Khosla 1979

Social Scientist
Aesthetics of Architecture
Author(s): Romi Khosla
Source: Social Scientist, Vol. 8, No. 5/6, [Marxism and Aesthetics] (Dec., 1979 - Jan., 1980), pp.
101-114
Published by: Social Scientist
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ROMI KHOSLA
Aesthetics
ofArchitecture
THE primaryaim of man has always becn thatof survival.The

greatestthreatto him is one of extinction. He is at once a biolo-
gical and a social being-a cultural being with natural origins.
Certain types of behavior have primarily natural instinctive
origins (reproduction,eating),while othershave culturalorigins
(fashion,craftand so on)
The means of man's survivalare expresseddirectlyin basic
relationshipsbetween himand the community (marriage, kinship,
clan, caste) and betweenhimand nature(hunting,cultivating,min-
ing). Expressedin a diagram,a cultureis built on thisbasic triang-
ular relationship.
NATUJRE
(LifeSupportSystem)
COMMUNIT MAN
(Group) (Individual)
figI
The degree of civilization that a culture may be said to
possessdependsupon the finenesswithwhich this triangular base
is keptin balance over the course of time. Thus tribal cultures
may be consideredto bc highly "civilized" if these relationships
arc finelybalanced. Converselysophisticatedurban cultures can
be highly "uncivilized" because there is little evidence of this
triangularrelationshipbeing in balance. Non-literateman lives
102 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
in a complete system which defines his relationship with his

community and with nature. The sense of history as we understand
it (the development of society in time) is completely absent, and
the tribe is concerned solely with tryingto ensure survival in the
immediate present. The tribe has absolute laws which govern all
the relationships within the triangle. There are precise rules of
conduct for behaviour between the individual and the community
and nature. Totemism (using it in the broad sense to include all
myths, tales, taboos and so on) is the communication system which
incorporates all these rules. A single rule or taboo will simultanie-
ously deal with a number of relationships. For instance, the indi-
vidual featuring in the taboo will be identified by his position in
the tribe (as a chief, a diviner or a particular kin) and the taboo,
which is the rule, specifies the conduct of this person vis-a-vis the
community or nature. For the purposes of remembering these
rules of conduct, the community or tribe is divided into its various
elements (clan, sub-clan, family, son, brother-in-law, chief,
magician, third son and so on.) Nature too is divided into its
various elements (groups of plants, parts of flowers, animals).
Each of these totemic taboos is a method of communicating
informationto the clan or tribe. The content of this information
varies so that a distinctionbetween the forbidden and the permitted
simultaneously reflectsthe distinction between species. The myth
or story is the logic by which the object or person has a place in
the total environment. In the mind of the tribal, there is logical
equivalence between a collection of natural species and a world of
social groups. This equivalence is expressed through a totemic
system that relates each unit of nature (tree, insect, parts of plants
and so on) wvitheach unit of society.
forSurvival
Struggle
Thus the prime struggle in primitive society was between
the community and nature. The individual's role was totally sub-
servient to the community and taboos regulated his behaviour,
but at no time could he opt out of the community on whom he was
dependent for his survival. The relationship between man and
nature was essentially monitored by the community. Man's (the
individual's) access to the life support system was through the
community. Marriage was the central institution which linked the
role of the individual to the economic functions of the tribc. The
totemic system stressed certain ordered principles-the pre-emi-
nence of the social over the natural, the group over the individual
and organization over the arbitrary.
AESTHETICS 01 ARCHITECTURE 103
As long as the processof economic production, which was

