A recent insightful article on Scroll which should be of interest to our readers, and those who share our preoccupation with ‘Envisioning the Indian City’
A visual exploration of Dutch Ceylon
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Monsoon Assembly Air: Call for Abstracts
Sustainable Cities, SDG Academy
The SDG Academy is a virtual platform that provides high-quality online courses. The global faculty comprises leading experts in sustainable development from around the world who believe in the power of sharing knowledge to improve the lives of everyone. All course materials are available free of cost to all!
The latest course, ‘Sustainable Cities’ should be of interest to those following ETIC. The course explores what Sustainable cities are all about. It examines how urban sustainability can be delivered: how cities function as systems of systems; how we can increase urban productivity and reduce urban poverty and inequality, enable urban inclusion and safety; provide universal basic services, housing and infrastructure; protect the urban environment, reduce risk and vulnerability . It further explores what actions need to be taken to improve urban governance and financing for sustainable development and key institutions and agents that can make this possible.
For enrolment and an outline of the ten week programme see: https://courses.sdgacademy.org/learn/sustainable-cities-november-2016
Architecture, Language, Romance: ‘Love in the Time of Choleric Capital’ @JNU
Sarover Zaidi, who has been associated with the ETIC project for a while now, hosted an unusual discussion in Room 003, School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU. For once, I happened to be in the right place at the right time.
The first part of a series of ‘Happenings’ under the rubric of the Love in the Time of Choleric Capital (LITTOCC) exhibition, ‘Working with Language and Architecture’ offered a refreshing view of the city. Zaidi led with a question that I am sure many of us have wistfully considered and resignedly let go: where do lovers go in a city–in this case, Delhi.
The panel was formed by an interesting mix of people. Zaidi has been writing on architecture and the city for a while now. Her focuses lie at the intersections of material and visual cultures, texts, aesthetics and religion. Briana Blasko, Zaidi’s partner on a recent project, made her presence felt through her photographs taken around Delhi, especially in the Lodi Gardens. She has done very interesting work with textile.
Photograph courtesy: Sarover Zaidi
Photograph courtesy: Sarover Zaidi
To share their experiences from daily and literary lives, were Mohammad Sayeed, a sociologist and anthropoligist based in Delhi, who has worked on congested areas in the Batla House neighbourhood. And finally, to charm with his reckless love for Urdu poetry was Saif Mahmood, lawyer by day, and “a late 18th century Urdu poet, walking the streets of Delhi” generally.
As the audience trickled into the room they saw on the screen the results of Zaidi’s Google search for places for young couples in Delhi. She described how she and Briana had embarked on a project to document these spaces. Exploring certain parts of the Lodi Garden, of instance, they had photographed and spoken to couples w
ho were spending some private time there. Needless to say, the photographs were taken with permission, and in a few cases at least, the participants in the study had requested to be photographed with their faces turned away. Zaidi clarified in response to a question from the audience that although the focus of the few photographs that were shared was on heterosexual love, that was only a partial representation of their intention. They had spoken to groups who identified as queer, but so far they had not expressed desire to be caught on camera. Perhaps as the project evolves and grows in size, it will come to represent a more inclusive range of sexualities.
Sayeed offered us three stories–anecdotes, notes from fieldwork, call it what you will–through which he tried to convey the kinds of encounter that couples in urban spaces have to engage in. He spoke of his uncle who had come to visit Delhi and appeared to be unaware of the specific urban codes of conduct that govern each city. While this appeared to cause Sayeed some embarrassment on occasion, until he caused the story-teller even more embarrassment by getting involved in a fight between a guard at the Purana Qila and a couple who were enjoying a moment of privacy in the premises. While recalling the story, Sayeed did of course question his immediate response to this intervention, and his narration of the story was evidently tinged with a kind of grudging admiration for his uncle.
