Architectural education and its manifestation in the classroom

Critical Thinking in the Design Classroom

Mustansir Dalvi
Professor of Architecture


Teachers Workshop, NIASA, June 2006

Architectural Education in India
Architectural Education in India has been
weighed down by the traditions of
Architectural Practice that labour under
the twin hegemonies of
design and technology.

Institutions governing architectural education
All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE)
Directorate of Technical Education (DTE)
Council of Architecture (COA)
University of Mumbai
Design & Technology
Reactions to historical change, to immediately
preceding narratives, especially in the
twentieth century, whether
in its symbolic iconoclasm,
its stress on functionalism
in its so-called Post Modern avatar of unbridled eclecticism.


The Industrial Revolution
Beaux Arts Classicism
The Arts & Crafts Movement
Bauhaus
Functionalism
Modernism
The International Style
Post Modern Eclecticism
Critical Regionalism
Architecture today
is more and more being informed
by disciplines
out of/other than architecture
70
Fast knowledge, critical theory, structuralism, post-structuralism,
deconstruction, culture studies, gender studies, post-colonial studies,
identity, memory, freedom, compassion, societal constructs, body,
sustainability, ecology (charters), passive/active systems, bioclimatic
design, recycling, computers, programming/customization, information
technology, knowledge management, virtual design, movement,
structural systems, tensegrity, hi-tech, new materials, transportation,
heritage (charters), conservation, documentation, Indian aesthetics,
urban design, urban planning, rural studies, product design,
anthropology, 9/11, 1992/93, historiography, ethnography, social
studies, psychology, behavioral sciences, management, site
supervision, human resource management, social and civic
engagement, network techniques/scheduling, statistics, accountancy,
communication, critical reading, English, journalism, art criticism, Indian
languages, foreign languages, economic theory, GATT, globalization,
post-industrial societies, cartography, boundary conditions/ domains,
new vernaculars, adapted reuse, affordable housing, new recreations,
social justice, democracy, equality, emancipation
Redefining the Student
A student of architecture
is not only
a learner,
but also
a producer of knowledge

What are the tools?
Critical, evaluative, conceptual enquiry
Interconnect concepts/ facts
Use theory and argument
Ask for a higher level of explanation



The initial challenges
Understanding Objective versus Accepted reality
Understanding architecture as a cultural process
Understanding change as a series of discontinuities,
more than cause/effect transitions
in the past
PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM
society characterized by relatively long periods of
equilibrium, punctuated by relatively brief periods of
radical change and upheaval


the current digital age
PUNCTUATED CHAOS
society characterized by relatively long periods of
dramatic change, punctuated by relatively brief periods
of constancy

Business @ the speed of thought
Bill Gates, with Colling Hemingway, (NY, Warner Books, 1999)
What are the Questions?
What is a WORK of ARCHITECTURE?

How is ARCHITECTURE different from NATURE?

How useful is our methodology for evaluation?
(meta-questioning)

ARCHITECTURE
is a 2
nd
Order Discipline
A meta discipline, A critical attitude
Not merely an empirical discipline
like engineering
that needs/seeks/works with data

Architecture deals with
Fundamental issues
Questions what is presupposed
2
nd
Order Questioning
Does this design accept the world we live in?

How does the design reconcile itself to our
imperfect times?

Does my design reflect through application
the technological state-of-the-art of the world
today?

Does it give a direction or hope for the
future?
A methodology
for architectural education
Teachers must recognize ones own
insidiousness in the teaching process

Real learning will not emerge merely out of
the Didactic (which itself emerges out of
biases, prejudices and ad-hoc choices)

a LUDIC process
Built out of the free-flow of discussions, arguments,
questioning of stereotypes, reexamining (but first
recognizing) holy cows
CONTEXTUALISE
Looking at architecture as rooted in the man-made

Recognizing the canons
as privileged ideas/persons, predetermined choices
built by accretion, not reason

Examining the deeper structures in which architecture is
embedded
(after Donald Schon 1995)
DECONTEXTUALISE
Deconstruct/ destabilize accepted meanings and
notions
Make deeper readings of texts themselves to
look for traces of the alternate
Make alternate takes on the canons
Discover myths masquerading as history

The only way to advance in a discipline is to displace knowledge.
And the only discourses that remain healthy are those that are
displacing discourses.
The ones that cling to their theory and their tradition and their
rationality, die.
Peter Eisenmann
RECONTEXTUALISE
Context changes meaning. (Wittgenstein)
Make choices, but without naivety

