Suprio B/Ameeta S - Creating Place: Reflections on a Phenomenological Approach to the Design Studio

Authors: Ms. Ameeta Sane Practising Architect & Visiting Faculty in Design, Sir J.J. College of Architecture, Mumbai, India.

Currently pursuing MA in Material and Visual Culture with a special focus on the Anthropology of Architecture and Cultural Heritage at the University College London, London, UK. Postal Address: Flat no. 203, Ashtavinayak, Near Padva School, Mankhurd (East), Mumbai 400088, India.

Contact numbers: +91 22 25565904 / 25551006 E-mail: ameeta.sane@gmail.com, a.sane@ucl.ac.uk,

Mr. Suprio Bhattacharjee Practising Architect & Lecturer in Design, Rizvi College of Architecture, Mumbai, India.

Postal Address: G-1/103, Poonam Kirti, Poonam Nagar, Andheri(E), Mumbai 400093, India.

Contact numbers: +91 98695 82003 / +91 22 2821 8385 E-mail: nebula.suprio@gmail.com

Creating Place: Reflections on a Phenomenological Approach to the Design Studio.

This paper would attempt to present itself at two levels: one from the perspective of the incisive and objective onlooker, and the other from the perspective of the engaged and immersed experiencer. We would attempt to elaborate upon the findings of a process wherein the Design Studio has been taken out of the four walls of a classroom set-up and used as an embodied arena for the spontaneous unfolding of creative responses to the ever-increasing global concern of tradition vs. modernity. This phenomenological approach to Design Studios is essentially an interdisciplinary one involving the incorporation of learnings from the fields of anthropology, human geography and landscape studies in addition to architecture and urban design.

By reflecting on the nature of student proposals for two design intervention projects in the historiccore areas of the cities of Pune and Wāi in the state of Maharashtra, India, conducted as part of the Undergraduate Design Studio at the Rizvi College of Architecture, Mumbai, India, we propose an alternative strategy for conducting the Design Studio. Here, the commonly adopted case-study method of analytical reasoning followed by the dismantling of a complex scenario into smaller parts has been negated. Rather, a more immersive methodology has been adopted involving actual engagement of the students with the entire landscape in which these interventions were meant to be situated.

Phenomenology and the Act of Place-Making: It has been clear for a long time that urban studies cannot afford to look at design interventions alone. It is the entire landscape within which the intervention is to be placed that needs in-depth understanding for specific interventions to have meaning and significance. Landscape is best understood as a set of inter-related ‘places’. Understanding what constitutes place is thus a central point of enquiry into an existing urban-scape. Architectural and Urban design has for long been governed by the Cartesian understanding of ‘space’, which is based on an abstract notion of idealized beauty, and has very little to do with any real life, lived-in memorial association. ‘Place’ on the other hand, is seen as intrinsically created through the memories and associations of people. ‘Place-making’ then, is the new urban agenda. However, the process of place making calls for an immersive methodology. Hence, a phenomenological approach becomes the most natural way of understanding ‘place’.

This can be explained by citing examples wherein one examines the daily behaviour of people e.g. ‘where’ one would stand in a bus stop, ‘what’ one ends up looking at while say, waiting at a specific railway platform, or given a choice, ‘where’ one would sit within a public space. Each of these acts of place-making, made subconsciously by the individual are significant in deriving meaning from specific contexts, and as such vary from person to person. However what is crucial in all these acts is the fact that each of these individuals are embedded within their contexts, and

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through a set of responses, whether conscious or not, tend to relate and ‘belong’ to their complex contexts. It is through an identification and appreciation of these responses that a meaningful dialogue with the context can be established. It is this ‘acting through hindsight’ within the Design Studio that can reasonably alter perceptions and understandings of complex contexts. When such a process is adopted, students are able to arrive at a much richer and denser understanding of place through the resolution of their design projects.

This immersive methodology is important as we try to negotiate the onslaught of mindless globalisation that lays great stress on the creation of ‘instant’ and ‘appropriated’ identity or image.

In architecture this instant identity-creation can, for example, be seen in the adoption of aluminium composite wall cladding to project an image of technical advancement and modernity.