He also recalled the time when during one of his field surveys conducted in the congested and densely populated locality near Batla House, one of the residents, who had reason to fear for his life, had shared a story of voluntarily disappearance at night. The person he was dating had told him that her parents were away for the night, and what is a young couple to do? When he did not return till late, his friends searched for him, and as will be known to anyone who followed the series of incidents, it was not a safe time for the residents there. He came back much later only to reveal that he had not been to his partner’s house at all, but had spent their night on the streets of Delhi, because the anonymity was a greater source of comfort and security than any home.
For the next half hour Saif Mahmood mesmerized the audience by travelling back and forth in time, not simply reciting shayaris, but in fact speaking in and through them. Mahmood, who is working on a book on Urdu poets in Delhi, displayed an astonishing familiarity with his favourite poets–starting with the earliest laments for the changing nature of the city of Delhi to the most recent ones–still, lamenting the changing nature of the city. Weaving beautifully in and out of monuments, present and absent, verbal and marmoreal, Mahmood brought out the nuances in the range of expressions of love in Urdu–going so far as to cheekily claim that it is difficult to think of another language where one can express these emotions.
A point that Zaidi made initially was borne out by the discussions–the confusing interface of history (architectural or verbal) as carefully preserved past, and usable present. How do we read acts of inscribing sweet nothings or emphatic declarations of love on historic monuments, for instance? How do we justify the appropriation of our built environment by agents of historic preservation in favour of their use by citizens. This is a phenomenon that is observable in cities around the world, whenever there is shortage of private spaces for the couples. And this is not restricted to young couples–or indeed limited to couples only. Zaidi spoke of an elderly lady who had volunteered to be photographed near Lodi Garden, who would visit these places on family picnics but find for herself quiet benches and shades.
Marianne North, The Kutub (1878), Courtesy of the British Library
One of the audience members also pertinently observed that these spaces–gardens, premises surrounding historic monuments–could also be read as constructions based on aesthetic negotiations. The lines of sight or placement of foliage would in the past be determined by movements such as the picturesque. The question is whether such choices are informed by principles in art today, and if so, how this added layer of meaning being imposed upon a space negotiates with the existing tussle between history, memory and private use of public space.
The Calcutta Pococurante Society
Joshua Ehrlich has written an exceptionally entertaining piece for The Public Domain Review which sheds light on a little known Calcuttan Society…
Re-blogging “Where There Is No Architect” [Ajam Media Collective]
Sarover, whom we were lucky to have at the third ETIC conference (second at Jadavpur) back in August 2015, writes a guest post for Ajam Media Collective on life and architecture in and around the ‘native town’ of Bombay/Mumbai.
Here’s the link to her article!
Conference: Urban Futures and Urban Utopia in South Asian Megacities (25.07.16)
A one-day workshop titled ‘Urban Futures and Urban Utopia in South Asian Megacities: Narratives, Play, Planning’ was organized by Utrecht University, Netherlands, and the Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata. Organized thanks to the combined efforts of Dr. Paola Monachesi, Prof. Achin Chakrabarty, and Dr. Barnita Bagchi, the workshop took place yesterday, July 25, 2016.
Researchers at the Institute of Development Studies may be used to their auditorium on the sixth floor, but as a first-timer in that room I was struck by the seriously informal setting. One of the walls carries colourful abstract graffiti and for the most part the seating arrangement comprises circular tables with chairs on all sides. It makes for much more multi-directional exchange of ideas, as paper presenters were allowed to sit in their places after reading their papers and respond to questions and comments.
One of the main ideas behind the multidisciplinary workshop was to ‘create an alternative, bottom up way of to achieve consensus in urban development, or literary and filmic utopian and dystopian narratives’, by considering Kolkata and Mumbai especially using ideas of utopian and dystopian thinking.
The first session, chaired by Professor Prasanta Ray, began a little after half-past ten, with Achin Chakraborty’s paper Planning Urban Future: From Normative to Positive Analytic. Tracing three major normative lines of thinking about the development of cities: the smart city; supporting medium sized cities with potential; and green cities. Policy makers often tend to ignore the fact that the three major concerns of urban planning (growth, sustainability, social justice) cannot be addressed uniformly at the same time and that conflicts of interest are bound to arise. Chakraborty discussed the formation of degenerated peripheries growing in proximity to Class I cities, and closed with musings on the reasons for failure in implementation of promising plans, such as Provision of Urban Amenities to Rural Areas (PURA), a plan suggested by former president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.