simplythe procurementof itemsof survival,was on some sortof
communisticbasis, competitionwas non-existentbecause the tribe
as a whole and each individual were directly experiencingthe
strugglefor suirvivalthat existedbetweenman and naturein their
day-to-daylife. Marx has observed that in orderto produce,the
people enter into definiteconnectionsand relationswithone an-
otherand onlywithinthesesocial connections and relations,does
action on nature,production,take place.
The developmentof feudalismand capitalism isolated man
fromthe communityand fromhis life support system. Advanced
capitalism utilizestechnologyand labour to extract,fromthe life
supportsystem,its own profit.The community'saccess to its own
life support system is thus taken over by individual groups. A
communistculturemustrestorethe balance. The role of a com-
munistculturewill be to ensure the community'sexistenceas a
group which is pitchedagainstnaturefor survivaland not against
parts of itself. It is necessaryto replace patternsof ownershipso
that all indispensableresourcesbelong to the communityat large.
The paired familymustcease to be the basic unit of social organi-
zation.
Ideal oftheFuture
These assumptions govern the fundamental assumptions
about the architectureof the future,just as theygovernedthe
historyof architectureof the past. The map of the human settle-
mentsof the ages in the past and future are a physicalrepresenta-
tion,a symbol,a photograph of man's mode of survivaland how
the cultureof each age has regulated the basic tripartiterelation-
ship betweenman, communityand nature. In order to illustrate
thisprincipleacross a span of time,three settlementssymbolizing
the past, present and the futurehave been selected.The past is
symbolizedby a tribal village layout, the presentby the capitalist
cityof today and the distant futureby UltimateCity which is also
the last cityon earth,a symbolof an entity which is constantly
developingas part of the dialectical process. It is conceivedas
the last city because it is also an ideal which undergoes a quali-
tativechange to become somethingelse otherthan an urbansettle-
mentor city.
In applyingthe termaesthetics to architecture,it has to be
interpretedin the historical context to show how a particular
society,dependingupon its stage of developinent,generatesitsown
architecturalformsand that changes in thebase of a societycause
104 SOCIAL SCIENTJST
changes in the form of architecture.The reason is not really

difficultto understand.With the exceptionof tribal architecture,
the architecture of the slave, feudaland capitalistcras has been the
repositoryof thesurpluswealthcreamedoffby theelite. So architec-
turehas always been patronizedby the rulingelite and hence its
formsimplyreflectsthe aspirationsof thiselite.
The form and layoutof the primitivevillage was governed
by the physicalidentityof huts reflecting economic equality,
clusteringof hutsreflecting social organization and specific loca-
tion of the settlementreflectingits dependence upon the food
gathering source. The form and layout of the medieval city
reflectedthe protectiveand supremerole of the churchor temple
or mosque and the palace. The formand layout of the capitalist
cityis dominatedby institutions thathold propertyand production
resourcesin monopolyownership,The formand layout of Ultimate
City, the cityof the future, is dominated by unknown features
which willemergefromthe classless societywhercnature,the life
support system, is restoredto the ownershipof thecommunityas
a whole.
Let us thenconsiderthe arclhitecture of a primitiveculture.
To illustrate the point, a village in New Guinea is taken. The
location is on Mailu Island, Papua (Figure2). The distance bet-
ween the parallel rowsof hutsis about 30 feetand the sea is some
30 yardsaway. The houses facc into the streetwhich is the com-
munal space kept clean by womeni. Each clan is confinedto a
specificpart of the village and relationship betweenthe tribe and
the sca, the lifesupportsystem,is clearlydefined:
1) Land and fishingrightsare commonlyowned.
2) Fishing,huntingand sharingof the spoils are on a clan
basis.
3) Canoes and fishingnets are owned on the basis of sub-
clans. This is understandableas these need to be fabri-
cated and maintainedby more than just a family.
4) Fishinghooks are owned by thefamily.
Spatial expressionis an extensionof social integration. The
plan clearly reflectsthiesocial organizationof tribewith a single
linear communityspace. The social divisioninto clans and sub-
clans is clearlyrcflectedin the layout where sub-clans with their
own headmen,inheritance rights, communal ownership of nets
and boats, clustcrtheirhouses together.All natural and indispen-
sable resources belong to the communityat large whercasthe
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106 SOCIAL SCIENTISTr
products of culture (the canoe, the net, the hook) are owned by
those who produce them.
But there are some aspects of primitive life other than just
food gathering, which also architecture reflects. Let us consider
the Mbuti pygmy camp. The location and composition of the
Mbuti camp changes frequently. Women build the huts which
consist of several bent withes dug inito the ground and covered
with broad leaves. The location of the entrance-a gap-and its
orientation are most significant,and depend entirelyon the woman
making the hut. If she wants to express her love or respect for
some group or individual, she locates the entrance of her hut
facing that person's hut, the precise orientation depending on the
closeness with which she regards the person or group. If she is
angry with a person she will face the entrance away from that
person, and should her anger melt away the entrance can be rever-
sed. So we see that apart from performing a function (reflect-
ing social organization), architecture also reflectsaspects of primi-
tive life which are concerned with the quality of life. This concept
of the quality of life is another nebulous term which escapes
logical definition.
FeudalArchitecture
Moving away from a primitive culture, let us consider a
pre-capitalist or a primarily feudal culture. Feudal culture, in
terms of the way it exercises the tripartite relationship between
man, nature and community, really falls between the capitalist and
tribal cultures. For, in a feudal society man has not altogether
lost contact with his life support system. He is still engaged in
some aspect of procurement of nature's bounty for his survival
However the man-community relationship has already altered,
and the rise of institutionalized religion and private land owner-
ship has created an elite which is beginning to be removed from
a direct working relationship with the life support system. The
case study for this is located in the western Himalayas where
Buddhisin has flourished forjust under a thousand years.
Buddhism came into the western Himalayas (Ladakh, Spiti,
Lahoul) from India, via Kashmir. The people of this region were
divided inlto two basic groups, the remnants of which exist till
today. One group was nomadic, while the other had settled in
agrarian communities along the river networks. This fundamental
division in occupation came about because of climatic conditions
which restrictedthe movement of cattle and people during the
AESTHETICS OF ARCHITECTURE 107
long wintersso that the summermeant that land had to be culti-

vated and the cattle takento distantpastures. So the nomads took
the cattlewhile the agrarian groupscultivatedthe land. Into this
societycame Buddhismwithits organization,hierarchiesof autho-
rityand monasteries.
The monastery became the physical manifestationof the
symboliclink betweenman and his origins,his reason forexistence
and his inevitabledestiny.As the agrarian villagers came to look
agog at the new monasteries,bands of monks were at hand to
explain to themthe futilityof their insignificantlife. Gradually,
the entirecollectionof tribal mythsand taboos, totemsand rules
was replaced by literatetraditions.The replacementwas complete
because Buddhismabsorbedeveryaspect of tribal beliefand gave
it a pictorialformwithinthe Buddhistsystem.There were water
gods, wind gods and all the other tribal forcesin the Buddhist
pantheonbecause each deityof Indian origin could have many
aspects and so tribal nomads and their agrarian brethren were
able to see their entire universeas only a small part of the vast
Buddhistuniversewhich,of course,was superior. And so the vil-
lage paid homage to the monastery and the landowners provided
the surplusto maintain the monks.
The most important aspect of the monastery was that of
being the extension of the political arm of the king. These mon-
asteriesdeveloped and flourishedas part of a programmeof terri-
torialexpansion. This territorialexpansion was planned around
unitsof civil and military administrationwhich were centredon
the fortand monastery,which was a combined structure.Each
monasteryhad a nutnberof villages under its controland it also
owned land in cach of thesevillages which was let out to tenants
fora two-thirds or half share of the crop. In the culturalrealm,
the tribal festivals anid customs were convertedto Buddhistones
and the monastery became the focal point of all culturalevents.
It was imperativeforthe Buddhiststo replace the entire collective
body of tribal beliefs and knowledge witha totallynew one and
the speed with which it was done was due primarilyto the intro-
ductionof literacy which replaced the oral traditions of a non-
literateculture. The monasterybecame the centreof a tailored
systemof formaleducation,including medicine,fineart, religious
philosophyand astrology.The share-croppingrole of the mona-
sterywas to bringto it tremendouswealthand the surplusof this
was convertedinto silverand gold and other treasuresof art. This
naturallymade thema targetof attack and thusemergedthe for-
tressmonastery upon a hill. An example of this is the Spittuk
108 SOCIAL SCIENTIST,
monastery in Ladakh. Already the delicate tripartite balance bet-

