The End of Local : Towards a Manifesto

There’s been much talk recently about reclaiming the Architect’s position within society as an intellectual, a technocrat, and as a participant in Cultural processes.

It is our contention that every real value associated with the word ‘Local’ has been eroded and what value is left is only symbolic.

What remains is Iconography, Mythology and Identity.

Disabling.

Crippling.

Merely representational.

And so even though ‘Local’ is today’s buzz word in food, fashion and architecture (our essentials: roti, kapda aur makaan), its meaning has been hollowed out by other more relevant motivations like the environmental movement, low cost solutions for the poor, craft, climatic response, heritage conservation (built and landscape), sustainability, technology, form, typology, housing, community upliftment and micro-development schemes in the rural hinterland.

We are all officially placeless c. 2000

indigenous processes

OUTREACH ENGAGING COMMUNITY REHABILITATION

CRAFT ARTISANAL LIVELIHOOD

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY CLIMATE CHANGE subterranean architecture

otla

conservation restoration in all materials

CLIMATE JAALIS IN ALL MATERIALS TOPOGRAPHY RETAINING WALLS PLINTHS TERRACED SECTIONS

heritage, traditional architecture

CITYPRIDE PLACEMAKING VERNACULAR

colours patterned brick masonry built in furniture HENTIC L O C A L | AU T LONGING SENSE OF BE IDENTITY

ORgANIC

PASSIVE COOLING/HEATING

inclusive public access pedestrianization public art education

C RUSTI | Y EARTH AL WOOD RETE N AT U R N T E D C O N C PIGME

mud stone bamboo APHY ICONOGR GY O MYTHOL

housing

form typology RURAL OUTREACH

low cost small scale incremental poverty

The State of Architecture exhibition organised at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai last year reached out to a larger audience to explain the “role and instrumentality” of the architect as social catalyst in a bid to regain some of the lost ground since independence.

The third section of the exhibition, under the dome, titled ‘Projections and Speculations’, was a documentation of 80 projects from across the country that represented the emerging concerns within the profession.

These projects were contextualised within the postliberalisation phase of the country’s history with the rise in consumerism, speculation in the real estate market, a steady disinvestment in public space, all round moves towards privatisation, and an unhealthy disillusionment with urban processes.

So while other projects in the country had resigned to creating “architecture of indulgence”, the chosen 80 had “resisted” these indulgences in some or the other way.

They represented “Goodness” in these trying times.

Goodness was wide-ranging.

Formal and typological innovation within given project briefs triumphed with 58 projects, Local response was a distant second at 16, Environmental impact and community upliftment tied at 2 each, and a dismal performance by pedestrianisation and post-disaster rehabilitation with 1 project each.

But even though only 16 projects were recognised for being explicitly local, a total of 46 (of the 80) projects used a consistent set of elements arguably of a ‘local architecture’ to express themselves; A Local Garb.

Since the anxiety to be relevant pervaded the entire exhibition, these 46 buildings were particularly anxious in their garb.

A wide range of motivations were being externalised in this default local. It is as though every elaborate formal and typological innovation, low-cost, and environmentally sustainable design made by the leading young architects in India found expression through a grossly limiting, universal design language of ‘good’, ‘socially relevant’ ‘local’ architecture.

This we found most exciting!

One can quickly gauge that the trope of local architecture has unlimited valency to co-opt other goodness, of any form, as long as from high moral ground.

In effect, projects in the last twenty years have looked for legitimization through these tropes of local architecture, local craft, local identity.

And this ‘local’ is only a representation of local.

It has little or nothing to do with an actual locality.

So just building in rammed earth or bamboo, or borrowing decorative and structural elements from buildings in the vicinity, laying Ra jasthani stones with Marwari masons, designing immaculate joineries in wood, or even creating earthy textures, can indicate ‘local’ architecture.

These are universal locals and are as patronizing as the forces they choose to resist.

They might even be in spite of the local, produced in sharp contestation with the local context.

This preoccupation with being local takes us further and further away from being consequential.

We become more and more representational.

our resistance is as deep as the cladding on a building.

In effect, projects in the last twenty years have looked for legitimization through these tropes of local architecture, local craft, local identity.

