Domus India 2013-03

16 tVolume 02 tIssue 05 tMarch 2013 / RKDS, Idnany, Pirani envelope as a mediator / Kamath Design Studio,
Bhattacharjee debating tactile engagements / Nemish Shah language conversations / a city within the city: Sliced
Porosity Block by Steven Holl Architects / a tribute to the fearless mind of Lebbeus Woods / William Kentridge the
studio as a self-portrait / Giampiero Bosoni architecture of adrenalin / Abir Karmakar nding lost rooms
India
R200
New store: Mumbai. T: 24952323/24 W: akrutiliving.in E: info@akrutiliving.in
domus 16
March 2013
Editorial
References, context and language are the three
subjects that have occupied our minds as we put
this issue together. The context of the city, the
relationship with history and our approach to the
subject of heritage are all present on our working
table these days. The manic obsession to study the
city makes a museum-object out of everything that
we encounter in the urban scenario we inhabit.
Setting up urban study labs, running to identify
research projects and topics that are from the city
has become very fashionable today; and some of
us serious researchers, who for long have engaged
with the city, not out of vanity but out of deepseated concern are discussing what approaches
to the study of the city and the urban condition
are truly necessary and critically productive. The
Op-ed based on a project titled Gurgaon Glossaries
in this issue hints at some of this. Our features
that focus on two artists William Kentridge
and Abir Karmakar also emphasise the detailed
engagement with work and subject. The interview
with Kentridge explores the process of thinking
through an artists practice that is rich and nuanced,
invoking the studio as a site for thinking and
experimentation a contained walking of sorts,
like a walk through the city! Karmakar draws and
paints the interior space but this interior is very
urban. Teasing out the sense of contemporary
existence, metropolitan subconscious, and our
relationship to objects that make-up our physical
world, the painted frame-shots by Karmakar try
to excavate the real sense of being in the existing
world. It in turn draws sharp comments on the
world of interiors that we so take for granted, and
the objects of furniture, colour and luxury that we
treat as nothing more than daily needs of pleasure
as well as use. The interior is not the inside
against the outside but the two are enmeshed
relationships of existence.
Talking of context and the city, we visit the
polyclinic building at Lahori Gate in Old Delhi
designed by Romi Khosla Design Studios.
Negotiating many neighbours a mosque, a slum,
railway tracks this island of hope reaches out to
its neighbourhood through its design approach.
A medical facility for patients of TB and HIV
from the neighbouring areas, who may hardly
be able to manage a meal a day, the architectural
programme had to address the question of setting
up relationships with the community and its

neighbours. Trust, condence and a sense of
support had to be worked out so that the facilities
can reach out to the maximum people and this had
to be ingrained in the architecture for the polyclinic.
With this we also look at another medical facility
a dental college designed within the Jamia Millia
Islamia campus. Besides developing spaces for a
specialised education and the providing of service
to people in the campus and the vicinity, this
building too had to address the challenge of setting
up working relationships between the different
users of the buildings and its neighbourhoods.
In both these projects, architectural skin
emerges as the ground for deep descriptions and
explorations of values. How do we architecturally
value connections, user-space dynamics, visual
conversations within neighbourhoods, the sense of
being human? Transparency, movement and clarity
beyond the enclosure have been the key factors
that have been addressed in the design of these
built constellations. The terrain of these buildings
actively engages with the atmospheres it occupies.
Architectural skin is the deep geography of these
built interventions.
Taking forward the discussion on museums in
Domus 965 we take a close and argumentative
look at the Museum for Tribal Heritage in Bhopal
designed by Kamath Design Studio. Language
of architecture is in the forefront here for
debate; context and history are being negotiated
through questions of cultural consciousness and
imaginations like identity, familiarity, symbolism,
etc. We make a very meticulous reading of the
building, literally like an ant crawling along
the walls and surfaces of this built assemblage,
discussing questions of architectural form,
structure, visual repertoire, sequencing spaces
and the practice of the architects. To this reading
we have an essay by Nemish Shah that provides
a counterpoint to two aspects architectural
language and the idea of heritage/tradition. He
does a vivid comparison between many buildings
and the works of many architects across cities and
programmes to argue the ethics of practice, the role
of design and the sense of context and response.
The set of three buildings mentioned above bring
about a serious set of discussions vis--vis practice
and architectural imagination in India today. Over
the past year through a careful selection of projects,

and engaging with commentators who are very
observant, critical and argumentative Domus India
has attempted to lay out as well as map the current
architectural scenario in India. There is no time
to waste on crying over lack of critical journalism
in the eld, when hardly anybody did anything
about it except the few like Gautam Bhatia or Romi
Khosla or A G K Menon who genuinely worked
towards it, and thought about it. Thoughtless crying
or negative criticism is not productive; a magazine
should struggle hard and build the capacity to
churn ideas, discussions, arguments and new life
much like the myth of the churning of the ocean!
Architectural practices, studios and thinkers are
constantly producing thought-provoking projects,
dealing with precarious situations and challenging
scenarios there is much good in between all
that we need not be bothered about; so the good
that exists has to be debated and challenged as
a way of producing a dialectics of practice, and a
constant reworking of the eld. In the same vein
we constantly visit earlier books and publications,
many ideas and many architectural events; in
this issue we continue with our discovery of, and
deliberations on the work of Karle Malte von Heinz.
An architect who designed some of the large and
important projects in India, especially in Delhi, as
well as many houses all across India, hardly nds a
mention in the narratives of architectural history
in India. A designer who lands up disturbing our
notions of style-time relationships, or brings forth
ornamentation-architecture nuances, is surely
someone we need to discuss and visit. Just as in
our opening photoessay we visit the visual cosmos
of IIM building in Ahmedabad designed by Louis
Kahn, through the photographs of a German artist
who also measures the histories of certain specic
buildings in Berlin, Brasilia and California.
A rich collection of ideas comes across to you
through this issue of Domus India, and we
truly hope and wish that the momentum of
enthusiastically and decisively engaging with the
worlds of architecture, design, visual culture and
city studies will carry on through the spaces within
this publication.
KAIWAN MEHTA
Stills from I am not me, the horse

is not mine (His Majesty, Comrade
Nose)
DVCAM and HDV transferred to video
6 minutes 1 second
William Kentridge
2008
6
All images courtesy Volte Gallery, Mumbai
Stills from I am not me, the horse is

not mine (A Lifetime of Enthusiasm)
DVCAM and HDV transferred to video
6 minutes 1 second
William Kentridge
2008
Interview with artist William Kentridge

on pages 90-93 of this issue
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domus 16
March 2013
OpEd
OpEd / Gurgaon Glossaries
Notes from an
urban situation
With a growing interest shown by urban studies scholars in city
peripheries and second towns, Gurgaons urbanity will soon be
under academic and judicial scrutiny. Gurgaon provides enough
opportunities to urban studies scholars to mobilise their three
obsessions to overview, to lament and to intervene. As in
most urban studies scholarship, it would be easy for studies
on Gurgaon to articulate grand and coherent overviews of
environmental degradation, of corporate takeover of planning,
of infrastructure collapse, of developer appropriation of land, of
growth of an oppressive civil society, of growing consumerism,
of gentrication and of capitalistic exploitation in Gurgaon. Such
a picture would provide a comprehensible idea of the degraded,
failed, appropriated, oppressed, gentried and exploited urban
conditions. This would then create a context for the second
obsession of lament for the environment, the labour, the poor,
the public and infrastructure. Finally, the lament in turn would
provide for the third obsession to intervene. Like everywhere
else, the obsession for intervention would be mobilised on the
one hand through activist movements demanding participation,
transparency, accountability, efficiency, rights, etc. and on the
other hand, through design and technological pursuits that
seek efficiency and delight in the urban space. This kind of
linear and an easy mode of urban research, shaped by the three
obsessions often obtain academic validations and techno-legal
justications.
The problem with these obsessions is that they not only
conceptually close the discussions on the urban condition,
but also bring about simplistic readings and cause dangerous
implications. For example, a reading that planning has been
taken over by the corporate fails to notice various levels of
nuances involved in negotiations, transactions and balancing
of power that takes place between various urban actors for such
a condition to come about. In Gurgaon, most local landowners
collaborate with large developers to develop expensive realestate on their lands, with expensive ats that are then rented to
new corporate workers. The rent market in Gurgaon seems to be
dominated by the local landowners. The landowners at the same
time also make rental housing for the large number of migrant
workers who come to provide services in the city. However, today
the numbers of migrants have become so large that they have
started showing their political presence in the city. The clear
narrative of corporate takeover starts getting blurred when such
details open up. In most urban studies, the characterisation of
the corporate and the other are generalised and often rendered in
binaries of gainers and losers. Often the elite corporate workers
are considered to be gainers and local landowners and migrant
workers are seen as losers. Gurgaons urbanity also complicates
10
such stories of gains and losses, where the corporate workers,

local landowners, and the migrant workers wield enough power
to assert themselves in the physical, social and economical
landscapes of the city. A simplistic articulation of gainers and
losers forces an intervention towards regulating the gainers
further and bringing about justice and protecting rights of the
losers. While tighter regulations have often resulted into higher
levels of corruption, efforts to get justice and protection of
rights brings the so-called losers within the realms of legality,
which results in large-scale erasures. For example, if effort is
made to provide clear tenures and apartment housing for the
slum dwellers, then it is possible that clear tenures will attract
richer people who may buy off the houses. Also, the work and
production that was possible in the spatial conguration of the
slum will be impossible in an apartment.
The obsessive tendency to overview, lament and intervene is
not only problematic, but is also impossible and irrelevant. Like
any other city, Gurgaons urbanity is also full of stories that
complicate the easy narratives a local councillor announces
that his dream is to provide every new migrant with a house; an
air conditioning employee shifts to his office guest house when
his house gets taken over by lizards; an organisation specialises
in catching monkeys; some people are obsessed with watching
their housemaids at work on their mobile phones using remote
surveillance cameras; master-plan documents are sold at
photocopy shops; an enterprise is set up to provide consultation
on gifts; new enterprises come up to provide emotional security;
residents associations issue discount-shopping cards; about a
hundred trucks move around the city sucking shit from every
building; more than a thousand litres of diesel is burnt every
day to run the air conditioning plants; the residents undertake
an aggressive tree plantation programme; new legislative and
nancial instruments are devised to facilitate the forceful
changes in landscape; and many more. These incoherent stories
refuse any kind of clear reading and comprehension of the
urban condition. They show us that a city is in a constant state of
becoming. It settles in ways where there is no easy resolution of
urban forces or differences.
It is clear that cities get worked out beyond plans and
conspiracies, beyond concepts and categories, beyond activism
and policy, and beyond discourses and interventions. At the same
time within the nuances of urban life lie many more possibilities
of imagining amenable pasts and futures, involving diverse
urban actors. The emerging questions for urban studies would
then be about rethinking the methods and terms of engagement
with the urban.
These are some

notes clarifying
the conceptual
orientation
of the work
Gurgaon
Glossaries by
Prasad Shetty,
Rupali Gupte
and Prasad
Khanolkar
urbanists and
members of
the Collective
Research
Initiatives Trust
(CRIT), an
urban research
collective based
in Mumbai
Gurgaon
Glossaries is a
work produced
for the Sarai
Reader 09
exhibition at the
Devi Art Gallery,
Gurgaon,
curated by the
Raqs Media
Collective.
The work
comprises a
glossary of 100
terms (micronarratives
of new
practices and
relationships)
that have
emerged in the
settling process
of Gurgaon. It
is also on view
at the Mumbai
Art Room until
9 March 2013
where the
glossary takes
on a form of a
table converting
the gallery
space into a
discussion room
domus 16
March 2013
OpEd
OpEd / Gideon Fink Shapiro
A park for Roosevelt,

40 years later
Gideon Fink
Shapiro writes
on architecture
and design. He
worked in the
architecture
office of New
York-based
Gabellini
Sheppard
Associates, and
has created
public art
installations
with composers
Peter Adams
and Simon
Fink, as well as
with Amorphic
Robot Works
in Brooklyn.
He is currently
working on a
PhD thesis at
the University
of Pennsylvania
School of
Design,
examining
the French
engineer and
landscape
architect
Jean-Charles
Alphand. He is
the author of
the smartphone
app Domus
Architecture
Guide to New
York
12
The belated completion of Four Freedoms Park, Louis I Kahns

memorial to Franklin D Roosevelt in New York City, has
possibly inspired more eulogies to the architect than to the
president. Roosevelts legacy feels less secure today than it did
in Kahns time, with the American welfare state under attack
and the United Nations unable to arbitrate conicts. On the
other hand, Kahns place in the history of architecture appears
robust. Following Nathaniel Kahns My Architect (2003) and
the restoration of Kahns Yale University Art Gallery (2006),
we now have a Kahn retrospective at the NAI and the Vitra
Design Museum (2012-13), a new book on Kahns houses by
William Whitaker and George H Marcus (2013), and, of course,
the opening in 2012 of the monument at the southern tip of
Roosevelt Island.
In a curious way, the deferred execution of the Roosevelt
project, which Kahn and his office designed in 1973-74, became
an exercise in conservation. To build it was like restoring or
reconstructing a lost work from the past. It required technical
ingenuity and interpretive tact to follow Kahns construction
documents while addressing new factors such as rising sea
levels, seismic codes, access for disabled persons, and quarry
closures after the architects death in 1974. We cannot guess
what last-minute renements Kahn might have made on site
during construction. But after almost four decades on the
boards, the project faced the same ultimatum as many ageing
buildings: adapt or die. The adaptations were relatively subtle,
thanks to assiduous efforts by all parties involved.
To get to Roosevelt Island from Manhattan you can take an
aerial tramway, oating with airy detachment over the river
and city. Once you reach Kahns memorial, however, you
experience the landscape in a deeply terrestrial way. Beginning
with the massive embankment that makes you pause at the
entrance, you are ensconced in a sequence of sculpted mounds
and excavations leading to the waters edge. The enormous
granite staircase looks as if it might lead up to one of the
Beaux-Arts monuments that Kahn designed as a student under
Paul Cret. What really lies at the top of the stair is a vast urban
room dened by the structures along the East River. Here the
park gives visitors a sense of arrival and belonging within
the wider urban topography. More immediately, visitors
nd themselves in a tree-lined, wedge-shaped garden that
funnels inexorably towards the climax at the tip of the island.
Centred around a banal lawn, this pared-down green space
lacks the rich textures and detailing found in Kahns pareddown architecture. Evidently Kahn had not yet mastered the
expressive problems unique to vegetal building materials, at
least not in drawings. But the walled garden points outwards
beyond its walls, forwarding the eyes and feet to a horizontal
summit that compresses down into a room and nally bursts
open to the landscape.
This nal room is so clearly the beginning of something, a
taking-off point, as well as a primal enclosure and gathering
space. Partially enclosed on three sides by 27 towering granite
blocks, it opens to the southwest as if to pour forth into the
swirling tidal strait. The rooess square space resembles a
scaled-up version of the source pool in Kahns Salk Institute

courtyard (1959-65), or perhaps a scaled-down version of the
Salk courtyard itself. It somehow reconciles the scale of the
human body with the scale of the city and landscape. Amid the
heroic monumentality of the 36-tonne blocks one perceives the
quivering fragility of light trickling through the one-inch gaps.
This space, which almost didnt get built, whispers something
about the contingency of a plan, the vulnerability of a city and
the impermanence of a civilisation. From the porous room we
feel, surprisingly, the smallness of the 20th centurys greatest
city. New York is inseparable from the advancing waters
that enrich it and threaten it; they must be respected as a
constituent part of its ground.
As Anthony Vidler observed, For Kahn, architecture was above
all, and always, an art of memorial. The Roosevelt memorial is
also a memorial to Kahn, to New York and to architecture itself.
In memory lies the germ of imagination, and in the space of
Kahns memorial one nds innumerable futures in embryo. The
granite-walled Room is not a tomb but a womb, an incubator of
projects. For Kahn it was to be the beginning of architecture,
the stem cell of urban plazas, civic buildings and public parks.
The monument urges us to renew not only Roosevelts four
socio-political freedoms (freedom of speech and worship,
freedom from want and fear) but also several architectural
values or freedoms, which I will venture to articulate, perhaps
absurdly, in a parallel format.
1 Freedom to form. Space and structure give shape to shared
ideals and needs.
2 Freedom to move. Architecture responds to the movements
of time, the environment, body and mind.
3 Freedom from linear chronology. The past, present
and future are simultaneous in the perpetual beginning
of architecture.
4 Freedom from autonomy. Architecture is implicated
in the world and it participates in cultural and
environmental production.
Kahns belief in a cohesive society and a common good,
expressed in countless projects, can sometimes seem too
abstract and insufficiently heterogeneous for our times. As the
2012 Venice Architecture Biennale showed, few things are more
contentious today than common ground. But Four Freedoms
Park reminds us what makes architecture in the public realm
so exciting. Kahn said, What one does can belong to everybody.
Your greatest worth is in the area where you can claim no
ownership. It is precisely in this way that Four Freedoms Park
belongs to the landscape and the people of New York.
The memorial arrives on the scene like the proverbial Socratic
gady, provoking difficult questions. With a new university
campus soon to be developed nearby on Roosevelt Island,
and New York debating how to deal with rising seas, we
have to think in terms of collective spaces. Kahns giant little
project challenges the city to remember and to begin, to form
and to move.
GIDEON FINK SHAPIRO
ON STANDS NOW
H 2013
> ISSUE 1 > MARC
VOLUME 1
INDIAS
FIRST
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MAGAZI
Mahindra:
E 39 Anand
LEAD FEATUR innovation truly free from
ian
How to set Ind
king
constrained thin
ath:
Renuka Ramn
INTERVIEW 81Share it with the
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domus 16
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March 2013
Contents
Editorial
Op-ed Gurgaon Glossaries
Notes from an urban situation
5
10
VV.AA.
Lebbeus Woods
19402012
Contemporary Museum for architecture in India
curated by Kaiwan Mehta, text by Suprio Bhattacharjee
A park for Roosevelt, 40 years later
12
A portrait of the architect as an

immigrant
Journal
17
William Kentridge, Roshan Kumar Mogali
Op-ed Gideon Fink Shapiro
78
The studio as a self-portrait
84
90
Photoessay Thomas Florschuetz

Cover
The lower level of the
Museum of Tribal Heritage
in Bhopal designed by
the Delhi-based Kamath
Design Studio is
conceived of as a generous
verandah offering spaces
for workshops conducted
by craftsmen and artisans,
defined by the superposed
structural order of steel
columns and steel beams
that support the building
volumes floating overhead
(Photo courtesy Kamath
Design Studio)
The past imperfect
26
Giampiero Bosoni
Architecture of adrenalin
94
Romi Khosla Design Studios, Ekta Idnany, Jasem Pirani
Envelope as a mediator
Kamath Design Studio, Suprio Bhattacharjee
Debating tactile engagements
38
50
Abir Karmakar, Kaiwan Mehta
Finding lost rooms

Rassegna
Faades
Nemish Shah
Language conversations
SANAA, Imrey Culbert, Mosbach Paysagistes, Sam Jacob
A museum of time
Steven Holl, Lebbeus Woods, Christoph A Kumpusch
Light in the city
102
108
60
62
70
15
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Journal
Ahmedabad, IN
Prathaa: Kath-khuni architecture of

