THE UTILITY-FOCUSED APPROACH TO ARCHITECTURE AS A discipline has proved to be quite a hurdle as far as the idea and act of conducting academic research is concerned. As a ‘visual’ subject, architecture is understood as being concerned with the past and with monuments. As far as the pragmatics of architecture is concerned, issues related to real estate, in the context of planning and construction, are high on the agenda.

Although utility, visuality, and pragmatics are crucial areas of cultural concern and theoretical debates, they are also areas where living-room conversations easily take over. In this context, authors and publishers are often quite happy to produce coffee-table books for easy gratification. Debates in history discuss architecture only to argue over cultural prototypes of style, dynastic classifications or dates, tourism, or conservation.

Often, when architecture is discussed by architects, who are trained largely to draw, construct, and be clever at managing formal and spatial organization, a discussion of theory is ignored. Only a few architecture schools and a few trained architects have moved away from the problems discussed above. A large number of professionals, however, are quite unconcerned about the need to refresh their approaches.

Many books on architecture capture historical monuments – they, however, merely document and catalogue them. The recent book by Marg Publications, The Architecture of the Indian Sultanates (2006), edited by Abha Narain Lambah and Alka Patel, though, brings in new scholarship as far as the subject is concerned. It does not, however, raise any significant new questions. The way the history of architecture in India is constructed, the relationship of monuments to cities and tourism initiatives – these are some areas that this book could have explored. It is important to note that most of the book’s contributors are researchers working in American universities or have received funding from programmes abroad. However, many books published by Marg continue to contribute new research material concerning architectural objects – and to their reception in contemporary cultural debates.

Recently, Yatin Pandya produced two books – Concepts of Space in Traditional Indian Architecture and Elements of Space Making (both published by Mapin in 2005 and 2006 respectively). In the first book, Pandya tries to uncover a methodology to “decipher the implications (of what constitutes the Indian context) on the physically manifest”. The selection of canonical examples, which are limited to a few from Western India, needs to be questioned. The book unproblematically employs ‘physical’ analysis – light, shadow, and proportions, to define concepts like ‘Indian-ness’ or ‘timelessness’. The beautifully illustrated book with photographs, sketches, and diagrams, uses notions of architecture, which isolate the architectural object from its site, culture, and history. The second book attempts a classical physical analysis of buildings to understand geometric, perspectival, and experiential aspects of architecture.

Bombay Art Deco Architecture – A Visual Journey 1930-1953 by Navin Ramani (Roli Books, 2006) is a hectic photographic documentation of art deco buildings in Bombay. In recent years, several handbooks encouraged by Conservation ventures, have come out. Researching history in detail, with impressive photographs, they are often romanticized evocations of localities – books on precincts like Banganga (Banganga – Sacred Tank on Malabar Hill, Eminence Designs, 1996) and the High Court (The Bombay High Court: The Story of the Building 1878–2003, Eminence Designs, 2004) by Rahul Mehrotra and Sharada Dwivedi, and Through the Looking Glass: The Grade I Heritage of Mumbai by Abha Narain Lambah (Urban Design Research Institute & Jasubhai Media, 2003) are some examples of this genre. They do not substantially contribute to debates on architecture but do provide material for discussions about local history and preservation of monuments.  Documentation is very important to any discussion and books like these help raise public awareness about pro-active Conservation ventures.

Gautam Bhatia’s Punjabi Baroque: And Other Memories of Architecture (Penguin, 2002) was a book that should have set the tone for many tracts on architectural theory in India.  In the book, you find the architect pondering over architecture as a cultural practice. Bhatia speaks of architecture, culture, and buildings, using his experiences as a practitioner – meeting clients, “a roll of drawings under sweaty armpits, I have ranted and raved across spoiled tablecloths dripping with spilt tea to a range of closed minds…” Bhatia’s position as a practising architect in the book is a very crucial location. The book looks at what architects need to think about, besides light, shadow, colour, and ventilation. That architecture ‘gets produced’ by the way buildings are used, decorated, fantasized about, and built, rather than by the ideals of planning or geometry, is what Bhatia draws our attention to.

Bhuj: Art, Architecture, History (Mapin, 2006) by Azhar Tyabji carries a detailed documentation of the reconstruction of Bhuj after the earthquake (2001). The architect raises questions about the reconstruction of history and looks at issues related to art, tourism, culture, and the market.  The book is assembled out of the experiences and working procedures of the architect – you find him scouring archives and meeting people from different communities, including antique scavengers and thieves. Books like these deepen the question of belonging to a past in a more substantial way than books that simply document or eulogize localities.

The Loneliness of a Long Distant Future: Dilemmas of Contemporary Architecture (Tulika Books, 2002) by Romi Khosla, has in many ways, been the only contribution to critical thought about architecture. The book actually begins with an introduction by economist Prabhat Patnaik, setting the context for a discussion of architecture within political and economic frameworks. The book looks at architectural interventions in Palestine, Central Asia, China, India, Nepal, among other places. Khosla spent six years travelling to various regions as the Principal International Consultant to the UNDP, UNESCO, and UNOPS. The various critiques by Khosla, whether about international conflict or globalization, locate themselves in the project of Modernity, which Patnaik says is a “derived project, derived from the basic project of human freedom”. The book also looks at how architects negotiate with, and design for “abstract futures” and “ancient futures”.