Jenia Mukherjee in a remarkably animated and engaging presentation spoke about the Blue Infrastructures of Kolkata. Pointing out the lack of critical evaluation of the notion of sustainability she spoke about the need to look closer at environmentalism of the poor rather than its more affluent definitions. Starting with Joseph Townsend’s measurements of the Hooghly river in the late seventeenth century, her account came down to the drying up of the Bidyadhari and the Kulti Outfall Scheme in 1943, as she emphasized the importance of the hydro-social aspects of town planning.
A team of researchers (Prerna Mandal and Dipanjan Nag) from IIT Kharagpur led by their supervisor, Joy Sen, spoke about the Role of Innovation Zones and IOT in Urban Futures, looking at three case studies, Evans, Denver; Delhi; and Hong Kong. Sen spoke of Utopic thinking as setting a yardstick against which one can measure the efforts that have been successful, and mentioned a number of innovative ways of conceptualizing cities, such as Madan Mohan Malavya’s plan based on the organization of people and movements in the Kumbh Mela. Arkopal K. Goswami who had made significant contributions to the paper, especially on the section on Transit Oriented Development was unable to be present for the workshop, but his colleague and students dealt with the section efficiently.
Barnita Bagchi and Paola Monachesi’s paper City Utopias, City Futures: Narrative, Play, and Urbanism in the Context of two Asian Megacities focused mainly on the “ludic urban utopian imagination” in which social justice drives urbanization processes. Bagchi warned about the recent trend of forgetting history in a dangerous way and illustrated her point about a ‘layered non-reductive model’ citing instances from Aneek Dutta’s film Bhooter Bhabishyat (2012), where a property developer looking to replace an old mansion with a shopping mall meets unexpected opposition in the form of ghosts of Kolkata’s past. Monachesi spoke about her very interesting work on the game, YouPlaceIt! which hopes for conflict resolution between different stakeholders, based in Dharavi, Mumbai.
Nilanjana Deb opened her paper, The Tide of Migrants Ebbs and Flows: Envisioning Calcutta as a Born-again Cosmopolis, recalling her during her research for the paper the optimism about the city’s re-imagining had dwindled, leading her to suggest the title include the phrase ‘Failing to Envision’. Her paper raised the important question: how cosmopolitan is Calcutta–and, how cosmopolitan it has ever been. Deb’s paper focused on the Metia Bruz area where Wajid Ali Shah had settled and established a ‘chhota Lucknow’. The selective tolerance of Kolkata’s populace may not be a very recent phenomenon after all, as she suggested, by looking at the gradual desertion by the English of the Metia Bruz area after the Muslim migrant worker populace started settling down. She ended with David Harvey’s question: who can claim the ‘right to the city’?
In the post-lunch session Carla Danani gave an extremely lucid paper titled Utopia and a Rethinking of Public Space, where she distinguished between ‘utopic configurations’ and ‘utopian intentionality’. She elaborated on the notion of ‘public space’ referring to its physical characteristics while acknowledging how places have been made more complex with the advent of technology. Her attempt to develop a ‘utopian idea of public space’ takes into account that something “in common” must be built keeping intact the differences in spaces and uses.
In Reimagining Mumbai from the Margins of the City Ratoola Kundu noted how in recent discourses the cities of the Global South are characterized by chaos and lacking infrastructure. She argued for the existence of many ‘subaltern urban imaginaries or visions’ of Utopias that resist broad metanarratives of urban Utopianism. Using case studies of Dharavi and Kamathipura, Kundu explored the relationship between the demography residing in these parts and their sense of possession and identity associated with the land. Suggesting that possible urban futures may be imagined from the margins, she asks what the centuries old existence of these ‘dystopic’ neighbourhoods tell us about visions and planning.
