Economic &Political WEEKLY

Politics of Architecture
Author(s): THOMAS OOMMEN and SHREYASI PAL
Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 50, No. 14 (APRIL 4, 2015), pp. 16-19
Published by: Economic and Political Weekly
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COMMENTARY
real interest rate. Again from relation-
ship (1) in the model above, one can in-
fer that even if the RHS is high, MPK can
still be low because of a higher A. This
leads to a higher capital stock. Thus a
priori there is no reason to believe that a
higher or lower real interest rate will
dampen or stimulate growth in our
country unless we can prove that a fac-
tor like A is not an issue or at least not so
significant. What can adversely affect
investment and growth is not really the
interest rate, but other factors that
dampen the prospect of investment, an
observation hinted also in the inter-
departmental study of the RBI (2013).
Moral Hazard
Just to reiterate, asking for a cut in the
interest rate has a moral hazard compo-
nent. One does not know whether it is to
Politics of Architecture
THOMAS OOMMEN, SHREYASI PAL
In India, architecture is not seen
as a discipline possessing any
serious transformative social
agency or critique either by
architects themselves or informed
critics. The article attempts to
interrogate this situation, tracing
and situating the validity of
architecture's political claims,
and offering possibilities through
an increased engagement with
architecture's other-the city.
Thomas Oommen (thumoh@gmail.com) and
Shreyasi Pal (shreyasishrek@gmail.com) are
teaching at the Sushant School of Art and
Architecture, Gurgaon, Haryana.
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jack up corporate profits in the current
period or raise investment, because the
corporate sector has all the incentive to
ask for a cut without having any real in-
terest in making serious investments. A
declining rate of interest reduces the
cost of working capital and directly in-
creases profit. Any interest rate cut will
also stimulate share prices, increasing
net worth and the value of assets. These
are the private benefits which exclude
a vast majority of Indians. If it also
raises investment and growth, it has
positive social externalities. In a credit-
constrained corporate sector set-up,
higher net worth might mean more
credit from the banks anyway or can
reduce effective operating costs. Thus, a
drop in the interest rate has a doubly
beneficial private impact. If we justify
an interest rate cut in the name of a
It is because an architect seems to us a sym-
bol of the resurgent India that the Modern
Architectural Research Group has come for-
ward to sponsor this magazine on architec-
ture and art
-Anand 1946.
A rchitecture is perceived, now
more than ever, either as an in-
consequential background or as
an accessory to power structures. As a
background, architecture is seen as high
culture, which though it possesses some
value in itself is not seen to critique or
affect in any serious way the "real" lives
of people. As an accessory to power
structures, it is often seen as the instru-
ment of capitalist hegemony and vio-
lence-the most popular form being the
luxurious "architectural" development
displacing the slum. In any case, in
India, architecture is not seen as a disci-
pline possessing any serious transforma-
tive social agency or critique either by
architects themselves or informed crit-
ics. The article is an attempt to interro-
gate this situation, tracing and situating
the validity of architecture's political
APRIL 4, 2015
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social externality and actually push
forward the private cause, that will
then inflict the cost of a moral hazard
on the nation.
Gone are the days when debates on
such issues would involve a good cross
section of experts and the government
would also try to generate informed
research papers. Unfortunately, while
we spend most of our time tracking and
talking of interest rates, papers on
poverty and inequality measures have
instead cornered the administrative
limelight.
REFERENCES
Marjit, S (2008): "Inflation and Public Policy: Con-
temporary Dilemmas," Economic & Political
Weekly, 6 September.
RB! (2013): "Real Interest Rate Impact of Invest-
ment and Growth: What Empirical Evidence
for India Suggests," Inter Departmental Study,
RB!.
claims, and offering possibilities through
an increased engagement with architec-
ture's other-the city.
