brian, keep the criticism coming, i think it is important for Indian
architecture people to know more about the situation in .us. they make it
sound as if things are great out there in the states, and the mainstream
media publications.... well. you know!
// long mail with digressions, read at your leisure,
// if at al!
\>>>> digression
Salingaros, i don't agree with a lot of his politics (me being
non-american -- if you remember my categories from Design-L), but he was the
first to shout "Let the .US gracefully bow out of the tallest skyscraper in
the world race, we have nothing to prove by this" and this was before
9/11/2001. i don't agree with his overly mathematical approach, but
appriciate the integrity of his work. my differences might be because i come
from history and hagemonies (or "theory") so my preferences run more like
...
http://www.nexusjournal.com/MarRos-en.html
neverthless, i think Salingaros' work is important, as is Christopher
Alexander's early work (before Pattern Language) and Habraken's current
work. have you seen it? Itten, now if i can find somebody who can teach math
at this level! whoops! all my problems will be _over_ in Delhi! there is
already the greatest basic design and art teacher i ever met here, he does
some Itten exercises (draw your left hand on paper with soft pencils without
ever looking at the paper. look only at what you are drawing.
disassociate....)
so this is where i come-in from, i guess there is no disagreement, just
different approaches. i also want to see architecture driven to the point of
dissolution ("writing a history of its own demise", as i used to call my
exercise, the On Typology / Mapping Heterologies studies), but at the same
time, architecture is an industry -- it has organisation(s), modes of
production and economies, it involves people. i feel it is important to take
into account this resistive mass. just got back from a factory tour (we were
assessing the long term prospects of business), and i was surprised to find
ordinary workers able to elucidate technologies that were Top Secret (on the
pain of death) in Nazi germany and scandinavia -- so i realise the
potentials of another action, of driving productive means into the ground,
where they become another craft.
a worker said "so-and-so manufacturer from jaipur is good, there is 'life'
in the metal dust he makes (is main to jaan hai)" -- he was explaining high
technology using an artisan's language. and this is wonderful. it was funny,
of course, because he was explaining how parts are grown through a sintering
process, and we were looking at viscous metals -- or machine components that
become fluids at performance levels. so we had two levels -- at the same
time, an engineering level and an artisan level!
we do not have similar operabilities at various thresholds in Architecture.
we see entranched groups at every level who say "THIS, and this only!" now,
the 1994 amendment to the indian Copyright Act, which reduced the scope of
Architecture, seems to come from the Dominant Doxa of 1980s (alternate
technology, festival of india, emergent -- rampant -- socialites, the myth
of a humble nameless egoless sthapati, interdisciplinary studies that
subsume architecture, newly confident planners). i sense a curious alignment
of interests, i am discussing a comissioned study in some parts of
architexturez. should someone want to take this up!
question: what happned in 1975-1994 (before-emergency --> "liberalisation")?
digression ends >>>>\
so to answer questions implicit in your and prem's posts: i looked at IPR to
see what constitutes the work of architecture, what is the _identity_ of an
architect's work in the eye of law (or as prem says it, the least
denominator). now, the American and United Kingdom laws are wonderful, i can
map the Libeskind paper right on the least denominator. and they already say
architecture is a media, but _not_ the representation-bearer, it is a
representation, but _not_ the common features. so the work of architecture
is transmissible, manipuable, transformable and wholly seperable (alienable
is a better term, somewhat marxist -- though i am not argueing from that
school) from the end-product (building, code) and the architect. so
architecture is a recording, and this i like -- it goes against the
prevailing "myth of the architect".
ok. so i am running out of depth here -- i am not a lawyer. but let's see,
if Bunker was taken to court.., Prem, he can say...
"note the subtle nuances, the Indian law is _written like_ the British law,
but it is not. the work of architecture has to have artistic attributes.
now, i have given due credits and much more to the 'architect', i have said
he was the designer, but Architecture -- that, the suddenly you touch my
heart business, was the illiterate artisan's contribution. so yes, mr. raina
is the designer for sure, we paid him and even gave him a certificate for
design; but architecture was done by the artisan -- because that is where
artistic stuff comes in. look at the wonderful steel doors, for example. the
plan! in comparison is lousy, it is just a workeable design. and we left the
door ajar, in case he wants to barge-in (rather than challange our
authority), and barge-in he did! so we, the institutions, stand affirmed;
and the next mr. raina better watch out because it is our judgement against
a trained architect's (who is not an Architect)"
and it'll work.
Prem, as i understand things, and i might be wrong....
in indian IPR, the drawings are loaned by the architect to the contractor
for construction (he is supposed to return the blueprints, in good
practice), and the client can retain a copy of the drawings for reference.
they are not the property of the client. the building is, however, and the
client may raise an architect-designed structure to Architecture by
comissioning an artist!
paradox, no?
also, Prem, any coded work (be it art, software, building) tends to be
context-sensitive, architecture is in-situ; but the others are no less CS. i
think. the UK and US laws seem to imply architecture can be detached from
the site, and re-contextualised in another ambit. which i think is
wonderful, and something we don't seem to have here.
opinions? everyone?
Architecture, Practice, What Constitutes the Work of Architecture: i am
struggling to articulate some underlying themes -- common to what Foucault
called the middle practices -- perhaps i should leave that articulation to
somebody competent in that domin. a question like What is Not a Pipe!, to
play on Maguritte/Foucault