. The biggest example of such symbolism is linked to our childhood.

I interviewed 10 children of age 5 to 12 and I asked them if they think a building and a house were different. The answer was a unanimous ‘YES’. On further asking what exactly did they think the difference was? The answers again were somewhat similar. To them a building was something related to a work place where a lot of people worked together and a house was a place where families lived. For a child’s point of view the answers were functionally correct and when I asked them to draw me the two the result were as follows.

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Fig. 6 Ebrahim Zaidi (Age - 9 year)

Fig. 7 Haider Zaidi (Age- 5 years) 24 | P a g e

Similar, yet again. This is where the question arises, why it is that for every child the house is the same? We all are aware of the fact that none of these children live in houses like these anymore; in fact most of them stay in apartments which look somewhat similar to what “buildings” are for these children. It is the symbolism that has developed over ages; “H for hut” is one example of this symbolism. This symbolism makes a permanent place in our memory since our childhood and stays with us throughout our lives therefore no matter how old we grow the drawing of the house will remain the same and there will always be a difference between a “building” and a “house”. An image fed into the memory in his/her childhood. These representative memories based on imagery, confined our perspectives to a particular system of understanding and viewing the space. These corruptions of memories lead to the miss understanding of architecture at the grass root level. With such rigid memories architecture stagnates in ones memory and is unable to evolve with time forming a particular set of structural representations, forms and images rather than developing in a form of an experience.

So the concern arises that is the symbolism so strong that architecture cannot brake out of it or is it because that the architecture is so week that it cannot replace the forced images fed into our memory. The generic architecture of today which is a result of mass production has not been able to overcome these symbolisms because it itself is bound by them; architecture of today has grown into a discipline, a system governed by various set of rules. Form and function, they two alone cannot complete the architecture because a building is never all about them. A building lives in a continuous dialogue between all the elements in it. It is about the connection of the tiniest details that make up the larger space, the relation of the built and the surrounding, the enclosed and the open, the new and the old. “Every new work of architecture intervenes in a specific historical situation. It is essential to the quality of the intervention that the new building should embrace qualities which can enter into a meaningful dialogue with the existing situation. For it the intervention is to find its place, it must make us see what already exists in a new light. We throw a stone into the water.

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Sand swirls up and settles again. The stir was necessary. The stone has found its place. But the pond is no longer the same.� (Zumthor, 1988) Hence every construction is an addition to an already exiting background, this addition has the ability to merge into the already existing or redefine the elements of the past surrounding it, giving them a whole new meaning. “Ghalib ki Haweli in old Delhi (turned into a museum now) or the Nimbrana fort (turned into a five star hotel) are examples where the changes in functionalities end up redefining the spaces. But when the newly built does nothing to its surrounding when it stand alone, numb, that is when the possibility of it’s virtually none existence arises. Buildings are the smaller unit that come together to make a larger space, a space at the community level. If these buildings do not have a connection of any sorts with each other, if they share nothing, if they respond to no past, if they have no resemblance to the known, if they cannot bridge the past and the future then how can they build the right present? We end up having spaces which belong to nowhere, places with an identity crisis. Places that have no memories to look through, no memories to stitch a story around them. These spaces stand solitarily, fulfilling their functions (ideally) but then, that is all they are there for. They will be replaced with better functional spaces and they will be soon forgotten because the memories attached to such places are so generic and superficial that they would never be able to grow deep rooted memories

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CHAPTER -04

ARCHITECTURE AND THE VARIABLE MEMORIES Every piece of architecture falls under a certain category when we see it in the light of memory generation. There are certain spaces which contain and reflect memories which belong to particular period, space which are representative of the past or belong directly to the past; these spaces are the bridge to our history.

Then there are places which have the ability to generate memories, the sense of a place attached to these spaces is unique in certain ways thus generating memorable experiences and adding to them a new set of memories. There are also certain architectural examples that will make us realise that there also exist spaces which try to convey a different feel but are interpreted in a different manner, in these scenarios it is usually the use of these spaces that modify the way they are understood and remembered.

But with all the above categories of spaces there are also places that hold no potential for generating any sort of memories. These places neither link to the past neither do they contain memories of their own. These places are a concern for architecture as they do nothing more than taking up a physical space around us in order to cater to a function.

There are examples listed below belonging to each of the above categories, in order to understand what characteristics make a certain space formulate a certain memory.

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THE NEW DELHI RAILWAY STATION (AJMERI GATE)

Fig. 9 New Delhi railway station The slowing speed of the train, the shrieking voices of the hawkers, the recorded announcement and the anticipation attached to a visit to a new place or back home are some common feelings and experiences shared by a lot of people on arriving to a railway station but this is not all a railway station is about. It is the portal to the city one of the first few places a person experiences in a city. The Railway station of a city can have a tremendous impact on ones understanding of that city. It is undoubtedly one of the emblems of the city and hence the architecture of it has the responsibility to respond to the identity and the memories attached to it.