Modern Architecture's Politics
In a certain sense, the trauma within the
discipline of architecture over its tradi-
tional conception of itself-as a utilitar-
ian and stylistic practice as well as an
ethical and transformative praxis-starts
with the dissipation of modernism.
Without delving deeper into the com-
plex genealogy of its influences, it is
safe to say that, what resulted in the
politicisation of modern architecture, was
its embodiment of a varying mix of
Kantian (the need to be formed by but go
beyond the rational-embodying larger
abstract, metaphysical ideas/realisa-
tions), Neitzchean (aesthetic freedom,
continual reinvention, the "will" of an
age that could be translated into space,
and aesthetic experience as transforma-
tional) and Marxian (transformation of
material conditions to influence man's
social being) philosophical influences.
This was especially disjunctive and
radical because as renaissance human-
ism and its "antiquarian" attitude-re-
discovery, even invention of a rational,
enlightened Greek past-gave way to an
"archaeologically" inspired period start-
ing with neoclassicism, a Pandora's box
VOL L NO 14 llil!lJ Economic & Political WEEKLY

of possibilities to link function, form and
space was opened. This "battle of the
styles" of the 19th century was, as
architectural theorists tell us, decisively
put to an end by 20th century modern-
ism's direct equation of form with func-
tion. That is the function of a building
would decide and be embodied in its
form. But this "function" was more than
the mere utilitarian.
Modern architecture's romance of
function and modern technology in-
volved viewing the machine in political
terms: "as the destroyer of class and na-
tional boundaries and creator of a demo-
cratic, collective brotherhood" (Jencks
1973: 34). The "function" therefore was
also to create an architecture that both
anticipated and engendered that society.
Even the more or less apolitical triad of
heroic, "idealist" modernists-Le Cor-
busier, Walter Gropius and Mies Van Der
Rohe-held beliefs that were a mix of
"humanitarian liberalism, reformist plu-
ralism and a utopian socialism" that
would bring about this new society (Jen-
cks 1973: 31). These beliefs were in line
with most European avant-garde archi-
tects who believed in a modernism diat
as Marshall Berman describes it, was a
great, "life affirming," "romance of con-
struction" (Berman 1988; Risebeiro 1992).
This is not to mention the influential and
unabashedly political intent of the
"activist" tradition of modernism con-
sisting of influential Marxist architects
like Ernst May, Hannes Meyer or Moisei
Ginzburg (Jencks 1973).
As architectural theorists analyse it,
the plan of the building would therefore
organise the political structure and
protocols hosted within it, while the sec-
tion would organise the social strata and
its relationships with the ground (Polo
2008). The formal and spatial structure
of modern architecture would thus
abandon all historical association to
show its clean break from the bourge-
- oisie culture that had so far constituted
the discipline. Indeed, modern architec-
ture's conception of the pure three di-
mensional architectural object with no
front and back distinction in the free
flowing space of the city (which would
all be later critiqued) was as much
a product of an assumption that the
Economic & Political WEEKLY 1111D APRIL
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COMMENTARY
socialist city with its collective landown- of architecture as critical resistance, but
ership would eliminate such things as a mostly by formal means wherein archi-
public "front" and a "private" back. tectural form is conceived as "one resis-
The big difference between the main- tant to the self~confirming, conciliatory
stream tradition of "idealist" modernism operations of a dominant culture ..."
and the more radical "activist" practice (Hays 1984: 15).
described above was only that the ar- On the other hand, strands of neo-
chitects in the idealist tradition saw modernism like "hi-tech" continued to
functions like collective/workers hous- maintain the formal heroics of modern-
ing or public institutions as purely "func- ism, without any hint of a critical agen-
tional" needs thrown up by modernisa- da. While the latter flourishes even to-
tion, measures like nationalisation of day, critical architecture conceived as
land in the city or collective ownership "resistance" and practised by a handful
of housing as also functional, rational of architects has mostly fizzled out. The
planning tools that formed the back- relationship between politics and form
ground of their architectur_e, while the is a non-sequitur today as the discourse
latter saw these measures as forming has moved on "to the post-critical, projec-
the foreground of modern architecture. tive, diagrammatic and parametric/digi-
However, what was "apolitical" and tal all loosely associable with the "post/
"functionalist" for "idealist" modernism after theory" turn in the social sciences.