This ‘local’ is only a representation of local.

It has little or nothing to do with an actual locality.

Often a complex of socio-political relations, human endeavor, material resources, local production, local anxieties and aspirations are coalesced into a choice of stone masonry (random or coursed or dressed).

This tokenism we find ineffective to context.

The primary intent of this document is to affect a significant change in the perception of what’s actually left of ‘local’ in architecture and challenge the current status of ‘local’ in academia, popular media and inside the architect’s office so that the entire trope of local architecture could see its end c. 2000.

This way we can focus on non-representational aspects of our architectural practices and attempt to re-engage with processes and people and hopefully find purpose and relevance within the discipline.

local is for them.

Ever wondered why some guy from some locality working with some local contractors and some local architect can’t produce a local building?

“F@%k the geographical and cultural context. We were really uncomplicated then.

There was no posturing.

It was simply a negotiation with budget. Exposed brickwork saves on plaster cost. So if the jaali is beautifully crafted everyone’s happy.”

Madhav Raman, Anagram Architects

For 2 years after its construction, the SAHRDC (South Asian Human Rights Documentation Centre) offices building in New Delhi remained unrecognized by popular media in the country. Finally the Architectural Review Emerging Architecture Awards recognized the building in 2007 (followed by the Brick Awards in 2010 and more recently nominated for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture) as a significant reinterpretation of traditional architecture in India.

The jaali in particular caught their attention as a “long-standing tradition in Indian architecture.” Anagram Architects had become “India’s best known architects” and no one knew about them at home.

Madhav attributes the success of the building abroad as part of the world-wide rejection of global forms. Everything non-global was local and everything local was good. In India though people were still wide eyed around the malls, multiplexes and developer led gated communities.

Anti-global wasn’t part of buzz then. He also recalls ‘parametric design’ becoming somewhat academic at the time. The project has since been completely absorbed into the gamut of local and sustainable architecture in India through academic and commercial journals and awards, and recently made its appearance in the chapter Regional Manifestation: Local Assertions of the book Architecture in India: Since 1990 written by Rahul Mehrotra.

“When cultural traditions are recognized as “local,” “regional,” or “authentic,” do we detect an element of resistance to the international art machine and market, or are these the very qualities of marginal diversity that make the most sought-after global commodities?”

Homi Bhabha Another Country in Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking [MoMA, New York 2006] p. 31

So obviously its the twisting brick jaali façade that’s making the building local and sustainable. Climatically its impact is negligible to the building, providing natural ventilation and shading only to the stairway and corridor.

The Delhi region in particular has very few remarkable examples of patterned brick buildings, and no patterned brick jaalis in its entire pre-modern history.

There were no local craftsmen involved.

Yes, they were from the region of India. Bengali carpenters worked the shuttering and Ra jasthani masons made the brickwork happen. Were there local, handmade bricks used? Yes. But they’re used all over the world. The brick jaali was a well crafted, low-cost solution building on the recent legacy of Laurie Baker and others.

Madhav did suggest that the entire negotiation between the idea that germinated at Anagram, the client’s budget, the skills available with the masons and those skills expected from them, definitely had an intense local flavour.

The jury report for the shortlist of the Palmyra House designed by Bijoy Jain for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2008-2010 cycle is an indicator of the Death of Architecture in the purest representation of local goodness.

From somewhere in the world, all this wood joinery, textured concrete and slatted wood facades must appear ‘good’, ‘socially relevant’ and ‘local’. And conversely all this use of natural wood, construction of wood joinery and fuss over IPS colours and textures must feel over-indulgent without the tag ‘local’ attached to it.

How often do we hear the description of a project being recognised internationally as; 1. Hand-made by local craftsmen, and in the case of Palmyra House six-generation craftsmen probably from the Marwari lineage.

2. Made with local materials, in the case of Palmyra House cutting trees becomes acceptable if they grow or are sourced locally.

3. Building designed as a continuation of local building traditions, or an improvement of local skills most often referring to a woven screen, a jaali, a jharokha, or a type of masonry.

4. Building sits gently within the landscape, and in the case of Palmyra House foundations dug by hand (because the hand is gentler than a JCB).