The last few minutes of Souvik Mukherjee’s paper went almost unheard as he unleashed a 3D viewer cardboard box showing views of different cities. His paper titled Gamifying Kolkata: A Ludic Approach to Viewing the City considered various computer games, augmented reality apps and the inaccurately named immersive experience games. Seeing Kolkata as a fundamentally ludic city (citing all kinds of makeshift street arrangement for games), Mukherjee’s paper lamented the absence of the cityscape in video games, but posited a number of exciting possibilities. The paper traced a brief history of games based on the city, bringing it down to video games, and finally to games such as PokémonGo which compel the player to explore the city in different ways while playing the game.
- Source: http://www.madhusreedutta.com/
The final session opened with a fascinating account by Madhusree Dutta of Bombay cinema, which was based on her work in the city, featuring various experiments with the movie form and unexpected ways of installing them, such as at the ends of waterpipes at the Kalaghoda promenade. One of the things that the works aimed to highlight was cinema in Mumbai as labour-intensive industry. She took us through a wonderful series of slides showing the work that had been done to revitalise the movie archives, recreating posters and other film memorabilia. Finally she addressed the issue of the gradual fragmentation of the spaces of viewing. She cites the example of multiplexes, home viewing, and the most popular cheap forms of viewing–all of which she suggests are similar in their extreme exclusionary nature, however different in ambience.
Sujaan Mukherjee presented on spaces of dying in Kolkata addressing the question of public commemoration, historiography and the regenerative power that resides in such spaces, especially in the fiction of Nabarun Bhattacharya. The paper discussed briefly the emergence of the public sphere among the nationalist elite of Bengal before looking at the representation of burning ghats in Shakti Chattopadhyay and Allen Ginsberg. Kangal Malshat (2003) was seen in its Bakhtinian potency, and Mukherjee suggested that it is a mistake to look for the carnival in the events of the novel, but that the novel itself should be seen as a carnival. What the the insurgency that takes off from spaces of death (burning ghats and cemeteries) suggest about Nabarun’s perception of history and memory, as well as the power of representing bourgeois life as vulgar spectacle were teased out.
In the final paper of the day, Moinak Biswas offered an insightful history of the representation of space in Indian cinemas. He illustrated how the notion of space was value-laden from the onset in early mainstream cinema. The spaces were denominational and not in rationalized continuity. Gradually the change sets in and the city or the outdoor landscape begins to play a more important role. He cited the example of post-independence cinema which frequently feature outsiders who come to the city to become expert users of the city. Biswas spoke about the concept of ‘neighbourhood realism’, before going on to illustrate many of his points by taking the audience through a chase sequence from Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday (2004), where the neighbourhoods through which the chase takes place ultimately modifies the relationship between police and fugitive.
The day closed with a viewing of Ranu Ghosh’s remarkable documentary, Quarter Number 4/11, but followers of the ETIC blog know all about the film by now! It is a ‘ground zero perspective of urban real estate development’, which uses innovative shooting methods to narrate the experience of ex-factory worker Shambhu Prasad Singh and his family to hold on to their rightful home as the South City residential complex and shopping mall take over the land. The director has previously spoken to the ETIC project group about her personal experiences while making the film and the methods she employed to get two perspectives within a single documentary.
With that a most enriching day’s conference featuring a mind-boggling array of approaches came to a close. Our sincerest thanks to Dr Paola Monachesi, Prof. Achin Chakraborty and Dr. Barnita Bagchi for taking the trouble of organizing an enthralling workshop.
PhD Studentships, Monsoon Assemblages
Announcement
Four-year PhD Studentships
Location: University of Westminster
Deadline: 26th August 2016
Two x four-year, full time PhD studentships in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment as part of ERC grant funded project Monsoon Assemblages.
Stipend of £16,000 p.a. and Tuition Fees (Home/EU fees only).
Full article
Two x four-year, full time PhD studentships
Monsoon Assemblages is a five-year long research project funded by the European Research Council (Starting Grant no. 679873) with the ambition of confronting challenges of urban climate change through novel, inter-disciplinary research in three of South Asia’s rapidly growing cities: Chennai, Delhi and Dhaka. It is driven by questions of how these cities might be transformed if no longer thought of as exclusive products of human agency, but as co-designed by the material energies of earth systems.
