Why Architecture Critic?

If you are not an architect or urban designer, I implore you NOT to leave before having read this entry fully from end to end. This rant is an attempt at questioning the void (no, the post collision World Trade Centre sized hole!) that exists in our media (print or otherwise). Have you ever seen or read or come across a species called an Architecture critic in any Indian newspaper or news channel ever?

What in the dickens is an architecture critic you might ask?

It is not your fault at all. You have obviously read and heard a lot of art critics, film critics and literary critics in your time. Every Sunday supplement is full of their rants and bored cynicism. But scratch your head all you want, I am sure you have never probably read architectural criticism. In spite of the fact that you probably live in a house which is in a residential colony, that there are marketplaces somewhere in the vicinity, there is an entire neighbourhood of places to eat, shop, play, catch a movie, attend a marriage, entertain friends and so on and so forth. There is probably a network of streets all around your house or apartment complex that take you to where you want to go (or sometimes, take you to where you don’t want to go!). The point I am trying to make is, you are surrounded by Architecture! And in a much more tangible and real way, than you are surrounded by books, cinema or art. You live inside architecture, you work inside architecture, you traverse through architecture, almost all your activities are in the living breathing presence of architecture! And some of this architecture is literally shit, isn’t it? Yet you suffer in silence and never ever raise your voice even a teeny-weeny bit against the complete lack of informed debate about architecture in this country. Why?

Now lets look at The New York Times. The iconic Ada Louise Huxtable, the Pulitzer prize winning Paul Goldberger, the inimitable Herbert Muschamp and now Nicolai Ouroussoff all form a long line of distinguished and seasoned voices who made architecture the topic of conversation in New York homes, and got people involved in discussing their city, their surroundings and how citizens can and should have a decisive say in the shaping of the environment in which they live.

Let us now shift our gaze to our venerable ‘The Times of India’ (since 1838, no less). The Indian behemoth that claims its superiority in Indian readership. From time to time, there are guest voices that raise topical issues about architecture in single pieces and then die down. The issue of the BRT corridor in Delhi is being taken up these days because it is the hot topic right now and will catch eyeballs. But there is really no sustained interest in dialogue and polemics about the most important architecture issues that affect the lives of millions of city dwellers who read the Times of India. Issues that affect your life and mine, significantly more than the parties featured on page three of Delhi Times or Bombay Times for that matter. And I am definitely not talking about the Vaastu of your home!

I am talking about the spreading of our cities like gangrenous cancers on the surrounding countryside, in the name of suburban growth. I am talking about the three precious hours of your day, that you criminally waste commuting up and down from home to your place of work and back, every day, day after day. If you multiply three hours by six (for the six working days) it comes to eighteen! Imagine! Almost one whole day of your precious life you just give away every week sitting around in traffic jams, inhaling exhaust fumes, generally cursing your bad luck. 18 hours. How much you could have accomplished in that time. It is literally two full nights of restful sleep. And all because of the way your living environment is planned (or not planned!) Its architecture’s fault, and you should definitely have a say.

We who make the city a living thriving entity, suffer in quiet disquiet, when it comes to issues of architecture in the city. We do not have any say in the shaping of our living environment. Why?
For a very long time, we have assumed that only the powerful and wealthy can make change. The government can do as it pleases, passing arbitrary laws, picking up ad-hoc parcels of land for piecemeal development wherever it pleases with no accountability whatsoever to the citizens whose lives are inflicted with misery and discomfort by these rash government decisions. The wealthy developers buy huge parcels of land using money and manipulation and then transform these into jungles of glass and concrete. For a burgeoning population - no doubt, we need more houses, more shops, more this and more that, but shouldn’t there be a debate in the public realm at least about how we should do it? Shouldn’t we as citizens of a democratic country have a more prominent say in the architecture that shapes our lives?

Why do artists and writers go out into the world with their work and demand that society take note, criticise their oeuvre, engage in dialogue and all that? And why do architects and urban designers huddle together in ‘Architects Only’ conferences, sharing their ideas and thoughts with a select professional few, when the work they do actually and physically affects the lives of millions?

Lets take a simple test. How many illustrious writers can you name? I am sure a score at least. How many famed artists can you recall? Again, at least a dozen I am sure. Now lets get to architects. How many city altering architects come to mind? Do you know who designed the city of Chandigarh? Do you know whose brainchild was the network of circles and hexagons in Central Delhi? Do you know who has almost single-handedly transformed the landscape of Gurgaon? For better or for worse? No, obviously you don’t. I am sure you do not know about the architect who has affected your life so profoundly, you would wince in discomfort if you realized it.