ween man, nature and the community had beenr upset and food
gathering through exploitation ha(d become the order of the day.
Architecture remained the mirror of fetudalsociety.
Moving on from a feudal society, and leaving aside the glo-
rious Greek Tenmplearchitecture of colonial India where the British
identifyingthemselves as the Greek Gods, built their institutions
to rule Indians, let us move onto the mature capitalist city of to-
day. If we regard the city as a functional object, an object that
serves the inhabitants, we are confronted by its dual aspects.
Firstly, the city is a weapon of survival-a weapon that is pitched
against nature and hence capable of controlling the extraction of
produce from the earth. Secondly, the city functions as an artifact
which enriches the quality of life of its inhabitants. These dual
aspects are only an extension of the natural (survival) and cultural
aspects of any human settlement.
Thie quiality of life withina city depends upon its mode of
survival from without.A coal strike at Dhanbad makes dinner cold
in Saharanpur. Since the forces which regulate the survival of the
city are predominantly economic, the history of economics
remains largely the history of urban settlements. Economics
regulates the supply and distribution of the carth's produce and
the ideology provides the ways in which this distribution can take
place. The history of economics and ideologies is also a record of
the changes which have taken place in the rights of different clas-
ses of people to a sh are in the earth's produce. The focal point of
any urban settlementhas been created by the class which lhas had
the largest share of the produce.
From its birth place in Europe, the capitalist city reaches
out its tentacles all over the world seeking its nourishment. Thhe
motor car, as a product, depends upon a inetworkof channel.s
that siphon offthe produce from the underdeveloped parts of the
globe. As these tentacles are "cut" the capitalist city withdraws
them and attempts to survive on "food" nearer home. The capitalist
city is a large conglomeration. Its needs for "food" are tremendous
and its catchment area is global. The firsttime in history when it
was possible to feed a city of even a million inhabitants was in the
nineteenth century. The invention and commercialization of the
transoceanic and intercontinental sea transport meant that the
bullock cart as the unit of food transportation was replaced by
bulk carriage. The railways, colonization and the steamnshipenabled
the capitalist cities to feed offlands in distant places.
The link between man and nature in the capitalist city has
become very obscure. The urbanized millions of the American
and European continents have totally removed themselves from
nature, from the complex biological forces that control their lives
on the planet. The responsibilities of the control of "food" extrac-
tion from nature has beeni hianded over to the multinationals who
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ilies,comfortablein theirmutual interdependence, fan out with a network of

channels that siphionoffthe sui plus and raw materials fromthe underdeveloped
parts of the globe.
have mesmerized the inhabitants with gadgets that "(enrich" the

'quality" of life (continus pop music fror birth to death, 24-
channel television set at your finger tips, the 1980 Pierre Cardin
show) and totally removed them from any aspect of survilval.
The myths, taboos and totemic rules of capitalist society
are not about man's relationship with nature and his place in the
community but about the triumph of individuality over the
community. Besides the "star" system, the idea of reinforcing the
fragmentation of the community into individuals is propagated at
every level. Land, a communal asset, is parcelled offinto individu-
al bedrooms and one communal space which may be a quarter of
the area occupied by the individual bedrooms. Never is, it as-ked
whether each person needs his own room, his own cupboard, his
own private bed, his own radio, his own car and so oni. This is
the basic assumption of capitalist urban life. And so the urban
form reflects this emphasis on individuality with large areas taken
up by private housing and other large areas taken up by private
comimercial offices. The investments are enormous. The houses
remain empty all day, the officesare empty all night and wide
roads carry the people every morning to theirdesks and every