have become extremely contested politi- All of these contemporary schools/
cal ideas today, especially since the "end genres have a deeply ambivalent atti-
of history" and the decisive victory of tude to the "political" and is postmod-
capitalism (Fukuyama 1992). ernist in the sense that it takes late capi-
One could argue that the reason why talism as the default context and is un-
modem architecture still inspires so critical towards the global/multinational
much fervour and hatred is because of capital that funds it.
this rendering of architecture as reformist
and political rather than emerging from - Politics That Is Architecture
apolitical categories/sources like cultur- If as the phenomenologists argue, the
al/historical codes of "beaµty" or prac- primary task of architecture is to help us
tice, "natural" principles, or individual "dwell" in the world, then extending
"genius," though these humanist Martin Heidegger's concept of dwelling,
explanations also abounded. Modernism it does so by allowing for existential ori-
in architecture was therefore simultane- entation, cultural identification, and a
ously a deeply liberating moment-a connection with history, i e, letting us
high that imbued it with transformative "be" in a protected place (Perez-Gomez
social purpose and one that ensured a 1990; Schulz 2007; Heidegger 1975). The
catastrophic collapse-a low that would anxiety to realise such "places" has per-
happen in time with architecture's reali- haps been at the -core of architectural
sation of not only its inability to be trans- discourse-that is the "appropriate"
formative purely by its formal and spatial relationship between the ontological
manipulations, but the dystopias it would certainties of architecture popularly re-
go on to create in this overzealousness. ferred to as the Vitruvian triad and the
This "low" sparked a trajectory away ways to achieve it. In engaging in this
from a political or in fact from any cer- pursuit, architecture, intentionally or
tain relation between function and form not, dons the garb of a social instru-
and is popularly referred to as post- ment, continually reinventing itself,
modernism. Postmodernist architecture either to benignly "let" us be or at the
in this sense is most commonly under- other end of the spectrum attempting to
stood as a "doubly coded," ironical but induce changes by creating authentic
populist mannerism that assigned pri- desire, for an alternate state of "be"ing.
macy to meaning derived from cultural/ And whether one is of a Heideggerian
historical symbolism and an aversion to persuasion or not, the nature of this
any political linkages. But it also included state of being and the contestation for it
genres like post-functionalism-an idea is arguably "political."
4, 2015 VOL L NO 14 17
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COMMENTARY
Architecture must therefore both lo- break from the baggage of the past and theme of exploration-but the lack of
cate and dislocate, centre our existence the Nehruvian urban vision captured in any conviction or critical thinking other
and decentre-that is, in order for archi-form and space by Le Corbusier in Chan- than the generic on architecture's agency.
digarh in the 1950s was seen as its em-
tecture to be, or let us be it must oppose
in cl certain sense its own coming into bodiment. This and other projects of this Relinking Architecture
"being" (Eisenman 2004). One of the period have been attributed, in retro- and Politics
reasons why this is so is architecture's spect, as a confident, alternative, univer- Must architecture then deny any desire
inherent proclivity to give presence-to salist project, ready to deploy critical for a social role as a case of an outdated
institutionalise and legitimise and the reason and "ready to argue with the and discredited Kantian categorical im-
historical tendency to be put to use for West as well as itself" almost as much as perative? The authors believe that there
such purposes. If architecture is, along it has been derided as an empty non- is a way where architecture can be mod-
with the arts, to appropriate Jacques contextual copy of European modernism estly political and affirm its identity as a
(Khilnani 2007: 13).