If you are a resident of South Delhi, and you have spent many a pleasant evening at Dilli Haat, than you have, say, by reading Arundhati Roy’s ‘The God of Small Things’, then it is my pleasure to tell you that the architect of Dilli Haat is Pradip Sachdev. Pity, you knew Arundhati Roy, whose book you most probably haven’t read (kudos if you have read it!), but didn’t know Pradip Sachdev, who has given you a place to enjoy numerous pleasant evenings. If you still haven’t been to Dilli Haat, you should go there as soon as possible – it is an idyllic pedestrian plaza of arty shops and open air plazas and food places to while away an hour or two.

I am not blaming you for not knowing Pradip Sachdev. Its not your fault. And the idea of this rant is not to massage the egos of architects. Far from it. The burning idea is to bring architecture into the very midst of our thoughts. Because it affects us in more ways than I would like to re-iterate again and again. Why must we tolerate ugly glass monsters and badly planned marketplaces as we do all the time? Why should we not be involved in shaping our cities as we see fit? Why does our opinion not count? It is time, the fourth estate, namely the media, start taking up issues of architectural design and urbanity on a sustained basis, clearing the deck for the powers that be, to sit up and take notice.

Our cities, towns & living habitats can no longer remain at the mercy of corrupt development authorities, thoughtless laws, venal politicians and ruthless private cartels. And the first step is awareness of what architecture is, how it is practised, what constitutes good architecture & what each one of us, what YOU, can do to make better architecture.

Is anybody at the Times of India or NDTV reading this?
52 thoughts of an Architecture Critic
(1) Why are there so few public toilets in our cities? (The economics and politics of public toilets)
(2) Why are there hardly any pedestrian plazas in my city?
(3) After cutting trees for building roads and bridges, why are new saplings planted tens of kilometres away? Hasn’t anyone heard of a concept called micro-climate?
(4) Do we need glass buildings?
(5) Do you like the 20 feet tall hoardings in your city?
(6) Why do I have to commute 20 kilometres to work everyday?
(7) There are hardly any cheap and legal office spaces for small practices and young professionals in the city. This is the equivalent of stifling the young entrepreneurial spirit of the country. How is the MCD sealing drive in Delhi related to this? (Why we must build more offices and less shopping malls.)
(8) Who needs stupid byelaws? The laws and why people break them.
(9) We should all have small gardens in our homes (yes, even those of us who live in apartments.)
(10) Who says Delhi can’t go high-rise? (City densities and morphology)
(11) Where are public gardens? Why are there more and more roads and less and less greens?
(12) Why isn’t anyone taking up rain-water harvesting seriously? The economics and politics of water distribution.
(13) The concept of self sustaining neighbourhoods
(14) Why are our residential colonies so ugly?
(15) The Yamuna riverfront : the economics & history of riverfront development
(16) The Dharavi slum settlement generates $450 milllions in manufacturing revenues (you read right!) Time to change our world-view of what slums are, and why slums become. And what we can do about them.
(17) The Brihanmumbai Corporation is going to redevelop the Crawford market. What is our attitude to old historical buildings in the city? What can we do about these buildings without compromising development?
(18) The suburb : what it means to live in the suburbs.
(19) Why are the malls coming up in our cities ugly as hell? Which idiots are building these energy guzzling monstrosities and why?
(20) Why does nobody in our country ever go visiting museums? Why are our museums falling apart?
(21) What a truly beautiful street really is…
(22) Why is Lajpat Nagar so bloody ugly? Can’t a marketplace be a beautiful place? What we need to do.
(23) How the government is systematically wasting public money on flyovers, and where the main problem lies.
(24) Do you want to die while trying to cross the road? Why the city is no longer meant for pedestrians.
(25) We can no longer go on cycling trips in our city. Who cares for cycling anymore?
(26) Why are there so many coffee shops, but so few libraries? Does no one read anymore?
(27) I love my bhutta (corncob) and my golgappa. What we can do to save our neighbourhood thelawaala.
(28) What happens to the waste we produce everyday? And why should we care.
(29) What we can do about Chandni Chowk…
(30) Do you know what an Urban village is? A fascinating glimpse into an alternate history and a new way of living in the city
(31) Places for sport : clubs, stadia and playgrounds
(32) What is the Delhi Masterplan 2021, and how it affects our lives…also, what does ‘land-use’ mean?
(33) Maps and new ways of seeing..
(34) The Metro…a history of mass rapid transport in cities of the developed world, and what we can learn from them.
(35) What things to look out for while buying an apartment…
(36) Why it is criminal to have more than two cars per household
(37) Tips for lucky people who own their own plot of land and are planning to build a house
(38) Spaces for women and children in the city.
(39) Nehru Place. Urban nightmare? Or brilliant opportunity?
(40) Art in the city. How expressions of art need to be out there, in the midst of our daily lives, not tucked away in inaccessible art galleries
(41) What’s in a name? The naming and renaming of places in a city.
(42) The geometry of our cities
(43) The concept of the city forest
(44) A lake in every neighbourhood. Water in our lives.
(45) