Di 39 | Suprio B - Free From What Bnds Us | 04/2015

April 2015

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Volume 04 / Issue 06 R200

CONTENTS 27

Author

Authors Ranjit Hoskote Critic and curator Smita Dalvi Architect and researcher Contributors Apurva Bose Dutta Suprio Bhattacharjee Photographers Matteo Piazza Praveen Mohandas Rajesh Vora Shimul Javeri Kadri Ramlath Sebastian Zachariah Robert D Stephens Aditya Palsule

INDIA

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Kaiwan Mehta

28

Maurizio Gargano

30

Confetti History and prehistory

Joseph Rykwert

32

Economy, power and architecture

Suprio Bhattacharjee

36

Alex de Rijke

42

Ranjit Hoskote

46

Smita Dalvi

52

Sharmila Chakravorty

58

Frei Otto 2015 Pritzker Architecture Prize

Contemporary museum for architecture in India

Free from what binds us Critique meets construction

Shelagh Keeley

The afterlife of the classical

Kahani Designworks

A storyseeker’s guide

Why exhibit architecture?

Robert D Stephens

62

Man-made misfortunes

Lorenzo Pignatti

68

The new grand tour

71

studio archohm

Design as intervention

Kaiwan Mehta

76

SJK Architects

Projects Ethics of design

Apurva Bose Dutta

84

LIJO.RENY.architects

Reflecting amidst chaos

90

Renato Rizzi

The Gdansk Shakespeare Theatre

John Tuomey

INDIA

Title Editorial Does architecture matter?

Contemporary museum for architecture in India

LA CITTÀ DELL’ UOMO

April 2015

Design

100

Rassegna Systems of enclosure

107

Feedback John Tuomey’s Dublin

Volume 04 / Issue 06 R200

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LA CITTÀ DELL’ UOMO

LA CITTÀ DELL’ UOMO

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FREI OTTO (1925-2015) THE PRITZKER ARCHITECTURE PRIZE 2015

Cover: Frei Otto passed away a few weeks ago, shortly after being awarded the 2015 Pritzker Architecture Prize, leaving behind a legacy of pioneering life-work in lightweight buildings. The cover is a dedication to the life and work of a master such as Frei Otto. Pictured here is his design of the roofing for the main sports facilities in the Munich Olympic Park for the 1972 Summer Olympics, 1968–1972, Munich, Germany, one of his seminal and path-breaking works.

Photo © Christine Kanstinger ©2015 The Pritzker Architecture Prize / The Hyatt Foundation

FREI OTTO (1925-2015) THE PRITZKER ARCHITECTURE PRIZE 2015

A sketch of the Skewed House in Palakkad, Kerala by LIJO.RENY.architects. The abstracted form may look chaotic, but was meant to reflect the chaos of the surroundings – the traffic, the noise, dust, heat, several cluttered signage, the kitsch-ridden surrounding architectural-scape, the chaos of the overhead electrical wires etc.

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28 EDITORIAL

Architecture practically shapes the manmade, physical world we live in, it probably constitutes the most material and most present of all things designed to provide for human life and sustenance on earth, yet, you rarely see architects as influential personalities within the sphere of culture or everyday politics. At times, architects are involved in committees set up by State administrative bodies, where they serve as experts on issues relating to planning or development. However, the question is about architects as active participants in everyday politics, through architecture, but beyond the job of an architect. This question that has always lingered around comes up again in the context of two things – firstly, recently architects have featured on covers of lifestyle magazines, posing as makers-and-shapers; well, within the profession, sure, some of them are so, but what kind of public figures are architects? How have architects shaped or influenced public imagination or cultural discourse? Some architects flashed on these magazine covers and hoardings have indeed fed into popular taste and created more of the same because it sells in a real-estate-driven economics of development, but that is a one-off case and so it does not even create an iota of debate or discussion in popular press. Secondly, a series of recent exhibitions on architecture through the works of exemplar architects from India – Charles Correa, Raj Rewal, and then B V Doshi – in India and abroad. These exhibitions, in some ways, brought architecture and the discourse around it in public sphere through the mode of the exhibition; however, that did not go a step further into opening up discussions in popular press or such other forums. At the recent India Art Festival in Mumbai, Ranjit Hoskote curated a series of conversations and panel discussions, and the theme this year was museums and the exhibitionary mode of practice and discourse – he, in fact, triggered the discussions by referencing A K Coomaraswamy’s Why exhibit works of art? One of the panels in the series had four architects – Mustansir Dalvi, Smita Dalvi, Yaswantrao Pitkar, and myself – moderated by Ranjit Hoskote; the paper that Smita presented at that discussion she kindly converted to an essay for this issue, featured here with the title Why exhibit architecture?