Himachal Pradesh
A recent exhibition at Hutheesing Visual Art Centre
in Ahmedabad by Design Innovation and Craft
Resource Centre (DICRC), Centre for Environmental
Planning and Technology University (CEPT)
presented an overview of a distinctive architectural
technique, highlighting our rich vernacular heritage
The vernacular traditions in India are in constant
ux, with an increasing loss of indigenous skills
and knowledge. The locally-available materials
are being displaced with the growing incursion
of new materials for construction. Kath-khuni
construction prevalent in Himachal Pradesh is

one such indigenous tradition of construction that
reects excellent sustainable building techniques
using local materials and human resources.
The need to preserve such traditions led to the
inception of a collaborative project which aims
at disseminating knowledge about kath-khuni
construction technique practiced for centuries in
Himachal Pradesh.
This exhibition is a part of a research project,
an international collaboration initiated in 2011
between the researchers based in the Faculty of
Architecture, Building & Planning, University

of Melbourne, Australia, and DICRC, Faculty of
Design, CEPT University and was partly funded by
the Australia India Institute.
Prior to this, an exhibition in Wunderlich Gallery,
ABP Faculty, University of Melbourne, was
organised last year from 13 to 31 August 2012.
An online resource lab has also been developed
to disseminate the related information and
knowledge of this project. This project is a recipient
of the international Zumbotel group award
for Humanity and Sustainability in the Built
17
Journal
Environment, 2012 with an honourable mention in

the Research and Special Initiatives category.
The research is featured in a book, Prathaa: Kathkhuni architecture of Himachal Pradesh, which
documents the research on existing and emerging
building practices in Himachal Pradesh. The
relative isolation of the hills and the demanding
environment fostered the development of
distinctive prathaa (traditions) that has been
practiced for centuries. These indigenous building
traditions reect the synthesis of material and
environmental constraints with social and
cultural beliefs and rituals. Published in 2013 by
SID Research Cell, CEPT University Ahmedabad,
the book illustrates the role of indigenous building
18
practices in a dual sense: architecture as an

outcome of specic material assemblies to full
specic functional purposes and architecture
as a process to bind together people, places
and resources in order to sustain particular
cultural norms, beliefs and values.The book has
been authored by Prof Bharat Dave, Faculty of
Architecture, Building & Planning, University of
Melbourne, Australia, Prof Jay Thakkar, Faculty
of Design, and Head of Research, DICRC, and
Mansi Shah, Researcher, DICRC. The authors
have very sensitively captured through their
research work an age-old building tradition in
these 145 intriguing pages of extensive research
and documentation. The book and the exhibition
consists of the panoramic shots of the region

where apart from the built-form, the culture and
context are evidently visible. Also the imagebased 3-D reconstructions developed for many
of the buildings give a fresh look to the mode of
documenting and recording.
This three-day exhibition and book launch held
at Hutheesing Visual Art Centre started with
an introduction to the project followed by the
authors sharing their experiences about the
research. The book was launched by architect
Nimish Patel congratulating the authors on their
effort and commendable work. He emphasised
the need and potential of publishing a series
of books on the title Prathaa comprehensively
documenting the rich vernacular heritage of
building practices across the country. Prof
Krishna Shastri (Dean, Faculty of Design, CEPT
University) inaugurated the exhibition and briefed
the audience about other activities of DICRC as
well. Exhibited through illustrative panels, video
and interactive media, the event hosted a wide
array of both national and international audience
including research scholars, architects, interior
designers, academicians and students. A lecture on
Approaches to Digital Documentation of Spatial
Environments by Prof Bharat Dave from the
University of Melbourne was conducted on the
second day which was followed by a screening of
the documentary lm Landscaping the Divine by
Prof Molly Kaushal.
This project is part of a planned series of research
and documentation activities that will help to
create new paradigms for the understanding
of craft through the changing times. With
the international collaborations, the aim is to
reach larger audiences, and creating newer
avenues and different methods of research and
documentation, says Prof Jay Thakkar. Among
the next possibilities of this project is to develop
a comprehensive travelling studio where
researchers and students from CEPT University
and the University of Melbourne work together
in Himachal Pradesh. This could lead to the
development of collaborative design processes
through the deeply-rooted knowledge and skills
of craftspeople and design-thinking capacities
of students and researchers. This could be then
demonstrated and tested and thus would be
fed back to the indigenous building practices in
Himachal Pradesh.
The larger intentions of projects like this are
cyclic in nature, where the imagination starts
with a primary eld visit, but later with detailed
documentation and extensive research, it can take
the form of a publication disseminating valuable
information about it. Further, these initiatives
also act as a seed to many new thoughts,
which delimits the human capacity to think of
indigenous building construction techniques
as old and mundane. The connection with the
context and culture remains the core of the
building traditions across India, specically here
in Himachal Pradesh; which differentiates them
from the modern techniques of construction
that are often disconnected from the context
and culture.
Rishav Jain
Indigenous Building Practices
http://himachal.crida.net/
domus 16
March 2013
New Delhi, IN
A vantage point for

domestic spaces
Bharti Kher continues with her narration and
translation of gender dynamic in relationship to
space in her recent body of artworks
Bharti Khers exhibition held at Nature Morte
from 19 January to 16 February 2013 titled Bind
the Dream State to your Waking Life dealt with the
co-relationship of domestic space and gender. The
exhibition comprised sculptures that were not
just dramatic but also transient in nature. Kher
has used different materials for her installations
to express the myriad of emotions that a domestic
space conjures through the memory of that
space, its usage and its inhabitants. One of the
installations had a wooden staircase xed to a
beam on the roof, with two large spoked wheels
driven through its middle depicting the wheel
of time in relation to a domestic space. Another
installation titled Time Lag by Kher displayed a
huge pillar that had been placed diagonally and
had pierced the upper half of the doorway and
a brick made of melted bangles hung from the
column almost like a pendulum of a clock. The two
artworks have been placed inside the gallery in
relationship to the original positioning of the door
and the staircase of the gallery respectively and
the artworks have sperm-shaped bindis attached
on the surface creating an etching-like pattern
that invokes a feeling of movement to both these
elements staircase and column. This is not
the rst time that Kher has used sperm-shaped
bindis on the surface of her artworks; and if one
remembers the Rinky-dink Panther, 2004 and The
Skin Speaks a Language Not its Own, 2006 both
had bindis pasted on the surface of the berglass
panther and the elephant giving a texture-like
effect to the life-size animals. Interestingly, the
gallery space of Nature Morte is appropriate for
the exhibition as the gallery is housed within
a residence and has different levels and stairs
within the gallery that forms a space within the
space. Among other works displayed in the gallery
was a diptych frame with shattered mirrors and
on the surface blue and black round bindis were
applied the round bindis not only represents the
popular forehead decoration for women but also
symbolises the third eye in Indian philosophy. This
particular work created a two-fold relationship
between the woman and the domestic space
rstly with the daily ritual of a majority of Indian
women who stick their bindis on the mirror and
secondly the reection of herself through the
mirror; the work is reective of the day gone
by and acts as a reminder of all the eventful
memories attached to a space. Other works
displayed include saris draped on cement pillars
as if they are meant to cover different parts of the
body and are placed in the gallery space along
with other framed artwork of bindis. Her works
attempt to weave the emotions and memories
of a woman attached to the interior or domestic
space where she might have spent a long time and
Bharti Kher, Lao's Mirror, 2012. Courtesy Nature Morte
Bharti Kher, Time Lag, 2012. Courtesy Nature Morte
the usage of bindis of different shapes and sizes

in her works express a trajectory of periods both
historical and contemporary in relation to women
and her changing roles in the society. Her work
reects contradictions of an enclosed space that
is the interior of the house and at the same time
it is also a private space that represents freedom
or independence.
Kalyani Majumdar
Nature Morte
www.naturemorte.com/
19
Journal
Bengaluru, IN
The rise of a capital

After exhibiting at the National Gallery of Modern
Art in New Delhi and Mumbai, Dawn upon Delhi: Rise
of a Capital has arrived in NGMA Bengaluru
A collection of around 250 photographs, archival
maps and town plans of Delhi from the 19th
and early 20th century takes us back to a part
of history of a city that is also the capital of
independent India. The images displayed at the
exhibition Dawn upon Delhi: Rise of a Capital
are from the coronation durbars of 1877, 1903
and 1911 and capture many interesting facets
of political and social dynamics apart from the
festivities coupled with pomp and show that took
place in the pre-independent city of Delhi. This
travelling exhibition has been jointly organised
by NGMA, the Ministry of Culture and the Alkazi
Foundation for the Arts. The collection is from the
archives of the Alkazi Collection of Photography,
Archaeological Survey of India, the Central Public
Works Department archives, the Ram Rahman/
Habib Rahman Archives and the D N Chaudhuri

Collection and it has been curated by Rahaab
Allana. The display gives a rare opportunity to
the viewers to take a historical journey of Delhi
through images that are from the era of the British
Raj; the images from 1903 durbar that was held to
celebrate the coronation of King Edward VII and
Queen Alexandra as Emperor and Empress of India
showcases the festivities with elaborate tents that
were installed at the coronation area in Delhi with
electrical light installations for the rst time and
a specially uniformed police force was brought in
for this grand event. Apart from the photographs
exhibited, there are maps of modern Delhi by
renowned architects such as Edwin Lutyens and
Herbert Baker displayed. Interestingly, as one
walks through the gallery looking at images of the
pavilion from Delhi Durbar in 1911, one can almost
hear the sound of the trumpets and the drums
rolling as King-Emperor George V made the regal
announcement that the new capital of the British
Photo courtesy ACP
Raj has been shifted from Calcutta to Delhi in

front of an astounding and probably unsuspecting
audience who witnessed the rise of the capital.
Kalyani Majumdar
Until 16.03.2013
National Gallery of Modern Art, Bengaluru
http://ngmaindia.gov.in
[Domus India 11 (October 2012) featured a photoessay with photographs
and textual extracts from the exhibition and the related publication]
Mumbai, IN
A chronicler of Bombay/Mumbai
As a tribute to one Mumbai's most
prominent historians, Sharada
Dwivedi, who passed away last year,
the Prince of Wales Museum now
known as Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj
Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) in Fort
hosted a memorial lecture in her
honour on 14 February 2013
Organised jointly by the CSMVS
and non-prot organisation, Urban
Design Research Institute (UDRI),
the tribute lecture was addressed
by British historian Charles Allen.
Dwivedi was one of Mumbai's
best-known historians and had
authored a series of books on the
city's history. She was also on the
panel of the Mumbai Heritage
Conservation Committee. She was
a mentor and a guide to many
heritage conservationists, students
and journalists alike. She insisted
upon calling the city that she grew
up in as Bombay and not Mumbai
as Charles Allen fondly remembered
of the avid researcher and historian
during his memorial speech. Allen
and Dwivedi worked together on
the book titled The Taj at Apollo
Bunder a well-researched book
that documented the profound
history of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel
from its conceptualisation to the
present day. Another book that has
been a landmark in understanding
20
the heritage of Bombay/Mumbai is

Bombay: The Cities Within, which she
co-authored with Rahul Mehrotra
and is a beautiful coffee table book
with verses, sepia tone images that
invoke a sense of nostalgia for the
city and helped in raising awareness
about the citys built heritage among
its inhabitants.
The event was followed by
announcing the winner of the
Charles Correa Gold Medal Award.
Since 2001 UDRI initiated the
annual Charles Correa Gold Medal
and it is given to young students
of architecture to encourage them
to come up with design solutions
in urban contexts. The winner for
2011 was announced by one of the
jury members architect Kamu
Iyer and went to Anushka Raina
from the School of Planning and
Architecture (SPA), New Delhi, for
her sensitive design response in her
project titled Revitalization of central
business district in New Delhi and has
dealt with an important urban issue
which is the parking problems in
the crowded business centres
of Delhi which is also known as
Lutyens Delhi.
Kalyani Majumdar
Urban Design Research Institute
www.udri.org/
Photo courtesy UDRI
domus 16
March 2013
Mumbai, IN
The weft and

warp of things
Threads when set free speak the
language of art in Monika Correas
woven fabrics in her recent collection
of tapestries
Monika Correa in her recently held
exhibition at Chemould Prescott
Road titled Meandering Warp:
Variations on a Theme showcased
her collection of tapestries. To
understand Correas work on
tapestries, it is very important to rst
understand the method of weaving.
In weaving, there are two elements
one is the warp (longitudinal
threads) and the other is the weft
(the threads that run parallel to the
width). The loom has a reed which
is like a comb that keeps the warp
threads parallel to each other and in
the process of weaving the weft and
the warp interlock and form woven
textile but if at any point of time
during weaving the reed is removed
then the threads would meander.
A trained weaver, Correa wanted
to experiment with tapestries by
removing the reed at some point
during the weaving process in
order to let threads drift. For this,
Correa uses a reed that she can
remove or put back in at any time
while weaving and that provides
an altogether new dimension to the
process of weaving and the language
of threads. The idea of the thread
taking its own course when released
from the comb nds its own way in
a journey of self expression in her
artworks. One of her works displayed

at the exhibition titled Black Nile
shows the meandering of threads
freely yet carefully organised
and depicts the ow of the river
through her experimentation
with textiles. There is uidity and
energy in her artworks and gives a
three-dimensional effect to all her
tapestries. For a textile artist, the
canvas is not readymade as the artist
has to weave the canvas and hence
this medium of art is not only timeconsuming and labour-intensive but
also has exacting requirements. This
exhibition provides a fresh lease to
an artform that has a rich history in
India that traces back to the times
when India was the hub of textile
trade and cultural exchange with the
rest of the world and was probably
responsible for clothing the world.
Kalyani Majumdar
Chemould Prescott Road
http://www.gallerychemould.com
Tapestry works by Monika Correa titled Black

Nile (left) and Connections (right) displayed at
the exhibition in Gallery Chemould
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Mumbai, March 2013
Photos courtesy Chemould Prescott Road
21
Journal
Architects
and comics
While architecture is undeniably fascinated by comics,
it is also true that comics assign buildings an ambiguous role
of great potential, as demonstrated by two recent publications
Since the 1960s, architects have been under the spell

of comics. For their part, cartoonists have also been
attracted to architecture since longer still. With all
due distinction and precaution, we can even say
that an architectural drawing is similar in structure
(with its combination of pictures and words) to
that of a comic strip. The book Bricks & Balloons.
Architecture in Comic-Strip Form by Mlanie van der
Hoorn tackles the relationship between architecture
and comics. It shows how the connection more often
emerges in architecture than in cartoons, and how
ambiguous and opportunistic the link has been in
certain cases. The book is a response to this opacity,
presenting 70 authors whose work lies squarely at
the intersection between architecture and comics.
Based on rst-hand interviews with architects and
comic-strip artists, Bricks & Balloons is an attempt
to cover the duality in an all-encompassing way,
with three chapters on the relationship between
comics and architecture criticism, and three on
the relationship between comics and architectural
design. The rst section explains how comics have
been a vehicle for architectural issues (with the
reference scale more centred on that of the building
than of the built environment). The second part is
about how and to what extent architects have used
comics to promote and popularise their work. The
22
Review
Manfredo di Robilant
vast bulk of information (including bibliographical

references) is interspersed by anecdotes that enliven
it, despite the fact that the books non-diachronic
scheme favours theoretical issues over events,
offering a principally conceptual rather than
historical clarication of the architecture-comics
affiliation. Van der Hoorns interpretation aims
to demonstrate that between architecture and
comics, the latter can be a tool that functions as a
critical device towards the former because it has
the potential to reveal in unexpected ways how
inhabitants interact with a building (or rather
how buildings speak to their inhabitants) and how
architects try to impose their authority by means of
building (or rather what buildings, actually built or
only designed, say about their architects).
Among the many cases illustrated in Bricks &
Balloons, Chris Wares Building Stories is possibly
the most vivid portrayal of the ambiguous and
potent role buildings can have in comics. Ware, a
cartoonist and graphic novel artist who has been
famous on the scene for at least 20 years, tells the
stories of the inhabitants of a four-storey residential
building in a non-specied Chicago neighbourhood.
He introduces the viewpoint of the building
itself, making it the rst-person narrator. There
is no real storyline. The tales are divided over 14
architecture historian
distinctively discrete books, booklets, magazines,

newspapers and pamphlets contained in a box
with a pictographic listing of all 14 items, but does
not suggest a specic reading order. Perhaps it is
precisely the fragmentary nature of the material
in the coffer that transmits, or actually invokes,
the peculiar role of architecture, which in the
framework of the ction overlaps its role of physical
setting with the role of co-protagonist, paradoxically
off-stage but gifted with omniscient and judging
insight. The buildings faculty to know everything
not only derives from it being the physical container
of the lives of its inhabitants, but also from the fact
that its reality belongs to a wider time frame than
the human one. If the theme of Building Stories is the
solitude of its characters, particularly of the female
protagonist, the building is the only depository of
the common memory of their existences, making
it the only one who might be able to be truly
empathetic, even compassionate, in their regard.
When the leading character passes by the building
years later, she wonders why she feels so nostalgic.
And for one moment it seems as if the secret life of
walls and architectural elements is able to enter into
contact with the intimate life of the inhabitants, as
perhaps too few architects imagine can happen.
domus 16
March 2013
JOURNAL BOOKS
Mlanie van der Hoorn
Bricks & Balloons

010 Publishers, Amsterdam 2012
pp. 224
www.010.nl
Chris Ware
Building Stories
Random House, London 2012
pp. 260 (14 items)
www.randomhouse.com
23
Journal
JOURNAL BOOKS
Alexandra Lange
The Dot-Com City.

Silicon Valley
Urbanism
Strelka Press, Moscow 2012
273 KB
www.strelka.com/books
Justin McGuirk
Edge City.
Driving the Periphery
of So Paulo
Strelka Press, Moscow 2012
955 KB
www.strelka.com/books
Photo Alice Berton
24
domus 16
March 2013
A tale of two
territories
Two e-books analyse the history of two urban territories: Los Angeless
Silicon Valley, a pastoral capitalist home to dot-com companies,
and So Paulos periphery, home to the favelas of the informal city
Both the e-books by Alexandra Lange and Justin
McGuirk for the recently founded publishing
house established by the Strelka Institute, for
which McGuirk is publishing director, are tales of
divided cities, critiques of the lack of government
or corporate responsibility for city making that has
led to polarised outcomes which, they argue, waste
opportunities for positive change. In both cases
the authors embark on a critical drive, necessarily
by car, exploring these isolated, disjointed
communities, speculating at the same time on the
lack of political will to regenerate the downtown.
Lange argues that both the city and the dot-coms
have a lot to gain by applying some of the creativity
they employ in building online and technology
empires to engage with the space between the
metropolis and their insular suburban enclaves.
Langes case study underpins a bigger protest: dotcoms promote city campus zones free of the public
realm, that elusive space of difference. Unwrapping
her points from her ample descriptions of their
corporate locales, the reader is gradually drawn
into her polemic about their enclavism and at what
cost it comes to the spatial identity of the civic as
a concept. The other cardinal sin in Langes book
is that dot-coms occupy buildings that actually
do not appear to need contemporary architecture.
Whether it is Facebooks adoption of hacker chic,
Review
Lucy Bullivant
Googles dated office design with insulated

yurts or Apples un-campus, she lambasts them
for their inward-looking corporate creativity,
obsessed with groupthink and a transparency
that hardly allows for mavericks. Packed with
seductive options for eating, modes of working
and offering private shuttle buses (Facebook) due
to security issues, their patriarchal culture sucks
employees into their working culture. This is
hardly new: corporate culture has a strong history
of patriarchal embrace. But of the dot-coms, only
Google has expressed a wish to build worker
housing and to lobby for a zoning change. McGuirk,
by contrast, focuses on the ways in which the
housing deficit, as a result of speculation taking
precedent, impinges on the health of the formal
city. So Paulos 1971 master plan led to its endless
landscape of towers, but did not include the
periphery, a place where settlers were left to fend
for themselves. He quotes architects such as Jorge
Juregui, Urban-Think Tank (U-TT), Christian Kerez
and MMBB, who have been retrofitting the favelas
in conjunction with SEHAB, the citys housing
authority. But his road trip continues without
discussing their innovationsJureguis Urban
Attractor Cell, or what U-TT call their natural
arena at Groto, for example. That could be
because the point of McGuirks e-book is to argue
Architecture critic
@lucybullivant
why the informal city cannot be incorporated

into the formal city through better transport,
infrastructure and employment. He is concerned
about the status of the favelas, suffering actual
and threatened evictions in the lead up to the
2014 World Cup; the legacy of successive mayors
pandering to real-estate lobbies that fund their
election campaigns rather than coming up with
a vision for the periphery. What is the formal
city? Impeded by traffic-clogged roads, he finally
makes it to Alphaville, one of the largest gated
communities in the world planned in the mid1970s, a town ringed by a steel fence topped with
barbed wire, concealing neat streets of mansion
houses with swimming pools. But that is not it,
and nor is formal entirely defined by the historic
centre, seen as either in decline or enjoying a new
quarter, Nova Luz, with a cultural centre by Herzog
& de Meuron.
Integration, responsibility: who is going to make
the next move? Who really wants to make a
stand? Typifying a new genre of polemical writing
about the city and its evolution, about how civic
aspirations should avoid being swallowed up by
corporate and real-estate interests, both e-books
valuably open up major debates on the future of
urbanism and the kind of game-changing it can
effect in the 21st century.
25
Enclosure (Brasilia) 05
C-print
183 x 228 cm
2008/10
Courtesy Diehl, Berlin
Photoessay
The past imperfect