Ranciere's definition of aesthetics, a cer- transformative praxis even as it refuses
tain "distribution of the sensible," then it Nevertheless, the search for an Indian to make the modernist mistake of archi-
"identity" that pervaded Indian archi-
is inherently political by what and how it tectural determinism or reducing archi-
chooses to represent or give space to andtecture in the following decades-cul- tectural form and space to simple politi-
thereby "legitimise" (Ranctere 2004: 12).minating in the 1980s-made it fairly cal formulations.
This is clearly manifested, even in clear that a critical project that ques- Modernity is today a global experi-
most banal architectural designs that we tioned modernity had certainly been en- ence, simultaneously and intera~tively
see today in our cities, produced by a gendered within Indian architecture. everywhere. In India it is simultaneously
culture of consumption. This is architec-This stream of exploration went on to transformational and deeply ambiva-
ture as the mythical sign at the service critically aestheticise the traditional, the lent, morphing and mutating in won-
of the market, maintaining the status informal and the rural, attempting to drous eccentric forms while fizzling
quo by attempting to resolve the trouble-give presence to the "mythical" while away into the deeply absorbent sponge
some contradictions that arise between remaining modern and "rational"-an that is Indian culture (Appadurai 1996).
people's beliefs and their everyday ex- attitude that came to be eventually It has clearly foregrounded the experi-
periences (Barthes 1972). Design as (though unsuitably) termed "critical ence of "plurality of times existing to-
Adrian Forty reminds us alters the ways regionalist" (Frampton 1984). Though gether," an ontological "now" that strad-
people see commodities by disguising unconscious of any such classification at dles not only the past and the present,
the shape of what we take to be reality, the time, this "search" or longing was but the future as well (Chakrabarty
casting myths into enduring solid tangi- also part of a broader tendency of utopian 2000: 109). The Indian city is the very
ble forms so that they. seem like realityaesthetic politics of that period to move site of these deeply ambiguous and plu-
closer to the Gandhian village vision.
itself (Forty: 1992). The malls, the Ital- ral conditions/futures-th e very en-
ian villa-styled condominiums, the im- However, in the post-liberalisation era gines of social transformation.
ages of capitalist efficiency representedthere seems to be no identity/roots to More than ever it is incumbent of
through hi-tech office spaces, gated confidently go back to-the layers have architecture (and urbanism) to abandon
housing are all perhaps architecture as melted and fused irregularly beyond an fixed and tired notions of aesthetic and
part of a larger system of mythical signseasy recognition. Tradition is not "resis- social modernity-either that aesthetic
to let us "be" as we are, unaware of con-tance" any more-it too serves global modernity must patiently await social
tradictions as we race in pursuit of a capital and is easily appropriated in modernity before it can be fully appreci-
"first world" existence. expedient conservative politics. Since the ated, or that one must build heroically
So even in its current avowed apoliti-1990s, the trajectory of critical thought anticipating the social modernity that
cal stance architecture cannot help but as outlined above has mostly been dis- will grace us in the "future" (Mehrotra
rupted primarily because the economic
be ideological, as its images are splurged 2011). What might be more useful is to
over magazines and billboards in real and social paradigms that formed its ba- come to terms with the fact that we are
estate advertisements and political hoar-sis have eroded. The "slowness" of a and will for some time to come be stand-
dings as proof of "development" that is practice comprised largely institutional ing on shifting sands. That is, instead of
projects that characterised the socialist
arriving, to create ever more desire for a being oriented purely towards "futures
first world modernity that we are impa- period, which afforded the possibility of that 'will be'" and are already known/
tiently awaiting in the "waiting room of a critical practice (of the Charles Correa, given (and imported from other places
history" (Chakrabarty 2000). Balkrishna Doshi, Raj Rewal) no longer on the globe) we must engage with the
exists. Projects today are primarily com- plural "futures that already 'are'" as a
Politics of _Indian Modernism mercial in rapidly urbanising fringes mode to interpret and "provincialise" the
In the high confidence of the post-inde- with short turnover periods. What is of first (Chakrabarty 2000: 250).