evening back to their empty houses. Life is enrichied not by
contactwith natuireor the link with the life supportsystembut
withsensual inputsthatwhollyemphasizethe quality oflife in the
cityto the completeneglectof the aspect of survival,the weapon
of extraction.Weare only too aware of the urban jungle of a capi-
talistcityso one need not discuss the quality of life within it to
such a degreeof detail. The real problem is one of visualizinga
futureurban settlementthat it not only gets over the worstdefects
of the capitalist city but also transcends the lags of an urban
settlementin a socialistsocietywhich is stillweigheddown with
rootsof its earlier origins.
If one were to make certain assumptionsabout the culture
of a trulycommunistsociety,we could, perhaps, visualize theform
of urban lifein thatdistant future.The main assumptionis that
the close link between man, communityand nature has been
restoredto a level thatis near to the one discussed earlier forthe
tribal cultures. We may assurne that communistsocietyis trying
to keep in delicate balance the tripartite relationshipbetween
man, communityand nature. Some of the other assumnptions
that we may take for granted are: it is a post-Revolutionary
time, there is equality of all, the words "exploitation" and
'samizdat'occur in the dictionaryof dirtyslang, the artistis free
and thereare no political boundaries.
BeyondUrbanCivilization
Amidst thisheaven on earthis placed the Ultimate City,
a cityof the future,a communistideal and quite literallythe last
cityon earth. That is to say its eventualdecay must signal an end
of all forms of urban civilization and the beginning of some
entirelynew way of Life. In developing constantly,the Ultimate
City evolvesbeyond urban civilization where the inhabitantsseek
a new lifein which man is preoccupiedwith the accumulationof
knowledge.The consequences cannot be foreseenby us.
Thc UltimateCity has two clear functionsas a unitofsurvi-
val. The firstis to be the hub of an economyin a state of economic
equilibrium.The second is one of dynamic social progresswhich
does not contradict thiseconomicequilibrium.The emphasis oni
growthand developmentis shiftedaway from economic wealth to
knowledge.Perhaps exponentialgrowthwill be switched to linear
growthwhereindustrial capital will stabilize itself by equating
investment rates with depreciatingrates.
The iimage of a plan as Ultimate City giowvs out of'an existingcity. It aimnsto
bring its inhab)itantscloser to their modes of survival. Phe puipose of survival
is served by Migration Settlemnents which have all been squeezed into this plan
though in real life theymay be so separated by geographical distance that some
days in a balloon may carry inhabitants fromone city to another.
A-food farm;B--migratorysettlementfor farminlgC-Storage; D-aultoma-
ted core; E-home Settlement; 1 the old city; G migratory settlement for
mini.ng.
The Ultimate City will function economically in such a way

that its own inhabitants will be responsible for its survival In a
classless society it cannot be assumed that certain nations or classes
of people will provide the labour and produce for certain others
who are privileged. The purpose of survival in the Ultimte Csity
will be served by migrationsettlementsThe inhabitants of the city
will migrate seasonally away from their homesettlementsin order to
gather the produce of their economy A; igrationsettlementsare the
weapons of the survival of the Ultimate City So the Ultimate City
is really a whole chain of settlementswith the inhabitants moving
between them. The Ultimate City is also a "mine city", "food
city", "leisure city", "knowledge city", "fish city". Perhaps
"knowledge city" and "leisure city" are one and the same or per-
haps they are separate. Selfsufficiency will be the key of the
Ultimate City. On a planet that is seen to be divided beyond
national boundaries into regions of self-survival, each region will
support a deTse urban community.
Successful urban life requires the satisfaction of both
material and sensual needs (nature and culture). As an artifact (a
112 SOCIAL, SCIENTIST
centre of culture) the city must provide a network of services at