Thomas Florschuetz
The photographs of Thomas
Florschuetz, who was the only German
artist showcased at the recent KochiMuziris Biennale, connects four
different buildings in different locations
through a language - architectural at
one level, but also the photographic
frame on the other. Time, and
architectural imagination, rather a
sense of utopia within architecture
is revisited by these images - not to
glorify the utopia but rather in a way
of asking questions of it, asking that
imagination in visual grammar to
revisit its own history. Florschuetz
in an interview comments, The
grammatical tense is its (photographys)
inner essence in a certain sense: the
recording of a situation, the fixing of
a particular extract from reality onto
a surface. But the clocks dont stop.
26
This sets a process in motion that

takes place after the preceding event,
but which understands this event as
its starting point. So the unfinished
shouldnt be seen as a fragment that is what the extract is - but as a
productive process, a thinking things
through, a making of associations.
These photographs have been taken
across four cities Berlin, Brasilia,
Ahmedabad and California.
Thomas Florschuetz is a Berlin-based

visual artist and photographer. Architecture
is an important subject in his works. His
recent exhibitions include Extract, Vitra
Design Museum Gallery, Weil am Rhein,
2013 and a show at the Durbar Hall at
Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2012
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March 2013
Enclosure (IIM) 02
C-print
183 x 150 cm
2010/13
27
The past imperfect
Enclosure (IIM) 18
C-print
123 x 83 cm
2010/13
Courtesy Galerie m, Bochum
28
Thomas Florschuetz
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Enclosure (IIM) 30
C-print
183 x 123 cm
2010/13
29
The past imperfect
Enclosure (IIM) 44
C-print
153 x 103 cm
2010/13
30
Thomas Florschuetz
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Enclosure (IIM) 14
C-print
183 x 150 cm
2010/13
31
The past imperfect
Enclosure (La Jolla) 08

C-print
150 x 123 cm
2007/12
32
Thomas Florschuetz
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Enclosure (La Jolla) 11

C-print
150 x 123 cm
2007/12
33
The past imperfect
Untitled (Palast) 53
C-print
183 x 228 cm
2006
34
Thomas Florschuetz
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Untitled (Palast) 56
C-print
183 x 253 cm
2006/07
35
The past imperfect
Enclosure (Neues Museum) 25

C-print
183 x 150 cm
2009/10
36
Thomas Florschuetz
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Enclosure (IIM) 59
C-print
183 x 123 cm
2010/13
37
38
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Envelope as a
mediator
We take a close look at two medical facility buildings in Delhi, both designed by
Romi Khosla Design Studios, that straddle two very different sites and contexts.
In both these buildings, architecture emerges as a mediator of ideas and values,
and this is achieved by a descriptive working of the building skins that are also
the tectonic structure of the built constellations - that understand culture and
social relationships
Design
Romi Khosla Design Studios

Text
Delhi
Ekta Idnany
Jasem Pirani
Photos
Saurabh Pandey
The faade of the

polyclinic has blue and
yellow aluminium louvers
that serve dual purpose
of providing ventilation
and enclosure
New Architectures of Social

Engagement, Niamh Coghlan,
Aesthetica magazine,
1 October 2010
2
http://www.moma.org/visit/
calendar/exhibitions/1064
3
The poor in and around Lahori
Gate area are in very bad
health due to drug addiction,
physical incapability and social
desertion. Some have critical
diseases like HIV and TB.
They are homeless because
they simply cannot afford
shelter. Barely managing to
feed themselves, they pull
rickshaws or engage in casual
daily labour. Some are sex
workers and others get by
through begging.
The Polyclinic, which will be
a day care referral medical
relief centre, will serve
these poor people in the
neighbourhood who cannot
afford to get medical treatment
and check-ups. Completing
the Polyclinic in this dense
and crowded locality was not
easy. The Polyclinic site had
a dilapidated Chungi building
that had provided shelter for
the homeless and was a hub
of drug-related activities. Fully
aware of these problems, the
architects worked closely with
the local community
The emergence and collapse of

every grand narrative has had
profound effects on architecture.
The recent speedy emergence
of megalomaniacal urban
manifestations and the resulting
crisis have also given cause to
much soul searching. The crash of
the housing real estate market in
the United States that catapulted
the recent state of economic affairs
symbolises architectures giddy
collusion with commerce and the
dilemma of belief suddenly faced
by architects around the world.
Architects, largely an outmoded
species in the planning of important
types of building such as hospitals,
prisons, airports and probably even
schools, have seen their roles largely
relegated to fullling commissions
for clients who can afford to engage
in aesthetics.
Can architecture go beyond its
capacity to serve the whims of the
privileged few and be a conduit for
social change? Can architecture
rediscover the belief that buildings
can perform a benevolent function
in the survival of a community? As

architects we are always conscious
that The edices and buildings that
comprise our environment have
a profound effect, psychologically
and physically, on our behaviour1 .
Illustrating the case in point and
trying to reposition architecture
and the role of architects post
the economic collapse the NY
MoMAs seminal exhibition Small
Scale Big Change: New Architectures
of Social Engagement, October
2010, focussed on 11 projects
across ve continents that trained
the spotlight away from the
architectures of indulgence towards
an architecture that largely results
from a dialogue with those from
underprivileged societies2 for their
benet. Perhaps the more pertinent
question for architects is whether
the architectural dialogue can
maintain its disciplinarity while
trying to affect social change.
Designed by Romi Khosla and
Martand Khosla of Romi Khosla
Design Studios, a charitable
polyclinic 3 building located near the
39
Delhi, IN
Lahori Gate area of Old Delhi can endeavor to provide answers

to some of these questions and more. Catering to the poorest
and those living on the fringe of the urbanity of the national
capital, the polyclinic was commissioned and donated to the
Municipal Corporation of New Delhi, by the Sir Sobha Singh
Public Charitable Trust. The building stands situated in the
heart of the old city of Delhi, contesting boundaries with
the railway line, a masjid and a burnt down slum. While it is
conventional in architecture to hold the context sacred, how
does one deal with a context that is hostile in accepting the
architectural agent? The architects realised that engaging
the local community and enlisting cooperation from the
adjoining masjid and railway authorities would enable them
to surmount the odds.
The building for the polyclinic stands pristine amongst the
rubble of the erstwhile slum, platonically perfect, harking back
to the days when Modernism predicated that architecture
could bring one closer to Utopia. Almost mimicking the
urban situation it hopes to counter, the face that the building
presents to the world, or at least the world that passes by on
the railway tracks, appears cubed, sterile and serene. This
western faade is exactly that a faade, a solid curtain with
a punched-in picture frame that hangs off the front of the
building, shading the glass screen set behind by deep recessed
balconies on every oor. Behind the added veil of an iron
security mesh, this side hardly betrays what might be inside.
The particular articulation of this curtain enables the ruse
of an open oor plate completely concealing the fact that the
services of the building are housed right behind it.
On the other side, the building opens up to the community
that it hopes to serve and is in diametric opposition to the
western face. The entrance through this side is perched on a
40
modest porch that almost feels contiguous with the ground

plane of the neighbourhood. The low plinth tiled in Kotah
and large glass panes of the entryway blur the divisions of
the outside and inside. Further throwing caution to puritan
ideals of the other side, this faade is a brightly painted
unmonolithic curtain bounded on both edges by the concrete
side walls. It would appear as if the interior of the building
is pushing itself outward from within the connes of the
concrete shell. Large expanses of glass that make up part of the
curtain allow a complete reveal of the inside of the building,
while also allowing the occupants a view of those who
might be hesitant to reach out for help. The banality of the
aluminium louvers that serve to provide natural ventilation
all the while ensuring privacy contradict the careful detailing
of the building. The precise gaps where the curtain wall pulls
away from the side walls embeds storm water drain pipes
rendered in shiny stainless steel appearing as innocuous
structural glazing members. Horizontal breakers that shade
the glass also serve to mark oor levels and act as ironically
risky balconies with absent railings.
The building is deliberate in the humble expediency with
which one can read it and it is this that allows it to exist
and be accepted within the chaotic milieu that surrounds
it. The same idea also extends into its theoretical reading
syntactically the building is using the module of the Maison
Dom-Ino diagram proposed by Corbusier as the basic building
block of Modern Architecture. The plan is a virtual nine
square grid with equal bays along the north-south axis. But
along the other axis the nal western bay is foreshortened
due to the available site conditions. The architects choose to
deal with this compromised bay with amazing intuitiveness
reminiscent of Baroque spaces. They highlight the diminutive
Above, left: The entrance is

perched on a modest porch
that almost feels contiguous
with the ground plane of the
neighbourhood. The low
plinth tiled in Kotah and large
glass panes of the entry
way blur the divisions of the
outside and inside. Above,
right: the polyclinic has been
designed keeping in mind
its close proximity to other
buildings. Opposite page, top:
the building stands situated
in the heart of the old city of
Delhi, contesting boundaries
with the railway line, a
masjid and a burnt down
slum. Opposite page, bottom:
a view from one of the rooms
of the polyclinic showing
the horizontal breakers that
shade the glass and also
serve to mark floors and act
as ironically risky balconies
with absent railings (the
railings are supposed to be
installed at the door itself)
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41
42
Delhi, IN
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bay by detaching it off the mass of the building by providing

a gap, rendering it into a free faade, all the while using the
available poch to conceal service areas.
Materially, as well, the building contributes to the above
dialogue and enhances the graphic legibility of the project.
While functional need dictates that the building is robust,
vandalism-proof and economical yet the architects manage
to clearly reinforce the diagram in the material reading on
both the faades one is clearly able to discern the three
structural bays. While the side facing the tracks is a mere
rational rendering of the divisions, the louvered faade
chooses to tell more about the interior function. The vertically
continuous blue louvered bay calls out the stacked staircase
hidden behind it. The yellow painted louvers indicates oor
areas such as landings and corridors. Glass is used largely
to de-materialise boundaries inside and allow views to
the outside from the waiting lounges. The use of concrete,
plaster, steel, glass and the use of the primary colours on the
louvered faade, alludes to the traditional material palette
of Modernism and yet the same materiality also allows
the building to enter in subtle competitiveness with the
commercial edices of the contemporary urban city. It is the
above dialogue that could allow the building to create a sense
of pride and ownership amongst the community. It also allows
the architects to further the disciplinary conversation within
its own fraternity.
Architecture does not necessarily need to return to the
belief in any all pervasive grand narrative to reposition its
importance to humanity. But perhaps if architects were to reappropriate some of Modernism by sieving out dated ideals
such as the architect as the mastermind or celebrity; and
adopt the entrenched belief that power of architecture and
architectural space can nurture, enhance and improve the
survival of a community while engaging their participation
then, architecture might rebalance itself in the humanities
rather than occupying lofty and lonely perches in high art.
EKTA IDNANY
Architect
This page: Glass is used

largely to de-materlise
boundaries inside and allow
views to the outside from the
waiting lounges. Opposite
page, top: the vertically
continuous blue louvered
bay calls out the stacked
staircase hidden behind

it and the yellow painted
louvers indicates floor
areas such as landings and
corridors. Opposite page,
bottom: rear view of the
building
43
Delhi, IN
8
6
7
3
2
1
X
5m
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
FACT BOX
POLYCLINIC FOR THE DESTITUTE

Electrical Consultant
Design
Romi Khosla Design Studios SEMAC India
Principal Architects
Romi Khosla, Martand
Khosla
Plumbing Consultant
SEMAC India
Design Team
Rajnish Pant
Client
The Sir Sobha Singh Public
Charitable Trust
Structural Consultant
SEMAC India
Location
Old Delhi
44
5m
5m
Lobby
Office
Consultation Room
Toilet
Rest Room
Pantry
Lift Shaft
Balcony
5m
DRAWINGS
Project Area
1093.5 m2
Ground floor plan
Section X
Construction Phase
2009 - 2011
East elevation
West elevation
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C
1
B
10
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0
6m
2
19
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40
11 12
10
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30
39 5
35
4
Entrance
Lobby
Central Block/ Library
Terrace Garden
X-ray Room
Darkroom
Scanning
Staff Room
Faculty Room
Readers Room
Lecturers Room
HODs Office
Toilet
Store
Deep Freeze
Mortuary
Technicians Room
Dissection Hall
Preparation Room
Store
Histology
Museum
Lecture Room
Stores and Services
Staff Common Room
Faculty Changing Room + Common Room
Cafe
Kitchen
Students Changing Room + Common Room
Waiting Room
Deans Office
Record Room
Demo Room
Biochemistry and Pharmocology Lab
Physiology + Pathology + Microbiology Lab
Oral Biology and Oral Pathology Lab
Consulting room
Public Health Dentistry Clinic
Sterilisation room
Office
38
19
20
2
19
36
33
37 37
1
0
6m
5
3
0
DENTAL COLLEGE
Design
Romi Khosla Design Studios
Principal Architects
Romi Khosla, Martand
Khosla
Design Team
Maulik Bansal,
Ram Pandarathil Nair,
Megha Shah
FACT BOX
Structural Consultant
SEMAC India
Electrical Consultant
SEMAC India, MaxMEP
Plumbing Consultant
SEMAC India
Client
Jamia Millia Islamia
University, New Delhi
Location
New Delhi
Project Area
11,696 m2
Construction Phase
2007 - 2009
6m
DRAWINGS
Ground floor plan
First floor plan
North elevation
Section CC
Section BB
Civil Contractor
CPWD
45
Delhi, IN
The envelope or exterior of the building is what denes the

boundary between the inside and the outside. The exterior
appearance is what we rst experience or see of a building. In
a similar way, we see people rst as how they visually appear
to us. In both of these cases it can be said that we are seeing
the skin of the object. Skin is the boundary of the object
that separates the object from the space around it. The skin
of a building its faade is sometimes considered to have
a social and cultural role in representing what is inside the
building. Traditional typologies of buildings such as temples,
villas, or municipal buildings usually have sufficient
connection to a system of understanding that we know the
programme of the building from the architectural elements
that are used to make the exterior form.
The articulation of the skin of a building is about the
movement between the inside and the outside one that
is dened by the programme that is concealed and revealed
within. Bernard Tschumi states that the envelope of a building
is what excludes or includes by its articulation of the surface
by fortication or porosity, by veiling and by screening. This
suggests that movement from inside to outside is constitutive
of space rather than being a product of space. Gilles Deleuze
and Felix Guattari, two French philosophers, have said it well,
A substance is said to be formed when a ow enters into a
relationship with another form.
Principal architects Romi Khosla and Martand Khosla of Romi
Khosla Design Studios based in New Delhi, were entrusted
with the responsibility of designing a dental college for the
Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi. The college
46
besides being a teaching centre for dentistry also provides

dental care to the people in the surrounding areas. The
programme therefore had to be designed keeping the three
users in mind; the common public, the doctors who were going
to teach and practice and for students who were going to learn
and assist. The architects realised that it was crucial for the
programme to be simplied so that it is easily understood
by the three end-users and allows the users to ow from one
space to another. This denes the envelope as a connector from
the inside to the outside.
Romi Khosla Design Studios ensured that the faade was
designed to serve dual functions. The northern faade of the
building behind which the clinics have been located such
that the structural curtain wall glazing provides enormous
daylight for dental treatment. On the southern elevation, the
glazing has been conned to horizontal narrow openings
that protect the southern side of the building in the clinic
areas from heat gain. Here one can argue that the skin of the
building is as an organising element that relates functionally
in connecting society to the building in a non-spatial way.
Therefore, the underlying relationship is that the skin/
envelope separate as compared to making connections, by
transforming space into a represented system.
Programme, envelope and context form the basis of
architecture and buildings. Herzog and de Meuron have
designed, with artistic vigour, a number of buildings where
the surface of the building, its skin, is not of familiar
or traditional architectural forms. These projects include
the Dominus Winery in Napa Valley California, where the
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March 2013
The varying levels of

transparencies, openings and
closings in the faade links the
aesthetic experience with the
connected spaces beyond and
the disconnected social system
47
Delhi, IN
The surface itself forms the

structure of the building as
structural glass, reinforced
concrete frames, structural
steel staircases and corridors
emerge and disappear,
separate and connect to
map the programmatic and
contextual elements
skin is made of gabions where chicken

wire enclosed blocks of stone used in highway
retaining walls. The skin is actually the
structure, and yet is also simultaneously a
metaphorical allusion.
At the Dental College, although architects
Romi Khosla and Martand Khosla may not
have implied any metaphorical allusions, their
treatment of surface architecture with the
varying levels of transparencies, openings and
closings in the faade paradoxically links the
aesthetic experience with the connected spaces
beyond and the disconnected social system.
Here, the surface itself forms the structure of the
building as structural glass, reinforced concrete
frames, structural steel staircases and corridors
emerge and disappear, separate and connect to
map the programmatic and contextual elements.
Similarly, the Seattle Public Library by Rem
48
Koolhaas also makes the skin a highly conscious

element while at the same time it is the structure
for the building. The reality of the Seattle Public
Library is that the skin has the integrity of being the
structure and is the central idea of the building.
Also in the case of the Dental College structure, which
has an institutional typology, the architectural
surface creates spatial effects that have a function
which denes the envelope as a mediator.
With reective glass surfaces adorning most
city skylines, where we know of nothing that
is beyond or inside, and in most cases where
the building is the worst arbitrator of energy,
it is elevating to see that Romi Khosla Design
Studios has mapped the complexities of the
programmatic and contextual elements by the
articulation of the skin. The articulation of the
skin of a building, or of a person, is about the
movement between inside and outside. An
envelope that not only mediates and simplies

but becomes a part of that movement from
the outside to the inside space is a critical and
fundamental aspect of space. It is substantively
different from the representation of space.
Most often than not studies pertaining to faade
articulations and/or surface architecture is
limited to the tectonics of building. We have
established that any building is both the space
of the building and the space around the
building. In that framework the tectonic analysis
of skin should be expanded to take more
consideration of the interactions of the surface
with the space. At the same time, a study must
be carried out that maps and layers movement in
relation to geometry.
JASEM PIRANI
Architect
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49
Debating tactile
engagements
Conceived as a tribal hamlet, the Museum of Tribal Heritage in Bhopal
designed by Kamath Design Studio opens up a range of questions regarding
architectural language, collective consciousness as well as cultural
representations. The building is designed to emphasise the experience of ideas
and visual figures of speech through a built geography that is vaguely familiar
and non-alienating
So you wanted a white box?

We live in a country where our very relationship with the
nations original inhabitants is contentious. Labelled tribals
by colonial settlers and socially victimised by the caste-system,
these communities have, over thousands of years, evolved a
way of life that stems from a one-ness with the land and the
direct experience of the life-world1 . This engenders a collective
consciousness, a living heritage that is manifest in their daily
rituals, their social customs, and the objects and patterns that
enliven their everyday what we label as their art.
As such, this art is representative of, and a product of, the values
and beliefs of the community, and not of the individual. This
is not in the manner of art as understood today art for arts
sake. Far from being the intellectualised object created in
isolation for display in a clinical environment devoid of context
(in the manner of modern art), tribal art is intertwined with
everyday rituals and living. It becomes inseparable forming
the tools and mechanisms of everyday existence, whose
meaning and sense of purpose derives from the very cultural
context it has been evolved within. As John Berger explores2 , the
very meaning of such specic works can be lost by a distortion
of context. The act re-contexting or mere replication would
thus make us wonder how its (the art works) unique existence
(should be) evaluated and dened in our present culture3 such
that they do not become objects of bogus religiosity4 There is
an understanding of the inherent schism in this presumably
accommodative view in the persistence of the us and them.
50
Design
Kamath Design Studio

Text
Photos
Suprio Bhattacharjee
At its worst, this leads to the common prevalence of perceiving

these objects as exotic relics. This is a challenge any museum
dedicated to anthropological studies would need to engage with,
and as a container of the museological programme, so too the
architecture.
A new museum building dedicated to the tribal heritage of
Madhya Pradesh in Bhopal seeks to engage with this challenge.
Designed by Revathi Kamath of Delhis Kamath Design Studio,
this is not the usual snazzy white-box museum in chic designer
wear. Far from offering a reductivist environment with discreet
objects in a hermetic environment, this building intends to be a
heterotopia 5 of polychromatic textural delight full, messy (as
opposed to the white-box), lived-in and through its adaptable and
transformative nature, representative of a living heritage a
space in which the architect hopes to embody the spontaneous
energy and innate wisdom6 of these communities. In opposition
to a container for the display of lifeless relics past their time, this
museum intends to be alive.
Conceived as a tribal hamlet with an enlade of raised pavilions
anchored off an arced processional route, the project negotiates
a substantial gradient and allows users to explore its spaces in
an uninhibited fashion. The building becomes an experience in
itself and has a sense of remarkable permeability. It is open to
the elements, making it a part of the museums experience. The
formal gestures are vaguely familiar and non-alienating a
signicant aspect. The lower level is conceived of as a generous
A view of the entrance

courtyard. The upper
verandah is accessed
through ramps that
encompass generous
courtyards. The route takes
the visitor past courtyards
between the pavilions on
one side, while the other
side overlooks a focal
amphitheatre
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March 2013
Bhopal
View of the gallery

courtyard from the lower
level corridor
51
Bhopal, IN
verandah offering spaces for workshops conducted by craftsmen

and artisans, dened by the superposed structural order of steel
columns and castellated steel beams that support the building
volumes oating overhead. The scale of this space is intimate and
allows for a sense of tactile engagement. This verandah becomes
a belvedere, offering views to the landscape beyond. The upper
verandah traces the same arc as below, accessed through ramps
that encompass generous courtyards. The route takes the visitor
past courtyards between the pavilions on one side, while the
other side overlooks a focal amphitheatre. The pavilions are large
52
shed-like spaces, with few openings for natural light.