This description of a ‘good’, ‘socially relevant’ and ‘local’ building is not limited in any way to the Indian subcontinent.

This description is valid for the entire region that has now been represented as the Islamic World by the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA).

There is a sizeable overlap of this region with developing countries, with colonized countries and with the global south.

our local is a local seen from outside.

How to win an Aga khan Award for Architecture [AKAA] from anywhere in India.

Roof has a flamboyant lightness as a sure sign of contemporaneity. A typically heavy base alluding to a traditional paradigm of construction. The overall effect: Grounded architecture establishing a continuity in tradition while being relevant today and representing the aspirations of a new society “Interpretation� of local jaalis in traditional as well as modern materials is the easiest and quickest establish a regional identity

Patterned brick masonry, brick jaalis and slatted wood facades are a universal favourite across the developing, global south

cantilevered stairs visible from a vantage point to emphasize lightness and austerity

Visual jugglery of the traditional tiered expression of various neighbourhood, regional or nationally significant/available materials.

A minimum of one modern interpretation of a jharokha

Architects across the world have unanimosly chosen the junction of bracket and primary structural member (wall / column / pier) as the location for celebration of detail

At an organizational level, the Courtyard type building is most effective. Picturesque plants are strategically located to demonstrate the local landscape

Window openings can span the entire range of contemporary designs from kitsch to modernist. Popular ones being square punctures, tall slits, white border windows, extra small punctures.

Stepped open walls, profiled parapets and meandering multilevel plinths to create an emphasis of the grounding the building into the landscape

CHARACTERISTICS OF A UNIVERSALLY LOCAL BUILDING

Characteristics of a Universally Local Building

Architectural Design Ready Reckoner

The Aga Khan Award for Architecture Apologizing since 1977 The AKAA was established in 1977 by His Highness The Aga Khan, leader of the Shi`i Isma`ili Muslims, “to enhance the understanding and appreciation of Islamic culture as expressed through architecture.”

At the launch of the exhibition for the Tenth Award Cycle, 2005-2007 at Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, Mohsen Mostafavi explained the role of the award “in bringing the best of the architecture of the Muslim world to the attention of the international community.” This might seem a formidable task considering the contemporary understanding between Islam and international media. But the award has another much larger goal in “seek[ing] to identify and encourage building concepts that successfully address the needs and aspirations of societies in which Muslims have a significant presence”.

The award attempts to bring two very different, and often incommensurable goals, seamlessly together. The first involves the international community recognising architectural production from the Islamic world, which is really just an apology extended from western academia. And the second, to award those architectural projects that are actually relevant to their specific context and meet community needs and aspirations.

Why the Apology?

How does an award like the AKAA come into existence in the way it does? What about architecture in the Islamic world is so appealing for scholarship in the west today? Should we just consider this as an interest stemming from rampant western (American) presence in the region? Or as efforts by certain Islamic groups to circulate images of hope and aesthetic beauty within international media, now flooded with images of Islamic terrorism? A brief historiographical background of the study of architecture in the Islamic world will contextualise the relationship of western academia, the AKAA and architecture from the Islamic world.

The study of Islamic architecture in the west has a history. In fact, when it comes to Islamic architecture, the international community of scholars has much to apologize for; for constantly imagining the orient as a monolithic, unchanging, decadent culture; for Delacroix’s fantasies; and for placing Islamic architecture as a degenerate branch in Sir Bannister Fletcher’s genealogical tree; and for further assigning it an anthropological category; and especially for denying it any heredity from antique culture.

Western orientalist scholarship, since French colonialism in Africa in the nineteenth century, cannot be seen without its ideological underpinnings. Edward Said, the renowned literary and cultural critic, explained the orient as a social and intellectual ‘construct’ in the minds of western orientalists emphasizing the imperialist prejudice that played itself out in their scholarship and work.