What is being lost through this is a much deeper and richer manifestation of identity that has taken hundreds of years to evolve and embodies the tangible and intangible qualities of a specific place. The challenge is to make future generations responsive to these qualities to evolve an original response or representation of the innate and specific qualities of each place through a process that stresses on the appreciation of the complex realities and opportunities within each situation by bodily engagement and immersion.

Phenomenology: The ideology: Phenomenology is an umbrella term encompassing both a philosophical movement and a range of research approaches. The phenomenological movement was initiated by Husserl (1936/1970), as a radically new way of doing philosophy. Later theorists, such as Heidegger (1927/1962), have recast the phenomenological project, moving away from a philosophical discipline which focuses on consciousness and essences of phenomena towards elaborating existential and hermeneutic (interpretive) dimensions. Applied to research, phenomenology is the study of phenomena: their nature and meanings. The focus is on the way things appear to us through experience or in our consciousness. Phenomenological theorists posit there are certain essential features of the life world, namely identity, embodiment, sociality, temporality, spatiality and discourse. The task of the researcher is to bring out these dimensions.

Key Concepts of a phenomenological approach: ‘The life world’ and ‘Embodiment’ The ‘life world’ comprises the world of objects around us, as we perceive them and our experience of our self, body and relationships. This lived world is pre-reflective – it takes place before we think about it or put it into language. The idea of ‘life world’ (Lebenswelt) is that we exist in a day-to-day world that is filled with complex meanings that form the backdrop of our everyday actions and interactions. The term life-world directs attention to the individual’s lived situation and social world rather than some inner world of introspection. The idea of ‘Embodiment’ can be understood with the help of the following quote: “If embodiment is an existential condition in which the body is the subjective source or inter-subjective ground of experience, then studies under the rubric of embodiment are not ‘about’ the body per say. Instead they are about culture and experience in so far as these can be understood from the standpoint of bodily-being-in-theworld.” (Csordas 1999: 143) Parallels between phenomenology and Vedānta: The notions of the ‘transcendental mind’, the ‘being’ and the ‘body in-itself’ emphasised by Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre; lay outside the body-realm; an unchanging absolute, which, nonetheless arose from the sensory experience of ‘phenomena’. This ‘transcendental’, ‘existential’ or ‘free’ state was viewed as the ultimate goal; and sensory experience a mere indulgence, a necessary but frivolous layer which one had to surpass in order to get to the ‘divine’, ‘abstract’ plane of existence. ‘Mind’ thus stood out as an independent entity beyond the realm of physical reality. Drawing parallels with Vedānta philosophy, with its concepts of the ‘world as illusion’ Māyā; the Antarātman or ‘inner-self’ as the ‘true’ and ‘divine’ being, the abstract, the absolute, it is not surprising then, that this kind of phenomenological reading was a very popular tool used by scholars to decode and theorise Indian philosophy and its manifestations in art and architecture. However, the crucial and often overlooked point is that in the Hindu pantheon, an architectural edifice is consciously designed to initiate bodily experiences of varying

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heights in order to finally culminate in a transcendental experience. Thus, the progression through Māyā is consciously achieved through ‘complete immersion’ in the sensory world. The material world, in fact, initiates the following experiential trajectory: “Māyā” Illusion

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“Samsāra” World

“Bhoga” ------------Immersion

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“Brahman” Divine/Abstract

“Bodha” ------------Experience

“Yoga” Union

This immersion undoubtedly leads us to an individual’s ‘synaesthetic’ experience in the world and his perceptions, which ultimately may or may not lead to a transcendental plane. Hence, there is stress on finding one’s own way. The abstract ideal of the philosophy, yoga, meditation etc. provide only indicators or general frameworks for orienting oneself but ultimately it is the individual’s own experiences that create his/her sense of being.

The emphasis then is on understanding that ‘space comes into being through practice… cultural meanings thus evoked are principally unstable and contextual... implying that spatial divisions are ‘read’ through the body, a learning process that is never completed’ (Gabrielle vom Bruch, 1997: 139-172). Thus, we realize that phenomenology is intrinsically embedded in the way, we, in the east perceive the world and ourselves.