These spaces, as seen when vacant, strike one as dark and
mysterious, in contrast. Revathi Kamath explains that these
are intentionally dimly-lit to allude to dark spaces that are part
of the tribal consciousness. As a broader strategy though, one
can see this connect to an innate stream of consciousness in
eastern spatial thinking7 that is less actually about the tribals
themselves, but about our primordial urge for womb-like spatial
enclosures. Perhaps the sheds then, in that case, may come across
as a bit overscaled.
On this upper level, the projects most striking iconographic
gesture the lace-like truss elements can be experienced
up-close. Composed of a ligree arrangement of welded steel bars
in pairs or trios, these trusses with their almost ornament-like
disposition become the projects most memorable aspect. The
scale of their braiding transforms with the nature of geometry
and support conditions. At times though, they appear to be
too frail to be actually carrying the cumbersome load, leaving
the viewer a bit confused as to their true structural function,
besides appearing clunky as in the connecting verandah. The
practice has used steel to dramatic fashion before in the roof
of the St. Josephs Cathedral in Imphal, Manipur. But whereas
in that project, the steel roof had an overbearing presence, here
the spatial effect within the sheds is light and buoyant, as the
eye follows the triumphant arcs traced by the bottom chords of
the trusses. The use of steel can be seen in continuity with the
On the upper level, the

projects most striking
iconographic gesture the
lace-like truss elements
can be experienced up-close
domus 16
March 2013
metal working traditions of the region since the Iron and Bronze
Ages, as well as in the more contemporary truck body-building
industry in nearby Indore.
In addition, the building features an ambitious environmental
programme roofs are meant to be grassed over (administrative
image-making exercises have resulted in the use of thatch
on some roofs instead) angled to 30 degrees the optimum
angle of repose to contain soil and prevent its run-off until the
rhizome-like doob grass has sufficiently grown. The earth offers
insulation, tempering the hot and dry climate of the region.
Additionally, the courtyards shall have atomisers to induce a
more humid micro-climate. Rainwater run-off is intended to be
stored too.
As a set of exible spatial environments, the museums
decidedly self-effacing architecture succeeds in creating an
enabling environment that the exhibiting communities can
immediately identify with and appropriate as their own.
Clearly, this de-objectied architecture does not display an
aversion to this, but rather welcomes it. The offices early collages
illustrate ideas of how the buildings could become an active
participant in the curatorial programme. This open-ended nature
reects the process of the buildings complex making, through
a participatory-design agenda over a series of workshops
with the participating communities, government officials,
anthropologists and ethnographers, where ideas were evolved
through common consensus.
53
The building features an ambitious environmental

programme roofs are meant to be grassed
over angled to 30 degrees the optimum angle
of repose to contain soil and prevent its run-off
until the rhizome-like doob grass has sufficiently
grown. The earth offers insulation, tempering the
hot and dry climate of the region
54
Bhopal, IN
domus 16
March 2013
the German Lebenswelt

as introduced by Edmund
Husserl in 1936 in the Crisis
of European Sciences. The
world as immediately or
directly experienced in the
subjectivity of everyday life,
as sharply distinguished
from the objective worlds
of the sciences (Source:
Encyclopedia Britannica)
2
See John Berger, Ways of
Seeing (Penguin, London, 1972).
His discussion on this subject

within a specific cultural
context is nonetheless relevant
across the gamut of the visual
arts
3
Ibid. p 21
Ibid
5
Derived from ideas of Michel
Foucault explored in 1966-7.
A space of multiplicity and
non-hegemony, especially
reflective of our multi-cultural

society, explored by human
geographers today
6
Telephonic conversation with
Revathi Kamath on 16 February
2013
7
See Junichir Tanizaki, In

Praise of Shadows, translated
by Edward G Seidensticker
(Leetes Island Books, Chicago,
1977)
55
Bhopal, IN
2
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
6
1
11
7
2
10
Lobby
Store
Wood Workshop
Metal Workshop
Reserve Collection
Library Block
Amphitheatre
Auditorium
Seminar Hall
Display
Pantry
North Zone Gallery
East Zone Gallery
South Zone gallery
West Zone Gallery
Introduction Gallery
3
2
5
4
2
7
7
15
14
2
10m
13
0
0
Design Team
Revathi Kamath, Ayodh
Kamath, Usman Khan,
Sanjay Das, Manoj Gupta
Civil Contractor
Dilip Gangwani
56
16
10m
10m
MUSEUM OF TRIBAL HERITAGE

Design
Carpentry
Tribal craftsmen
Principal Architect
Revathi Kamath
12
Client
Government of Madhya
Pradesh
Location
Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh
FACT BOX
DRAWINGS
Built Area
13,000 m2
Lower level plan
Site Area
32,000 m2
Part elevation at southern end
Part elevation at northern end
Project Cost Estimate

R28 crore
Construction Phase
20042013 (expected)
domus 16
March 2013
9
16
12
13
14
15
10m
DRAWINGS
Upper level plan
Truss detail over corridor
57
Bhopal, IN
What fails miserably though, and not to the fault of the

architecture, is the curatorial programme. A change in
administration midway through the project resulted in a
curatorial programme devoid of intellectual strategies, but
replete with exoticised image-making that has distorted
the larger purpose of an institution of this nature. In the
museums current state, one confronts a visual cacophony
of unrelated objects that contest with each other for the
viewers scant attention, much like entering a typical crafts
emporium with zillions of tribal artefacts (read: consumerable
goodies) crowding from every corner. A space meant for
the contemplation of culture becomes one for conspicuous
consumption. Far from representing richness, this has the effect
of a white noise that soon becomes unbearable. Should one
be amazed at the sheer skill of the craftsmen involved as they
inhabit every available corner, or be appalled at the de-contexted,
comic translation of the displays into objects of delightful
charm for the sheer viewing pleasure of the urban visitor8 (like
the cute little horses marching on a truss or the ags that actually
denote a religious festival) a cultural Disneyland? This loss of
authenticity is a nagging problem one sees the fallacy of the
(overtly sincere but misplaced?) curatorial programme as an
engagement with these communities has been reduced to the
mere representation of their skill in the production of beautiful
58
and decorative embellishments as competent artists

of pretty but meaningless inll that makes a mockery of
their indigenous intelligence and broader participatory
intentions. This museum, unfortunately, has been invaded
by a bureaucracy that favours the exotic and the reduction of
meaning to mere mannerism.
A lost opportunity? Revathi Kamath is optimistic Buildings
need to be participatory to allow values of society enter their
edice, where the architect is not solely the creator but is
inltrated by the consciousness of all (the contributors of the
process) She believes that the buildings inherent capacity
to adapt and transform will ensure its ability to host a more
intelligent programme in the future. As such one can consider
the museum building to be a work-in-progress, as an adaptive
environment that has the capacity to accommodate, or even
facilitate, changes in programme. This will be the buildings
success, in its ability to withstand the test of curatorial and
administrative change of hands.
As a piece of architecture, the buildings emphasis on enabling
a visceral engagement does succeed in translating the direct
experience of the life-world the core from which tribal
art forms take their cue. Its raw power ensures its ability to
be inhabited as well as remaining timeless and always
contemporary in its referencing of primordial forms of creating
As a set of flexible spatial

environments, the museums
decidedly self-effacing architecture
succeeds in creating an enabling
environment that the exhibiting
communities can immediately
identify with and appropriate as
their own
8
Here, the museum
programme becomes no more
than the 17th-18th century
cabinet of curiosities of
the British
9
Medical Faculty Housing

in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert,
Leuwen, Belgium, 1970-72
10
Greg Burgess, Uluru

Aboriginal Cultural Centre,
near Ayers Rock, Australia,
1997
domus 16
March 2013
shelter much like the nature of tribal art. It ttingly is devoid

of the architects voice but reective of the spirit it intends
to capture. While it does not have the renement seen in the
architects other works (such as the striking Aga Khan Award
nominated Tomar Residence in Delhi), the intentionally coarse
nature of the architecture can be seen as a welcome departure
from the glitzy, image-driven visual culture invading our cities
today. The architect sees this as part of her efforts at eroding
the mainstream. The building does manage to raise signicant
questions about our building culture, and as such is bound
to have its many detractors. Yes it is not perfect, yes it has its
obvious aws as an architectural object but that is missing the
point. This project is less about the building but what it enables
and represents in the difficult Indian context of building within
the archaic connes of the public works system. This barebones
celebration of unity in diversity is welcome. Much like the
resilient cock-a-snook spirit of Lucien Krolls MM9 and Greg
Burgesss deep respect of the genius-loci n the Liru-Kuniya10
(both signicant examples of participatory strategies within
architecture), this building challenges established practice
cultures whilst celebrating its spirit of purpose.
SUPRIO BHATTACHARJEE
Architect
59
Language conversations
Text
This essay makes a case for an architectural language that in spite of being rooted within
the traditional is not an imitation but a re-interpretation of the older human responses to
nature and the landscape around; where a building does not need to resort to overt visual
clues from tradition or context but can create an experience of encountering its subject,
which almost appears accidental and incidental
Photo Nemish Shah
In his book, An Outline of European Architecture,

Nikolaus Pevsner makes the claim, often made, and
one that he strongly believed in, that the kind of
architecture a society builds reects quite literally
the needs, wants and aspirations of a society. In
a sense, he meant that visual form, quite simply,
is a direct and rather inevitable expression of
something else. Certainly form means something,
but it is neither direct, nor inevitable. There is
no deterministic calculation by which one can
predict what a visual form means, nor can we
dene what it would mean in any given condition,
or for a particular set of people. Because, how
are horizontal lines necessarily more expressive
than vertical lines, and why should a building
be better constructed because it makes a feature
of exhibiting its construction rather than of not
exhibiting it? It is surely clear that all these are
aesthetic demands made by people who have
already decided what they want buildings to look
like, and who then persuade the public to accept
them as though they were inevitable consequences
of the facts of modern life and society.1
So we understand that there is nothing inevitable
about how a building looks. The other thing to
understand is that modernism always imparted
moral categories to ideas and by extension to
visual forms. A good building would not lie and
hide behind decoration, and would, therefore,
expose its structure. The big city is always bad
compared to the rural village or the small town.
60
Nemish Shah
Certainly, these are ideological imperatives and

not entirely empirical in their judgement. They are,
in some sense, pre-dispositions which determine
the architectural stance or the language of
architecture. But the discussion of an Architectural
language, of what a building possibly speaks,
and what a viewer possibly and ambiguously
understands seems to be an immensely subjective
discussion and therefore one without any
clear answers.
Traditional buildings, such as seen in Jaisalmer or
at Mandu, or rather, almost everywhere in India,
have a distinct local language because they were
built in a general style of architecture and used
an idiom that would have been developed locally
and over a period of time. This is why they speak to
us. And we can understand them. This experience
of a uniform architectural language is important
and creates a cultural landscape that is always
signicant. The buildings seem rooted within that
particular ethos and therefore belong to that place.
In a living society with its stratied aesthetic and
a culture that, at each stage of its development,
manifests itself differently, rootedness to a cultural
milieu and more specically to a physical or
geographical landscape, offers a sense of belonging
and of identity. Clearly we can talk about the works
of Alvar Aalto as being rooted within the Finnish
landscape. But rather than being simply rooted
within the ideals of a Finnish landscape, they also
possess a meaning which is valid outside the Finnish
Photo Nemish Shah
ADCK Centre Culturel Tjibaou, RPBW Photo Pierre-Alain Pantz
scene.2 The same can be said for the work of Alvaro

Siza Vieira in Portugal and of Geoffrey Bawa in Sri
Lanka (University of Ruhuna) 1 & 2 , to name a few.
These are the architects who contributed to the
formation of a kind of architectural language, a
vocabulary and a grammar that inspite of being
rooted within the traditional is not an imitation,
but a re-interpretation of the older human
responses to nature and the landscape around.
There is only a certain kind of building which has
that quality, which while responding to a hidden,
implied universal idea, also cultivates a real,
more immediate response to its culture and its
environment. They are extremely modern, in the
best sense of the word, without being alien. They
make us feel that the architecture we encounter
in front of us, what we see is real and original and
not at all, as Kenneth Frampton calls it, a regression
into nostalgic historicism. What this kind of
architecture really does is that it does not assume
to know the desires and the aspirations of a people,
and it explicitly does not presume to be the solution
to that aspiration.
The recent response of the designers of the Indian
Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo 2010 5 is a telling
example. The 4,000 m2 Indian Pavilion was built
in the form of a bamboo stupa, the largest dome
in the world, and the entrance to the pavilion was
a barrel vaulted pathway, the front of which was
embellished with a replica of the Siddi Saiyyed jaali
from Ahmedabad. This is absolutely regressive and
domus 16
March 2013
David Watkins, The Historic

Mission, in Architecture
and Morality (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press,
1977), p 85
Christian Norberg-Schulz,
The New Regionalism, in
Principles of Modern Architecture
(Singapore: Andreas
Papadakis Publisher, 2000),
pp 92-93
3
The reference here is clearly
to Critical Regionalism, the idea
first postulated by Alexander
Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre, and
then taken forward and made

famous by Kenneth Frampton
in this 1983 essay, Prospects
for a Critical Regionalism,
Perspecta, vol. 20 (1983), pp
147-62. Without getting into a
deeper and longer discussion
of the same, the idea here
is different in the sense that
Critical Regionalism tended to
become far more reductive as
a means of understanding the
examples cited above. What is
required is a more complex,
nuanced reading of site/
context/place and technology
all put together, whereas
Critical Regionalism tended to

make the whole understanding
more monolithic, more
univocal
4
Alan Colquhoun, 'Regionalism
and Technology' in Modernity
and the Classical Tradition,
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989),
p 207
5
Senake Bandaranayake,
'Looking at Geoffrey Bawa'
Introductory essay in Geoffrey
Bawa, 1919-2003, (Colombo:
Geoffrey Bawa Trust, 2011),
pp 6-7
Michael Moran / OTTO
really shows the absolute paucity of thought in

the representation of the idea of India in front of
the world.
More difficult to discuss, in the same vein at least,
is the tribal art museum by Vasant and Revathi
Kamath, featured in the current issue. As is their
fort, the building tries to negotiate the ne balance
between the vernacular and the modern. What is
apparent within the work is that, for one it is not a
pastiche, like the former, nor is it a blind imitation
of the traditional. But what is also clear is that this
is not a genuine response to the development of
an architectural language for that particular site
or the programme. The response comes more from
the architects predilections rather than from the
site/context/programme. The fact that it is a tribal
museum is even more troubling. It t naturally
within the architects oeuvre to build exactly the
kind of buildings they have been building for
years. It is, in that sense, preconceived and
therefore, deliberate.
Compare this then, to the Todd Williams Billie Tsien
American Folk Art Museum in New York 4 . What
that building does without resorting to overt visual
clues to being a folk art museum is to create an
interior experience similar to that of encountering
folk, or rather everyday art, which is almost always
accidental and incidental. And from outside, it
stands almost totem-like, an object on the street,
hemmed in from both sides by the Museum of
Modern Art. This is not a direct reading of the
building, nor is it the inevitable understanding

of what people see in it, but it is a one possible
understanding of the building. Similarly, if one sees
the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre in Nouma,
New Caledonia, by Renzo Piano 3 , one would see
clearly that the building while emerging from the
linguistic and the artistic heritage of the Kanak
people for whom it is built, it does not create the
typical, overtly romantic imitations of traditional
Kanak architecture. Kanak identity in this project
is reinforced, not just by the re-interpretation of its
traditional architecture, but also by the relationship
of the buildings to the landscape around. The
building is extremely modern, not because it uses
technology and structural systems, but in its
fundamental thought process which incorporate,
with those advanced technologies, traditional
learnings and age-old ways of building and thus
engaging the culture at a much deeper level.
This does not mean that these are regionalist
practices3 , rooted within the narrow premises of
that particular region only. Because, although they
are particular responses to particular programmes/
sites/contexts, they are also universal in their own
way. They speak to a much larger audience, but
they are also not populist. It "exists as part of the
unconscious ideologies underlying current practice
and is connected with the actual political economic
situation whose modalities are only indirectly
related to any supposedly indigenous culture.
It is the result of a complex interaction between
Anderdon | Dreamstime.com
modern international capitalism and various

national traditions ingrained in institutions and
attitudes. We should not expect to nd, in this sort
of regionalism, any differences of fundamental
kind, or complete survivals. Rather it manifests
itself in the form of nuances. The materials of
culture are similar in all cases, but each country
tends to interpret these materials in a slightly
different way.4
So the question in front of us is this will we be
able to develop a language of architecture that do
not blindly imitates the west, nor complacently
make buildings that just seem or look Indian. As
Senake Bandaranayake says, Sri Lanka was lucky
to have Geoffrey Bawa, whose work was imbued
with the totality and complexity of this aesthetic
sensibility, which educated several generations
of Sri Lankan design and designers, (and) that is
his most enduring contribution5 . It is that kind
of language that we need, not a prescription,
but a language which resists certainty, eschews
populism and challenges straightforward
interpretation or literalness, and at the same time
one that is not elitist. The Architectural project
needs to emerge not as an architects means
to satisfy his or her ego, but as a fundamental
instrument in the negotiation of a societys past,
present and future.
NEMISH SHAH
Architect
61
A museum
of time
62
domus 16
March 2013
Few places in France could seem further removed from the rarefied elegance of
the Louvre than the former mining flats surrounding Lens. It is here, though, that
the grand dame of Parisian museums has established an ethereal, otherworldly
outpost deeply steeped in the diaphanous language of SANAA
Text
Sam Jacob
Photos
Niccol Morgan Gandolfi
63
Louvre-Lens
Lens, FR
Evaporated mass
Its the kind of morning so damp and grey that it feels like the day
will never really break. The landscape here is flat and wide but
horizonless; the mist blurs earth into sky. The ground itself has been
scraped into raw brown furrows streaked with the green pointillist
haze of winter crops. These giant brown-green planes are dotted
with white seagulls and scored with the sharp calligraphic strokes
of pylons and skeletal trees.
Its flatness is clear of any natural interruption as though its been
worked over by farming and industry, pummelled into total
abstraction by the history of Northern France. The landscape is
divided into the two-dimensional geometries of highways, logistics
and ownership, inscribed with the reach and scope of machines.
Out of this hazy flatness two gigantic black cones rise up. These are
Europes biggest slag heaps, remnants of the mining industry that
once characterised the region. Their profoundly abstract shape and
scale is of the kind that only unconscious industry can produce.
The strange angular geometries of post-industry are now
home to the Louvre-Lens. Built on the site of a mine that closed
back in the 1980s, the new museum is a regional outpost of
the grand Parisian Louvre. The project is perhaps the last of
Europes regional-scaled post-industrial cultural projects that
began with the Guggenheim Bilbao. Here at the other end of
that two-decade project, the Louvre quickly churns through the
familiar arguments: tourism, culture as post-industrial salve,
regeneration and regionalism. But theres something else at stake
here: a reinvented iteration of the Louvre itself.
The building shares the low blocky massing and the glazed-metallic
cladding of the industrial-agricultural vernacular that surrounds
it. But SANAAs hyper-precision recasts this prosaic substance
in otherworldly form, as though the geometric flatness of the
landscape has risen into bodily form. From the perimeter of the
site, the buildings brushed-aluminium cladding appears as long,
low rectangles of a smeary Gerhard Richter. The surface effect
of the panels sucks all the gravity out of its substance, its mass
evaporating. It is a building seemingly formed of arrangements of
Pas-de-Calais mist.
So abstracted are its reflections that its walls often appear spectral,
even that we might be looking through them. As the building turns
corners, its volumes reflect each other so that ghostly volumes
flicker across its surface. The museum disappears into itself,
appearing to be caught in the act of vanishing into a state where
substance and shape are half atomised.
And this inversion is a clue to the buildings character. The
Louvre-Lens cant be read without reference to its behemoth of
a mother, the Palais du Louvre in Paris. The Louvre is an entity,
building and institution of gigantic cultural significance,
linked closely to the construction of national identity and to the
machinations of imperialism and colonialism. In programme
and symbolism, the Louvre-Lens attempts to re-imagine the
Louvre, to create a different order of museum, one that inverts the
characteristics of the historical culture palace. We can read in its
lightness, for example, an opposition to the sheer weight of stone.
Its blankness contrasts with the overwrought surfaces of the
Louvre, bristling with decorative code and figural narrative. We
read opposition in its plan too, where two wings asymmetrically
flank a central pavilion as an inverted recollection of the hypersymmetry of the old Louvre Palace.
Like the child of a famous and significant parent, it feels a
compulsion to counter the very things that spawned it.
The Galerie du Temps is the clearest curatorial inversion that the
Louvre-Lens performs. It is the heart of the project, the centre of its
curatorial ambition. Its huge open space opens up to us. The slender
white fin-beams of its portal frame obscure the light filtering
from above. The gallery walls have the same reflective sheen as
the exterior, and have a strange, almost imperceptible warp to
their plan. There is something unusual in the effect that the room
produces, as though its atmosphere has something of the fog
outside. Space and light seem to become more physical, as though
alchemised into a hazy substance.
A pale concrete floor slopes away from us like a landscape. But this
is a landscape conceived as time rather than space. As the room
64
stretches out before us, so too does time. It begins at 3500 BCE and
continues to the mid-19th century, the point where the Louvres
collection ends. Like a scale rule, calibrations of time are etched into
the gallery wall. The objects are arranged in archipelagos against
this chronological progression so that time faces us as we enter the
room. The statues all turn their faces towards us, startled like the
regulars in a saloon bar. Every step we take is a stride of 100 years.
The curatorial statement tells us that this is in direct opposition to
the organisation of the Louvre in Paris, where objects are grouped
by department. Here, the intention is for the whole of human
culture to play out in a continuum, for unexpected relationships to
be forged across the boundaries of museological time and space. The
ambition of the Galerie du Temps is huge: a single space containing
all of human culture. There is something final about it too, like the
closing scene of Kubricks 2001 where Louis XIV furniture is bathed
in a space-age white glow.
But theres something peculiar at the heart of the brief. Removing
categories of technique, geography and culture and prioritising a
The museum, built in the

