Hiranmay Karlekar
Eric Hobsbawm, the eminent historian who passed away not so long ago, wrote in Fractured Times: Culture and Society in the Twentieth Century, “The second (the first being printed publication) fine art which is doing well is architecture, and this will continue in the twenty-first century. For humanity cannot live without buildings. Paintings are a luxury, but houses are a necessity.” Hobsbawm further stated that in the course of the 20th century, the architect, particularly the architect of great public buildings, had become “the ruler of the world of fine arts.”
Non-architects like this writer, who might be startled to find architecture categorised as a fine art, would be interested to know that the famous Bauhaus (literally, house of construction) movement was founded by the architect, Walter Gropius, with the idea of creating “total” works of art encompassing all the arts including architecture. The movement, which had a profound impact on art, architecture, typography and graphic, interior and industrial designs, flourished in Germany from 1919 to 1933, when it was closed down under pressure from the Nazis who considered it as a centre of communist intellectualism.
The fate of the Bauhaus movement might prompt scepticism about Hobsbawm’s ascription of a ruler’s status to the “architects of great public buildings.” The riposte will be that while the Third Reich has been destroyed and the Nazis cast into history’s sewers, the name ‘Bauhaus’ continues to command admiration. As for his glorification of the role of architects, particularly those of “great public buildings”, he argues that this was because they found “the most suitable, that is the most costly and impressive, expression of the megalomania of wealth and power, and also that of nationalisms.”
Hobsbawm has a point. Besides discharging the functions they are made for, the huge and impressive buildings that unleash hyperbolic gush, stand testimony to the wealth and power of the individuals or institutions behind their construction or of a nation if they house Government or other public offices. For countries just emerging into wealth and power, these constitute statements of their arrival. Consider the skylines of Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur, Dubai and Doha, which appear calculated to rival, if not outshine, the famed ocean frontage of New York City.
In India, cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi and those in the National Capital Territory around it, have malls, offices, hotels and residential buildings that touch the skies. There, of course, is nothing new about buildings being statements. The Taj Mahal was not only a breath-taking construction but a statement of Shah Jahan’s love for his wife Mumtaz Mahal and of his power to have a monument like that built. The Red Fort was not only a massive citadel but an announcement of Mughal power and invincibility. Later, it became a symbol of the goal of independence from the British, and the flying independent India’s flag from its rampart the metaphor for the goal’s realisation – a fact underlined, after independence, by the Prime Minister addressing the nation – and an assembled large and distinguished gathering – from its ramparts every Independence Day on August 15.
There is, however, far more to architecture than constructing buildings that are statements. It also includes the building of small houses for middle class and poor people, a field where Laurie Baker and others following his example have made path-breaking contributions. Also, gargantuan concrete and sheet-glass monuments as well as lesser structures like commonplace dwellings are part of localities, towns or cities and the dynamics of their collective lives.
All this needs to be remembered because of two developments – the continued growth and proliferation of cities and global warming. Desmond Morris points out in The Human Zoo that the city is as unnatural a place for humans as the zoo is for animals. For a million years after their emergence as Homo sapiens, humans were tribal hunters until the end of the Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, when farming began and eliminated the need for hunting for food. It also led to surpluses, trade, and specialisation, which in turn made for the rise of villages, towns and cities. Morris writes, “The species (humans) had evolved as a tribal animal and the basic character of a tribe is that it operates on a localised, interpersonal basis. To abandon this fundamental social pattern, so typical of the ancient human conditions, was to go against the grain.”
With the emergence of towns more than 8,000 years ago, human became citizens and super-tribesman. The “key difference was that in a super-tribe he no longer knew personally each member of his community.” This change “from the personal to the impersonal society,” was to “cause the human animals the greatest agonies. As a species we were not biologically equipped to cope with a mass of strangers masquerading as members of our tribe.”
