It’s a rare honour and pleasure for me to address all of you graduating students of Architecture here this evening. It normally is a practice in Institutions of learning to invite an external person of eminence to address such functions who would share their wisdom with the graduating students when they are embarking on their careers. I am afraid I am neither external to CEPT nor an eminent person who have any such wisdom to share! However, having left the faculty some years ago, I simply accepted this kind invitation from the Dean and happily agreed to be to here in a different role, to share with you some of my insights and observations which perhaps might be of interest to you as, as you are at a juncture to begin your professional career very soon. At the outset let me confess that none of what I say is in any way a preaching, as I always believe in practice before preaching and from that point of view, I will try to just narrate some of my earlier efforts to appreciate our great discipline in its larger context of learning and understanding.
This function today really makes me nostalgic, being on this side of the audience facing you all eager to embark upon your career with huge expectations. Several decades ago, I was in your place there receiving my degree and listening to the words of encouragement from one of India’s greatest teachers invoking us to build our character and conscience to face the realities of the world. His words - use your knowledge to gain wisdom through its discreet application in field, - build your professional character with humility, moral and ethical base, - and work for betterment of humanity at large. These words provided inspiration to me and enabled me to build myself as a professional. I pass on these words to you, remembering in dedication, Dr S. Radhakrishnan here this evening. These words of advice are timeless and have inspired generations.
Architecture is a discipline of knowledge enabled by individual’s creativity requiring preparedness not only in terms of acquiring knowledge and ability for creative imagination for artistic work but also to cultivate an individual’s mind to appreciate finer sensibilities of cultural context and evolving traditions. It requires rigour to develop an intellect to assimilate and synthesize historical learnings in order to creatively interpreting culturally relevant ideas. An architect, through his imaginations, creative instincts and theoretical understanding, conceptualizes ideas about buildings. He applies these in design to develop his own expression in building arts. Realizing a building as an end product is a circumstantial act involving a team of professionals from other building disciplines. This teamwork translates an architect’s ideas into a reality. Architect’s role in his practice is pivotal but conditioned by this circumstantiality.
In our efforts to understand architecture it cannot be separated from art and sciences. “There is a close analogy between the aims of art and of science. Descriptive science is, of course, concerned only with the record of appearances; but art and theoretical science have much in common. The imagination is required for both; both illustrate that natural tendency to seek the one in the many, to formulate natural laws, which is expressed in the saying that the human mind functions naturally towards unity. The aim of the trained scientific or artistic imagination is to conceive (concipio, lay hold of) invent (invenio, to light upon) or imagine (visualise) some unifying truth previously unsuspected or forgotten. The theory of evolution or of electrons or atoms; the rapid discovery (un-veiling) by a mathematical genius of the answer to an abstruse calculation; the conception that flashes into the artist’s mind, all these represent some true vision of the Idea underlying phenomenal experience, some message from the “exhaustless source of truth”. Ideal art is thus rather a spiritual discovery than a creation. It differs from science in its concern primarily with subjective things, things as they are for us, rather than in themselves. But both art and science have the common aim of unity; of formulating natural laws.”1
“Form is only a means of expressing the spirit, and the one thought of the artist should be how best to render the spiritual vision. He is not bound by the forms that compose the world of gross matter, though he takes them as a starting point for his formal expression of the vision within him; if by modifying them or departing from them he can reveal that vision more completely, his freedom and his duty as an artist emancipate him from the obligation of the mere recorder and copyist. The ancient Asiatic artists were not incapable of reproducing outward Nature with as perfect and vigorous an accuracy as the Europeans; but it was their ordinary method deliberately to suppress all that might hamper the expression of their spiritual vision.”2
“Indian Art demands of the artist the power of communion with the soul of things, the sense of spiritual taking precedence of the sense of material beauty, and fidelity to the deeper vision within; of the lover of art it demands the power to see the spirit in things, the openness of mind to follow a developing tradition, and the sattwic passivity, discharged of prejudgments, which opens luminously to the secret intention of the picture and is patient to wait until it attains a perfect and profound divination”3
“The greatness of Indian art is the greatness of all Indian thought and achievement. It lies in the recognition of the persistent within the transient, of the domination of matter by spirit, the subordination of the insistent appearances of Prakriti to the inner reality which, in a thousand ways, the Mighty Mother veils even while she suggests. The European artist, cabined within the narrow confines of the external, is dominated in imagination by the body of things and the claims of the phenomenon. Western painting starts from the eye or the imagination; its master word is either beauty or reality, and, according as he is the slave of his eye or the playfellow of his imagination, the painter produces a photograph or a poem. But, in painting, the European imagination seldom travels beyond an imaginative interpretation or variation of what the physical eye has seen. Imitation is the keyword of creation, according to Aristotle; Shakespeare advises the artist to hold up the mirror to Nature; and the Greek scientist and the English poet reflect accurately the mind of Europe.”4