The Studio Situation: Undergraduate studies in India are still largely controlled by rote-learning and a system of examinations that remains unchanged from place to place. This is no different in undergraduate Architecture courses where the ‘syllabus’ would largely remain the same regardless of place, climate, culture and contexts. Stereotypes and ill-placed dominant view-points still are rampant within the education system, with a so-called ‘technical’ bias and an emphasis on imagery and form-making. Representations of ‘Indian-ness’ or place come in the form of easily identifiable ‘elements’ such as courtyards, certain roof-forms and stylistic clichés.

To make matters worse, Indian popular culture is rampant in its adaptation of imported values and ideals and their ‘superiority’ over the ‘traditional’. As such, there is very little understanding of indigenous lifestyles, culture, building techniques, materials, music, arts and literature. One has to note that this commerce-driven background forms the basis of most students.

The projects described henceforth had to place themselves within this situation, and were conducted as part of the Second Year Architectural Design Studio.

The Wāi Project: the idea of place and landscape – perspectives and meanings.

If, we agree that the value that is given to a landscape is defined by this cultural emphasis rather than by its ecological value, some of the central questions that emerge are: Can architecture heighten people's awareness of their environment by revealing the particular qualities of that environment? Can architecture structure the experience of a landscape? Can there be a nonintrusive architecture?

The Wāi Project presented the students with such a situation. Wāi is a historic town on the banks of the fledgling Krishnā River, in the state of Maharashtra. The city resonates with deep cultural significance and today is an excellent example of the dilemma of small-town India: how does it face up to rapid globalisation that threatens to plunder specific cultures and traditions? How does it ‘negotiate’ this ‘threat’? Can this gap be bridged?

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Thus the project became an attempt at ‘engaging’ the disengaged – the river, the landscape, the ghāts1, the lost sense of cohesive community and urban spatiality, an eroding urban fabric and least of all, the people. An attempt had to be made to instil in them a shared sense of pride and belonging in where they are? How does Wāi reach out not only to the outside world (for whom it is merely a way-stop on the journey to Pune, or pretty pictures, or a place where a certain ‘festival’ occurs)?

To restore this sense-of-place, it was deemed important to evolve an ‘interface’, an ‘in-between’ – that brings about active dialogue between people. A ‘place’ or an ‘institution’ that would communicate, not only through its content (in terms of the programme it holds) but also through the expression of its architecture.

A city is known by its institutions. Wai is known for its prajnya-pathshālas (traditional schools), the Marathi vishwakosh (the Marathi Literature Library), and of course, its many temples. But what was seen as an important need was a ‘place’ that held all this together. A place that would bring people together, not only during times of ritual, but otherwise as well. A place that embodied the spirit of Wāi.

The most important aspect of the programme was building a ‘response’ expressed in spatial and experiential terms – to the place, its people and its existing situation. If architecture is primarily about finding meaning through movement and experience, what will this experiential journey communicate to the user?

After an in-depth ethnography of the place, it was decided that a public forum integrating the historic institutions, ritualistic spaces, and the Wādas (courtyard residences) of the old city with the emerging urban form of the new city was imperative in order to provide a sensitive and creative pointer for the future developments in this landscape. The students concluded on the project programme themselves and through a democratic process, selected a site on the main ghāts along the river that had fallen victim to administrative neglect.

What was interesting was the nature of their responses on site, where each student seemed to be suddenly aware of the complex nature of the site topography and the relationship that the city has with the river. This is elaborated in the brief that was evolved after their return from Wai and manifested as is read in the following: urban engagement – project for a public forum in Wāi: Wāi.

A RIVER RUNS through IT . . . but it has always been there, just like the rocky outcrop defined forever as the Pāndavgarh . . . the unattainable fort under whose steady and unremitting gaze the city has grown over the past centuries. the river never ran through Wāi . . . Wāi grew along the river. Nature came first. Human existence and culture harnessed it later – today in the form of the Dhom dam 10 kilometres upstream; hundreds of years ago in the form of the finely cut and jointed stone that forms a 2 system of kunds along the river bed – channelling the lazy flow into a gurgling, spiralling dance – binding the sky and the earth in its representation of the cosmos. Water was not water any more. It now had meaning. Ritualistic significance. Ghāts cascading rhythmically into the river in a ceaseless performance of expanding and capturing space. The urbanscape penetrated the river making it its own. The caressing geological bowl made by the Krishnā was now a space of choreographed ritual – fest, festivity, colour and bon-homie.