Architects have, for too long, loved being professionals with flair; some of them easily call themselves ‘artists’, and there are some no doubt who have actively contributed as educators and pedagogues or activists and writers or editors. But somewhere the struggle between the iconic and everyday has taken away from the architect being the everyday professional who through her/his work actively contributes to public life. This often comes up in discussions like why are we making bad buildings today? Or why is there no single iconic building in a city like Mumbai... and so on. Architect Charles Correa has pointed out how often bad cities are great places; architect Kamu Iyer has discussed how a city is about its fabric rather than one or many iconic structures. So it is indeed a struggle to resolve this question between the iconic and the everyday; and architects often get projects that are one building on one site, and so where is the scope of a larger influence, would be the question. As we struggle with these dilemmas, we have also forgotten the tenacity of what we call ‘design’ and the scope of this action

Kaiwan Mehta

and practice. The exhibitions that one just mentioned above were surely opportunities for the professionals to ask questions and debate them, but also somewhere engage the public sphere in these debates. The large spread and intensity of work one studio-practice can do in a lifetime was strikingly remarkable and evident in these exhibitions. To not build up momentum around them through various seminars and symposiums was indeed a lost opportunity. There have also been exhibitions by architects, where essentially objects – leftovers and some obsessively created (trying to escape their nonsense-value by trying to call them art) from the studio – are dumped and piled up in a gallery space, and called an artarchitecture exhibition. In such shows, which often feed on the exotica-quotient of objects from older buildings, or imagined lost practices and miniature models of the same, create an aura (hollow though) for themselves and the kind of practice they fetishise. Let us not count them for now, as a clear and strong critique of such activities will need more room. However, there are also architects who see their studio space as the ever-changing exhibition; while some have now started seeing the idea of an architect’s lecture as an exhibition itself, presenting a lecture as an exhibition (we will be bringing to you more on this soon). And as we discuss more recent attempts at exhibitions in architecture, we should not forget Vistara or The Architecture of India exhibition for the Festival of India in France; it is only now that we are able to evaluate and measure of their influence, good and bad, misunderstandings and relevance, and we have already had some discussion on these in our earlier issues.

At one point, forums such as the Urban Design Research Institute in Mumbai or SARAI in Delhi were active platforms for engaging with issues of public concern. The establishing of relationships and equations between the professional discourse and the everyday public sphere is somewhere important. One is reminded of figures like Mulk Raj Anand or Laurie Baker in these conversations. Mulk as a cultural figure, and as an editor, was influential in two new cities that independent and Modern India saw – Chandigarh and New Bombay/ Navi Mumbai. Laurie Baker, a slowly forgotten figure (and sadly so) connected the question of architecture to everyday life in a manner rarely done, and a way that is most important to understand as a methodology, as a design approach, rather than as a style of design or construction. A recent conference at the IES School of Architecture raised an important question – the space of design in peri-urban and rural India, an issue that was also taken up by the Aga Khan Planning and Building Sevices, India about two years ago (reported in detail in Domus India (15) February 2013).

What happens to these discussions? Some of the experience-sharing at these conferences, and the practice-biographies that one is able to understand in the process is invaluable; so how do they feed into our education systems, or further the architect’s engagement with public life?