“We of today have been overpowered by the European tradition as interpreted by the English, the least artistic of civilised nations. We have therefore come to make on a picture the same demand as on a photograph, — the reproduction of the thing as the eye sees it, not even as the retrospective mind or the imagination sees it, exact resemblance to the beings or objects we know, or, if anything more, then a refinement on Nature in the direction of greater picturesqueness and prettiness and the satisfaction of the lower and more external sense of beauty. The conception that Art exists not to copy, but for the sake of a deeper truth and vision, and we must seek in it not the object but God in the object, not things but the soul of things, seems to have vanished for a while from the Indian consciousness”5
It is imperative for an architect to appreciate the connection between Art, Architecture and Theoretical Sciences in order to function as an individual. This is the foundational need for him to make his contribution in the profession. Our traditions coupled with its contemporary understanding in our immediate history helps us appreciates these foundations and this is where our learning never stops. The real predicament of our distant history and in spite of that the idea of Indian thought is well explained in the words of Coomaraswamy. “The extant remains of Indian art cover a period of more than two thousand years. During this time many schools of thought have flourished and decayed, invaders of many races have poured into India and contributed to the infinite variety of her intellectual resources; countless dynasties have ruled and passed away; and so we do not wonder that many varieties of artistic expression remain, to record for us, in a language of their own, something of the ideas and the ideals of many peoples, their hopes and fears, their faith and their desire. But just as through all Indian schools of thought there runs like a golden thread the fundamental idealism of the Upanishads, the Vedanta, so in all Indian art there is a unity that underlies all its bewildering variety. This unifying principle is here also Idealism, and this must of necessity have been so, for the synthesis of Indian thought is one, not many.”6
Thus, the practice of architecture is a complex profession. The architect has to be continuously aware of his roles and responsibilities and the conditions created by the influential circumstances around him which help realise his designs. The architectural profession has evolved out of such conditions in historic times. Architects have always realized their works with high standards of excellence capturing its relevant spirit in cultures across the world. The cultural influences are reflected in architecture and it is a mirror image of its cultural context. Architects being the constituent of a culture working in a particular context, produce works with analogous identity. The role of an architect is thus conditioned by the patronage he receives. His creative ability to design presupposes his abilities to define his larger goals as a creative individual in search of a relevant artistic expression. This is also his philosophical pursuit anticipating his ability to search for his own validity through his rigours and works.
Thus, the work of an architect reinterprets validities in a cultural context. Culture specific built-spaces expressive of these validities have evocative quality. An Architect’s objectivity results from his understanding of these validities by appreciating (as Kahn used to express) the ‘beginnings’ of man’s institutions, a foray in the study of ‘volume zero’ of history to rediscover the spirit, and the root of the institution where it all began. This informs him about the ‘nature’ of the institutions. It is through this validity that the architecture expresses its spirit and attains universality in cultures in change. The ‘concepts’ are an architect’s philosophical search and the premise for his creative imaginations, but these sometimes get replaced by mere putting together of parts in an assemblage of building projected as ‘design’. Many times, programmatic ‘needs’ (as requirements) govern, and the ‘desire’ (as aspirations) gets subjugated under its pressure in a programmatic problem-solving exercise. The need to identify the ‘beginnings’ of a particular institution of man and its ‘nature’ gets substituted by what patrons or architects ‘want’ the building to be and not what the validities define the building (colony of spaces) to evoke. This is where the dilemma of an architect’s role begins and the work that he produces gets distanced from its validity. Thus, the result (as Kahn used to say) that every building is not a work of architecture, and all those who build are not architects. This is the most important difference that we have to appreciate. As architects we have to exercise our strength to uphold our roles as professionals and assure safeguarding our role and to maintain the dignity of this great discipline and the profession.
Architecture is one of the most holistic disciplines of all. All of you who have been introduced to this great discipline during your years here at the school, must thank your stars for this. Also remember that your real learning begins NOW! Always remember and be grateful to all those who helped you and supported you throughout your studies. - Those who instructed you to develop your inherent skills and build your abilities as young pioneers of this great evolving profession which is instrumental in shaping future human environment. You must ensure that your actions in future must never belittle this great discipline of Architecture!
Congratulations! Best wishes to you all!
- 1. Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy (1877-1947): Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 9, No. 1. (Winter, 1975). © World Wisdom, Inc. www.studiesincomparativereligion.com
- 2. Sri Aurobindo EARLY CULTURAL WRITINGS (1890 — 1910) Part Four. On Art, The Revival of Indian Art
- 3. -ibid-
- 4. -ibid-
- 5. -ibid-
- 6. Coomaraswamy, op cit