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The term ‘ghāt’ refers to a series of steps leading down to a body of water, such as a river or a natural lake, in many parts of South Asia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghats 2 The term ‘kund’ refers to a stepped well, or a small reservoir of water that is surrounded and contained by a continuous set of steps.

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Wai is known as ‘dakshin-kāshi’ or the ‘Banaras of the South’. The bend in the river southwards as it negotiates the rocky terrain is its raison d’être that gives the place its significance. Its reason of existence - embedded within this powerful landscape. Here, (what becomes) the mighty Krishnā a few thousand kilometres downstream possesses a calm, gentle and docile self. Like a deer. That can also gallop at tremendous speeds with extraordinary force and agility.

Today, Wai has turned its back to the river.

What was once one of the foremost public spaces in India is today a series of fractured expanses - fragmented and in dire need of being reconnected and rejuvenated. Blank high walls and ugly buildings bound the river and the ghāts.

Mere pretty pictures for the outsider. That is what the ensemble of ghāts and river has become today. Beautiful backdrops to orchestrate the riveting drama of contemporary 3 4 5 cinema. For a resolved Madhuri in Mrityudand . Or for an angst-ridden Ajay Devgan in 6 Gangājal .

The river is remembered only during ritualistic performances. The early morning baths and the 50-odd days-long ‘Krishnāmāi’ fest before summer. For the rest, it is used to discharge the effluence of humanity. The ghāts today are messy, clogged with filth, slimy, in need of attention. No pretty pictures here. They are disjointed and fragmented. Just like the fragmented cultural existence of the people. The city is loosing its cohesive-ness. New buildings are rising at a growing pace – ugly, ill-‘designed’ and insensitive. Old wādas are disappearing and being replaced by metal-clad boxes with their mandatory air-conditioning units poking out like ugly deformities. Whatever happened to the richness of architecture as a language.

Whatever happened to breathing fresh air, verandahs, intimate communal spaces, stimulating spatial experiences, local materials and craftsman-ship, and the sense of the street where open doorways would invite you unhindered.

Wāi has always been inclusive . . . it has always allowed itself to be enriched, through the influx of culture, technique, lifestyle, art and architecture. Mughal arches blending in with Peshwā spatial designs. Rājasthāni paintings forming a basis for a lost Marāthā school. So it has grown as a community and as a culture.

Wāi has always been in a state of flux – changing hands . . . the rivers ebbing and flooding, the culture fluctuating with new influences. Yet the temples remain – silent and solid permanence . . . laughing at the temporality of human existence. Man goes, but his architecture stays.

Wāi needs a new architecture. A new architecture that responds to and creates place. An architecture that will engage with the city at many levels – with its people (irrespective of occupation, caste or creed), with its various institutions (public and private such as charitable trusts) and with its history; with the landscape and the climate; an architecture that will embody the aspirations of the community, that will create an identity for the community. An architecture that will bind the city together through what it holds most precious – the river and the ghāts along its banks.

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Refers to Madhuri Dixit, Hindi film actress who portrays the lead character in the film Mrityudand.

Hindi film The Death Sentence: Mrityudand (1997) by Prakash Jha shot in Wāi.

Refers to Ajay Devgan, Hindi film actor who portrays the lead character in the film Gangājal.

6 Hindi film Gangājal (2003) by Prakash Jha shot in Wāi and the surrounding landscape.

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Studio Responses: What was dramatic was the nature of the studio results. With an understanding that these were second year undergraduate students, the responses that were evolved seemed extraordinarily mature and sensitive for a group of students who had, for all practical purposes, yet to ‘learn’ what architecture was all about!

Each project seemed to challenge pre-conceived notions of ‘what’ architecture should be like.

Most works ended up being extensions of the city itself. Yet other works manifested specific qualities of the city in their scale, and the articulation of spaces and volumes. What was remarkable however, was, that each student seemed to encompass their specific interpretation into an architectural language that broke free from known and accepted notions of spatiality to arrive at a set of original and personal responses.

