HUMAN FACTORS: SUSTAINABILITY AND HABITABILITY

Demis Roussos Bhargava

Master of Architecture (Design stream), UNSW Student ID 3108479

WORKBOOK # 01: Intro Second

Iteration

“See the world in green and blue, see China, right in front of you
See the canyons broken by cloud, see the tuna fleets clearing the sea out
See the Bedouin fires at night, see the oil fields at first light
And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth…
It was a beautiful day, don't let it get away” 1

“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin' hot spot” 2

Let’s see, how do I begin this? It’s been exactly a week since I left India and landed in Australia, and
three years since I experienced anything remotely resembling formal education (and eight since the
standardized version), so this is going to be a bit difficult. Well, I suppose an introduction is in order
(since this is an intro), followed by ramblings that may or may not be related directly to the issues of
“sustainability” and “habitability”. These are basically concepts, ideas, interests and experiences that I’d
like to include and develop in what I design – theoretical and esoteric notions, to be tempered and
modulated by practicalities of embodied energies and thermal masses and… Which is part of the reason
why I’m here in Sydney, thousands of miles from home, and taking this course as an elective. (And
then of course, there’s the whole issue of my repeated use of the word “I” – an issue informed by the
ancient philosophies of my country and the writings of Western authors like Neale Donald Walsch.) As I
gather, the aim of this class is to understand sustainability and habitability issues, and observing and
documenting these in practice using photography and writing. But that’s for later; right now I’d just like
to get into the groove, so to speak, and understand where I’m coming from. So:

Who I am (personal constructs)

My name is Demis Roussos Bhargava, I’m 25 years old and I come from New Delhi in India. After
completing my Bachelor of Architecture degree from the TVB School of Habitat Studies in 2001 I worked
two years in the office of Prof. Ashok Lall and then a year with my Dad before enrolling at UNSW. I’ve
been lucky enough to have been involved in the design of some very good projects, including a green
office design for Development Alternatives, a redevelopment proposal for an industrial site within the
city, an SOS Children’s “Village” campus in Bhopal and a retirement complex in the foothills of the
Himalayas. In each of these I’ve tried to apply sustainability and habitability principles in addition to the
conceptual and “design” issues, though at a rather amateur level. Hopefully I can evaluate and improve
these designs – and my future works as well – by using what I learn in the class and in the street.

1 Lyrics from ‘Beautiful day’ by U2

2 Lyrics from ‘Big yellow taxi’ by Counting Crows
What I like
I like reading, music, nature and life. They inform what I believe in. And what I believe in informs my
architecture.

What I believe (attitudes – what I think is what I am)

I believe that architects build what they know. We read and see and hear, and then design. Maybe it’s
an ego issue – look at me, I know so much more than just how to draw lines on paper (or in
virtualspace). I’d prefer to think that architecture is a natural expression of our collective knowledge
and beliefs. So I believe in multiple universes and temporal singularity, fractal and Euclidean
geometries, the Third Wave of civilization, and in life on the knife edge between order and chaos. And
while I believe that everything takes place “simultaneously” I believe that we choose our reality and
therefore we don’t conveniently just accept what happens to us as unavoidable.

Why? (value systems)

Because Architecture is about building something from nothing, people living and interacting with their
natural/built environments. If this creating of order from disorder doesn’t fly in the face of entropy,
what does? The Dark Tower ties together music and machine, life and building, a literary construct
existing at the nexus of all possible universes that anchors (or generates) the lines of force that bind
reality. If the Hindu temple is an axis of access to the cosmos the Tower likewise signifies our buildings
acknowledge oneness with the universe, a union of the spiritual and the pragmatic, theory and practice,
form and detail, part and whole, science and religion, all distilled in built form (and I believe it is).
Personal catechism, esoteric belief system, call it what you will. This is what I believe Good Architecture
can be. A solution systemic in reach with the flexibility to resist the tedium of mass-produced monotony
and the mayhem of thoughtless stylism: ‘Anarchitecture’ – one order of chaos that belongs.

Architecture, man and nature

During my 5 years studying at TVBSHS I tried to carry my interest in biology into architecture with
varying degrees of success:

• Thesis design of a Biotechnology Center exploring dissolution of tripartite schema reflecting the
scientist’s role as a participant in rather than a dispassionate observer of nature
• Dissertation on the fractal as an ordering principle in the design of Hindu temples at Khajuraho
• Design of an Archaeological Museum in the historically loaded context of the Delhi Red Fort
• Design of a redevelopment scheme of Kashmere Gate, an urban design project where a new
design extrapolating lines of force of the urban fabric was crystallized about historical and social
fixes, with sustainability principles such as orientation, passive cooling and rainwater harvesting
used
• Scripting and production of a 17 minute digital movie using morphing and editing that showed
natural forms as exemplars for man made structures
• Scripting and production of a 5 minute digital movie conceptually linking Architecture to the
Multiverse, held together by Stephen King’s “Dark Tower”
These and this forms the foundation I want to build my architecture on.
As architects we can shape the built environment to catalyse a positive shift toward uniting nature,
science and society. I recently read Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave, and it just struck me how much we
take things for granted. (It’s a great book and I’d like to go into it in more detail in some other entry,
trying to relate what the class is about at that level, in addition to the physical aspects of the subject.)
Everything about the way we were brought up, the way we live, and society today in general has its
roots in the Industrial Revolution – standardized academic tests, the educational system as a
conditioning camp for the 9 to 5 lifestyle and national government (among others). And why stop there?
Most of the words I’m using here have their origins hundreds and thousands of years ago, and the earth
I take for granted has been in existence 4.5 billion years. So what I do today could have an impact in
50 years, another kind of impact in 200 years and yet another in a 1000 (always assuming we don’t get
blown up before then). I believe every thought floating out of mindspace, every line drawn in
virtualspace (pixels coalescing built future in murky depths of the monitor) and every quick sketch
forged in the heat of (battle) inspiration is of consequence. Of consequence to the picture we paint on
the canvas of the site, to the people who breathe life into that picture today and in the future, and to
pur planet. Of course, practising what I preach is something else altogether.

