our indian sad state of documentation..: Charles Correa: India’s Greatest Architect charles Correa’s gift his archive of over 6000 drawings to the RIBA Library. .... India s architectural icon gives away his entire life collection to r i b a , suggest the state of documentation efforts in this country ,...there are absolutely no organisation in this country which will treasure his contributions ... R I B A library is the best place... look at many of the organisations like intach , N A S A , zonal nasa ,,who crave for the students work,, the students and faculty have put in hundreds of man hours documenting every nook and corner of country ,spending their parents hard earned money..., where are the drgs and documents ? has any one seen a book ... why a book.. at least a book let for the students.... .... the greed and the obsession to posses made every one lock these valuable student information to rot. ... s o l u t i o n : m a k e t h e d o c u m e n t a t i o n v i r t u a l... let every student see it, read it and use it... history of our land is for our learning and not to be kept in some dark,congested libraries.. C O N T E M P O R A R Y A R C H I T E C T U R E : great architects like geoferry bawa, carlo scarpa, aldo rossi,, Peter Zumthor, wang shu, Rafael Moneo, rob and leon krier ,our own doshi has showed us how much we can learn from history and place....... doshi talks about the learnings from madurai.... how many of us have really analysed and felt what doshi says.... .honestly ,i have not done..............................we were not taught and trained to look at and learn from history.. we are the sons and daughters of modern architecture at least , we have a chance now.. we can correct the mistake..otherwise the 2000 year learning will become a dead document in the documentation libraries ..we need to re orient the students and instill a new sense to decipher / decode history and tradition to learn the essence of it than copying the elements to represent.. copied history got died in few years by the post modernist .... if the cultural essence of the past to continue , we need living architecture the documentation that we do for nasa is a very high quality presentation ... but i wonder , how many of the students who work on that really know what they are doing? i have guided many .. there are differences between when 20 people work on a topic and 3 or 4 people do the same.. ...3 young students from s.a.p , ar.bhuvana sundar ,kalyana sundar worked together with Jaffer Khan as the team leader won the nasa trophy .... they did detailed analysis with hand sketches , gingee fort was unknown at that point of time.. the young team from s a p , made all of us proud with their unique , simple approach.. .............................todays , NASA is done under tremendous pressure by the students.. to perform very well at the nationals require months of hard work... i am suggesting that our children need to enjoy architecture, feel the story of our land , civilization, ..yes , the buildings of the past tell us very interesting stories , every student can be given a prize, even if they a do small , simple documentation............. at second and third year stages they need to be oriented ..... [ c e p t does simple measured drawing assignment of small building only] ............................................................ the dead monuments ( like large temple complexes , palaces ) can be left alone for the researchers and archaeologists ...[ as we all feel ,sita ,u and i , this type of documenting major buildings are time consuming and very strenuous...] ... what i am suggesting are the small houses where our parents and grand parents lived, narrow streets of the villages, narrow alley ways culminating in the temple square Mariamman koil ,. small towns with numerous temple squares can be a great source architectural and planning discovery and joy ... these squares do not stand a chance [ if a student selects them for n a s a] to become a documentation of the year but, the leanings the young , small groups of students get when they analyse them may rewrite the principles and concepts our present architectural design thoughts... the student will be closer to the people and land that he/ she lives...
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 18:45:03 +0000