PhD applications are invited from the spatial design and/or environmental humanities disciplines to engage with these questions. The exact areas of study will be developed with the successful applicants; proposals may draw from a number of theoretical perspectives, including urban political ecology, actor network theory, urban assemblage theory or more-than-human ontology, and propose to make use of a range of research methods, including archival research; policy research; literature review; textual and graphic analysis; ethnographic fieldwork; mapping and data visualisation; spatial modelling and design. All proposals should include a practice based component. Successful applicants will be supervised by an interdisciplinary team of supervisors drawn from the project team and will be encouraged to engage fully in the activities of the Monsoon Assemblages project, including participation in symposia, workshops, exhibitions and publications.
Full details and instructions on how to apply are available here:
Architecture and cultural heritage between the Ganges and Gibraltar
Settled Topographies: From Gibraltar to the Ganges
ArCHIAM Centre Conference
July 11 – 12, 2016
10:00 – 17:00
School of the Arts Library
19 Abercromby Square
Liverpool
Last week the ArCHIAM Centre at Liverpool School of Architecture hosted a two day symposium, ‘Settled Topographies: From Gibraltar to the Ganges’, exploring how culture and spatiality have comingled across this trans-continental region in contemporary and historical settings. As Professor Souymen Bandyopadhyay (Director ArCHIAM) introductory remarks stated, ‘there is a need to reflect on the area’s global interactions to help inform contributions to the present world’.
The opening sessions including papers by Dr Iain Jackson (University of Liverpool), ‘State Building and Nation Creation: British Mandate Architecture and Planning in Iraq’, and Cleo Roberts, ‘The River Ganges: Colonial Calcutta’s Sub-City’, provided a rich insight into how British colonial relationships had sought to harness inherited environments through a combination of infrastructural, and prestige projects, and the ecological riverine environment respectively.
Jackson’s discussion looked at the legacy of British architecture in Iraq, and argued that flamboyant structures such as J.M.Wilson’s University of Al Il Beit, 1922-27, created to resonate with local aesthetics and indebted to New Delhi design, served as conduits for governance. Roberts drew on this analogy and discussed how the river Ganges, popularly framed as a commercial conduit to colonial Calcutta, was, as her catalogue of visual sources was beginning to show, a lived space which challenged concepts of spatial governance, and in doing so held the city together, and allowed it to function. The notion of spatial politics was further drawn out by Dr Jyoti Atwal (Jawaharlal Nehru University_ whose work, ‘Mapping Widowhood: Observations from Colonial North India’, used a method of gender geography to understand how state administration and caste enmeshed, and affected trends in widowhood.
Dr Sharon Smith (Aga Khan Documentation Centre at MIT) provided valuable insight into how visual methodologies, similar to those adopted by Jackson and Roberts, are supported and promoted by the active online documentation programme at the Aga Khan Documentation Centre. She encouraged researchers to access the diverse range of visual and material archives of the Islamic world, and to collaborate with their ongoing work and drive to digitise their resources. As Dr Michael Toler’s (Aga Khan Documentation Centre at MIT) paper ‘Visually Documenting Early 20th Century Tangier: A Study of Glass Negatives’, showed items from the collection, and showed how the archive’s development, through the open source resource, ArchNet, is enriching historic perspectives, and being used to shape current infrastructural projects.
The series of papers presented by Dr Martin Goffriller (University of Liverpool), ‘The Death of Place: An Archaeology of Oman’s Super-Modernity’, and Dr Harriet Nash (ArCHIAM affiliate researcher) continued to show how historic research in Oman, and an understanding of past settlement, is informing contemporary methods of heritage and infrastructural management. Goffriller’s archaeological work in Bahla Oasis, and Nash’s studies of the Aflāj Irrigation Systems of Oman explained how contemporary practices hinge upon historic forms of knowledge, such as the practice of star and sun watching to time, and allocate water resources described by Nash. As a subsequent paper ‘A Short Walk in the Himalaya: Vernacular Architecture on the 30th Parallel’, presented by architect John Harrison (ArCHIAM affiliate researcher) showed through detailed and continual survey, how water supplies, and drainage facilities shaped architecture and the social relationships.