At one level, all the exhibitions on the masters were a collection of their monumental and iconic works, along with the more smaller projects too... and so on. But what these exhibitions surprise you with (not that you were not aware of it earlier, but just when an exhibition brings all together in a

curatorial conversation) is the intellectual life of architecture, its richness, its depth, its intensity, its struggles – and this we have yet not tapped in our understanding! The core questions we are yet not able to pick up – not those of form and function, or those of space and geometry, or space and time, but the question of design, of architecture itself, of life and space, memory and visuality, discourse and form. A recent show on exhibition at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai and the Max Mueller Bhavan, titled In Order to Join: the Political in a Historical Moment showcased the photographs of Mies’ Barcelona Pavilion (reconstructed now) by Shelagh Keeley. A panel discussion between the artist Shelagh Keeley and myself, along with Ranjit Hoskote, brought forth various questions on the history of architecture’s intellectual and received life, its staple ways of imagination and its afterlife; a strong reference for us in this discussion was also Beatriz Colomina’s recent text on the subject, Manifesto Architecture: The Ghost of Mies. This issue features Ranjit Hoskote’s essay detailing the many chains of thoughts, that strike conversations as one witnesses the iconic pavilion in a set of images different than the ones they are habituated to seeing in books on history and theory of architecture. The artist’s photographs create a fresh discourse not just about the historic icon but indeed about architecture per se, and this was something that beautifully emerged in the panel discussion - form, ornament and spatiality, drawings and photography, and so on. Then Ranjit Hoskote in his own way produces another biography, another journey of the work – Keeley’s as well as Mies’. This, I would suggest, is the true strength of an exhibition as a discursive space; however, these topic would be more relevant within professional circles, but they had the strength to reformat working and thinking in architectural practice. The same exhibition invited me to present a talk with the reference of Robert Venturi and his iconic text – Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture – a project and work relevant to the time period and practices central to this exhibition. This trigger led to a presentation titled The Ethics of Space and Design – Complexities and Contradictions elaborating on the question of spatiality and the role of space and visuality in the way we act and behave as users of a city, and important subject especially when the city is being forced to change its avatar overnight; this would have been an occasion for a much larger public involvement in the discussion on space, urbanity, and change – which indeed it was – as evident from the discussion that followed the presentation.

As a profession, we have largely missed both, understanding the intellectual life of architecture (within its production, and making, as well as in its after-life) and the public life of architecture. Architecture, indeed, does matter. We have to let go of the ‘iconic’ for sometime – iconic architecture, as well as the iconic architect. Only when we let go of these, will we give some time and space to architecture, and ourselves to be able to pick on, and explore, the tenacity of design in architecture, the breathing capacity of architecture, its sensibility to shape and actwithin public life. km

CONFETTI

Photo © von Schlaich

DOES ARCHITECTURE MATTER?

In this famed photograph of Frie Otto, taken while the Montreal Expo 1967 pavilion was under construction, he can be seen as the heroic architect-pioneer, invincible and accomplished, staring into an optimistic future. Frei Otto passed away a few weeks ago, shortly after being awarded the 2015 Pritzker Architecture Prize ©2015 The Pritzker Architecture Prize / The Hyatt Foundation

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CONTEMPORARY MUSEUM FOR ARCHITECTURE IN INDIA

FREE FROM WHAT BINDS US Frei Otto wins the Pritzker Architecture Prize 2015. Frei Otto passed away a few weeks ago, shortly after being awarded a belated Pritzker Prize leaving behind a legacy of pioneering life-work in lightweight buildings. Much adored and respected across the world, and a cultural icon in his native Germany, Frei Otto broke the rigid boundaries of a parochial discipline to conceive of what a real future can be. This was not the hyper-futurism or the dystopian visions driven by a science fiction post-mechanisation, but a real, grounded and pragmatic approach to addressing pressing realities of a world always on the brink. His work has inspired, and continues to inspire, countless individuals, architects and innovators across the world

Photo © Christine Kanstinger

Photo © Frei Otto

Photo © Christine Kanstinger

Suprio Bhattacharjee

Photos © Frei Otto

Photos © Archive Frei Otto

Above: model for the 1967 International and Universal Exposition or Expo 67. Left: roof for the Multihalle (multi-purpose hall) in Mannheim, 1970–1975, Mannheim, Germany. Opposite page, top and centre: roofing for main sports facilities in the Munich Olympic Park for the 1972 Summer Olympics, 1968–1972, Munich, Germany. Below: roof for the Multihalle (multi-purpose hall) in Mannheim, 1970–1975, Mannheim, Germany

I didn’t know who had made it. But I was obsessed.