Saint-Thodore pit of a major
disused mining site, occupies
five interlinked blocks that,
according to the architects,
recall boats nudging one
another. The structure is
developed horizontally,
in keeping with the local
farmhouse style
domus 16
March 2013
Opening pages: the glazed

entry pavilion is grafted into
a wing clad with anodised
aluminium panelst. The
vaporisation of its mass
is one of the most evocative
features of the complex
(right). The landscape
design seeks to preserve the
memory of the industrial site
65
Louvre-Lens
Lens, FR
1
N
1
2
5
4
7
10
6
12
11
14
2
3
PLANS
1
2
3
4
5
6
66
Foyer
Auditorium
Temporary Exhibitions
Entrance Pavilion
Bookshop, Shop
Caf
7
8
9
10
11
12
Resource Centre
Patrons Area
Picnic Area
Members Area
Workshop
Galerie du Temps
13 Pavillon de Verre
14 Administration
15 Restaurant
10 m
domus 16
March 2013
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
Sunshade grille
Double-glazed skylight, 10+(8+8) mm thick
Interior moveable louvre
Painted steel T-beam
Aluminium honeycomb panel, 2+20+1 mm thick
Insulation, 140 mm thick
Concrete wall, 280 mm thick
Aluminium honeycomb panel, 1+(1+18+1) mm thick
Polished concrete screed, 150 mm thick
Insulation, 90 mm thick (floor heating)
Structural concrete, 240 mm thick
A
B
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y
Z
Kalzip
Acoustic board
Painted perforated metal
Fascia
Roller sunshade
Laminated glass, 6+6 mm thick
Mullion
Double glazing, 10+(8+8) mm thick
Column
Galvanised grating
Natural ventilation grille
Polished concrete screed, 130 mm thick
Insulation, 110 mm thick (floor heating)
Structural concrete, 210 mm thick
1m
C
D
E
F
G
R S
6
DRAWINGS
1
2
3
4
5
6
Site plan
Ground floor plan
Longitudinal section
Galerie du Temps plan
Galerie du Temps: faade details
Pavillon de Verre: faade details
FACTS
Design
SANAA, Imrey Culbert, Mosbach
Paysagistes
Total Surface Area
28,000 m2
Exibition Area
3,000 m2 (Galerie du Temps); 1,800
m2 (temporary exhibition pavilion);
1,000 m2 (Pavillon de Verre); 1,000 m2
(storage open to the public); 3,600 m2
(entrance pavilion)
Landscape
6,600 trees; 26,000 shrubs;
7,000 perennials: 4 ha flowery
meadows and prairies; 1 ha lawn;
20 ha park
Auditorium
280 seats
Preliminary Design
05/2007
Construction Phase
09/200912/2012
Cost
150 milion
Competition
01/2005
67
Louvre-Lens
I
Lens, FR
I The entire building is pivoted

around the entry pavilion,
whose square perimeter
houses a number of freely
arranged circular, glazed
volumes. These accommodate
public facilities such as the
Resource Centre, with a media
library to help visitors in their
approach to the museum, or
the family picnic area (II)
III The central hall leads

into the Galerie du Temps,
containing the permanent
collection (entrance in the
background of the photo),
and to the temporary
exhibitions wing
II
III
68
linear chronology conceptually and architecturally

leaves us with just as rigid a form of curatorial
narrative as any 19th-century museum. If a
subjective and unexpected relation is at stake, we
nd ourselves instead unable to escape a linear idea
of time itself. In alternative examples such as the
National Gallerys Sainsbury Wing, art history and
oblique reference coexist. The Louvre-Lens gives us a
single point perspective of history, and as such
it seems entirely Cartesian, a space rooted in the
French Enlightenment.
It also seems to play to a certain weakness in
SANAAs contribution to the project. If the studios
work could be characterised by one thing, it
would be the ability to make matrix eld plans of
tremendous abstraction, a kind of hyper-relational
eld. Yet here, these gestures are left behind in
other parts of the museum, in the bubble-plan
pavilions of bookshops, cafes and restaurants, for
example. In this great hall, we ironically seem to
return to a hyper-formality, a space striated with
meaning rather than ambiguity (where even every
step means moving forward or backward in time).
The Galerie du Temps is a sensational exhibition
space, and the idea of space measured like the
tick of a clock is an admirably high concept,
for however awed. It also reminds us that
the architecture is not only formally related to
the regions agricultural-industrial buildings.
These are building-sized environments where
temperature and light are manipulated to produce
articial climates out of time and space. They
allow crops to grow out of season and synthetically
accelerate natural growth. We could imagine
domus 16
March 2013
IV & V The Galerie du

Temps is 120 m long, with
walls entirely clad in brushed
aluminium panels, and a glass
ceiling to let in natural light.
The exhibits come from the
Paris Louvre and are on view
in Lens for a period of five
years. The museographic
arrangement is innovative,
with works grouped under
historical sections regardless
of their original civilisations
and cultures. The museum
design is by Adrien Gardre
IV
VI The basement storage

area, accessed from the
entrance hall, can be visited
by the public
the Galerie du Temps as a kind of cultural forcing

house, a highly rened environment that supports
history and culture rather than horticulture.
Its contents are a superb greatest-hits package, a
concentrated experience of high-grade cultural
objects. Etruscan, Greek, Roman, Islamic and
Renaissance sculptures and paintings seem
suspended in the Galeries atmosphere. These
high-water marks of human culture seem to
lose their earthly footing and float like the
debris of an asteroid belt in a Walmart-sublime
architectural apparatus.
The Louvre-Lens is really a museum about a
museum, a museum of the Louvre itself. We can
see it in its post-curatorial vision of art history and
in the transparency of the building that seems to
let us see the museums very structure. Its there
too in the basement, where archive and storage
rooms are opened up to public view, where busts
and canvasses are arranged on industrial racks. The
museum might present objects from the Louvre
collection, but it also displays the mechanics of the
Louvre itself. The history of the museum becomes
an archaeology of its own, an archaeology that lets
us glimpse the museums role in manufacturing
historical narratives. It displays a record of the
power, imperialism and colonialism within which
it was forged. And it lays out the museums pivotal
role in the construction of national identity and
Western culture.
SAM JACOB
Architect and critic, director of the architecture firm FAT
VI
69
Light in
the city
In 1977, two architects met in Manhattan in
a small TriBeCa loft. Their friendship was
sparked by an extraordinary drawing of
Piranesian influence by one of them, Lebbeus
Woods. In the years following their encounter,
Holl and Woods pursued very different careers,
but over three decades later their paths
converged again in the Sliced Porosity Block,
a programmatically hybrid urban complex
designed by Steven Holl Architects in Chengdu,
China, to which Woods contributed his only built
work, the Light Pavilion
Design
Steven Holl Architects

Photos
Brando Posocco
Working with doubt

This conversation between the two architects was recorded in
New York City during the production of Lebbeus Woods + Steven
Holl. The Practice of Architecture, a documentary lm by Michael
Blackwood, not long before Lebbeus Woods passed away in
Manhattan on 30 October 2012.
LEBBEUS WOODS Oh, you brought your sketchbook, wonderful!
STEVEN HOLL This is a concept sketch from March 2007. It was the
beginning of the Sliced Porosity Block in Chengdu, China. At this
point, Id already made the Linked Hybrid in Beijing.
LW Was it nished?
SH It was just about to open! We got a call from this company in
Singapore who are building these projects that, I would say, are
less than ideal. So I said let me have a chance to make an ideal
project here in the centre of Chengdu. These kinds of companies
have a formula: they build a shopping centre and on top they
put an office tower and a residential tower. My rst concept
sketches made it clear that this wasnt what we intended to do.
Instead, we wanted to make an intricate urban form and shape
the public space with their project. This was the rst thought. The
second thought was that instead of a monolithic inward-focused
complex, it would have porosity and what I call micro-urbanism.
All around the edges, youll be able to go in, and youll have shops
that communicate both with the inside and outside. That micro70
domus 16
March 2013
71
Sliced Porosity Block
Opening page and facing

page, top: the Sliced Porosity
Block is a complex situated
in Chengdu, the capital of
Sichuan and one of the most
important economic centres
in Western China. Standing
at the intersection between
two major urban arteries
the First Ring Road and Ren
Min Nan Road the Sliced
Porosity Block is formed by
five towers that shape a plaza
of 11,000 m2 on their inwardfacing side. The buildings are
cut diagonally so as to allow
light to penetrate easily into
the square. The buildings
have a white reinforced
concrete structure, while
the sectioned elevations are
faced in glass. Facing page,
bottom: the central tower
with the pavilion designed
by Holl. Visible on the right
is the irregular frame of the
Light Pavilion designed by
Lebbeus Woods and Christoph
A Kumpusch
The towers house three

sculptural volumes inside
large openings, including the
Light Pavilion by Lebbeus
Woods, third image from the
top. Sliced Porosity Block
is heated and cooled by 468
geothermal wells. Large ponds
in the plaza collect rainwater.
Thanks to recycling systems,
its water consumption has
been reduced by 43%
72
Chengdu, CN
urbanism, the double front of the shops and the multiple cores
will also migrate up into the section of the building, where there
will be large gaps cut out after 10 storeys and buildings inserted
within buildings. Thats where your Light Pavilion is.
For the plaza, inspiration came from a poem by Du Fu (712-770), in
which he says, This fugitive between the earth and sky, from the
northeast storm-tossed to the southwest, time has left stranded
in Three Valleys. So the idea is that the landscape formed by this
block will take the shape of Three Valleys. Together, all these ideas
are about turning this complex into something really special.
Your project then becomes central because in the concept of
micro-urbanism the building within a building the largest
and most central piece is where the Light Pavilion is.
LW When you asked me to participate with you in this project, I
was extremely pleased. First, because it was your project and I
knew it would be good. And secondly, because I dont have very
many commissions very few to put it mildly. So this was a
chance to do something on a larger scale that would be there for
a while and would make part of an urban complex, which has
always been my ambition or desire. We went through several
stages. In the rst stage, the project was thought of as a hightech pavilion, do you remember? But we never quite dened
what high-tech was, because what is high-tech today will be
old hat tomorrow. So the idea of somehow designing a high-tech
pavilion that would take the so-called high-technology of today
didnt seem to be the best way forward. Eventually it evolved
into the idea of a light pavilion, because light will be light in
perpetuity. Light is a universal quality that will have meaning
further down the road. So the emphasis shifted from technology
to light and thats how the concept evolved, but there was also
importance in the idea of having a different kind of space in your
concept of micro-urbanism.
SH This is one of the things I have been trying to promote in terms
of the impact of large developments in China. No building will
be mono-programmatic; they will all be hybrid buildings. They
are like chunks of a city where life, work, recreation and culture
all coexist. That idea started out with the Beijing Linked Hybrid.
These initiatives become sort of self-sustaining and prevent
the necessity to travel back and forth across the city. Beijing, for
example, has been choked by the fact that everyone wants to have
a car, and then they all go out and get into traffic jams.
LW It sounds like Los Angeles!
SH Its much worse. Its 30 times worse because it is 30 times
bigger! Chengdu has similar problems, so in these projects the
idea of a truly hybrid building with all the functions you need to
live and work was a very precise goal.
LW I think many aspects of the future, shall we say, are question
marks, things we dont know already. We do understand what
office space is and what shopping centres are, along with all
these things that constitute the ingredients of the project. I
wanted to introduce something that was unknown to us, and
that we had no way of saying how good it was. Maybe it is no
good; maybe it has no purpose or use.
SH Or maybe its the main thing! Philosophically, this is the
central point.
LW I set out to do something that we didnt understand, or
didnt know what its value or use might be. So the Light Pavilion
became a kind of experimental space that is created without a
particular programme except for light, this enduring, universal
phenomenon that is part of our experience and certainly part of
our idea of architecture. People would have to experience it and
make up what they want. That was the beginning, the middle
and the end of the story. It didnt have anything to do with
expecting visitors to go here or there or do something that was
programmed in advance.
SH In the Sliced Porosity Block, the cut light lines are code
restrictions to bring some light into the adjacent buildings.
Those angled slices are really what form this building. Nothing
is arbitrary. It all comes right out of the building code, i.e.
maximising the sunlight for the surrounding neighbourhood.
At the beginning of this project I envisioned three sorts of
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March 2013
73
A skybridge connects two

buildings, a theme already
explored by the architects
in the Linked Hybrid
complex in Beijing
74
Chengdu, CN
buildings within buildings. My ideal was that

you would do one pavilion, and my office would
do the History Pavilion, because although this
building is situated on a blank site, years ago there
used to be a historic museum here about the whole
county around Chengdu. The museum was moved
before we started the project, but we thought that
because the history of Chengdu was part of the
site, there should be a History Pavilion showing
a series of digital images of what was in that
original building. My choice for the third pavilion
was Ai Weiwei. So the three of us were working
on these carved-out openings that create this
space. Unfortunately somewhere along the way
Ai Weiwei got fed up with the project because the
developer didnt approve of his design. The rst
one they approved was yours, by the way!
LW That worries me! They wouldnt approve Ai
Weiweis design but they approved mine. There

must have been something wrong with my project!
SH The project has a strange history because it was
conceived when I rst started working in China,
which was enormously open because the Olympics
were coming and everyone was excited about what
was possible. Basically you could have a blank slate.
LW What intrigues me about you and your work
is that somehow you have been able to operate
in that zone where it is difficult to have freedom.
You have negotiated and insisted on doing things
in a certain way and it has worked so far. You
mentioned the Beijing project, the Linked Hybrid,
but in other projects in other places, I depart from
you in the fact that I dont want any clients. When
people ask me about the Light Pavilion and who
commissioned it, I say Steven Holl. You were kind
enough to set up the contract for this project so that
domus 16
March 2013
you were my client rather than the developer, with

the result that I only had to deal with you. To me
the ultimate corruption is the capitalist priority
that places architecture into a product game of
making high-end objects, kinds of luxury products.
Whereas you have an urban idea; it is not just a
fancy building. Your notion of urbanism at least
in terms of your intention, your hope, your desire
and aspiration is meant to serve the city and its
inhabitants, not just an elite who have the money
to build it. So far youve been able to do that, but
you might not be able to do it in the future. We
were just referring to this, because you said there
was a certain moment in China when things were
opening, but maybe they will close. Now in fact
it looks as if things are closing up, and it will all
become just another set of elite projects by famous
architects who build famous-looking things.
Somehow youve managed to avoid all this but I

dont know if that will always be possible I hope
so! But in a certain way I doubt it!
SH Thats the title of my book, Urbanisms: Working
with Doubt!
LW You are very self-aware! Anyway, in my project,
what Id like to do is set out a programme for the
future where working with doubt, a beautiful title,
is something that is underwritten by developers
and governments, and where doubt really becomes
a cohesive issue that unites us as contemporary
people. We are all united by our doubts and fears,
so we use architecture as a way to transcend those
doubts and fears.
75
Chengdu, CN
2m
2
DRAWINGS
1
2
76
Constructional section of the skybridge

Section
CREDITS
Design Architects
Steven Holl Architects
Design Team
Steven Holl, Li Hu (design architects); Roberto
Bannura (associate in charge); Lan Wu (project
architect, Beijing); Haiko Cornelissen, Peter
Englaender, Jongseo Lee (project architects,
New York); Christiane Deptolla, Inge
Goudsmit, Jackie Luk, Maki Matsubayashi,
Sarah Nichols, Manta Weihermann, Martin
Zimmerli (project designers); Justin Allen,
Jason Anderson, Francesco Bartolozzi,
Guanlan Cao, Yimei Chan, Sofie Holm
Christensen, Esin Erez, Ayat Fadaifard,

Mingcheng Fu, Forrest Fulton, Runar
Halldorsson, M. Emran Hossain, Joseph
Kan, Suping Li, Tz-Li Lin, Yan Liu, Daijiro
Nakayama, Pietro Peyron, Roberto Requejo,
Elena Rojas-Danielsen, Michael Rusch, Ida
Sze, Filipe Taboada, Ebbie Wisecarver,
Human Tieliu Wu, Jin-Ling Yu (project team)
Associate Architects, Structural Engineering
China Academy of Building Research
MEP and Fire Engineering, LEED Consultant
Ove Arup & Partners
Quantity Surveyor
Davis Langdon & Seah (DLS)
7UDIF&RQVXOWDQW
MVA Hong Kong Ltd.
Client
CapitaLand Development
Built Area
310,000 m2
Construction Phase
10/200810/2012
March 2013
domus 16
Plan of the Light Pavilion.