These responses summed up their personal readings and observations of the place as experienced first hand and without any kind of prior exposure to similar projects. This spontaneous interpretation of their own experiences into creative responses can only be achieved through constant interaction and the absence of any kind of canonical and over-theoretical approach. Rather what was cherished was the manner in which each student expressed and verbally explained his/her work through the commonalities of everyday experience and in a language that could be understood by anyone and was free from any kind of dogma or diatribe.

Rather they were honest and humble responses to the site, as seen through their eyes.

What is remarkable in the context of this conference is the very ‘urban’ nature of their responses.

Each project went beyond the limitation of ‘building’ to engage whole-heartedly with the landscape, the river, the adjoining streetscape and of course, the scale and spatiality that gives Wai its distinctive character. Each of the projects was immutably rooted within the tangibles and intangibles of the context.

The Tāmbatāli, Pune Project: housing and the act of urban insertion Tāmbatāli is located in Kasbā Peth, the heart of historic Pune, in close proximity to the surviving walls of Shaniwārwāda – a former timber palace (burned and destroyed more than a hundred years ago) with a four-storey high stone fortification. The place has the particular characteristics of many historic urban core areas – densely packed houses standing shoulder-to-shoulder, old timber and brick buildings (some dilapidated, some in perfect condition) sharing space with new concrete monstrosities – a strange, seemingly chaotic grouping together of built masses that form narrow, valley-like streets funnelling wind through the numerous courts, gathering spaces and doorways that open from, and into it. The buildings are mostly residential – with quite a few shophouses - and they are usually not taller than four stories. Formerly, ‘tāmbats’ or coppersmiths that gives the place its name inhabited the place. Today, the social structure has changed completely, and only a few remain who practice this profession.

This place experiences the same kind of stresses of modernization and development that most older cities in the country witness – faceless ‘new’ ‘interventions’ disrupting the fabric and continuity of what exists. Not that one should exalt romantically in the beauty and fineness of the old architecture, but just that the inevitable ‘new’ needs to be more sensitive and place-specific, incorporating and interpreting in a contemporary manner that which gives the place its unique character – whether it is the scale and open-ness of the existing buildings, their response to climate, or the way in which they are crafted and built.

The ‘new’ needs to place itself amongst the ‘older’ in a certain way – the strategies that can be adopted are many – from large-scale ‘global’ ideas of completely rebuilding the area ground-up, to more ‘local’ and small-scale ‘insertions’ in the gaps and voids within the built fabric – whether these ‘gaps’ are assumed (within the limitations of the studio project) or are found on site.

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The Urban Strategy Although finally the project for each student entailed the expansion, reworking or complete rebuilding of each of the houses (as deemed necessary from case to case), the larger strategy adopted is of significance. Instead of the conventional modernist, administrative or techno-centric approach of levelling the entire site and ‘re-designing contemporary buildings’ or ‘collective housing’ from the ground up, the strategy adopted, though surprisingly modest, was deemed by many to be far more radical if not ‘romanticised’. The studio adopted the strategy of smaller, local insertions – 're-working' anew using traditional/contemporary materials of one ‘unit’ or ‘house’ that was either collective in nature or individual or belonged to a joint-family. This ‘unit’ is defined by one ‘plot’ demarcation – although the organic and accretionary nature of the urban growth over centuries means that each of these would be irregular and varying widely in size, scale as well as the built mass that they carry.

This is important as the character of Tāmbatāli is defined by this varied nature in scale, size and density. A contemporary collective housing project would repeat the placeless-ness and scaleless-ness of most of our city suburbs, and this was not desired. Rather what was intended was a unique approach towards housing and towards a future urbanity which is not far removed from that way in which the place had got its specific character in the first place. However what was important for the students was to realise this difference and then make a sincere attempt at compressing a time-scale of over a hundred years (the time that the settlement would have taken to evolve its specific and recognisable characteristics that gives it such a strong sense of identity) into a few weeks in the studio to evolve a response that would not deem itself to be out-of-place in its context.

In this project, each student had lived-in experiences with the residents to be able to undertake the task of re-designing a particular house within the aforementioned changing nature of the existing social structure of a residential area that formerly comprised mainly of copper-smiths.