NO TABULA RASA
No architect/thinker exists in a vacuum,
but instead emerges from a broader
intellectual, cultural and social history

It is time that (we) remembered
that schools were set up
to challenge the wisdom of the world
and its corruption,
rather than to reinforce it.
Daniel Liebskind
Elective: Semantics of Objects
A Brief Introduction to Ideas relating to:
Philosophy
Platos Theory of Forms , Platos Cave;
Descartes; Hegel; Immanuel Kant
Structuralism: Ferdinand de Saussure, Theory of Signs, Langue &
Parole, Barthes Objects, Levi-Strauss Deep Structures
Semantics:
Semantic, Syntactic & Pragmatic Symbols
Postmodernism and Architecture, Ecos definition
Deconstruction and Architecture
Derrida, logo-centrism, text, chains of absences and references,
trace, supplement
Jacques Derrida & Bernard Tschumis Parc de la Vilette
Peter Eisenmanns House VI
Affirmative architecture
Baudrillard, Hyper reality and simulacara
Architecture must Burn- Coop Himmelblau
Final Year Design Dissertation

Tradition v/s Tenet - a Jain Community Space
by Varun Ajani
In any religion there is always an important
split between tenets and traditions:
the epistemological and ontological basis of
the religion (tenet), and the myth and ritual
(tradition) of the day to day.

The traditions are necessary elements for the
sustaining of the community, the tenets
provide the ideology and philosophical
precepts.
Jain Tenets
Anekantvada (anek-multiple, ant-ends, vada-way):
Jainism is a non-absolutist philosophy- all reality is a
matter of perception.
An object can be perceived from infinite points of
view. Each and every view in itself is valid or equal.
Thus it talks of non-privileging of one perspective
over any other.
Jain Ritual
Jain ritual is more or less centered
around the Tirthankara image.
Although important, the Jina is but a
representation and not a reality.
A Jain doesnt ask for any favors and
does not offer anything in return.
Rituals are internalized, based on
meditation of ones self and ones deeds
The ultimate goal for the layperson, as
for the monk - the elimination of all
Karma, or liberation.
The Chaumukha
CONTEXTUALISED
the generic temple tradition
Reflecting its ideologies, and a space for ritual
practices- the improvement of the self through
restraint. The externalized rituals developed with
constant interaction with Hinduism.
Palitana Hill
Adinath, Ranakpur
DECONTEXTUALISED
Intricacy
Intricacy: the fusion of disparate
elements into continuity, the
becoming whole of components
that retain their status as pieces
in a larger composition.
An architecture that represents Non-absolutism can only do so
by being Intricate. Unlike simple hierarchy, subdivision,
compartmentalization or modularity, intricacy involves a variation
of the parts that is not reducible to the structure of the whole,
Non privileging one element over any other.

The approach is to arrive at an intricate architecture, free from
fostered beliefs and their representation, and a environment for
continued practices important to Jainism today.
Intricacy
Architectural Intricacy looks not only at
the compositional elements, but at space
itself.

Representing the idea in a 2-dimensional
field becomes the starting point.

This entry point into architecture is
translatable into the physical by dynamic
transformations
Disruptive Transformations
the destruction of a particular state is
necessary in order to discreetly proceed to the
next level
3D Modelling
or a different form of manifestation.
(Robert & Robert, 2006)
Intricacy
Transformations interplay over time to several levels of intricacy.

The irregular mesh becomes the distributive field for itself and
other elements. A plane distributes itself on the field: intricacy
appears.

These planes no longer retain their self similarity, as their positions
vary a-synchroniucally.
Intricate Spaces
Spaces are another layer of distributed fields. The experience of
space becomes possible through its function as a public space.
Indeterminate Structure
Fields of Enclosure
Response to Climate
Functional Spaces
A Jain Community Space
RECONTEXTUALISED
The temple retains its identity as the point area of the ideal that
each Jain aspirant yearns for, through the indeterminate
space/form, allaying borrowed iconography and built tradition.
A Jain Community Space
A Jain Community Space
A Jain Community Space
You can go with this,
Or you can go with that,
You can go with this,
Or you can go with that,
You can go with this,
Or you can go with that.

"Weapon Of Choice"
Fatboy Slim