In the fantasy world that I lived in as a child, sketches and drawings of bridges, towers, stadia, vehicles, planes and trains filled the pages of my books. No other stadium had filled my imagination as much as that built for the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, former West Germany. In a world devoid of the Internet, I would stare at family photographs and postcards, observing, studying and drawing a building whose form I could not understand immediately. Over time, intuitive engagement and inputs from my Engineer father and Artist mother did help in clarifying what I could only see in a tiny postcard (yes after homework was finished).

It was an extraordinary achievement.politically, socially, ecologically, and of course architecturally and structurally. A former toxic wasteland was identified for the location of the Summer Games.

It would need to be an enduring symbol of a post-Nazi, post-Hitler (West) Germany – a socialist democracy, free of barriers, free of its tainted past, free of segregation, a beacon for a new transparent state. Where people are truly at the centre, and the state is truly their representative, free from autocracy and hegemony. A brief that would challenge the most cereberal of thinkers.

The decision in 1966 by the International Olympic Committee to award Munich the Olympic Games was the first time this part of the formerly divided Germany, a country tainted by its past, would have an opportunity to redeem itself in the eyes of the world – for the ‘The Cheerful Games’ as the official adopted motto stated.

An undulating groundscape was conceived, turning a former bombed airfield into a new urban park.

Stadia were set into bowls, thus making them a part of the landscape. The motto of a ‘Green Olympic Games’ was put into emphatic effect by a country that was setting new standards in resource efficiency post-WWII. As a counterpart to the powerful landscape of new green valleys, a set of translucent hills was conceived. An homage to the not-so-distant Alps, this ensemble stands, till today, a crowning achievement in Ecological Restoration.

When I joined Architecture School in 1996, I finally discovered who the creators of this masterpiece were. The Internet was not freely available. Books were the only recourse. I was stunned by the majestic two-volume set called ‘Tensile Structures’.

Its author was Frei Otto. Subsequent investigation unearthed a monograph on his work. It sank in rather elatedly that he was the man I was looking for. But he wasn’t alone. A visionary masterplan

by Günther Behnisch (another German whose work deserves a Pritzker), and an able counterpart in landscape designer Günther Grzimek (both of whom have passed away), ensures till today that Frei Otto’s celebratory roof canopy forms part of a revolutionary man-made ensemble. I was overwhelmed by these volumes in the first year of my architectural education. The Internet was still not a freely available resource, and an exhaustive study led me to design my first year school project as a tensile structure, replete with details and drawings. By then, I had spent years drawing and sketching. An access to Frei Otto’s work seemed like a long-held penance had bore salvation. But that was also the nature of his work.

Having spent time in the Luftwaffe during the war, and upon being captured as a Prisoner-Of-War, he invested his time in conceiving of enclosures built out of minimum means, the poverty of resources in a strife-torn setting feeding his inventive spirit.

In his own words, he worked towards a world that he knew would suffer the consequences of dwindling resources.

Frei Otto’s built work is modest – not in scale one may please note – the Munich Olympiapark

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Perhaps one of his last works, in the roof structure of the planned Stuttgart High-Speed Train Station, he collaborated with Ingenhoven Architects to conceive of a fluid work in concrete that even Zaha Hadid couldn’t resist being inspired by in the rooflights of her Serpentine Sackler Gallery.

In comparison to the handful of built works that can directly be associated with him, Frei Otto’s research and experimentation has left us with a huge and lasting body of work that is as broad in its scope, as it is deep in its reach. He set up the Institute for Lightweight Structures in the University of Stuttgart in 1964 to further his research and exploration into the domain, and his output of material has been published in a number of prodigious and significant volumes. His work in many ways emboldened the architectures of the fabled late-20th century Hi-Tech movement, and many of the protagonists of the hi-tech movement including Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers (who was part of this year’s Pritzker jury) as well as Norman Foster (all previous recipients of the Pritzker Prize) have long lobbied for him to win this highest of accolades.

