Transforming SPA Avinash vishvakarma I remind some words of one of my favorite faculty member Mr. Tapan Chacravarty when I was in first year . It was his studio lecture delivered early in the semester in architecture studio to introduce us to architectural world. It was his second lecture after his one hour speech about perception of an architect about a pencil. He said that an architect’s approach to solve a problem would be different from an administrator approach. Former would adopt a creative approach or in other word would create something to solve the problem but an administrator adopt a destructive approach in solving the problem…at that time I along with my classmates were newcomer to this architecture world and still are but in these four years have witnessed the physical manifestation of what Tapan sir had said about difference in approaches of an architect and an administrator. Let’s relook the way the college or our design studios are shaping or socializing us. Before getting into that we should understand that without having freedom in thinking, freedom in expression, freedom in actions ,and freedom in way of communication a real innovation can’t be materialized . Out of box thinking does not need a specific way of communication. One thing our college did that can be appreciated is its decision of conducting entrance examination through a National Board . Due to this the studios of college have a good number of students from rural background as well which would not have been happened if it would have continued to take its own entrance tests which was generally known to students only from urban areas . I know that a lot of students are being admitted who don’t have genuine interest in architecture but on the other hand it is quite democratic to have students from every corner of the country and from diverse range of income groups, climate and culture. Due to this students from rural India are becoming concerned about the infrastructural problems, the planning issues etc. of their places. They want to work their provided they would get resources. This is a good sign of democracy and equitable development of all regions of the country where majority of the population live in rural areas with less trained professionals. Now let’s have a look on the actions and reactions of our college administration from the point of view of whether their actions consolidate the spirit of architecture which have had been an integral part of the college like SPA throughout it past 60 years glorious history . In 2009-10 the college administration decided to solve the problem of low attendance in the design studios and theory classes. For that they came out with attendance tool by bringing out attendance list without informing the students with good care though no matter they forgot this obligation of publishing attendance list for last several years. This action resulted in a big blow to the morale to over a hundred students who were flunking and being isolated from their batch mates just due to attendance. What I saw at that time was that many of the students who lacked demanded attendance were good designers and used to spend time in creative activities which would have been proved beneficial for overall architecture . So in this way our college started to transform the behavior of its students like a school student . Since the attendance list accident faculty use this as an instrument to control over the minds and expressions of the students. Instead of thinking about design etc. we think about is our attendance is sufficient to pass the year. Another thing is the mode of communication of faculty members to the students in the design studio. As I mentioned above that since college started getting students from rural India as well it produces a challenge before the teachers to teach in such a way so that each students understand what teacher wants them to understand. Right now half of the class do not participate in the class discussion because of lack in English proficiency. Those come from English background feel comfortable as faculty also speak in their voice and eventually discourage the expression of others. What I see is that those who are so vociferous and active in class discussion are not generally equally good at design. And those who are not able to communicate in the language faculty and other day-scholars type students speak make greater efforts to make their design more workable so that faculty would not do counter question in discussion session which they find difficult to argument due to their communication problem and faculty’s deliberate indifference to their problem. In this way some of our faculty members are deliberately failing to take responsibility to explore the architectural talents of the students from rural and small towns of India. The reason of this may be the assumption of faulty that if students from the rural regions Have to learn from them they must socialize themselves according to metropolitan culture. There are a variety of students in any class due to different reasons like their background, culture etc. Going with a particular socialized group of students and ignoring some other group is like running away of responsibility. This is what behavior and attitude of our faculty reflects. If a student is not able to create a space as per requirement of the design studio in its design problem then it is supposed by the faculty that either he is not focused enough or lazy or weak in design sense. There can be many reasons behind that. For example in house design it is not necessary to have a name for a space called drawing room which is basically used for receiving guests and other family friends in modern house typologies. A student who have lived in such type of places will perceive this kind of spaces easily but a student who have spent his life in unplanned houses, or other small house typologies not designed by trained architects will take more time to grasp that. Their perception of living spaces and spaces for certain activities will be different. E.g. dining table is not used by most of the families in India for taking food. But here each student is forced to copy a dining table from cad library and place that in house plan .it might be possible to have different scheme for dining area from the student of different part of the country . why is it necessary to forcefully incorporate a western mode of dinning style in Indian context which is even now adopted by a very little proportion of population? Will it not be better to give freedom to every student to search for a better design for dining area which should be rooted in their own culture, their own places. It is true that the main focus of architectural colleges in urbanizing India is to train students in such a way so that they would be able to face the urban problems of big urban centers after coming out in market. But to start to mould them from very beginning into the frames constructed by capitalist developers and other people having profit oriented attitude to suit the market demand is like killing the innovation and obstructing revolutionary steps that could have been taken by the forthcoming architects in near future. Modern dude type so called teachers have took information technology like internet, face book etc. as a tool to get away from their own responsibility and delegate their own work to students. I see that except some popular teachers like Manoj Mathur,P.C..Jain , aruna ramani mam..etc..use blackboard to explain something. Now a days they bring useless power point presentations have been shown repeatedly for several years to explain topic and as soon as student starts to understand something about that the presentation would have been over. When a teacher draws a line it involves a process which is more natural to be grasped by the students compare to the ready-made power point presentations. In these four years college administration had used several tools to bring students to its toe. In first step it brought the ghost of attendance. In the hidden agenda of blocking students in the clutches of yes sir and yes mam. Due to this students get less time to participate in some other activities. Less time to think and do something for extracurricular activities. Its now like take prints and get marks…….nothing else. I second step it brought semester system. This semester system is without carry over . for example a students who is failing In one subject which have no supply examination will repeat the whole year. This attempt aims to make student more like machine than designers. students are spending more time to increase numbers of sheets so to their marks than increasing qualities of design. In third step it stopped allotting room to all first year students. It might be appeared logical in the sense that college had informed to the participating candidates that hostel facility was limited. But this action has negatively affected to the first year studio as high rank students will avoid to come here due to accommodation problem provided they would have more options. It should be mentioned here that college has increased students intake in consecutive three years in architecture. Fourth step which college have taken is to create a new word OFFICIAL SHARING to hide its failure to provide for accommodation to its enrolled students. Supposedly next year it will allot two students for single room OFFICIALLY and say that look we have solved the problem of accommodation . the money will go in the coffers of college administration not in the students who allowed someone to share his room which he got on the basis of merit. So it the betrayal to the students from the college administration who have been allotted rooms because from now the financial support which they would have been getting will not be able to get as the student who will have to share will left with no money to give him after paying to college……cont.
Posted on: Sat, 31 Aug 2013 12:19:13 +0000
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