The structure changes colour
and luminous intensity
according to the passage
of time and to mark special
festivals. Its irregular and
iridescent pattern contrasts
with the whiteness of
the reinforced concrete
frame, strengthened by
diagonal bracing to increase
earthquake resistance
Architect and
professor, Christoph
A Kumpusch
collaborated with
Lebbeus Woods on
the design of the
Light Pavilion
A condensation of thought
Too much could be made of the fact
that the Light Pavilion is Lebbeus
Woodss rst and, sadly, last built
work, as if building was valued over
drawing or thinking.
This project, from my perspective,
was an extension of drawing, a condensation of thoughts as a material manifestation. Pouring over construction documents with Lebbeus
again and again, I can safely say
that the ideas did not stop when the
building process began. Rather, the
demands of a real project triggered
more conceptualisation.
The Light Pavilion is designed to be an
experimental space, one that gives
us the opportunity to experience a
type of space we havent experienced
before. Whether it will be a pleasant

or unpleasant experience; exciting or
dull; uplifting or frightening; inspiring or depressing; worthwhile or a
waste of time is not determined by
the fullment of our familiar expectations, never having encountered
such a space before. We shall simply
have to go into the space and pass
through it. That is the most crucial
aspect of its experimental nature, and
we its transient inhabitants are
experimentalists.
Located within a complex of towers,
the Light Pavilion offers visitors the
opportunity to explore a prototypical space of the future. Visitors walk
up and through a complex network of
luminous spaces that are ephemeral,
evocative and changing. Following

sloping glass and steel stairs suspended between glowing structural
columns, visitors ascend by several
possible paths to balconies overlooking pools and landscaped gardens in
the plaza below while framing views
of the city of Chengdu beyond.
The elements dening it do not
always follow the rectilinear geometry of its architectural setting, but
instead obey a geometry dened by
dynamic movement. Their deviation
from the rectilinear grid releases its
spaces from static stability and sets
them in motion.
The structural columns articulating the pavilions interior spaces are
illuminated from within and visibly
glow at night, creating a luminous

space into which the solid architectural elements appear to merge.
From distances across the city, the
pavilion is a beacon of light. The
structure radiates subtly changing
colours for different holidays, times of
day, months and years. The space has
been designed to expand the scope
and depth of our experiences. That
is its sole purpose, its only function,
encouraging us to encounter new
dimensions of experience. I prefer
to see this not as a stand-alone built
work, but merely the last leaf of a
stunning portfolio and a culmination
of so many dreams.
CHRISTOPH A KUMPUSCH
77
Lebbeus Woods
19402012
LEBBEUS WOODS, UNDERGROUND BERLIN, 1988
78
domus 16
March 2013
Tributes
to a fearless
creator of worlds
Steven Holl
ebbeus Woods made a project for

Pamphlet Architecture #6 in 1979, titled
Einstein Tomb. It was an amazing idea for a
tomb travelling through space on a beam of
light. Today, I imagine this invention is occupied by Lebbeus himself. He was launched
into orbit on 30 October 2012 from Lower
Manhattan via a storm.
His own works were a starkly original, metaphysical revolt. He worked out of time, away
from the post-modern tendencies (19751985), distinctly different from deconstructivist tendencies (1985-1995), and vastly
different from computer-generated blob
architecture (1995-2005).
Lebbeus Woods wrote on War and
Architecture with a sense of a state revolt.
Likewise, he wrote about resistance, but
with sceptical reection calling for an independent idea of both Architecture and the
world. Here are a few selections from his
Resistance Checklist:
Resist whatever seems inevitable
s
Resist people who seem invincible
s
Resist any idea that contains
the word algorithm

s
Resist the impulse
to draw blob-like shapes
s
Resist the desire to travel
to Paris in the spring
s
Resist the desire to move
to Los Angeles, anytime
s
Resist the idea
that architecture is a building
s
Resist the idea
that architecture can save the world
s
Resist the hope
that youll get that big job
s
Resist getting jobs
s
Resist taking the path
of least resistance
s
Resist the temptation to talk fast
s
Resist anyone who asks you
to design only the visible part
s
Resist the idea that you need
a client to make architecture
79
Lebbeus Woods
New York, US
LEBBEUS WOODS, DMZ, 1988-1989
LEBBEUS WOODS, DMZ, 1988-1989
80
LEBBEUS WOODS, SOLOHOUSE, 1988-1989
domus 16
March 2013
LEBBEUS WOODS, AERIAL PARIS, 1988-1989
81
Lebbeus Woods
New York, US
Stefano Boeri
Geoff Manaugh
Michael Sorkin
remember an emblematic story about

Lebbeus Woods. When 12 Monkeys
came out at the cinema, it was obvious that
the sets had been completely inspired by his
Neomechanical Tower (Upper) Chamber.
He protested and asked why there was no
mention of him. Most of all it was obvious that
the cinema had involuntarily paid tribute to
one of the worlds most visionary city designers. Because this is what Lebbeus was: an
architect of the imagination who, like few others in history (such as Cedric Price and Yona
Friedman), knew how to construct powerful
because disturbing and revealing scenographies in the worlds collective mind.
ebbeus Woods was utterly unique and

entirely irreplaceable, a full-scale terrestrial force for rethinking architectures relationship not only with the earth and with gravity,
but also with all of grounded philosophy, with
any belief in stability, in calm. Lebbeus dove
headlong into war, seismicity, urban collapse
and even deep space, where perspective
and horizon mean nothing, not to celebrate
groundlessness but to help us all think through
and discover new ways to belong, to build, to
nd a plane of reference worth trusting (if there
can be such a thing). That is architecture at its
very best and most urgent and the relentless
Lebbeus will be dearly and heroically missed.
Neil M Denari
Thom Mayne
o know Lebbeus was to know a real

human. A person who did nothing more
than live, which most of us do not. Essentially
he lived for others, even as he perpetuated
the myth of the singular gure. He worked
to communicate, not to satisfy. He loved the
ght, not out of righteousness, but out of principal. He loved pleasure, not out of hedonism,
but as a shared experience. In his form of living, the world was a massive, inexhaustible
cybernetic organism, and he described it
through his drawings, his ideas, his writing,
and in his love for humanity. He lived his work
and his work lived him. He made you live
deeper. While Lebbeus was always obsessed
with the metrics of things, the way systems
and phenomena could be measured, the one
thing that could never be quantied was his
own life. Lebbeus Woods lives on.
Zaha Hadid
ts a tremendous loss. Lebbeus was a

very close friend and a great architect.
His visionary work explored the fantastic potential and dynamism of space with
radical proposals and powerful drawings
that were extremely inuential. His Light
Pavilion in Chengdu will be testament
that our profession has lost a great voice.
ebbeus. A man of huge integrity and an

insatiable inquisitiveness to explore what
he saw as the potentialities of an architecture works of his mind untethered, unwilling
to succumb to the contingent, the compromises inherent in our discipline. There was
an equally powerful and balancing commitment to the political/cultural critique that
was essential to his project as an architect,
teacher and writer. He was, above all, interested in values: what is architecture for? His
ethical understanding of our work gave him a
moral authority which affected generations
of architects. His search was for an authenticity of the present to build the unbuildable,
characterised by the ambiguities of time, the
ephemerality of the durable, weight (gravity),
physicality and an emotional content embracing a critical optimism with a sense of melancholy. Throughout our careers, we relied
on one another for conversation, for deep
understanding, for criticism of each others
work. When at a crossroads I would nd him
and he would generously and happily leave
the aerie of his mind to enter fully into the
work at hand. He would almost become me,
in the sense that he so thoroughly understood
and supported the intention and aspiration on
the page. There was tremendous respect and
love between us and I will miss him terribly.
He had found his place and lived it free and
undiminished until his death.
ebbeus Woods was an authentic genius.

His intelligence was radical and his work
at once intense and effortless, lled with revolutionary joy. Such is the ineffability of genius:
it works in the absence of will. Architecture
poured from Lebs bottomless imagination,
thought made material. But Leb was truly our
hero not for the limpid miracle of his hand,
but for what he chose to do with it. He was
magnicently principled, rm and generous
of conscience, dedicated to the cause of
architecture as a social practice. He made art
with a genuinely political interior, everywhere
excavating for truth, never illustrating, constantly inventing. Whether Sarajevo ravaged,
Berlin divided, San Francisco threatened by
quakes, or Havana at risk from surging seas,
Lebs architecture sited itself at the nexus
of crisis and redress. And the results were
never mere prophylaxis, never supercial,
always an inquiry into the nature of necessity: Lebs work blew past the constriction of
the merely possible, ever expanding the limits
to happiness and to mind. In his wonderful
Aerial Paris, Leb envisaged an acrobatic
architecture unlimbered from gravity, freeoating and dancing in the sky. For so many
years in city designs of intricate mystery
and gorgeous order, in building forms that
sparked with potential between metaphysics and magic Leb created a world only he
could have conjured, a world that has forever
shifted the dimensions of our own. Lebbeus
Woods was the greatest architect of his time,
and my own life would have been so much
smaller without his example and his love.
82
nside his drawings, inside our brain...

he sculpted like nobody else... spaces
we inhabit, nightmare dreams, out of this
world... and as always... they were more real
than reality...
Mirko Zardini
Kenneth Frampton
erciless and passionately enthusiastic that was my rst thought when I

was confronted with the sad news that I had
lost a very special friend, a critical yet optimistic companion. The projects of Woods
are positioned in locations and sites where
contradictory realities break out into the open
in the form of crises and violence. He viewed
the task of the architect as being to design
spaces and urban structures that react to the
totality of human living conditions.
will forge in the smithy of my soul the

uncreated conscience of my race. And I
will try to express myself in some mode of life
or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can,
using for my defence the only arms I allow
myself to use: silence, exile and cunning. So
said Joyces Stephen Dedalus. I dont know
that Joyces goal is attainable. But its the
most moving advocacy I know for Dedaluss
heroic aspiration. That aspiration also resonates in Lebbeus Woodss voice. That is the
Woods archetype. Silence. Exile. Cunning.
write in mourning for the loss of a great

teacher, a great and ethical artist, and a
friend to the Cooper Union over decades.
Lebbeus was also a close personal friend,
someone with whom one could discuss
architecture to the very limits of its being,
and whose ethical compass and staunch
resistance to the consumerist spectacle
was a guidepost to us all. Much will be said
in the ensuing months to speak of his profound interrogation of an architecture of
resistance, of the loyalty and creativity he
inspired in his students and friends, of the
extraordinary corpus of drawings and threedimensional installations, of the irreplaceable void that he leaves in the school and for
us all. At Cooper we will celebrate his work
with students; re-experience his exhibition
in the Houghton Gallery following 9/11,
The Storm, and The Fall, at the Fondation
Cartier in Paris; and remember his love for
us and the humility with which he taught and
learned every day.
Hans Ulrich Obrist
Toms Saraceno
Peter Noever
Eric Owen Moss
Anthony Vidler
believe that Lebbeus Woodss most

enduring legacy will stand in his great
and rare ability to demonstrate that it is
possible for resistance and optimism to coincide in architecture. And that architecture,
just like drawings, can be made anywhere
there is light enough to see.
Christoph A Kumpusch
n one of our last conversations, Lebbeus
said, Christoph, the biggest problem you
can have in life is not having a problem. This
was in response to us going through the latest
photos Iwan Baan had just sent hours before
from the Light Pavilion in Chengdu. Lebbeus
explained that this space creates a problem,
rather than a solution. He was excited and in
the best of moods; excited about the images
that were in front of us on a laptop screen,
excited about imagining what people will do
with the project as built. This is completely
unique. It hasnt been done before, has it?
We were toasting heavily and celebrating
all by ourselves at 10:20am. Lebbeus set one
glass aside, lled it, and announced, Thats for
Steve, my rst and best client ever. By around
11:00am we had an idea for another project. It
trumps it all! When can we go? Lebbeus was
fond of Kasper Gutmans line in The Maltese
Falcon where, just before the police arrive, he
says, The best goodbyes are short. Adieu.
reached the end of utopia as well as the end

of history? Let us listen to, and watch, the
more ambitious and idealistic of the coming
generation. Only they have the answer.
ith the demise of Lebbeus Woods,

we have lost one of the great architectural thinkers. Over almost half a century, Woods offered us portals to other
always unexpected dimensions. Woods,
for whom architecture was an open gate
to possibility, envisioned new and alternative forms of utopian thinking. Ernst Bloch
dened utopia as something thats missing. Similar to the late douard Glissant,
Woodss utopia was quivering, trembling,
because it transcended established systems of thought and subjected itself to the
unknown. Glissant has inspired generations of architects with a deep philosophical
commitment to architecture. Once he told
me that it must be said from the start that
trembling is not uncertainty, and it is not fear;
that every utopia passes through this kind
of thought. Utopia is a reality where one can
meet with the other without losing oneself.
In a text on utopia, Lebbeus asked, Have we
ebbeus Woods was an enigma who

lived his life in deance of the society
into which he had been thrown and by which
he was besieged. It was not an easy passage for someone of his rough ethical sense.
What are poets for in a destitute time?
could have been applied more aptly to him
than to many others. Hence the unremitting dystopia of his vision, compulsively laid
onto paper in one distressed stroke of his
talented minds eye after another. With him it
was Blade Runner all the way; the prophetic
mise en scne of a world reduced to meaningless rubble, the crashed spaceships and
tubular rail bridges of a doomed escape.
Hephaestus mocked by the repelling hubris
of his own poetic astral technology that even
Lebbeus could be seduced by. Yet through
all this he remained the passionate advocate of the creative spirit, and it is this that
made him into an inspired teacher and a passionate and articulate nurturer of the tyro
architect. He was an anarchic romantic to
the core, which made him intolerant of unreconstructed erstwhile New Deal critics like
myself. As he put to me during a review of
student work at the Cooper Union, You are
preaching in the wrong church here. This
was about it: a rebel without a cause versus
a socialist without a country.
The images on these pages are reproduced
by kind permission of the Woods family.
Our warmest thanks go to Aleksandra Wagner,
wife of Lebbeus Woods
domus 16
LEBBEUS WOODS, SOLOHOUSE, 1988-1989
March 2013
83
CONTEMPORARY MUSEUM FOR ARCHITECTURE IN INDIA
A portrait of the
architect as an immigrant
As an outsider, Karl Malte von Heinz remarkably interpreted the labyrinth of culture through the
kaleidoscope of a free pluralistic society conceiving an architecture specific to a new situation
and far removed from contextual trappings
84
Text & Images
domus 16
March 2013
This spread: Jamia Middle

School Buildings, New Delhi
Driving by the retreating monolith of the Viceroys Palace on the

way to New Delhis Connaught Place in the early-November haze
can be a vastly disorienting urban experience. As one approaches
the hulking mass of Kuldip Singhs iconic Pallika Kendra building,
its impenetrable grimness can be foreboding. The dulled-out suns
reach cannot enliven this tired, alien hull. Concurrent, though
yes, more dramatic than precedents elsewhere1 , this building
stands as a sentinel to a delusional vision of the future a
monumentally vacuous dream that is at odds with a disturbing
urban reality. I watch this building, unmoved.
The earlier days were spent at the architectural creations of Karl
Malte von Heinz, which straddle across both the colonial and
post-independence periods. The November haze had already been
a constant companion by then. The sunlight was dull too. But the
buildings were alive. Their mysterious affability and exuberance
bear testimony to another vision, but one that (still) can be
representative, actually, of where we stand today, as a nation, and
where we come from.
My journey culminated fittingly at the buildings of the Jamia
Middle School2 , and like Walter Benjamins vivid account of
the angel in Paul Klees Angelus Novus, this complex throws its
viewers into the future by contemplating the past.3 As narrated
previously4 , one sees the wide amplitude of Heinzs work
immediately. His work raises a number of valid and intriguing
questions. This essay seeks to gain an insight into the works of
this significant 20th-century Indian architect.
The Immigrant
Heinz came to India, perhaps in the late 1920s, and established an
early reputation by building a number of significant residences
for the bourgeoisie and the Nawabs. Of Germanic5 origin, he
subsequently became a naturalised Indian.
A sense of freedom as an immigrant allowed him to conceive
of architecture specific to a new situation, as an outsider, far
removed from contextual trappings. This would have enabled
him to view the countrys architectural heritage in an unbiased
and delightfully new way. As an Anglo-Saxon he must not have
been removed from the influence of the politically-motivated and
socially-driven 'liberated' architectures conceived there in the
early part of the century6 leading him to deeply empathise with
the socio-political currents in the Indian subcontinent.
Shaping a body of work
Prof S M Akhtar describes Heinzs work as experimental
and versatile.7 Indeed his work is free from dogma and the
compulsions of era. Stylistic precedents are never mimicked and
neither are his works mere facsimiles. Appropriateness seemingly
came from an assertion of a certain cultural influence and his
architecture became a mise en scne for each context gave rise
to a performance of events to be conducted under the watchful
gaze of his buildings.
85
A portrait of the architect as an immigrant
I Plans of West End twin house

showing traces of marks
made during the construction
process. Note the thickened
and inflected walls
II A view of the staircase

in West End twin house.
One of the beguiling grotto
spaceswalls
III & V Faculty of Education,

1940s. Sunny, light-filled
entrance hallway in an
unmistakably Art-Deco
manner. Notice the
impossibly twisted newel
post finished in terrazzo
IV Pataudi Palace. The ascent

culminates in a bridge leading
to an open-to-sky colonnade
through which the landscape
beyond becomes visible
VI Pakistan High
Commission, late-1950s.
Blue-tiled central fantasy
dome as seen through the
Delhi haze with its fluted
base and triangular motifs
II
86
III
IV
VII Pataudi Palace, 1930s.

As glimpsed through the
trees a layered form
surrounded by verandahs
domus 16
March 2013
This necessitated a specificity of architectural language the

sources of which could be diverse whether the urge for a vision
of national integrity by referencing the countrys vast historic
building culture within a decisively modern and syncretic
construct (the Jamia), an exploration in a regions geography (the
Deori Mahdi Nawaz Jung in Hyderabad8), or the representation
of identity through an inferred and fantasised iconographic
syntax (the Vatican and Pakistan embassies). But these were not
duplitectures9 or mere copycat constructions.
The Heinz Grammar
By no means was Heinz a Taxonomists delight, as the 'hand of the
architect' is not really visible representing a lack of superficial
style' as such each project can be seen as a studied engagement
with a situation.
Heinzs works are distinctly anti-monumental despite their
immense presence. The buildings are ground-hugging and nonintrusive one may miss the Jamia from the street. The West End
single residence has an intimate scale and a fragmented nature
akin to European townhouses now consumed by an overgrown
Bougainvillea. There is a humane-ness of scale in his embassy
buildings as well which are barely noticeable from the street.
Other than its blue dome and chhatris, no other aspect of the
Pakistan embassy is visible.
His buildings also offer intriguing ways of connecting the inside
and the outside, through the inclusion of the verandah device (the
Pataudi), or in many cases by the old tradition of enclosed and
contrasted inside space10 such that the inside is different from
the outside.11 As described in my earlier essay, the engagement
with the inside often comes as unexpected and of surprise, and
makes for a riveting spatial drama. In that sense, a thickened
wall (the poch space) serves the same function as a verandah
allowing for the perception of an outside that is distinctly
different from the inside.12
The architectural promenade assumes importance each
work encompasses an experiential journey, and for Heinz, these
become some of the most dramatic spatial entities offering
surprise and anticipation.13 Each journey leads to the presence of
landscape ending at an in-between condition a verandah
(the Vatican Embassy), a terrace (the West End houses), or an
open-to-sky colonnade atop the building (the Pataudi). Within this
promenade, the grotto assumes significance. At the Vatican, the
journey commences from a narrow entranceway, inflected into
the building in the manner of the Baroque. At both the West End
houses, the journey leads one through a set of such compressed
spaces. The Pataudis dramatic promenade architecturale loops
V
VI
the experiencer through a series of spatial enclosures of intense

contrast there is a moment when one suspects the staircase
just hasnt enough headroom. Of course all these gestures
masterfully choreograph a succession of spaces of diminutive
scale and explosive volume. There is no doubt that Heinz enjoyed
making the mundane routine of transition an exciting affair.
Many works allude to classical influences the axial,
symmetrical plan at times (the Jamia, the TTI14 , the embassy
buildings) or the pavilion in the landscape (the Jamia, the
Pataudi, the West End twin house which has a free plan with
inflected Baroque walls that amplify the spatial experience of
the interior).
Materials and textures play an important role the stucco
plaster of the West End houses and the Pakistan Embassy, the
unmistakable trademark terrazzo floors to achieve a continuous
unbroken horizontal surface in all his projects, or the masterful
brick surfaces of the Jamia. Certain buildings belie the advanced
construction techniques used (for their time and context)
reinforced brick in the Jamia buildings and the precast concrete
blocks of the TTI building. Another recurring trademark is the
distinct fireplace.
Ornamentation appears in inexplicable flourishes from sources
that can be vaguely discerned, but in a discreet manner that
dissolves within the overall perceptual effect. A lexicon of
iconography evolves for each project that is not in the manner of
flaccid eclecticism or mere decorative scenography15 but rather
an attempt to connect each building to a specific cultural source
within a decontextualised urban vacuum such that each
building can be seen not disconnected but, rather, contaminated
with culture.16 For Heinz, each building had a semiotic function
through the mechanism of the ornament, although this may be
confused with the intellectualised mask determined a priori
to create specific meanings.17 The key difference is the nature
of making: Heinzs architecture stems from the visceral and
intuitive, and hence allows for a multiplicity of connotations and
inferences. This is also true of motifs such as jaalis and chhatris. In
the courtyard of the Jamia, a pair of diminutive chhatris stretches
ones gaze upward from within the small space. In the Pakistan
Embassy, the chhatri emphasises each corner, in a traditional
manner. There is also evidence of discreet craftsmanship in the
wrought iron work and timber detailing.
Heinz and our contentious modern history
There are many questions which arise upon witnessing Heinzs
oeuvre. One of them concerns the need for his wider inclusion
in Indias 20th century architectural history. An enduring
VII
87
A portrait of the architect as an immigrant
II
problem with history concerns taxonomy. Heinzs work makes a

classification and qualification into the existing silos difficult. Free
from being a stylistic creator with a visually identifiable parti, his
works cannot harmonise into extant academic discourses.
Another concerns the question of the canonical building. The
problem with most historical overviews on Indian architecture is
the lopsided focus on grand gestures and symbolic monuments.
This is evidenced in the scant attention, for instance, paid to
domestic architectures of the period the Viceroy's Palace by
Lutyens is, for obvious reasons then, an exception, built in an
imperialist hybrid style to fulfil a political agenda of apparent
native inclusion to appease a dissenting populace. Our sense of
history itself becomes colonised as an extension our definition
of the canonical from that period is rarely re-framed. The Jamia
buildings are neither patronising, nor could they be seen as
vehicles of a ruling political propaganda. They were distinctly
anti-colonial in their stance. In the growing Hindu nationalist
sentiment that began in the pre-colonial years (and found favour
with the British administration), a quizzical and unfamiliar
building within a perceived Islamic Institution18 that seemed to
disregard any reference to architectural puritanism of any sort,
too, must have seemed at odds with most historians and postindependence reviewers19.
Another specific concern is the broad absence of the Jamia in
discourses on the countrys modern architecture. This ties in
with more significant debates on the very definitions of modern
and indigenous and their association with building culture
in our country.
88
III
Modernism in Indian architecture is oft wrongly considered to be