Sundial in Qarya Beni Subh. Photography courtesy of Harriet N
The influences of water, and travel facilitated by oceanic regions was emphasised in research presented by Professor Soumyen Bandyopadhyay (University of Liverpool), and Professor Nicholas Temple’s keynote, ‘Migratio/Pelegrinatio, Traversing the Mare Nostrum and the Levant’. Both noted how global connections and varied routes through the Indian ocean and Mediterranean Sea respectively, had impacted on social and architectural geographies from time immemorial. Bandyopadhyay described his survey work in the Omani hubs, Muscat and Muttrah, and showed through specific architectural detailing and motifs found in a series of mosques how routes through the Indian ocean had influenced design.
A rich series of papers focused on North Africa concluded the symposium. (Abdullah Gül University) and (University of Liverpool) provided architectural insight into vernacular architecture. Polimeni’s paper presented a series of Ibadi settlements, and showed how topological analysis needed to integrate the importance of cultural identity. Quattrone’s research conducted in the oasis town of Nefta, Tunisia analysed how social and cultural requirements were reactivating the regions architecture and creating hybrid constructions, and new vocational training programmes.
A rich series of papers focused on North Africa concluded the symposium. Dr Beniamino Polimeni (Abdullah Gül University) and Dr Giamila Quattrone (University of Liverpool) provided architectural insight into vernacular architecture. Polimeni’s paper presented a series of Ibadi settlements, and showed how topological analysis needed to integrate the importance of cultural identity. Quattrone’s research conducted in the oasis town of Nefta, Tunisia analysed how social and cultural requirements were reactivating the regions architecture and creating hybrid constructions, and new vocational training programmes.
The ability to activate the landscape through practical outputs and public dissemination was shown by (University of Sheffield) and Carmen Moreno. The papers showed how researchers were creating on-site projects and workshops in the North Africa, such as the creation of for hammams, and social housing across the region described by Dr Magda Sibley, which were changing perceptions and encouraging re-use and new engagement with heritage sites. As Carmen Moreno from explained, architectural and restoration workshops informed by traditional knowledge had helped regenerate M’Hamid Oasis in South Morocco, and pass on new skills to young architects in the area. Future projects planned with Indus University in Gujarat were intending to achieve similar.
The ability to activate the landscape through practical outputs and public dissemination was shown by Dr Magda Sibley (University of Sheffield) and Carmen Moreno. The papers showed how researchers were creating on-site projects and workshops in the North Africa, such as the creation of LED solar lights for hammams, and social housing across the region described by Dr Magda Sibley, which were changing perceptions and encouraging re-use and new engagement with heritage sites. As Carmen Moreno from Terrachidia NGO explained, architectural and restoration workshops informed by traditional knowledge had helped regenerate M’Hamid Oasis in South Morocco, and pass on new skills to young architects in the area. Future projects planned with Indus University in Gujarat were intending to achieve similar.
Structural detail from M’Hamad Oasis, South Morocco
The plenary session held in Beech Gallery amongst the exhibition, ‘Yesterday’s Rooms’ by photographer Clive Gracey, synthesised the discussions, and suggested a series of new directions. There was emphasis placed on creating sustainable projects, which were aware of the on-going past, and appreciated that histories, and spaces were multiplicities, which needed to be explored in collaboration with contemporary users.
Bahla Interior, Dakhiliya Region. Sultantate of Oman. Courtesy Clive Gracey
Sacred geographies in Kolkata
We would like to recommend this elegant research article exploring Kolkata’s mazars, and the Sufi practices associated with these structures:
Following the Sacred Graves: Image, Voice, Fragrance at the Mazars of Kolkata
Envisioning the Indian City 