pendence period, modern architecture concern in this new paradigm then is not Therefore, instead of a project of resis-
was popularly conceived as a radical. the presence or absence of a style or a tance as it is generally conceived, one
APRIL 4, 2015 VOLL NO 14 IIDI Economic & Political WEEKLY
18

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which takes the form of a critical region-
alism, a more valid way could be a de-
flection through a critical globalism,
where architecture and urbanism.project
or mainstream alternatives from futures
that already are in a design process that
interpellates normative global futures.
These futures that are-that already
exist-could be the blurred boundaries,
fuzzy edges and hybrid forms that
emerge in the very act of survival, inhab-
itation and appropriation in an urban
landscape of differential value (both
economic and symbolic) created by the
forces of globalisation.
The appropriation of spaces by the
homeless under flyovers-the imposing
transportation infrastructure projects of
our times, hybrid variations of housing
and commercial informality that foams
up around software cities, info-parks
and such formal "planned" development
are all potential sites of such already ex-
isting futures. These are critical also be-
cause they are examples of what Henri
Lefebvre called real, "lived" space,
where multifunctionality is engendered
and aesthetics invented as the planned,
hard "abstract" space (and modernity)
of the state and the formal market gets
.softened and interiorised (Lefebvre 1992).
By projecting and reimagining the fu-
tures that are, architecture and urban-
ism can create through its discourse,
multiple and alternate images of the
"good city life," more just and equitable,
which could, then, induce new forms of
city life (Oommen 2013; Castells 2009).
Echoing David Harvey's call for utopian
processes over spatial utopias to create
the just city, such a project will not
involve overt political claims or associa-
tions, but a sub-political mobilisation of
power and rights by using architecture's
and urbanism's core disciplinary exper-
tise of form, space, experience and its
desirous representation to make alter-
nate propositions-of ways to inhabit/
dwell in our cities.
But what are the means through
· which such reimaginations can be man-
dated? Perhaps the city can become the
"principal collective instrument" where
claims can be made of architecture, much
in the way the political society-the
people who are excluded from civil
Economic & Political WEEKLY 11111 APRIL 4, 2015
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COMMENTARY
society-strategically manoeuvres, resists Forty, Adrian (1992): Objects of Desire: Design and
Society since 1750, London: Thames and
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Regionalism: Six Points towards an Architec-
Such collective claims can push archi- ture of Resistance" in Hal Foster Anti Aesthetic:
tecture and urbanism that is currently Essays on Postmodern Culture, Seattle: Bay
Press.
restricted to its immediate site at the
Fukuyama, Francis (1992): The End of History and
mercy of client and capital towards cre- the Last Man, New York: Free Press.
ating "enabling fields that accommodate Hays, K Michael (1984): "Critical Architecture:
Between Culture and Form," Perspecta, Volume
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lived, bottom up spaces (Koolhaas 1995). Heidegger, Martin (1975): Poetry, Language,
Thought, New York: Harper and Row Publish-
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Economic&PoliticalwEEKLY
REVIEW OF RURAL AFFAIRS
December 27, 2014
Food Subsidy: Concept, Rationale, Implementation
Design and Policy Reforms -Bhupat M Desai, Errol D'souza, NV Namboodiri ·
Economic Benefits of Futures: Do Speculators
Play Spoilsport in Agricultural Commodity Markets? -KG Sahadevan
Projected Effect of Droughts on Supply, Demand, -Praduman Kumar, PKJoshi,
and Prices of Crops in India Pramod Aggarwal
Groundwater Irrigation-Electricity-Crop Diversification Nexus in Punjab:
-Anindita"Sarkar, Arjit Das
Trends, Turning Points, and Policy Initiatives
Agricultural Productivity Growth: Is There Regional Convergence? -Balaji SJ, Suresh Pal
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