Architecture: To Create or to Construct?
 

by Tissa Abeysekera, Director, TV Training Institute

Food, clothing, and shelter, they say are the basic necessities of life. When we talk of architecture we are talking of shelter, basically. But the word has an aesthetic connotation. It suggests a creation, a work of art. As Oscar Wilde once said, all art is basically useless.

When it comes to state planning, patronage for the arts is usually low on the agenda. That is except in unusual cases like, King Ludwig of Bavaria, who strained the coffers of his already impoverished kingdom by building a series of the most exquisitely beautiful, royal residences, that in their 18th century gothic-romantic mode are high points in renaissance European architecture.

It is only three centuries after they were built that the Bavarian state in the German Federation earn much revenue from the hordes of tourists who flock to see the extravagance of an eccentric monarch. Perhaps by now the cost of making these fairy-tale structures would have been recovered many times over.

At home we have an instance of regal extravagance of this nature. The beautiful Kandy Lake, the Cloud Parapet surrounding the citadel and lining the moat, and the Octagon, that give to the last royal capital of Sri Lanka its charm and its character, were built by a king who wanted to recreate here, an abode of the gods nestling in the clouds.

It was built against tremendous opposition from the clergy and the people; from the clergy because it violated certain principles of city planning decreed by Buddhist ethics. In the Buddhist kingdom coming down from the 3rd century BC, a city was not built round the palace complex. It radiated from a holy center, where resided the Sacred Tooth of the Buddha. All power emanated from there, and the ruler drew his mandate from it. It followed necessarily then, that cities in ancient Lanka were almost always Holy Cities. Secular needs and indulgences took second place.

On that day architecture was born

One day, in some faraway time, a man walked out of his cave and built for himself a dwelling. He had to build it himself, because nature had not provided him with a suitable shelter where he wanted to live. All these long years he had lived where he lived because he had no choice. Like in the case of homing birds or migratory animals, nature decided where he should live. The first man who walked out of his cave dwelling, decided to break free from this condition. He decided that he should be free to move and strike his roots where certain conditions other than the availability of caves were important to him.

If art is what man makes, and man makes something because nature does not provide it, or what nature has provided does not fully satisfy his needs, then, architecture could easily be the first of the major art forms. We can agree with this concept only if we accept that all art is born out of a need. All such needs add up to a collective aspiration on the part of mankind, and that is the desire to conquer nature.

The driving force behind all of human history is the overpowering desire of mankind to be its own master. Now we are contesting Oscar Wilde. Art is not useless. It could be useless, only in a comparative sense. That creation which satisfies the fancy only of an individual or a group of individuals as against the interests of the larger community, could only be termed, 'useless' or superfluous; something whimsical and therefore precious and in turn therefore, reactionary.

When man left his cave, the natural dwelling provided for him by nature, he broke away from the animal kingdom and began a long and fascinating journey. Along that journey the road map of 'progress' is marked by what he created. Of all such creations collectively termed 'art', architecture is perhaps, the most eloquent. In that exercise, there are two major strands. Man has built to live, and he has built to pray.

Buildings of prayer and atonement

For a long time after he left that cave, man seems to have expended most of his strength and his genius, to build for the gods. Like he carried with him a guilt for turning his back on his creator and his benefactor, by walking out of that cave, man kept trying to appease, to atone. It begins with Stonehenge.

It was not built to live, but to pray to the gods above. These buildings of prayer and atonement, from the dolmens to the sundial-like structures in Maccha Pichchu, and to the pyramids of Egypt and the Dagobas of ancient Sri Lanka, look up to the heavens, almost seeking mercy and grace. The skyward gaze continued even long after the renaissance. The greatest and most celebrated architectural monuments of post renaissance Europe are, despite Versailles and the Blumfontaine, those inspired by faith.

I indulge in quoting a long passage from a book on British Architecture, written during the Second WW. It is by a writer who may not be that well-known and answering to a name which sounds more like a pseudonym; Sacheverell Sitwell. But the book was a gift to me from the legendary Geoffrey Bawa, as a token of appreciation when I made a film on Lunuganga.

I quote to prove my point that even though two world wars had destroyed most of the glorious heritage of European architecture, on the eve of rebuilding their battered cities, the builders were seeking inspiration from the religious edifices built in the past, when men were more pious and closer to god.

