The Void

It’s a curious thing to feel out of purpose, to be at the end of your wits, to suddenly look at what u think is/was your life’s work… and feel… disinterest? No perhaps skepticism, maybe a kind of weariness…. I don’t know how exactly to describe it. Being stranded alone in personal life, also is not a small factor adding to it. But I’ve taken that for a given now. I’ve been working or at least trying to work for couple of weeks now, working through nights, trying to meet deadlines, trying to put up a presentation and make it look like I have done work and actually make it look that it makes sense ! Actually work is all I have now , and movies on the 42” wide screen TV which we roommates bought…. few hour of escape from reality. Hmm I don’t know about that, because all what I’m doing is probably far removed from reality, the architecture I create, the assumptions I make while making those design decisions. Decisions. I hate decisions, to say this is good and that’s bad, to say use this material and not that, that color and not this , that this particular form doesn’t work and some other works. I hate these decisions. I think sometimes it’s not fair, I don’t want to explain my work anymore than I intend to. What’s the use anyway ? They say contemporary architecture is an intellectual practice at least a major stream/chunk of it is. It is got to do more with ideas and theory rather than anything else. Yet architecture is not read that way. Let’s leave the real world alone. Let’s take the studio. Architecture is read God knows how, by the number of 3ds max rendered images you have, the quality of the drop shadow u have used on the plan. Ok, maybe not that bad, but what I’m saying is it is too visual. It is too on the surface. And it is not to be confused with giving a preference to a culture of visual thinking or anything. Even on the level of visual judgment there is no complexity, there is no vibrancy, there is no…..life, there is no mad experiment, there is no random merciful lapse of reason.

Even my work is all the same. I’ve been trying to be more adventurous, to not to go around in circles about making decision whether the stairs should be to the left or right or the wall should be brick or concrete, to lose myself in a delirium of form, random free flowing interplay of surfaces all those murky edges and a 100 chaotic messed up thoughts and imperfections, and that make me up. And in doing that try to balance a personal expression with the nature of a building type. Not very successful I should say, I get caught up in the same old web. Infact I’m growing increasingly tired of my own work. To put it in no milder terms, I am increasingly finding it disgusting and boring and more importantly without meaning. When a creator feels that , theres something gravely wrong and ideally he should stop. But you see I cant, I’m in the middle of a degree, I’ve got to churn out more stuff….but on the brighter side, hey it doesn’t matter anyway, so don’t worry.

One needs a goal to work to, a dream to live for, a cause to go on for, a passion to pull through when the going gets tough and I think I just might have lost all of that.

In the deep recesses of the mind I ramble,
And linger in the labyrinth of despair.
I soar for moments at long, on the wings of reason,
Sometimes even on the crest of creation.

For Meaning I search, for purpose,
Perhaps even for truth and conviction.
And in search of them, like them I wander,
Like ghosts among the living.

Doing architecture.

'd like to think I have few pretensions to what I am
Or what I can be.
I'm in this .... this joyous:depressing,stimulating:tiring, simple:esoteric, heavily intellectual:dumb, creative:painful realm called architecture.For me each moment in that realm is a continual reminder of the dichotomy - the mind numbing complexity - in myself,in life,and in the world around.
I'm lost in here and trying to find my way....but not out.
Its a pain in the ass you cant live without.To put it slightly more eloquently it gives me a way to look at the world, to order it, to understand/fight/hate/love/theorize/ it.

I enjoy its dichotomous nature not because I am brilliantly talented, but because I am so not.
Not because I can understand but because I can't.
I don't know where I'm heading...but I'm on my way.

I may not be among those whose names are inscribed on the sacred walls of architecture for all eternity- hell! not not even close, but perhaps after a life's work...perhaps I might be the wind that blew across its portals for a fraction of a second.

That in the end I think, might be more than enough.

Ramblings on architecture

I have often wondered what it is that makes the immortal, the eternal.

I've looked at great architecture and great art and wondered about the fabric that’s common to it all.

I sense strands that run through all of them...or at least I think i do

From the Amber fort that shocked me through the sheer range of its scale: from a towering majestic monumentality to light humane functional living spaces - From its sheer opulence to its disarming simplicity - from the silence and light at IIM-A: those volumes in brick silently guarding the eternal spirit of human institutions - From Corbusier’s few deft planes of concrete that trap space time and light in disarmingly simple and brilliant ways in the Millowners building - From the transformation of a simple yet vital function of accessing water to a celebration of light and movement in the adalaj step well, to the amazing spirit/concepts of modernism that I sense in the historic padmanabhapuram palace.

I've felt all these as almost universal in their spirit, they belong in the same realm of inspired creation.

From function undoubtedly they sprang, nevertheless ultimately they transcended it and became a celebration of life.

And what is life other than the celebration of living.

And what is architecture, other than the celebration of the human being.

A play of our sense of scale, vision, movement, balance, behavior – our sense of what is right and wrong in public , of right and left, up and down…….

If God made man in his Image, we make architecture in our image. Yes even the coldest, monumental, worst ones are facets of our own self.

Space and time(movement) , Light and Shadow, Mass and Void, Planarity and volume I believe are the universal language of Architecture – a language with different dialects, one used with different patterns and permutations yet the same basic language, the same grand old spirit of Architecture running through all of them.

It is quite disarmingly simple, that it seems almost obvious yet I believe that ultimately shrouded under all the theory architecture comes to down to this. I can find no other way of explaining why something as diverse as a subtle yet exquisite timber palace in South India to an outrageous Gehry building appeals to me in the same intensity of spirit. That is why a small space that is created in some corner of the world, appeals to the entirety of the world.

And that is why I can’t digest when narrow classifications are made of modern and post modern, western and oriental, ad hoc and “designed”. I believe one sows the seeds of the eternal in that very moment when concieves these combinations of space, volume and mass submitting to that universal spirit/force of architecture. There is no style, there is only the intensity of your will to create and if you have truly understood what you are creating, and convinced by its will to be- I believe you are on your way to creating something eternal – even if its not for the entire humanity - for yourself….a moment you have etched in your psyche….a moment that you know was lived creating something worthwhile.

The beginning of Insanity

Everything has a beginning...lol...even the public display of ones insanity or mediocrity...whichever applies. A random collection of thoughts....obvious,ridiculous,chimerical or didactic ... this is for my satisfaction alone ..like writing on a wall.....or like kicking in the air when u are mad....no.. maybe like the times you talk and shout to yourself, when multitudes of thoughts cloud your mind, your heart wells up god knows why to express - to pen down something , or talk to somebody about all the random thoughts in your mind - architecture or philosophy or whatever.Well in the absence of the latter(the person to talk to), i write. Maybe its not the absence - maybe there is just no other way to communicate to yourself. Anyway.... I think some people are destined to have these absolutely meaningless thoughts, these changes in flux of the mind, these colossal wastage of time thinking things that have no purpose. Yet that is the way some are made, and those thoughts have to be let off, like steam of a pressure cooker - to use a very indian metaphor.....so as far as I am concerned , let the steam off, why give a damn what its for or how it sounds.