Frei Otto’s passing triggered an outpouring of tributes, not only from architects, but from cultural observers and the general public as well.

Germany’s post-WWII architectural culture would have been inconceivable without the contribution of this indiviual, contributing to the collective imagination a vision for buildings that were free, light, transparent, porous, accessible and liberating, far from the oppressive architectures of the Third

Photo Hiroyuki Hirai

Reich. As the Pritzker Jury remarked, “Throughout his life, Frei Otto has produced imaginative, fresh, unprecedented spaces and constructions. He has also created knowledge. Herein resides his deep influence: not in forms to be copied, but through the paths that have been opened by his research and discoveries.”

His work remains timeless, free from fad and passing trends. Born out of a study of nature and the economy of resources, his work retains an emphatic relevance even today (perhaps even more so) in the face of increasing strife and polarisation, as well as the impending calamity of dwindling resources that the world is staring at, but refusing to accept. As an architect, or rather an individual, who has had the fortune of being exposed to his work in an uncanny way, I firmly hope that there are lessons we can learn in creating objects of great beauty and economy.

That ensemble of masts, cables and acrylic in Munich that many like me have been enamoured by for long, holds great lessons. As Benedetta Tagliabue, Pritzker juror member mentions in her tribute, “When remembering the many projects of Frei Otto or looking at images of them, they bring forth emotions of joy, curiosity, admiration, a wish to imitate and further develop. These strong feelings that the work of 2015 Pritzker winner constantly evokes can be a beacon for us all.”

Photo Hiroyuki Hirai

Roof has held numerous records for its sublime yet gargantuan scale – but in terms of number.

Many of his buildings that were intended to be ‘temporary’ are now protected national landmarks – including some of his first built works – roof structures erected for the Federal Garden Exhibtion of 1957 in Cologne Germany, and his work assumed such iconic status that even Pink Floyd commissioned him to design a set of unbrella roof structures for their 1977 US concert tour.

Perhaps his first real exposure to an overwhelmed international audience came during the Expo ‘67 in Montreal, Canada. Standing in the esteemed company of Bucky Fuller’s grand and airy Geodesic dome and Moshe Safdie’s lego-like Habitat, Frei Otto’s remarkable fabric-draped, mast-supported cable-net structure seemed like a mere preview of what was to come five years later in Munich.

In a famed photograph of his, taken while the pavilion was under construction, Frei Otto can be seen as the heroic architect-pioneer, invincible and accomplished, staring into an optimistic future. The victory at Munich was followed by a remarkable timber gridshell for Mannheim’s Multihalle a building that is no doubt a model for today’s blob-obsession, as well as an almost invisible roof canopy for Munich’s Aviary. In his later years he consulted on the work of his protégé Bodo Rasch, who after converting to Islam brought in a flood of work in the Middle-East. In recent memory, his collaboration with Shigeru Ban on the paper roof of the Expo 2000 Japan Pavilion publicly introduced a new generation of viewers to his pioneering work.

Photo © Christine Kanstinger

Photos © Frei Otto

Photos © Frei Otto

Photo © Christine Kanstinger

Left: roof for the Multihalle (multi-purpose hall) in Mannheim, 1970–1975, Mannheim, Germany. Below: the 1967 International and Universal Exposition or Expo 67, 1967, Montreal, Canada. Opposite page, above left and below left: roofing for main sports facilities in the Munich Olympic Park for the 1972 Summer Olympics, 1968– 1972, Munich, Germany.

Above right and below right: Japan Pavilion, Expo 2000 Hannover, 2000, Hannover, Germany (with Shigeru Ban)

Sto sea De Ru fea

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Above left, below left, below right: “In an age devoid of the internet, during my childhood, these postcards of the Munich Olympic Stadium from 1979 were my frequent companions. I would stare at them, wondering with amazement, even sketching on the reverse of them! I think these were made while I must have been 3 or 4 years old.” – SB. Above right: “Family trip to the Olympiapark in 1979, I was around 2 at the time.

This is a photograph that I’ve always felt enthralled by, sitting high on the ledge of the Olympiaturm, with Frei Otto’s vast canopy below.” – SB. Opposite page: Frei Otto’s German Pavilion at the 1967 International and Universal Exposition in Montrea. The images featured on this page are from the author’s personal collection.