Love for architecture

"...we may discover a love for architecture in many different ways. It could come to some persons, from village churches in any part of England; from the towers of Somerset in the Buttercup meadows, or from the carved and painted rood lofts of the Devon churches; from the flint churches of East Anglia and the gilt 'angel' ceilings from Norman columns, or from the fan vaulting of the perpendicular. From the abbeys and cathedrals.

Or it can begin abroad, and come home last to England. It could have its origin from the stiff sculptures and stained glass of Chartres; or from the figures of stone oxen on the towers of Laon; from the white vessel of the church of Vezelay, with its carved capitals and portals, and the church of Saint-Pere, at the foot of the hill, with its open porch and the stone archangels blowing into their trumpets at the corners of the tower."

Fountains of civilisation

"Even though cities have been the fountains of civilisation, many thinkers, from Rousseau to Jefferson, to Thoreau, have regarded cities as the source of corruption and evil. The universal myths of earliest Edens are always set in the country; the city is what happens after sin sets in".

Sodom and Gomorrah, and Babylon, continue to be the genetic strain of the city. However, the city has been the barometer of growth of any country, be it of the First, Second, or the Third World. Almost all the world's population growth over the next thirty years will take place in the cities of developing countries. By the year 2030, according to experts, for the first time in history, 60 percent of the world's population will be living in cities.

Any meaningful statement on architecture, its role in modern life, or the shape of things to come, has to be made within the context of the urban sprawl, and its continuing expansion. The fragmentation of real estate, our extension vertically, skywards, not in search of god, but for space, the maximum utilisation of that precious commodity which forms the core of any economic rationale, all these have had its impact on the way we build, not only to live, but to sell, to promote, to negotiate, and to govern. Even the house of god, has changed its form, and its decor.

Churches and the Buddhist temples

Here it would be an interesting exercise to examine the churches and the Buddhist temples, the Hindu kovils and the Muslim mosques, built during the second part of the last century, and observe how the faithful have attempted to accommodate their gods and their icons, within the rapidly changing socio-economic landscape.

Geoffrey was a very apolitical person

When it comes to how politics and the form of state power my be reflected in architecture, the new Parliament at Sri Jayawardenapura, designed by Geoffrey Bawa is a unique example. Geoffrey was a very apolitical person. But his design for the house to enshrine the ultimate state authority, reflects how much the form and the nature of State power has changed since the British built that colonnaded regal structure facing the sea. We who associated the pomp and grandeur of the State with that edifice, took time to adjust ourselves to the comparatively simple and austere contours of Geoffrey's creation which stands on the banks of a historic stream.

Quite apart from becoming aware of the architectural values encoded in that building, I think what some of us have realised now is, that the new Parliament at Kotte, reflects perfectly, the shift of State power from an imperial center, to the people, an act which was at the heart of our Republican Constitution of 1972 and which declared our complete break from the British Monarchy.

Our response to the irreversible spread of the urban sector, has been very schizophrenic. Our fatal attraction to the City has always been accompanied by a contrary nostalgia for a lost arcadia. This conflict has been a favourite theme of fiction writers from the 18th century.

Feeding on the rich sources of fiction, filmmakers perpetuated it in the twentieth century. From DW Griffith to John Ford, in Hollywood, and from Mehboob Khan to Raj Kapoor in Bollywood, the country boy lost in the city, seduced by the city girl, exploited and brutalized by the back alleys, and finally redeemed by the ever faithful Sita who waits for him in the village, has been an enduring symbol of humanity and good sense. This theme is repeated in the novels which appeared in the first three decades of contemporary Sinhala literature.

Architecture is part of life

I have meandered perhaps, jumped arbitrarily from one point to another, like in an avantgarde movie. The narrative may not have held together. But through all this rambling, I have kept one idea in the foreground; architecture is part of life, or rather, it has to be part of life, and more than any other art form, it is seismographically sensitive to shifts in the socio-economic landscape; more so now, than ever before.

And that is for two reasons. Firstly, in the emerging urban culture, the court, and the market place has overtaken the temple in importance. Religion changes much more slowly than the wheels and formats, the practices and ethics of commerce, and politics, and public life like water in a vessel changes shape accordingly.

Architecture may have come a long way since that first man who moved out of the cave built for himself a shelter. But one thing has remained constant.

We build for shelter; shelter to make love, shelter to raise families, to rest and to relax, shelter for our workbenches, shelter for governance and administration. In short, it means a roof to protect us from the elements. David Robinson, Professor of Architecture in the University of Brighton, in this marvellous, and opulent book on the work of Geoffrey Bawa, identifies a central element in his subject's creations:

"One unchanging element is the roof - protective, emphatic, and all-important - governing the aesthetic whatever the period, whatever the place. Often a building is only a roof, columns and floors - the roof dominant, shielding, giving the contentment of shelter. Ubiquitous, pervasively present, the scale or pattern shaped by the building beneath. The roof, its shape, texture and proportion is the strongest factor."