a post-independence occurrence20, when Nehruvian ideals found
their imported manifestation in Corbusiers Chandigarh and his
many imitators. Though in retrospect, these Brutalist monuments
echo deafeningly with borrowed voices and derived syntax, one that
stems from an ideological position of enforcing a historical amnesia
in the hope of fast-forwarding to a technological, machinist and
egalitarian future. While this may have found favour with Nehrus
vision of an urban and industrialised nation, it stood at great odds
with the cultural and social reality of the situation.
In a post-colonial nation already suffering a rupture in cultural
evolution and an edited historiography, Modernism and its
imported value-system came as another blanket of intellectual
colonisation, and often instigated knee-jerk attempts at
reclaiming a past through revivalist gestures or a romanticised
modernism as can be seen in the Ashoka Hotel with its overscaled Rajasthani and Mughal-inspired features pasted on an
otherwise modernist box.
Perhaps what the above discussion indicates is a necessity to
reframe an understanding of our own history and its application
to our present. This is valid even for our post-global situation. This
would mean a complete revisiting of the lens through which we
view architecture in our own country as well as an investigation
into our understanding of Indian-ness.
Pioneering an alternative argument for the future
. . . whether or not India was, is or ever will become a cohesive
cultural entity, depends on the differences and similarities in the
I Pataudi Palace. An ethereal

whitewashed pavilion in the
landscape
II House, Hyderabad, 1936.
The heavy influence of ArtDeco is evident. (used under
permission from the MIT Dome
Archives)
III, V & VI Jamia Middle
School Buildings, New Delhi
IV The stark, crisp exterior
of the late-1960s West End
twin house. The original
stucco plaster is in fine
condition. There is a trace of
the Rationalism prevalent in
the international debate during
the 1960s
domus 16
March 2013
IV
cultures of the people who have inhabited the sub-continent for

centuries [] So is India Indian? Its a tough question. Lets just say
were an ancient people learning to live in a recent nation.21
Does modern necessarily imply an exclusion of anything that
is perceived as indigenous? Heinzs architecture can be seen as
attempts to deal with a nations vast architectural heritage
something greatly overlooked and sidelined in post-independent
India. In an either-or discourse of the modern and the indigenous
there is always a conflict. But if we evolve to a both-and
argument, the subsequent understandings are much richer and
one aims at a cultural continuity. A modern India meant an
inclusive, heterogeneous, secular and free nation, mindful
of its past richness and regardful of its place within an
international debate.
Heinzs architecture, whether in the Jamia, the Pataudi or
the embassies of the Vatican and Pakistan urge us to adopt a
worldview that is inclusive and is accepting of difference. In that
sense it stands as an anti-thesis to modernist ideals of exclusion
and historical rejection. But this does not in any sense lead to
a nostalgia rather it becomes a tool to reconcile conflicting
positions and ensure their co-existence within the same
framework of inclusivity by treating each value equally,
without any one ever overshadowing the other. In a sense one
could say that though his lens was European, his buildings can
be viewed as having a multi-local response thus leading to a
vocabulary that is specific and true to that instance a kind of
implied authenticity.
The language of diversity
Heinzs work can be seen as reflective of the immense diversity of
the countrys cultural influences as well as their heterogeneous
nature. As an outsider, Heinz remarkably interpreted the
labyrinth of culture through the kaleidoscope of a free pluralistic
society. In this worldview, buildings resonate with influences that
are as much modern as they stem from an attempt to engage
with a vast treasure-trove of root ideas to find a suitable language.
And that language cannot be singular but that of diversity
perhaps what he saw fit for a country of such extraordinary
cultural richness - and which, post-independence was under
the threat of being 'homogenised' by an imported imagery of
aspirational modernist values that was at odds with the reality
of society post-independence. In many ways, Heinzs architecture
is reflective of the difficult unity through inclusion rather than
the easy unity through exclusion.22
SUPRIO BHATTACHARJEE
Architect
VI
In this concluding episode of the two-part feature on Karl Malte von Heinz, we further investigate
the body of this architect's work exploring its status and position in the context of architecture
history in twentieth century India. When the architect responds to what s/he sees around her/him
and the specific context of the project without bothering about the larger themes that history and
professional debates demand, or rather expect, s/he runs the risk of falling through the cracks. In an
attempt to notate the work of Heinz and insert its presence in the larger narrative of history, it in fact
makes us much more aware of the atmospheres and its nuances, and the various ideas that exist in a
historical period and the ways in which architecture can possibly exist. The themes of monumentality,
ornamentation and style need to be thought through once again when a body of work deals with it
fairly differently, than the expected production in the contemporary period. The values associated
with classification of architectural objects and practices are not generous, and they select through
pre-determined ideas often, rather than developing the signification-system based on the struggles
of practice. This section itself is a space for teasing out signification-systems and the relationships
architectural (and other) objects share with time and history-writing processes, and to think through
objects rather than defined system protocols, or values. KM
For instance, Chicagos First National Plaza

(now the Chase Tower) began construction a
year before the Pallika Kendra (or the NDCC New Delhi Civic Centre) was conceived. The
NDCC uncannily shares the same base and top
width dimensions as the Chase Tower, strongly
indicating its derivative nature
2
Henceforth, I shall refer to the Jamia Middle
School buildings as the Jamia
3
Also quoted in Kenneth Frampton, Modern
Architecture: A Critical History (Thames & Hudson,
London, 4th ed. 2007); 8
4
See 'The Heinz Oeuvre', Domus India, January
2013
5
Dr Omar Khalidi and Dr Margit Franz, 'Karl
Malte von Heinz: Austrian Architect in India,'
Architecture & Interiors 23 (2009): 92-95
6
One can trace influences the Secessionists
(particularly the work of Joseph Maria Olbrich),
the Expressionists (the work of Michel de Klerk)
and to some extent Art Nouveau besides of
course the streamlined formalist refinement of
Art Deco. An interesting, if more conservative
influence can be seen in Peter Behrens doricist
German Embassy, St. Petersburg, 1912
7
Conversation with Dr S M Akhtar, Dean of Jamia
Milia Islamia Universitys Faculty of Architecture
and Ekistics, on 31 October 2012
8
See the mention of Kohistan in my earlier
article
9
See Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in
Contemporary China, Bianca Bosker, University
of Hawaii Press, 2013
10
Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in
Architecture (The Museum of Modern Art, New
York, 1966); 70
11
Juan Antonio Cortes, Building the Mould of
Space, in El Croquis No.154. This insightful essay
uses various readings from history, including
that of Robert Venturi, to propose ideas on
space creation
12
Ibid
2013
14
Refers to the Faculty of Education building at
the Jamia University
15
See Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture:
A Critical History (Thames & Hudson, London,
4th ed. 2007); 292-293 for an understanding of
Post-Modernism of the 1970s-80s, much later
than Heinz
16
See Farshid Moussavi and Michael Kubo, The
Function of Ornament (Actar, Barcelona, 2006);
5-9
17
Ibid
18
The Jamia Milia was originally conceived as a
secular institution
19
2013
20
Antonin Raymonds exceptional Golconde
Ashram was built in Pondicherry in 1935 (then
part of French India) a manifestation of the
architects brilliant vision of western Modernism
tempered by eastern (here Japanese) spatial
thinking though in a cultural and sociopolitical context removed from British India.
I refer to Modernism here as a product of
objectivity derived from the manifesto of the
International Style and its predecessor, Die
Neue Sachlichkeit and on its emphasis on an
unsentimental approach to the nature of society
to quote historian Kenneth Frampton. What
this implies was a thorough rejection of the past,
of historic building cultures and the values that
they bring
21
Arundhati Roy, The Algebra of Infinite Justice
(London, HarperCollins, 2002); 2526. Quoted in
Alternative Indias: Writing, Nation and Communalism
by Peter Morey and Alex Tickell (New York,
Rodopi, 2005); ix
22
Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in
Architecture (The Museum of Modern Art, New
York, 1966); 88
13
89
90
William Kentridge
domus 16
March 2013
The studio as a
self-portrait
William Kentridges interdisciplinary practice combines drawing, performance
and animation to create works that hope to find meaning or sense in the world.
The artist talks to Domus India about the studio as an important category in his
art, the playfulness of his production process, and performing our lives
Top: Untitled (Portable Monuments), 2010.

Photogravure, sugarlift aquatint with drypoint
and burnishing, 42 x 48 cm (Edition of 30).
Right: Drawings for No, IT IS, a triptych of
three flipbook films, 2012. Opposite page: Nose
(with strawberries), 2012. Handwoven woollen
tapestry, 345 x 234 cm
Artist
William Kentridge
Interview
Roshan Kumar Mogali
The artist in his studio

A nearly ve-minute-long video by William Kentridge
Drawing Lesson 47 (Interview for New York Studio School), 2010
shows the South African artist interviewing himself. Twin
Kentridges sit across from each other as one of them asks the
other, Can you describe your life as an artist? Alright, can you
rather say what it was that you did today to give us some sense
of how you ll your hours between waking and sleeping every
day? And when the artist-self begins to try and answer the
ambitious question, his voice is muffled by the condescending
interviewer-self, who addresses the camera to say Hes not
saying anything thats interesting at all. I mean hes not talking
about truth or truth and beauty or about mystic truths that
are revealed by the artist. Hes talking about mayonnaise
Tabasco sauce. The playful and self-referential video, which
can be viewed as an interrogation between two components
of a self or as a fractured internal discourse carried out in the
intimate space of an artists studio, exposes the ambiguities,
multivalencies and contradictions that are at the heart of
Kentridges works. The pieces rely on and celebrate the viewers
sense-making capacity, and make the process of seeing their

inherent theme. Informed by the absurd, Kentridges freeform
artistic technique, his thinking with hands, with its constant
erasure and redrawing propels objects into action and
transformation against a background of cultural and historical
references stories of injustice as time gets revised in the
space of his studio. Domus India interviewed the artist before his
solo-exhibition Poems I Used to Know opened at Volte Gallery in
Mumbai on 6 February 2013. Following are some excerpts from
the interaction:
DOMUS INDIALast year in an article [Life brought to art,
Financial Times, 17 August 2012], Hans Ulrich Obrist wrote that it
is important to shape exhibitions as long-duration projects He
was making a case for long-duration exhibitions.
WILLIAM KENTRIDGEExhibitions staying up for a long time?
DIYes, for years, and I was just drawing comparisons with
how your work has progressed. It has been travelling around the
world, and it has stayed in the cultural consciousness.
91
William Kentridge
WKOf course; I mean I do understand that. The exhibition

Five Themes in the end travelled for three years in nine different
venues. So it was the same exhibition that was somewhere to
be seen, not in the same tenure obviously. But I do understand
that things need to sediment into a public consciousness rather
than ash past. Obviously, long exhibitions are a treat for the
artist; theyre difficult for the way institutions work, which rely
on audiences coming back or a large footfall.
DISo how do you think this affects the way the concerns
with which I would look at your art now maybe not
apartheid as much; maybe it transcends that and becomes
an existential
WKYes, I think that they do. Theres always a great deal of
what as an audience, the particular viewers Theres no general
viewership but individuals that think with different focuses,
look for different things, and not so much look for different
things, but recognise different things that come towards them
from the work. So when people were saying so all the work is
about apartheid that is partly saying they have a need for the
works to be about apartheid and it meets that need somewhere.
() The works, some of them, are directly descriptive of the
social situations in the city, of what the city looks like, whats
been happening to its crowds. While on the inside, I feel theres
a kind of continuum in the works. Me working in a studio or
a drawing of the city and the crowds. In each case, there is
something that happens in the studio that refers to the
world outside.
DIWe see the studio as a space of performance in your art.
WKYes, it is a safe space for testing things out. Its a physical
place for thinking. So I think that maybe I will walk for half an
hour before I do the rst drawing and think theoretically, walk
around the suburbs, walk in the city. But in fact the walking all
happens in the space of the studio and that becomes important
the enclosure, the containment of it all.
92
DIAnd then you bring it out.

WKAnd then it comes out in different ways; but I do think that
the studio is an important category.
DIYouve also had a certain preoccupation with narrative
the way you convert these stills into a progression.
WKWell, the question with narrative is that narrative is about
understanding process or a description of process something
that starts at one point and changes, goes through a series
of transformations at each different stage. So in that sense
something to be described as narrative can also be described as
an essential way of understanding how the world works and the
need we have to construct possible narratives.
DIIn most of your work, there are these diversions into history.
Sometimes not specic to your personal history. Somehow they
seem to be these appropriations. I mean that they take off from
works of these rebel artists. Like [Alfred] Jarrys Ubu?
WKThey come from, that they rip off that tradition, that they
expand on it, theyre essays on it?
DIRight.
WKThey are new revolts in themselves? Well, theyre certainly
not new revolts in themselves. There are new forces against
which to press, and to explore what these old traditions mean
in a contemporary context. Jarry at the moment now. Im not
a writer, so its not like Im trying to be a new Alfred Jarry. The
existing works whether a play, an essay or a piece of literature
they are a starting place for a theory of reection on the form,
on the history, on the medium.
DI A lot of your pieces are inspired from, you offer them as a
tribute to George Mlis
WK() On the one hand, they are a series of lms based on
Mlis but for me they became much more a meditation about
what happened in the studio. Thinking about Mlis not just as
really a lmmaker but as an artist in a studio in the same way
as Jackson Pollock and his action work. The studio as kind of a
Untitled, 2012. Indian ink on

pages from the Oxford Universal
Dictionary, 151 x 225 cm
March 2013
lm set. Im thinking of that ongoing long question of the artist

in the studio and the studio as a kind of self-portrait. That rather
than just the phenomenons of the Mlis lms. So you could see
the lms as take-offs, repetitions, different versions of the Mlis
lms or you can use the lms to see Mliss lms in a broader
way of as broader questions themselves.
DII see this pattern where you take off from somewhere. Is that
important in your process?
WKI think its a common stage. Yes, I think that all artists
in a way, all the images theyve seen of art history sitting
inside and whether its explicitly born from or implicitly from,
its very much in the work that emerges. I dont know of any
circumstance in which something emerges absolutely new.
Because in a way all great artists, all historic artists have
emerged in response to either their immediate predecessor or
predecessors before them.
DIWho are you looking at now?
WKIm looking at German Expressionists from the 1920s.
DI Anyone in particular?
WKThere is a great German documentary called Berlin on a
Sunday Sunday in Berlin Its a kind of German version of Man
With a Movie Camera. So on the one hand, Im watching it with a
view of a current project, which is the production of Alban Bergs
opera Lulu [scheduled for 2015]. But on the other hand, Alban
Bergs Lulu is a way of me getting into looking at a section of
German Expressionist woodcuts related to Africa.
DIOn the poster for The Nose, whats kheppi in the phrase
Another Kheppi Ending?
WKIts the Russian way of pronouncing the English word
happy. Under Stalin, every lm had to have a kheppi ending.
If it did not have one, if it had an un-kheppi ending, it would be
counter-revolutionary it was a revolutionary demand to
have a
DISo one sees this playfulness, these puns in your works

Do you think about them a lot? Are these conscious choices that
you make?
WKNo, there are phrases that emerge, like the playful
emerging of dreams. Theyre conscious in the sense for
example, this drawing of a shell with the text In the Absence of
the Real Thing. Now thats a drawing based on a little etching
of Rembrandt which I wanted to buy but couldnt. So In the
Absence of the Real Thing is a drawing of Rembrandts etching
in the absence of Rembrandts etching. But Rembrandts etching
is also in the absence of the real thing the shell it was drawn
to depict. So in a way its acknowledging the three degrees of
separation the drawing of an etching of a natural object. So
there are phrases which come in from that.
DIAnd the dictionary?
WKWith the dictionary, an obsolete book is resuscitated by
reuse, sending it back into paper. Theres an ongoing battle
between the digital medium and the physical book. And in areas
such as dictionaries and other reference books, they really are
obsolete. So its a sense of a rescuing and a distraction of these
old reference books at the same time.
DII was reading Notes on Camp before this interview. And
theres a phrase in there theatricalization of experience
which seems to resonate with your work.
WKI dont remember what she is referring to but the
potential of performing our lives strikes me as very deeplyrooted in us. That there are many different thoughts that go
through our heads and one sentence comes out at each moment
and there is a sense of a prompt that is going around. The sense
of being rooted in or stuck in theatre would not be an inaccurate
way of describing life.
domus 16
Untitled, 2012. Indian ink on pages

from the Century Dictionary:
An Encyclopedic Lexicon of the
English Language, 243 x 191 cm
Drawings for No, IT IS, a

triptych of three flipbook
films, 2012
William Kentridges solo exhibition titled

Poems I Used to Know is on view at Volte
Gallery, Mumbai, until 20 March 2013
93
Architecture
of adrenalin
Text
Giampiero Bosoni
95
Adrenalin architecture
Giampiero Bosoni
US7914384JOOP ROODENBURG, JOHAN WILLEM PHILIPPENVEKOMA, 2007
Previous pages: the Roller

Coaster Hat (patent
USD644415) designed
by Stefan Zwanzger
in 2011 for his website
thethemeparkguy.com; the
Japanese White Cyclone
at Nagashima Land Spa
(opened in 1994), the worlds
third longest wooden rollercoaster with its 1,700 metres
of tracks, and the seventh
highest (Joel A. Rogers
-coastergallery.com). This
page: patents for structural
parts of roller-coasters,
developed by specialised
teams of designers and
engineers. These designs
include the project for
the first roller-coaster,
engineered by Edwin
Prescott in 1898
US5272984WALTER BOLLIGER, CLAUDE MABILLARD, 1993
US609164EDWIN PRESCOTT, 1898

taken from Google Patents
US6047645SETPOINT ENGINEERED SYSTEMS, 2000
US609164EDWIN PRESCOTT, 1898
US6523479S&S-ARROWS, 2003
US6523479S&S-ARROWS, 2003
US6047645SETPOINT ENGINEERED SYSTEMS, 2000
96
domus 16
March 2013
Having grown at a dizzy rate in the past 10 years, todays everlarger and more complex roller-coasters are sophisticated
architectures, designed to let people experience and overcome
extreme sensations. Also, under the pretext of a craving for
amusement, they enable a virtual desecration and demystification of
the malaise of metropolitan life
A phenomenology of roller-coasters
Speed, force, energy, beauty, harmony, emotion,
fear and excitement. This set of physico-perceptive
factors with a potent raction potique offer
a good starting point for thinking about the
aesthetics of what may be the most spectacular
architectures of amusement: roller-coasters.This
is what the English-speaking world calls these
veritable machines pour le plaisir, or perhaps even
architectures de vertige, but to everyone else they
are known by their original name as Russian
mountains.
From ships to trains, motorbikes and cars, planes
and even spacecraft, the history of every means
of locomotion reveals a peculiar combination
of coherently harmonious, streamlined forms
dedicated to speed, and the pleasure of overcoming
extreme sensations like those of ight and
gravitational force. In its more experimental or
applicative phases, design progress in this eld
has had to reckon with such conicts as desire
and refusal, pleasure and fear, in relation to the
exciting or scary emotions aroused by sudden,
sometimes violent alterations of our bodily state.
Serving no useful travel purpose, roller-coasters
spring from the idea introduced by technology and
industrial society to pursue the evolution of this
unique phenomenon of speed, seeking to reproduce
the combined emotions that it sparks in what
might be called controlled laboratory conditions.
All this fascinating engineered architecture was
not of course created to train pilots or astronauts,
but as spectacular machines that induce intense
emotional reactions. They are tailored for ordinary

humans who willingly subject themselves to an
enjoyably death-defying challenge for its own
sake. This aspect raises all manner of stimulating
design questions and solutions, involving the
search for daring acrobatics and structural projects
with increasingly complicated evolutions; plus
a craving for extreme physical experiences akin
almost to those of astronauts or top guns in
supersonic ghter planes experiencing forces of
up to 9G.
At this point, since the ordinary human cannot
whizz through the air like Superman or SpiderMan, certain special emotions have to be recreated.
Hence the dizzy rides that run on safe rails set on
top of structures that are rmly anchored to the
ground. Like majestic molochs with the semblances
of mythological prehistoric animals, they are
designed to inspire an adrenalin-charged sense of
wonder, fascination and fear.
Browsing the rich and up-to-the-minute Roller
Coaster DataBase (www.rcdb.com), it is amazing
to see how rapidly in the last decade these
increasingly colossal and complex structures have
sprung up everywhere, though chiey in Asia and
particularly in China.
It is also interesting to note the parameters used
to classify the different types of amusement
machines. The rst basic subdivision is that of
material and construction technology: all-wood
structures on the one hand, steel on the other.
The wooden ones (which are more classic and
traditional, but still being constructed today)

