3 FORMS OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION

1) Land-scraper

2) Sprawler

3) Skyscraper

Correct density and composition = nameable CITY

too low density too high density = so-called “CITY”

Tradition and Our Built Environment 11

The City Zoning

Zoning in the city

by surprisingly few agents. The conference on “New Architecture and Urbanism: Development of Indian Traditions” is only beginning to announce the necessity of reorienting the priorities of the planning and building professions. The latter are still hung up on outdated technological conceptions like, amongst others, the “green” skyscraper or “eco”-suburbia. A common mistake of fossil fuel age “thinking” is to distinguish between “high” and “low” technology, failing to wake up to the fact that, before long there will not be a high-tech future to speak of and that human technology will be ecological or it won’t be. The worth of traditional architecture and urbanism is revealed all over the subcontinent in its sheer incredible versatility, its durability, its enduring validity in ecological terms, and hence its global applicability in various climates, altitudes, epochs and in contrasting political and economic conditions, in short in its sustainability. Equally, an individual architect’s or urbanist’s work and ideas can be truthfully assessed via their global applicability. What if all towns in India, old or new, were designed according to the precepts of Le Corbusier, of Lutyens, Fuller, Eisenman, Shahjahan, Jefferson etc.,? Are the ideas that guide their designs of a transcendent value, or are they simply passing fads? The question of “Sustainability” tests idea to their viability, universality, truth.

The term sustainable indicates what is ecological in absolute terms. All our current notions of progress, globalisation, T o m a k e a c i t y M I X E D U S E i s a N E C E S S A R Y b u t n o t a S U F F I C I E N T C O N D I T I O N F u n c t i o n a l = A r c h i t e c t u r a l Va r i e t y T y p o l o g i c a l O r d e r B u r e a u c r a t i c O r d e r F u n c t i n a l Va r i e t y X A r c h i t e c t u r a l U n i f o r m i t y O v e r d e v e l o p m e n t - M a n h a t t a n i s m F u n c t i o n a l Va r i e t y X A r c h i t e c t u r a l Va r i e t y

12 New Architecture and Urbanism: Development of Indian Traditions

economy, industry, creativity, modernism will be reformed accordingly and probably out of recognition. I am not interested in making converts to traditional thinking, but to spread theories and practices, that have proven to work for centuries, that are sanctioned by application in various cultures, climates, geographic and political conditions. Modernism’s most lashing damages may well have been done through its historisation of traditional planning and building techniques; through the insane outdating of languages and techniques which are in perfect working order; through the ideologisation of technology; through its discarding of “low” technologies as “historical” and therefore “outdated”.

Sustainability addresses the issue of ultimate purposes and means when building cities and exploiting natural resources. What can be our ideals, culturally, socially, politically, in given limited ecological conditions? What can be the numbers, patterns, networks, dimensions, geometries, materials, proportions, typologies, architectures?

Sustainability concerns technology and aesthetics. What hierarchy, color system, method of designing, building, inhabiting can be cultivated with controllable outcome? What principles and methods transcend taste, fashion, social and political regimes, or the unsoundable varieties and variations of human tempers and fashions? What is timeless and what is timely? What is the meaning and status of the local, the regional, the global? What is modern and Mono-centric conurbation vs poly-centric federation approach to planning cities

C I T Y & P A R A S I T E

C I T Y w i t h o u t S U B U R B C I T Y w i t h S U B U R B

Tradition and Our Built Environment 13 what is obsolete? A culture of sustainability re-evaluates the

meaning of all our values in ecological terms, foremost of the traditional, of the vernacular, the classical, of enduring timeless ideas, techniques and work.

As J.H. Kunstler demonstrates in “The Long Emergency”, we will return to traditional forms of settlement, production, agriculture and building whether we like it or not. With the aggravating global environmental crisis the notion of sustainability will evolve from being a political fad to a principle of existential necessity. That is where its promise lies but also extreme danger threatens.

D o n ’ t f o r g e t y o u r G R A V I T Y c h e c k

H O W M U C H C L A S S I C A L & V E R N A C U L A R I S N E E D E D T O M A K E T H E G O O D

C I T Y ?

Beaux-Arts Utopia Chicago White City 1893 Versailles Castle + Park Napolean III- Victoriana Imperialisme

Rome- Campo Marzio Forbidden City- Beijing Acropolis

Taj Mahal

Renaissance Ideal Cities Jaipur

Venice Rothenburg O.T. Cesky- Krumlov Athens Classical Age Williamsburg Traditional Villages Primordial Hamlets Lascaux Animal Architecture CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE VERNACULAR BUILDING

14 New Architecture and Urbanism: Development of Indian Traditions

Vernacularissimus Austerity Vernacular

Vernacular & Classical Cultural Apogee

Classicissimus Imperial Carnival Classicism

Private Imperialism

Good Private / Public Affairs

Public Imperialism

Well-applied and well-sized

Mis-applied and mis-sized

Well-applied and mis-sized

A P P L Y I N G & S I Z I N G O F C L A S S I C A L A N D V E R N A C U L A R M O D E S P R I V A T E & P U B L I C A R C H I T E C T U R E

Tradition and Our Built Environment 15 The great strength of India today is the powerful survival

of a vernacular reality despite the massive attempt at its eradication. I get hope and inspiration not from the modernist architects’ works, which are just as unimaginative and sterile as in other continents, but from the capacity of common people to build traditional settlements with very little land and poor material means.

They are often very successful in their grouping of buildings and networking of streets and alleys, in their unintended plasticity, and fail miserably where they are keenest to succeed, namely in their front elevations. They succeed when they use natural materials structurally and fail when they are used decoratively.

Traditional architecture and its aesthetics are bonded to the processing of natural materials, wood, clay, earth, stone. Their forms derive from the use of those materials and their techniques are conditioned by it. They are strictly material based, so to speak “ material-logical”. Even an untalented imbecile can not build a tectonic error, using natural materials without immediate disastrous consequences as to stability, aspects and use. Instead with the use of synthetic materials even an abstruse, illogical structure, a tectonic counter-sense, can be made to stand up.

To realise authentic traditional structures with synthetic materials and their specific fitting techniques (nailing, bolting, soldering, riveting, gluing, casting) is not only an onthological paradox, but it requires extreme design control and discipline. To build a believable fake today needs great expertise. The lack of design control and discipline explains the aura of the fake, the ersatz, the surrogate which is so characteristic of 99% neo-traditional designs of the past decades. It is the latter and not modernism, which is the deadly enemy of traditional architecture today.

Last minute sur prise on the building site

A U T H E N T I C ( N A M E A B L E ) T H I N G S K I T S C H ( S O - C A L L E D ) T H I N G S C O N T E N T = F O R M F O R M X C O N T E N T U N I T Y O F C O N S T R U C T I O N C U L T U R E C o n s t r u c t i o n a l M o n i s m & S t y l i s t i c P l u r a l i s m

16 New Architecture and Urbanism: Development of Indian Traditions CITY & LANDSCAPE

A city needs approximately so much land for its nutrition