Next?
• More pictures
• Analyses of previous works
• Works in progress and application
• Research

References
Time Magazine Special: The Age of Discovery
Crichton, M., 1993. Jurassic Park. Ballantine Books
Crichton, M., 2000, Timeline. Ballantine Books
King, S., 1981. The Dark Tower I. Milton Bradley
Toffler, A., 1980, The Third Wave. Bantam Books
Walsh, N.D., 2000. Communion with God. G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Walsh, N.D., 1993. Conversations with God Book 2. Hampton Roads Publishing Company

Image source www.btinternet.com/~digital.wallpapers/space_2.htm

HUMAN FACTORS: SUSTAINABILITY AND HABITABILITY

Demis Roussos Bhargava
Master of Architecture (Design stream), UNSW Student ID 3108479
WORKBOOK # 02: Research and methods
of
“We don’t need no education…” 3

Does research have any use for architecture? Why bother? Research jargonizes the obvious.

Typical findings and interpretative comments from Architectural Psychology and the Unavoidable Art:
1. Introverts have higher privacy standards than extroverts (obviously).
2. When asked staff and factory employees preferred sharing dining facilities on a communal basis
(obviously).
3. Visually handicapped people “see” rooms differently from people with normal sight (obviously).

but

“everyone of the statements is the direct opposite of, or significantly different from what was actually
found” 4

So maybe there’s more to the seemingly obvious after all. After all, the sun doesn’t actually revolve
around the earth does it? Assuming valid research methods came up with these non-intuitive
conclusions, we have to acknowledge that maybe our architecture needs to be driven by an
understanding of the physical and psychological inclinations of individuals and societies, in addition to
the other pragmatic issues. Research has certain limitations:
1. Diversity of information eg. some people may feel colour affects emotions while others might
say political and social factors.
2. Variables in research eg. a research “solution” may not be transferable between cultures, places
and environments.
3. Degree of confidence in results i.e. yes I’ve seen it but how can I be sure that it happens all the
time? If I was in Times Square on New Year’s Eve to see the celebrations, would I be right in
assuming New Yorkers spend all their nights watching a big shiny ball descending from the
skies?

Having said that, maybe the best way to do this would be (for example) to take each slide shown in the
class, note the issue or idea, read about it and look for examples of it in practice in past experiences
and present observations. Maybe come to some conclusions, maybe not… depending on whether or not
I think it’s fair to make a generalization. To test this out, I want to take four photographs from my
album, and then make broad generalizations about the relationship between man and nature at a
macro-scale based on those photographs.

[Man and Nature - in contemplation]

My brother Dev at Gangotri glacier in the

Himalayas, the source of the Ganges River

3 Lyrics from ‘Another Brick in the Wall Part 2’ by Pink Floyd

4
Architectural Psychology and the Unavoidable Art
Photograph by Demis R Bhargava

[Man & nature embraced by the built environment]

Yours truly comfortably attired in traditional Indian

summer clothes, in the courtyard of the India
Habitat Centre in New Delhi

Photograph by Mansi Gupta

[Man and the built environment: no nature]

(smog is not sky)

Railway water tanks at Kashmere Gate in Old Delhi

Photograph by Varun Kapoor

[Man, the built environment and Nature]

Somewhere in Greece

Photograph by Aparna Maladkar

So what tales do these photographs tell? Each

is different, and therein lies the generalization – there is no generalization when it comes to man, built
form, and nature. Man has no coherent or universal understanding of his relationship with nature. He is
the dispassionate observer outside nature who isn’t responsible for what happens to his subject, but he
is also inextricably linked to nature – the revenge of Heisenberg? Do our physical constructs
 a) embrace nature
b) ignore nature
c) acknowledge nature by subjugating it

and whatever they do, what alternatives do we have as architects? Maybe pretty forms and surfaces do
not define “good architecture”, but the opportunities it provides for people to play out their parts. By
observing how people behave in different environments, and how comfortable they are (physically and
socially), we might not end up with a set of rules for architecture, but with a better understanding of
the possibilities for architecture.

“What with the difficulties about obviousness, the relevance of such diversity of information to design,
the large number of variables involved, the degree of confidence when looking at the results, the ‘data
paradox’, the first and second order problems… he (the Architect) may be convinced that the best and
easiest way out is to forget the whole thing and design completely by feel… What is wrong is that he
does not test his ideas against what we do know about people both from psychology and from those
architects who have succeeded in designing pleasing and humane environments.” (Mikellides, 1980)

“Architectural psychology seeks to find out why people react to buildings differently. Why are some
buildings and environments liked more or hated less….” (Mikellides, 1980)

Rajasthani village in India

The bare necessities: shelter from the desert
sun, and family. But would an American
conditioned to live in AC glass boxes be as
comfortable? Different social backgrounds
count as much as different environmental
backgrounds. By researching and
comparing, we could understand these
backgrounds better.

Photograph by Mansi Gupta

References
Crichton, M., 1993. Jurassic Park. Ballantine Books
Mikellides, B., 1980, Architecture for people: explorations in a new humane environment. Holt, Rinehart, and
Winston, 1980.