PROFESSOR AKEEL BILGRAMI OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, AT A recently delivered lecture in Mumbai, proposed that the rise of scientific rationalism in the Age of Enlightenment resulted in displacing sacrality from the prime position it occupied in the lives of people in the 18th century. He described this loss as a process of ‘disenchantment’. Thanks to this process, the earth and its contents became mere “matter and material”. Processes of ‘objectification’ legitimized the exploitation of the environment by human beings, the self-styled masters of the world. In many ways, this heralded the industrial revolution and fuelled Modernist thought.

In today’s world, meretricious notions of venustas and utilitas (two of the three key propositions from the Vitruvian triad for architectural quality) stand privileged in many architectural initiatives.  With tongue firmly in cheek, one could ask whether this is the “double-coded” nature of buildings that Charles Jencks calls Post-modern architecture? In more pragmatic terms, one could interpret the first code as dealing with the satisfaction of the client’s brief, and the second, with the approval of fellow architects.

Generally speaking, architectural designs germinate in isolated studios or attempt to translate some theoretical agenda in terms that are ‘real’. Probably at its most fecund, in terms of production, Indian architecture today is varied and diverse, and not aligned to specific positions that would, in the past, have been called ‘isms’. Indeed, there are no ‘isms’, only agendas, which emerge from different states of disenchantment.

Indian architecture, since independence, has seen many self-conscious ‘positions’. In an attempt to resurrect an ‘Indian’ style, role-model morphologies have been dredged from imagined Indian traditions, or from indigenous building-forms such as temples or havelis. Timeless/ historical models have been transformed to suit the exigencies of contemporary architectural programmes. Architects have also chosen to be inspired by myths and traditions culled from Indian texts. This phenomenon reached its peak in the 1980s, fuelled by an obsession with ‘Indian-ness’, as well as by exhibitions featuring architecture such as Vistaar and Kham.

These days, many architects borrow from Classical architecture. Pastiche-style buildings proliferate all around. This supposedly elitist aspiration sweeping Indian cities can now be seen reflected in down-market restaurants and hair-dressing saloons as well. In a situation where the state has abdicated the responsibility of creating socially sustainable housing and has sold out to private parties, the user consistently gets ignored. Builders incorporate classical motifs and names (Ionia, Corinth, Athena, et al) in their new housing projects in an attempt to sell ‘idyllic’ homes that pander to buyers’ fantasies.

Since the latter half of the 20th Century, logocentric or absolutist positions have been dismantled in most disciplines. However, no suitable alternatives have been proposed. Deconstructionists talk of how, in language, ‘meaning’ is indefinitely deferred. In architecture, disenchantment with the world has come to stand for disenchantment with the intangible – this has also resulted in a disregard for ‘precise’ meaning and ‘pure’ expression.

Interestingly, in today’s world, we find varied intellectual/theoretical positions and High Modernist and Post-Modernist intuitive speculations getting legitimized with the reliance on the visual (enabled by software tools for fast visualization, which generate non-formal surfaces with ease). Using a free-floating style, architectural language has run amok. The only agenda is to use sensationalization as a mode to create the “shock of the new”. Mega projects in the last ten years have exhibited every brand of architectural bombast.