(All images on this page courtesy the author)

We thank The Pritzker Architecture Prize for the images and Jury Citation featured here.

All images are courtesy of Atelier Frei Otto Warmbronn. ©2015 The Pritzker Architecture Prize / The Hyatt Foundation

Jury Citation, 2015 Pritzker Architecture Prize

Above left: “My obsession continued. I had come across photographs of a tree structure in a book (at the time I didn’t know they were by the same person – Frei Otto – who had fuelled my initial obsession!). I used to draw these whilst skipping my mundane studies. This is probably during high school. I must have been 14-15 years old.”

– SB. Above right: “I cherish this drawing. I was still in school, probably 5-or-6th standard? I was proud of this drawing (I think I still am!). I finally seemed to be able to crack the logic in what I had been seeing. masts supporting cables supporting a transparent

tent with a cellular structure that encloses a bowl on legs. This is off a sketchbook. There are other stadia that I used to draw as well. None as crazily as this one. Of course skipping all the homework!” – SB. Right: Student work at Architecture School – 1st year (1996).

I guess years of penance finally resulted in this work.

I was lucky to find books on and by Frei Otto on the dusty shelves of the Sir JJ School of Architecture Library. I immersed myself in them.

Ny tutor had the faith in me to let me be. I’m still quite proud of this one. Tents, mast-supported-Windtowers, canopies on a steel latice frame, masts. All of it.” – SB

Frei Otto, born almost 90 years ago in Germany, has spent his long career researching, experimenting, and developing a most sensitive architecture that has influenced countless others throughout the world. The lessons of his pioneering work in the field of lightweight structures that are adaptable, changeable and carefully use limited resources are as relevant today as when they were first proposed over 60 years ago. He has embraced a definition of architect to include researcher, inventor, formfinder, engineer, builder, teacher, collaborator, environmentalist, humanist, and creator of memorable buildings and spaces. He first became known for his tent structures used as temporary exhibition pavilions. The constructions at the German Federal Garden exhibitions and other festivals of the 1950s were functional, beautiful, “floating” roofs that seemed to effortlessly provide shelter, and then were easily dissembled after the events. The cable net structure employed for the German Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal, prefabricated in Germany and assembled on

site in a short period of time, was a highlight of the exhibition for its grace and originality. The impressive large-scale roofs designed for the Munich Olympics of 1972, combining lightness and strength, were a building challenge that many said could not be achieved. The architectural landscape for stadium, pool and public spaces, a result of the efforts of a large team, is still impressive today. Taking inspiration from nature and the processes found there, he sought ways to use the least amount of materials and energy to enclose spaces. He practiced and advanced ideas of sustainability, even before the word was coined.

He was inspired by natural phenomena – from birds’ skulls to soap bubbles and spiders’ webs.

He spoke of the need to understand the “physical, biological and technical processes which give rise to objects.” Branching concepts from the 1960s optimized structures to support large flat roofs. A grid shell, such as seen in the Mannheim Multihalle of 1974, shows how a simple structural solution, easy to assemble, can create a most striking, flexible space. The Mechtenberg footbridges, with the use of humble slender rods and connecting

nodes, but with advanced knowledge, produce an attractive filigree pattern and span distances up to 30 meters. Otto’s constructions are in harmony with nature and always seek to do more with less.

Virtually all the works that are associated with Frei Otto have been designed in collaboration with other professionals. He was often approached to form part of a team to tackle complex architectural and structural challenges. The inventive results attest to outstanding collective efforts of multidisciplinary teams. Throughout his life, Frei Otto has produced imaginative, fresh, unprecedented spaces and constructions. He has also created knowledge. Herein resides his deep influence: not in forms to be copied, but through the paths that have been opened by his research and discoveries. His contributions to the field of architecture are not only skilled and talented, but also generous. For his visionary ideas, inquiring mind, belief in freely sharing knowledge and inventions, his collaborative spirit and concern for the careful use of resources, the 2015 Pritzker Architecture Prize is awarded to Frei Otto.