have the charm of being denser hence also
very sculptural in their structural texture,
making these large modular architectures look
like sinuous mountains, or even gigantic frozen
waves. Conversely, steel roller-coasters have
recently undergone considerable technological
innovation, as well as being developed in more
advanced forms. On this type of construction the
passenger cars no longer run on the upper side
of massive support structures. Instead, they are
attached to mono-beams that seem like free and
light uctuating lines, suspended in space by the
occasional support pylon. In particular, state-of-theart steel roller-coasters offer spectacular sequences
of hyperboles, parabolas, sinusoids and helicoids
that seem to oat magically in midair. In addition to
all these loops, twists and turns, in some cases new
roller-coasters also offer yet more surprises, such
as plunging at breakneck speed into underground
tunnels, shooting through sudden slits in walls
of solid architecture, or riding upside down as in
an overturned ski-lift. And thanks to the latest
generation of magnetic eld engines, todays wouldbe daredevils can experience crazy accelerations to
relish ever higher levels of g-forces.
The fast pace of technological and formal
innovations also sheds light on todays standard
yardstick for classifying these types of machine, i.e.
that of records per speciality: length, height, speed
and loops, meaning the number and complexity
of evolutions and revolutions performed during
97
Giampiero Bosoni
a ride. Naturally, this kind of vertigo-generating

machine goes hand in hand with the concept of
records, which fuel riders appetites for ever more
breathtaking ordeals that offer them an immediate
sense of elation afterwards for having overcome
their fear. Many have written that this mad urge
to look death in the face is simply an attempt
to defeat it, which may also be translated as a
feeling of erasing, albeit for a couple of minutes,
the dullness of everyday existence through the
inebriating, wild sensation of risking ones life (in
a controlled form, of course). Indeed, subjecting
oneself to such peculiar stress is like releasing for
a few seconds the innermost animal instincts of
fear, courage, resistance and strength, in something
verging on a drugged, esoteric experience.
As W H Auden wrote in 1966, in a verse from his
poem Fairground:
A ground sacred to the god of vertigo
and his cult of disarray: here jeopardy
panic, shock, are dispensed in measured doses
by fool-proof engines.
This cultural condition was also well described as
early as 1928 by Walter Benjamins friend Siegfried
98
Kracauer, the architectural historian, sociologist

and culture critic. In his Roller-Coasters article
(original title Berg und Talbahn) published in the
Frankfurter Zeitung newspaper, he noted with
acute insight: It almost seems as if everybody is
screaming because they imagine themselves safe
at last. With a cry of triumph: Here we are, borne
aloft in beatitude, zooming ahead in a race that may
imply death, but also appeasement. Many a page
has been written on this comparison anxiety as
an existential state, and dread as the effect of an
event or trauma starting from the analyses of
Sigmund Freud. However, aside from the diverse
and contrasting interpretations (neurological
versus psychoanalytical), it is worth remembering
that, according to psychoanalytical theory, the
death drive is exactly what dreams are to sleep: a
guardian. In this sense, we might hazard a guess
that the aesthetic exaltation of forms of speed
guards, incarnates, desecrates and demysties
the uneasiness and frenzy of our metropolitan life.
Steven Sterns article Off the Rails, published a few
years ago in Frieze, offers an interesting comment
on the subject of these architectures. Despite a 100year history, writes Stern, roller-coasters suffer a
dearth of criticism. While cultural theorists are in
love with amusement parks, they have little to say

about the rides themselves. You can nd dozens of
Baudrillard-quoting articles about Coney Island
and Disneyworld, but not much about what it
means to actually strap in and take the plunge.
Maybe thats because roller-coasters dont traffic
in representation. Theyre not simulacra, but the
real thing: more like drugs than movies, working
directly on the stomach and the inner ear. To
call the experience visceral is, for once, not an
exaggeration. No matter how theme parks might
dress them up with borrowed narratives youre
on a rocket, a runaway train, youre Batman
what happens on a ride is almost entirely a matter
of physics and physiology.
It is also important to remember that these
impressive structures are the work of highly
professional teams of designers and engineers.
(In this sector the worlds most famous office
is the German Stengel Engineering in Munich,
but the Italian rm Ride Tek also occupies a
distinguished place). Also offering superb quality
are the companies specialising in the constructions
themselves, which have their own specic and
sophisticated backgrounds (of the top four, two are
Swiss, one is German and one American, but the
domus 16
March 2013
PortAventura
Dutch are prominent too, and there is also a worthy

Italian representative).
To follow up on Steven Sterns reasoning, it has
to be recognised that the theme of temporary
architecture dedicated to entertainment has,
together with the world of fairs and expos, gained
a permanently strategic role in the interpretation
of genetic changes in the urban scene. This is partly
thanks to Rem Koolhaass Delirious New York. A
Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan published in
1978, in which he outlined his view of the myth of
the modern American city in the opening chapter
Coney Island: the Technology of the Fantastic.
Koolhaas wrote: At the junction of the 19th and
20th centuries, Coney Island is the incubator
for Manhattans incipient themes and infant
mythology. The strategies and mechanisms that
later shape Manhattan are tested in the laboratory
of Coney Island before they nally leap toward the
larger island. Coney Island is a foetal Manhattan.
Among these technologies of the fantastic, a
place of honour certainly belongs to the legendary
roller-coasters of Coney Island: Thunderbolt (1925),
Tornado (1926) and Cyclone (1927), the last one
having been a US National Historic Landmark
since 1991. It must also be recognised that this
interpretation had already been identied a

few years earlier by other leading theorists and
architects, engaged in a critical and alternative
survey of the evolutionary models in urban culture.
Think of Cedric Price with his Fun Palace of 1962,
or of Andrea Branzi who in 1966, a few months
before the foundation of Archizoom, submitted an
amusement park project as his degree thesis; and
especially of Guy Debord, who in 1967 published his
seminal theoretical book Society of the Spectacle.
It may also be worth considering that Domus has
never published any roller-coasters. However,
this term has been used several times to describe
such projects as the Centre Georges Pompidou
by Piano and Rogers, or some of Gehrys designs.
These architectures also represented a dreamnightmare in relation to their point in history,
representing and guarding some of our innermost
anxieties as men and women overwhelmed by the
roller-coasters of contemporary everyday life.
GIAMPIERO BOSONI
Academic and design historian
The Spanish PortAventura

theme park was built
at Salou, Tarragona, in
1994. Among its most
spectacular roller-coasters
are the Dragon Khan,
famous for its eight loops,
and the Shambhala, which
at 76 metres is the highest
in Europe
99
I Foreground: Millennium Force,

one of four roller-coasters
to exceed a height of 61 m at
the Cedar Point theme park,
together with the Magnum
XL-200, the Wicked Twister
and the Top Thrill Dragster.
Counting 16 roller-coasters,
Cedar Point first opened in
1870 on a 147-hectare site in
Sandusky, Ohio
Giampiero Bosoni
II X-Scream, perched on top of

the tallest observation tower
in the USA the Stratosphere
Tower (350 metres) has been
offering a plunge into midair
over Las Vegas since 1996. The
Stratospheres other attractions
include a free-fall tower and the
Insanity merry-go-round
III The Vanish roller-coaster

at the Cosmo Land theme
park in Yokohama, Japan.
Opened in 1999, it plummets
unexpectedly into an
underwater tunnel, simulating
a dive into a giant pool
IV The Battlestar Galactica,

a duelling launch coaster by
Vekoma Rides Manufacturing
opened in 2010 at Universal
Studios Singapore
II
IV
Cedar Point, Sandusky, Ohio
100
domus 16
March 2013
III
Joel A. Rogers - CoasterGallery.com
Vekoma Rides Manufacturing
Christian Kober/Gettyimages
101
Finding lost rooms

The series of paintings by Baroda-based artist Abir Karmakar in the show titled Room,
Interrupted in Passage allows one to explore the nature of space as a landscape of objects,
furniture, textures, fabrics where these construct a world that one negotiates in the larger
pattern of living. The world of the inside or the interior is a mine of sensualities, notions
and relationships that may not be visible but exist as impressions, as reminiscences, like the
creases in the bed you have just got out of; the history of objects is the struggles of bodies,
their disappeared presences, that occupy these fleeting rooms
Artist
Abir Karmakar
Text
Kaiwan Mehta
Clockwise from top left: Porno Painting XI, XII, XV and XIV, 2012. Oil on canvas, 41 x 61 cm
102
domus 16
March 2013
There was a time when he had enjoyed every opportunity

to talk, even to strangers, particularly to strangers since all
acquaintance with them, however quick, however warm,
had to be eeting, leaving him to go alone.
from Baumgartners Bombay by Anita Desai.
The room is warm yet, someone has just left the bed. The
television awaits a watcher, someone is about to return to this
passing room. The lights are on, casting glowing patches of
luminosity on pastel coloured walls; the sunlight struggles
to enter through thick curtains, it just cannot penetrate this
interior it is truly an inside. The stranger lived here last
night; you may have seen him on his way out. The new stranger
is yet to come, the emptiness is getting cold but the thick sofa
keeps the room warm, as the dusty glow of the carpet rests after
a night of ruffled conversations.
A deep evening of marinated light lls the room. Objects in the
room are there only but to hold, a missing presence; they play no
other role in these picture-images the series of paintings by
Abir Karmarkar. A cinematic eye pushes you into these rooms
From top to bottom: Porno Painting XIII, XVII and XVI, 2012. Oil on canvas, 41 x 61 cm
103
Finding lost rooms
Abir Karmakar
strange yet home. You are the spectator here, right now, but
when you were living here who was watching you? Who was
the spectator? Which one of us is the missing presence? Is it
similiar to the room you lived in, or is it that room itself? Warm,
hopefully cozy, restful, but just not home, never yet.
The outside peeps in; the urge to look out of the room but not
condent to let the outside in. The light outside aps on the
curtain, the curtain moves slightly, the door scarily opens but
just a little bit not sure if those, and that, outside should be
allowed in. The neon sign on the street peeps in, as if witnessing
a site of sodden crime, a sordid struggle maybe yet to happen.
The plumbing and electricity lines promise a programmed yet
surreal connection with the world outside, as you occupy the
intimacy of the bathtub and the plastic curtain around it, and
the televisions window to the world reads the news out.
The cozy and plush interiors are memory of a warmer morning,
a richer life that never happen, but is still awaited; the room
is a eeting sensation of that which never came to me. The
materiality of interior nishes builds up a stage, an arena for
life to nd a cozy moment or two, hidden from the outside
world, yet promising a complete world, luxurious, colourful,
lit and connected. Hoping for a coziness that was long before
stale, postponed in time gone, available to time present only as
a picture, in the imagined history of these objects the sofa,
the large arm chair, the carpet, plastic curtain, thick and dusty
shades, a ruffled comforter.
Metropolitan life is a geography of insides; a labyrinth of
interiors where we enter sparingly and only on few occasions
but we often imagine that the few interiors we know and see
and experience is what all the interiors in the city are about a
false condition of knowing! We do not know the city, until we do
know the insides that build it, make it, and produce it! The inside
is urban; private, yet urban. The city lives in its large plethora
of insides as much as it grows and breathes in its streets and
markets. The home is imagined as a space of familiarity, while
the city is a collection of strangers; but what when the home is
the strange space of existing, knowing many strangers have
passed by the same bed, run over the same carpet, watched that
same television? And what when all interiors are the same?
The lodge, the guesthouse, the hotel in one city and another,
in a third and a fourth, looks the same, smells the same, glows
the same then? One is no longer sure if the familiar rendition
is orienting the self across locations, or rather purposefully
disorienting within a hectically interconnected series of
104
urbanities and lives. The home is conjured, but its replica

precisely makes you realise that one is far from home; whatever
this home is supposed to be!
If urban life is a labyrinth of insides, then what would a map
of the urban, as a labyrinth of insides be like? Can we draw
a city map collecting and measuring all the interiors and
their ows? Every inside is a labyrinth of rooms and spaces,
stairways and corridors, but what nature is the extension of this
interior labyrinth into the metropolitan labyrinth of streets and
markets, railway stations and maidans. The inside geography at
some point fuses into, and becomes part of the exterior terrain
of city spaces. The city will be opened inside-out in this map of
inside spaces the home, the cathouse, the repulsive bar, the
public toilet, the lonely geriatric, the compulsive card-player,
and the street by night. What the outside tells us is only a story
that hides the insides lled of lives that are often denied an
everyday existence. The insecure outside, the amboyant agora,
cannot manage the inside that challenges the sanctity of an
administered public. The inside reveals an anxious city, one that
is free and struggles for an imagination that sheds garbs of
vanity and sanity.
The painted surface of the canvas, that brings to bear these
framed views, duplicates the thick textured replication,
recreation, rendering, of faked interior spaces that are meant to
provide for a home a eeting room that is meant to solidly
rm up a temporary stay; descend into the plush armchair,
get lost in the thick mattresses, sink into a textured carpet, be
immersed into the television screen. Soaked in, pulled in, nearly
withdraw away from the world outside. Enclosed, maybe even
self-obsessed.
Karmarkar, in this series, is as if hunting, searching, excavating
these spaces, a near archaeological act of discovering that which
was already there, but hidden under ages of sedimentation,
debris of order, design, the public world. As soon as these spaces
were unearthed, its occupants maybe ed the shower curtain
pulled to one side, the open window, the crack in the door, the
television still running. Or maybe they had ed long ago, but the
room froze in time, waiting for documentation, a recording of
itself. Or as life moves on the absent occupant will return, as a
stranger, a new resident of an old interior with fresh bed sheets
but the same bathtub.
KAIWAN MEHTA
Architect and critic
domus 16
March 2013
Clockwise from top left: Porno Painting III, IV, V, VI and VII, 2012. Oil on canvas, 41 x 61 cm.
Opposite page: Porno Painting I (left) and II (right), 2012. Oil on canvas, 41 x 61 cm
105
Finding lost rooms
106
Abir Karmakar
domus 16
March 2013
Abir Karmakar is a Baroda-based artist. He

was born in Siliguri in 1977 and completed
his Bachelor of Visual Arts in Painting from
Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata and
his MA in Painting from Faculty of Fine Arts,
M S University, Baroda. His work has been
exhibited in galleries in Mumbai, New Delhi,
Berlin, London and New York
Clockwise from top left: Porno Painting XXIX, XXV, XXVII, XXVIII and XXVI, 2012. Oil on canvas, 41 x 61 cm.
Opposite page: Porno Painting XIX (top) and XVIII (bottom), 2012. Oil on canvas, 41 x 61 cm
All images are from Abir Karmakars solo exhibition

titled Room, Interrupted in Passage. Courtesy Galerie
Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai
107
Rassegna
Four elevations and four windows

Four faades and four windows can encapsulate
the image of a house: simple (and complex) like
the one a child would draw. Or perhaps they
can represent an inventory of architectural and
production images: complex (and simple) like the
one illustrated over the following pages. Via 4+4
exemplary categories, this micro-classification
reconstructs a two-way compass for navigating the
design of a buildings more delicate parts those
that separate the inside from the outside, that
determine the exterior forms of the architecture
and the image it projects in outdoor space. Each
Faades
Panels
Liquid
Faades clad in panels can look solid

and heavy like traditional masonry
or light and airy like plumes of
confetti. However, often the very
latest claddings, made with CNC
technology, are characterised by an
intermediary nature that places
them halfway between the world of
surfaces and the world of volumes.
This theme reappears in panels
made of the most diverse materials:
wood like stone, metal or ceramic
(in the photo).
Faades
Frame
Shell
Does form come before matter or viceversa? While this age-old architectural
question is destined never to wear
out, sometimes the characteristics of
materials are so precisely defined and
specific as to determine the expressive
codes of architecture. An example is
offered by the novel application on
the faade of a composite material
conceived for covering interior objects
and walls: acrylic stone. In this case
matter comes before form and
directs architecture towards new
liquid horizons.
Are we all familiar with classic timber

construction? Good, now forget
about it. The clear increase in the
use of wood in architecture, linked
to the politics (and rhetoric) of ecosustainability, has altered the original
characteristics of this material and
produced a new set of super-woods
and hyper-frames. In this new
world, the traditional, functional,
technological and formal perimeters
of construction elements have been
surpassed or turned upside down.
An evolution of the first generation

of prefabricated buildings based on
flat panels, shell constructions are
formed from modules with a curved
section, sometimes developed
on two or even three planes of
rotation. Made using parametric
methods of design and production,
the individual elements can each
be different from one another and
give shape to constructions that are
specific and unique or even extreme
(from every point of view).
Above
Above
Above
Above
APAVISA
HI-MACS
STRATEX
FRENER & REIFER
108
domus 16
March 2013
of the hypothetical cardinal directions has an

additional element, a spin, a technological find
or a functional aspect that has been incorporated
into the theme of the faade and window. Some
examples represent perhaps specific solutions,
destined to leave a greater or lesser mark; others
undoubtedly construct, or rather constitute,
the start of a new direction in design and
manufacturing research. To varying degrees,
however, they are all anomalous houses, and every
anomaly has a magnetic force of attraction.
@GuidoMusante
Guido Musante
Windows
Advanced
Invisible
Solar
Infinite
The use of windows with motorised

opening/closing mechanisms has
increased exponentially over recent
years, also thanks to the introduction
of new and refined systems of home
automation. A further technological
and functional frontier in this field is
now represented by the incorporation
of photovoltaic and solar energy
systems into devices for electronic
movement. Hence the appearance
of a new generation of self-sufficient
mechanised windows.
The myth of invisibility belongs

to the history of the modern
window (according to a widespread
paradoxical statement, the most
beautiful windows are the ones
you cant see). The manufacturing
response to this design aspiration
comes in the form of windows with
increasingly slender sections, but
that are capable of supporting everlarger openable surfaces. One of the
solutions that best responds to this
demand is based on the pairing of
aluminium and composite fibres.
In their initial phase of use, now in the

past, photovoltaic systems were very
often considered as additional and
extraneous objects to architectural
language. A more recent trend sees
the integration of this technology into
the buildings various construction
elements. One of the most interesting
new examples of this development
is represented by the fusion with
glass. In this case, as well as collecting
energy, the cells can also act as light
screens, arranged in different ways.
Potentially extending to infinity,

continuous faades present two
traditional design limitations: one
technical (containment of heat
dispersion and low acoustic insulation),
and the other aesthetic (little
compositional and stylistic variation).
Both problems can be overcome thanks
to the development of new systems for
continuous faades featuring timber
structures. The natural qualities of this
material improve insulation properties
and increase expressive richness.
Above
Above
Above
Above
VELUX
WIFFA
OKALUX
UNIFORM
109
Rassegna
Faades
ESSENZA BATTENTE
MEG MATERIAL EXTERIOR GRADE
Essenza
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a high standard of technical performance with surfaces suitable for exterior use.
ESSENZA
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tures the Unitherm continuous faade system in wood that helps reduce heat loss as well as
providing acoustic insulation and natural lighting.
AGC FLAT GLASS ITALIA
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domus 16
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KHRS
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pantry is now as simple as pressing a button.
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THE PURE CONCEPT

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edgy and asymmetrical designs and the colour tone and texture in this collection are underplayed
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www.thepureconcept.co.in
113

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16 tVolume 02 tIssue 05 tMarch 2013 / RKDS, Idnany, Pirani envelope as a mediator / Kamath Design Studio,

New store: Mumbai. T: 24952323/24 W: akrutiliving.in E: info@akrutiliving.in

up relationships with the community and its

the past year through a careful selection of projects,

Stills from I am not me, the horse

All images courtesy Volte Gallery, Mumbai

Stills from I am not me, the horse is

Interview with artist William Kentridge

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OpEd / Gurgaon Glossaries

such stories of gains and losses, where the corporate workers,

These are some

OpEd / Gideon Fink Shapiro

A park for Roosevelt,

The belated completion of Four Freedoms Park, Louis I Kahns

scaled-up version of the source pool in Kahns Salk Institute

GIDEON FINK SHAPIRO

SCAN THIS TO STAY

sms SPENTA INNOWIN to 57333

Notes from an urban situation

A park for Roosevelt, 40 years later

A portrait of the architect as an

William Kentridge, Roshan Kumar Mogali

Op-ed Gideon Fink Shapiro

The studio as a self-portrait

Photoessay Thomas Florschuetz

The past imperfect

Romi Khosla Design Studios, Ekta Idnany, Jasem Pirani

Debating tactile engagements

Abir Karmakar, Kaiwan Mehta

Finding lost rooms

Light in the city

Founded in 1928 by Gio Ponti

16t7PMVNF 02 t*TTVF 05 t.BSDI 2013

editor and publisher

publisher and managing editor

chief manager - magazines

Prathaa: Kath-khuni architecture of

construction prevalent in Himachal Pradesh is

Architecture, Building & Planning, University

Environment, 2012 with an honourable mention in

practices in a dual sense: architecture as an

consists of the panoramic shots of the region

A vantage point for

Bharti Kher, Lao's Mirror, 2012. Courtesy Nature Morte

Bharti Kher, Time Lag, 2012. Courtesy Nature Morte

the usage of bindis of different shapes and sizes

The rise of a capital

Habib Rahman Archives and the D N Chaudhuri

Photo courtesy ACP

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