Indian Values

Why is it that India has produced world figures like Charles Correa, B.V. Doshi (black & white photo of his office above) and Raj Rewal in architecture, but China none? Could it be because these architects speak English and are published by the English press?

I mused on this when I was at this prize giving function in KL on Apr 7, thanks to an invite from Lillian Tay, and was treated to speeches by Raj Rewal, B. Doshi, Tay Kheng Soon, Sumet Jumsai and Hijjas Kasturi’s daughter. The event was organised to honour the best in Indian architecture for the past year, and they have decided to hold it in KL this year because for the first time, they were also honouring some of the best architects from South East Asia. The venue was KL’s new Convention Centre next to the Petronas Twin Towers. It was a long affair, and I was there from 6-11pm, but happily, dinner and wine were provided.

“Form follows finance,” said Raj Rewal, and I was trying to detect if there was a tone of sour-grape there. (It is one of the ironies of history that the Chicago architect who coined the term “Form follows Function” was in fact a major beneficiary of the most explosive boom of rampant capitalism that underscore the power of mammon.) While flashing slides of his works (the colour photo above is one of his), Rewal wondered if architecture shouldn’t emulate the national cuisine, adopt indigenous materials and technologies, and be a bulwark against globalisation. It was a short and spirited defence of small cottage industries and low-tech, high-labour production; and as much as I admire Gandhi and E F Schumacher, I remained extremely sceptical. I appreciate the fact that Rewal has done a lot of work, including an Islamic Centre in Lisbon which I believe he has won through a competition, but much of his works are what you may cal “reinterpreting the past”. In Lisbon, he basically copied the water courts of Alhambra. (Perhaps to give his works wider credence, he removed the word “Islamic” from his slides of the Lisbon project; naming it “Lisbon Centre” instead.) In another campus project, he blatantly took the plan of Angkor Wat complex and applied that almost wholesale to his design.

Sumet Jumsai played to the gallery. He drew attention to the fact that he was the only one wearing an Indian attire (not true) and that his name was a Sanskrit word, with something to do with the first Buddha (prior to Gautama). Speaking to him alone later ( I asked for his autograph, and he etched a profile of a young girl’s face deep into the pages of my journal), he said, “Kheng Soon is always harping on the fact that we are colonised by the west. And the west, they got everything from Greece. But I always say, in Thailand, we were never colonised by the west, you know. We were colonised by India, and I’m proud of that. I’m proud we were an In-dian-ised nation,” he said in his perfectly modulated, Cambridge-educated English.

Doshi was eloquence personified. He paid convincing tribute to the memory of the late Kanvinde, who was awarded the evening highest award.

Catching the glass lift with a group of Indian architects later, one of them said, “We are not used to heights.”
“I hope it stays that way. There’s no need to go high when there’s enough land. These towers,” I said nodding to the twin towers, “are more about ego than anything else.”
“You’re from Malaysia?”
“Yes. My country.”
“It’s good to hear a Malaysian say it’s about ego.”
But really now, I say it’s about ego, but it’s also hard to fight this primal instinct. From all I’ve read, Dubai is the next instant city to espouse the skyscraper, sprouting them like mushrooms after a rain. Except it hardly rains in Dubai, and out of a bizarrely flat desert terrain, it will be home to the world’s tallest tower in 2008. That will be the Burj Dubai, and is said to be 800m tall when completed, but the precise figure is kept a secret in case, listen to this, New York’s Freedom Tower tries to top it! So you see, it’s not about whether there’s a need for this tower in an arid plain or whether people will enjoy working 800m above ground, it’s about out-doing the rest. It’s about having it and flaunting it.

So are the Indians spiritual and above the fray, or are they just momentarily sore-losers? Bangalore is booming now. We shall see.

Chup