Taking the example of New Delhi, the capital of India, it is known to be a continuously growing metropolitan with a mixed population and mixed cultural background but yet this city has certain places which define it as the capital of

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the country but unfortunately one the faces of this city the New Delhi railway station fails to reclaim this identity.

Without going into the functionalities of the structure if we just take in account the experience of the whole place, it seems to be detached from the city. When we look at the New Delhi railway station, the structure appears to be confused in what it actually caters to? A desperate attempt to link the structure with the city somehow has forced the architect in superimposing the iconic pillars of the Connaught Place. Yes they are one of the images of the city but very ocularcentrically. The structure provides the observers with only an image of Connaught Place but is far away from providing an actual memory of it. Why is that though? It is because it is not the pillars that represent C.P. alone it is the experience of the whole place that generates a certain memory attached to it. For a surrounding as such, the approach of the New Delhi Railway station seems to be very ocular centric where it responds to just one element of the build to attach itself with the context and neglects the opportunity to match the experience of the surrounding. Connaught place is about the radial movement, the verandas the central green the layering of the closed, the semi-open and the open without catering to all these crucial elements of this space one can never bridge a link between any place and the Connaught place.

Thus the New Delhi railway station fails to become a container of memories and it is not able to generate memories of its own as well. And if it remains the same, a place so crucial for a city will always be unable to construct memories and will never formulate a relation with the city it belongs to.

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INDIA HABITAT CENTRE (LODHI ROAD)

Fig. 4.4 (filapia, 2013) On the contrary to the above there are examples of places which have the abilities to characterise a place and build memories which belong to that place in peculiarity. One of the examples of such spaces is the India Habitat Centre and its deep connection with the Lodhi road, New Delhi. Lodhi as the name, dates back to the rulers of Delhi during the 15th and the 16th century. To back this The Lodhi gardens are present in the same area as memorial for the Lodhi dynasty The importance of the area around Lodhi road has never gone down a bit since then it is considered to be a completely different side of the city, away from the hustle bustle of the capital this area is always associated to words like clean, calm, elegant, graceful and green. The roads are neither too wide nor too narrow, the trees planted on both side keep the days absolutely shaded and night nicely

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chilled. The whole experience of the place is particularly of the coolness which is hard to find in Delhi (especially in summers) and amidst this background if any new construction is to be made it needs to either respond to this rich context or be able to generate memories that are equally rich and it is only then that this new construction shall to justice to its surrounding.

The Indian Habitat Centre is one such construction around this area which, neither relates to the context directly nor does it contain the memories of the past but yet responds to its surroundings in a very cohesive manner by relating to the overall feel of its context hence whenever one tries and remember the Lodhi road today IHC is one of the architectural build that come to the mind and whenever one thinks of the Indian Habitat Centre one can easily draft out the Lodhi road and its context around it.

The building contains elements which are unique to it but yet merge with the background beautifully. The facade is treated with the red sand stone which has been one of the most extensively used materials in the Architecture all around Delhi at one point of time hence the building looks rooted to the city with just the basic choice of the material used. The stone has been a part of the very strong architectural history of Delhi, but this doesn’t mean that IHC reminds us of the Red Fort or the Jama Masjid but yes, the stone does connect it to the grace and the splendour of the two, presenting the observer with silent richness.

But this is just the visual aspect of it, if we talk about the experiential side of IHC is one of the finest examples of integrating man to his environment. The functional end of it ranges from business offices, visual galleries, auditorium, library, hotels and open air theatres, combining the corporate and cultural minds together. The complex comprises of a number of buildings six to seven floors and in between those lie small patches of greens and shaded open area away from the noise of the metropolitan. It’s not only soothing to the eyes but as well as soothing to the ears and hence these sudden hidden pockets of silence end up enhancing the whole experience of the place. It’s an example where special

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efforts are visible to put up a memorable experience in front of the user. The upper two floors of the buildings are twice as wide as the floors below so that the shaded area is larger than the foot print of the built turning the whole building into a natural umbrella or the large light cladding system in the form of the pergola with blue tinted sheets to cool the surface from the harsh sun of summers and make a large area usable all days of the year. These never go unnoticed; they are always at the back of the minds of every visitor forming pleasant special memories of the Indian Habitat Centre.

Fig. 4.5 (india, 2013)

Fig. 4.6 (landscapelover, 2011)

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CHAPTER- 5

Conclusion Memory formation in a human body is the a strong source for keeping architecture alive (by keeping the sense of a place alive) but one can also say architecture is a strong source for keeping memories alive (by providing a space a sense of place).

This intertwined relation between the two is the sole factor that led to this dissertation and will remain as a factor enough for not letting the people forget the importance of memory generation through architecture.

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