That to me is a fine definition, of the nature, the function, and ultimately, the meaning of architecture.

Prime Minister at the SLIA sessions :

SLIA offered its services free to the country

Soon after the tsunami struck our coasts on the 26th of December, 2004, the following day or the day after, to be exact, the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects contacted the Prime Minister's Office and offered their professional service free of charge to the country. This was a great and noble act of social responsibility on the part of your professional association.

You came forward so fast to offer your voluntary services to the people of your country despite the fact that the homes of the close relatives of several of your office-bearers had been either damaged or destroyed and this includes the home of your President's mother. Thus we may confidently state that in the matter of social responsibility the Architects came forward to set the standard for the professional community of our country.

It was not long after that the Institute of Engineers, the Institute of Quantity Surveyors and the University of Moratuwa came forward to offer their professional services on a voluntary basis. All these professional communities are now working together with the government voluntarily and free of charge to help construct homes for the thousands of families that were displaced.

Challenge before us

Let us agree that there is a very big challenge before you. You, the Architects of our country, are called upon at this moment of crisis to build homes not houses for the thousands of affected families. You are called upon to build living communities not settlements or camps, for the communities that were affected.

There is a big difference between homes and houses and between communities and settlements. What then is the professional challenge before you?

The challenge for you is to use space to design houses appropriate for living and to use space to design new community settlements for families to interact and live together in harmony. You have to therefore first understand how families with particular culture, with particular pattern of occupation, at particular levels of income, enjoying particular levels of education, following particular religious practices, having particular ways of using their leisure with particular style of life and particular ways of relating to the world and having different aspirations and views and desired future, want to live and also to interact with one another. You have to first understand the people for whom you are building.

The Architect is after all an artist who uses the medium of space to create a living environment by applying to it the technology of building. I hope I have understood the Architect's problem correctly. I don't know, perhaps I have not. But for sure one thing is very clear.

He or she must know the culture, the habits, the practices, the attitudes, the world's views and the aspiration of the people for whom the building is being constructed and so we find it difficult to understand why, specially where foreign aided projects are concerned, foreign Architects are contracted when so many highly talented Sri Lankan Architects are available in the country.

On the one hand, it is Sri Lankan Architects who can best understand the values, the lifestyles of aspiration of the Sri Lankan people for whom a building is being constructed.

On the other, it is unfair by the country to hire foreign professionals for work that can be undertaken by our own Architects. And what had resulted from these practices are underemployment of Sri Lankan professionals on the one side and an unsatisfactory building environment of several foreign aided projects on the other. But we must share the knowledge and experience from the Architects of the other countries.

I hope that we, as a Government, will be able to focus on these realities in the near future and take corrective action. The government is committed to help the national professional communities and strengthen them in order to serve the nation. As such we are happy to understand your problems and associate ourselves with your endeavour.

At ArchWatch readers competition : dressing table prize goes to Anusha

Last week Anusha Nallathamby, a 16-year-old girl from Crow Island, Mutwal who won the ArchWatch competition for a dressing table from Malinda Group of Companies, Moratuwa took over her prize from the SLIA President Architect Rukshan Vidyalankara.

Speaking at the simple handing over event which took place at the SLIA headquarters in Vidya Mawatha, she said this was the first time since leaving school (Ladies College, Colombo) after studies that she took part in a competition.

She had an artistic mind, loved nature, and admired well set houses blending with natural environment. She likes the ArchWatch page the only page in an English daily in Sri Lanka serving for this interest in the reading public.

She was contemplating becoming an Architect, when a week ago she was selected for a banking career by the NTB, and she had already begun her training. Now she has decided to stick to it.

Later in life if she succeeds in rising to the position of a decision maker in banking, she will foster and help those who are taking to Architecture.

She wished to thank and wish good luck to all those in the SLIA, ArchWatch and Malinda Group connected with this competition.

SLIA President, Architect Vidyalankara said he was glad to find that a young girl in her first attempt in a competition had been successful in winning it.

He hoped that in other competitions in life and in her career, she will be the winner. He wished all success in her life.

Architect Vidyalankara also presented her with some copies of the SLIA publication 'Architect' where she will find useful information on housing and the building industry.