In his book Orientalism, he explained the word-title as a mode for defining the presumed cultural inferiority of the Islamic Orient. He claimed that Islamic civilization has been victimized. He occupied a formidable position in western academia and his intellectual contribution was pivotal to the very establishment of Islamic art and architecture as a field of study within the larger discipline of art history in the west. Said’s contribution to the study of the Islamic world can be understood better within a larger tra jectory of developments in the post-war era. Post-war decolonization of the Islamic world (as defined by the award) caused a wave of scholarship amongst western scholars which has now been termed ‘apologist’ writing. New voices and newer narratives were being heard from around the region.

From the fifties and through the sixties, the post-colonial era of the world, scholarship in the west took up the study of Islamic art and architecture in a self-corrective manner – to de-essentialize, pluralize, and secularize studies in Islamic art and architecture.

It is within this apologist mode in western scholarship that the AKAA finds its place.

Apologetic Architecture Apologist scholarship and practices strived to systematically challenge the cultural hegemony of the west. Since its inception, the award has been committed to issues pertaining to social upliftment, sustainable development, conservation of regional and indigenous architecture and Islamic identity with respect to technology and modernity.

Architectural solutions to the various pressing issues of poverty and inadequate infrastructure in various parts of the Islamic world were recognized as pushing the boundaries of the discipline itself. The role of the architect becomes much more that of a social agent.

The award makes explicit its critical position towards the entire basis for assessing and awarding architectural excellence by recognizing a gamut of projects that have been simply excluded from the purview of western architectural academia and practice. The goals defined by the AKAA immediately point to the western pedagogical trends from the sixties up to the eighties; tropicalism, traditionalism, vernacularism and critical regionalism; that positioned themselves as resistive to the international style.

The award has responded to each of these categories in its various cycles, and has continued to evolve with critical discourse produced in the west. The recipients of the AKAA consciously resist the homogenization and internationalization of society and aesthetics.

The AKAA demands inclusion, in a postmodern-postcolonial condition that allows for inclusion. But this inclusion is ‘conditioned on’ and also ‘limited to’ the critical position it occupies within western discourse. This implies that the AKAA remains significant within western discourse only as long as it maintains its critical position to it. The award’s inherent political nature, which at times rejects western formats and systematically critiques western discourse, remains within the highly charged political realm of discourse and in the bargain often undermines its own capacity to synchronize with the locally relevant and aspirational in its true sense.

So the very criticality adopted by the apologists creates an imaginary ‘other’, an orient of sorts. The representation of these projects then imagines a similar monolithic, static, locality much like the imaginations of the first orientalists.

In this most patronizing way, all non-western architecture is effectively local to an ‘other’ context. This local architecture is handmade (contrary to developed, mechanized society), uses local material and people (because geography is absent), is an extension of traditional techniques and crafts (because history is absent), and it sits gently within the landscape (camouflaged so as not to be iconic).

So the Palmyra House is a local architecture anywhere and anytime. The place imagined as local to the Palmyra House is just a place ‘other’ than that of the west. In that, an entire region spanning multiple continents can be represented by the locality of the Palmyra House.

This local is more authentic than itself, and more static too.

our locality is being produced in the west.

“Architects of the West do not specifically make Western buildings. Architects of the nonWest are expected to. Even architects of the West working in the non-West in one way or another find themselves obliged to deal with the issue of nonWestern identity.�

Vikaramaditya Prakash Identity Production in Postcolonial Indian Architecture: Re-covering What We Never Had, Postcolonial space(s) G. B. Nalbantoglu and C. T. Wong (Eds.). (1997). New York: Princeton Architectural Press, pp. 39-52.

local makes us lazy.

We all strive for good and ethical practice in architecture stemming from our education and the recent history of the profession. Practices like Charles Correa’s are aspirational to all of us. Projects like social and educational institutions, markets, affordable housing, town planning and engagements with urbanization processes are considered aspirational.

But privatization and the market of the last twenty five years provides us access to very different kinds of architectural commissions, much less aspirational second homes, multi-storey single family residences, hotels, banquets, industrial buildings, commercial buildings accommodating rentals like offices and shops, and malls.

This has caused deep anxieties.

We are constantly reconciling our high ideals in practice with the kind of projects we are offered. And these reconciliations of good and ethical architectural practices often wear the garb of ‘local architecture’.

We make projects local to give us meaning in our work, to reconcile ideal with practical.