the material level (food) and a variety of impressions at the sensual
level. In the course of time there are changes in the life styles of a
city's inhabitants. A city which is responsive to these changes will
be better able to improve the quality of life within its boundaries
than one which remains comparatively unresponsive. Ultimate City
is the firstcompletely responsive city; for its inhabitants will parti-
cipate directly in both the decisions which activate change, and
the work that becomes necessarv to achievc this change.
In the past, formal architecture (as distinct from native
architecture which belongs to the people) and the whole body of
architectural knowledge have been utilized to overawe the people
with both scale and sheer beauty. In this sense the architecture of
Ultimate City truly belongs to the people and it is not a weapon of
suppression. Ultimate City provides an environmetntthat saturates
the senses and gives man a richer life. TFiheelements of this func-
tion are contained in the intuitive process of creation. The creators
of the city are the very people who irnhabitit. Thieirconception of
the city is a direct expression of their creativity. Here, in this ideal
and yet last city on earth, there is the freestpossible action of the
individuals and the community. Conflicts between choices are
resolved through discussion, arbitration or struggle. Invention
changes the range of choices and will ofteni be used to overcome
conflicts.
Culture City
ofUltimate
The culture of UltimnateCity will have evolved from tribal,
feudal, capitalist, socialist and communist foundations in a process
of negation and development, and it will have preserved only the
positive achievements in its inheritance. The most important of
these will be techrnology. A distinictionis important to maintain.
The development from a penultimate city to Ultimate City invol-
ves a fundamental clhange in social structure because penultimate
city is the urban settlementof a socialist society which has all the
cultural and social lags of its capitalist past. Thus the penultimate
city is still a city in the traditional sense of the word where occupa-
tional and class distinctions still continue to exist. Ultimate City
is beyond these distinctions and hence is not an urban settlement
of the type familiar to us; on the contrary,it is a string of settle-
ments linked together by the constant movement of people.
Ultimate City separates technology from its linikswith the defunct
social structure and realigns it to a newer social order where sur-
vival in a self-sufficient environment is the simplest and most basic
AESTHETICS OF ARCHITECTFURE 113
law. The pathi of progress of technology will be specifically direc-

ted. Sciences, a part of knowledge, will show the total range of
technical possibilities that can be developed regardless of their use
or abuse. Only those possibilities will be developed which are
directly related to the problems of survival at the physical (natural)
and social (conmmunity)levels. Thus science will open up the total
possibilities and technology will develop the desirable possibilities.
.4re~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Anothierimiageof Ultimate City. It shows thc beautifulUltimnateC ity risinig ouit

of the concrete boxes of the past. It lives and breathes, constantly changing
shape. Thie roads of the old city have been preservedbut treesand fields abound
and one leaves Ultimate City to wvalkdlowinlush avenues. Abovo,,techinology
satellites constanitlymonitor all aspects of suirvivalto ensure that there is no
ecological imbalance.
This choice between the total possibility and the desirable possi.
bility will be made on the basis of social choice. Thus, technology
responding directly to social discipline will be used exclusively for
survival on the planet taking into consideration both natural and
cultural demands.
The pictures of Ultimate City are symbols of the ideas of a
Marxist culture and should be seen as images. These images are
presented as symbols of the last urban settlement where nature has
already started taking over the surface of the land that was once
covered with the legacy of capitalist cities. The brick and concrete
and miles of roads are now covered with dense forests, scented
flowers, the sound of birds and the hush of breeze through
branches of shrubs. There are beautiful sunsets every evening
(because the smoke of the factories is gone) and every inhabitant
is in a joyous state as he relaxes and lets his mind wander through
space and time and through the voids of the universe which are no
longer a mystery.

Khosla 1979

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Social Scientist

THE primaryaim of man has always becn thatof survival.The

in a complete system which defines his relationship with his

As long as the processof economic production, which was

changes in the form of architecture.The reason is not really

long wintersso that the summermeant that land had to be culti-

monastery in Ladakh. Already the delicate tripartite balance bet-

ilies,comfortablein theirmutual interdependence, fan out with a network of

have mesmerized the inhabitants with gadgets that "(enrich" the

roads carry the people every morning to theirdesks and every

The Ultimate City will function economically in such a way

centre of culture) the city must provide a network of services at

law. The pathi of progress of technology will be specifically direc-

Anothierimiageof Ultimate City. It shows thc beautifulUltimnateC ity risinig ouit

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