This lived-in, engaged experience was of prime importance, as it revealed to each student personal, idiosyncratic and subjective insights of the inhabitants into the culture and built environment of the place that would have remained completely undiscovered if a process of mere analytical and visual observation was followed.

These readings into the site were crucial in moving the students away from ‘exoticising’ the place into a reductive conclusion of formal or visual ‘architectural vocabulary’ that is rampant in such kind of studies of historic areas. Rather what was gained was a deeper conclusion of why certain things are made the way they are, or why certain architectural ‘devices’ that inhabitants have evolved intuitively over time are important – such as the street-facing verandahs – that are crucial in the socio-cultural life of the street (this also crucially gives the place its close-knit character, as these verandahs, regardless of which floor they are on, become urban thresholds for each ‘house’ or ‘room’ – a kind of semi-public membrane that sheaths each house). Besides they perform another crucial function of shading and climate-modulating each adjoining room – something that most of the new builder and developer-driven apartment blocks lack completely.

It is readings such as this that added to the richness of understanding and interpreting the place, and what came out as important was this lived-in experience of engaging with the place through its people.

Learnings from this studio: The Kasbā Peth project provides invaluable learning for future practice, as housing transformations in historic urban cores is one of the foremost issues in Indian architecture today and students need to understand the intricate complexity of addressing the interface between community-specific housing needs and emerging lifestyle-aspirations of the younger generation occupants. The strategy, to focus on a micro-level bottoms-up approach of engaging the students with the occupants of Tāmbatāli, conducting a detailed study of the existing scenario vis-à-vis surviving traditions and emerging neo-traditions, in conjunction with its manifestations within the existing built fabric provides a significant shift from the default ‘master-plan’ approach to housing

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design. The work thus done by the students shows both a pragmatic and sensitive understanding of the issues in Tāmbatāli and a genuine concern for the development of an alternative model of ‘newness’ to the emerging high-rise apartment blocks in this area. Their proposals of low-rise high density schemes beautifully capture and retain the existing scale of Tāmbatāli. Intuitively, their work creates a subtle hierarchy of social spaces in-sync with the socio-cultural practices of Tāmbatāli.

However, certain fundamental issues regarding the evolution of the visual culture of Tāmbatāli still needed to be addressed. What was felt was that the next step would be to sensitize the students to alternative building construction techniques, materials etc. and to focus on the development of a new construction grammar for not only, say Tāmbatāli, but such places in general. Only by taking the outcomes of these Design Studios further to the Building Construction, Materials and Working Drawing Studios, can we hope to achieve holistic contemporary solutions that reflect today’s times and needs. However, as a note of caution, one must admit, that this ideal scenario is still far from being achieved as we still struggle to strike a balance with a rote-learning driven ‘syllabus’. It is still easier to achieve innovation and practice newer and ‘free-er’ ideas in the design studios than in the other technical studios, at least the way in which architectural education is followed in India.

Conclusion: Although the two projects described here were varied in scope and scale, the students, through acts of embodied interaction were able to easily immerse themselves into these seemingly unfathomable and complex constructs. They had their own initial responses full of awe and surprise, as well as intuitively sensitive insights after getting gradually familiarized with the surroundings. By this spontaneous adaptation of self into context, each one overcame the feeling of strangeness, and appropriated the new landscape, making it one’s own unique experience.

Thus, one saw, that although, the students came from their everyday contexts of city-suburbia filled with its framed discontinuities, pastiche and politics, they were, due to the presence of this loose narrative framework, able to build an individual response that reflected an intimate understanding of place and became the ‘most natural response’ for them. These diverse yet intricately connected creative responses proved that it is possible to envisage an urban future for historic centres that is free of mere stylistic cloning. Rather an untutored, lived-in, intrinsically realised spatiality emerges when the strategy focuses on understanding the larger picture and not on developing written canons in order to create deterministic experiences.

It is hoped that in the future, through many more opportunities in evolving such studios and mapping the work of the students, one would be able to demonstrate, how an involved unpretentious designing can be used as a tool for meaningful project formulation. One wishes for such strategies, to be able to envisage new creative possibilities for the urban future of the historic towns and cities of India in the face of unprecedented and rapid ‘development’ References: Abram, David (1996) The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and language in a more than human world. New York: Pantheon Books.

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