‘Making Local’ is good practice.

But we congratulate ourselves too soon on the success of an architectural commission when it is recognized as ‘local’. Our own assessment of the social and environmental impact of a project is limited to how local the architecture of a building appears to be. This drastically alters our imagination of the impact of our work.

For a discipline so anxious about meaning, relevance and impact on society, this is grossly limiting. The pursuance of good architecture through activism, creation of public projects, collaborating with other agencies involved in aspirational project work, research and development in low-cost material technologies, engaging with regulations, norms and bye-laws, advocacy planning are all undermined by a single symbolic local architecture.

Local architecture helps us absolve ourselves of all real engagement.

this is not that local

We are in the midst of a monumental global shift to the right with rampant conservatism in politics and society. It is no coincidence that local expression is resonating yet again across the globe. But this ‘local’ is not the resistance of a few progressives to the homogenization of society (in the form of tropicalism, vernacularism, traditionalism and critical regionalism), but simply a tag to the most conservative and protectionist agendas of the world.

This local looks for purity, resists (im)migration, re-writes history, is xenophobic, and very proud. It can no longer be aspirational.

And the transition from post-independence Gandhianism, Nehruvian nation building and the subsequent search for identity in the 50’s and 60’s, through the postmodernism of the Indian masters and to more recently the assertions of conservative politics, the status of ‘local’ has seen a complete renewal.

Local now stakes a claim on what was once national. We have many more borders to protect, more non-local communities to keep at bay, more traditions to valourize, more private museums to build. But architects have continued to pursue “local” as though its relevance and social impact are still prevalent in their original form.

they never said local

We must acknowledge the practices that have created and perpetuated the most compelling images of good, socially responsible and local architecture. If the Aga Khan Award for Architecture has been a forerunner, Auroville and Hunnarshala have been a close second.

Both Auroville and Hunnarshala are equally committed to environmental sustainability and the strategic deployment of local resources (people, materials and processes). But while Auroville finds purpose in spiritual belief, Hunnarshala finds purpose in community empowerment.

Kiran Waghela of Hunnarshala recalls how he carried absolutely nothing with him when he visited Kutch after the earthquake. Rehabilitation was a matter of deploying networks of people to organize, train and then empower the entire community to re-build their shelters on their own.

Ranjeet Mukherjee of The Vrindavan Project, an Aurovillian based out of Delhi, also recalls a similar experience working in the Maharashtrian countryside.

“We are an architectural design and construction firm, working exclusively with ecologically appropriate materials and sustainable technologies. The lack of locally available skilled masons in the area posed quite a challenge.

We responded to these circumstances by taking on the contractor’s role ourselves, working directly with villagers from the nearest settlement. These people are primarily farmers with little experience in construction. Harvest seasons had to be factored into project scheduling, over and above the necessity to teach every aspect of building from scratch. To our delight the enthusiasm displayed by these locals was extraordinary. As we commenced with demonstrating a method of creating stable foundations using only compressed earth, their interest in the work was locked.

Our approach was cost effective as compared to other strategies employed in the region thus far. A wall panel of 8ft x 8ft and 9”; in thickness can be rammed in a single day. Since this entire operation requires only human energy, and basic raw materials, such a method is naturally low in carbon footprint, as well as economically feasible. The building is a load bearing structure and the entire roof of this home is supported by these earth walls alone.”

But this was not the end of the local engagement.

“Upon demonstrating this durable indigenous alternative, to conventional brick and mortar construction formats, [We] soon came under the scanner of local material suppliers…If you want to build, you have to buy my bricks.

That’s the rule; otherwise we will shut down your access road.”

There is a universality to both programs.

There is a pre-conceived approach to environmental sustainability and community empowerment. The outcome cannot be determined.

Both require elaborate training programs, both negotiate the available resources.

Both are ideologically local.

The localization comes as a process of optimization.

It is simply good practice to work locally.

But local is not necessarily inspiring, as is the common understanding.

Local is not only un-skilled and nontechnical, but also intrusive and monopolizing.

And even then both practices produce an architecture of exquisite beauty, consciousness and localness.

the place has moved on. but we insist on being from there.

THE END IS HERE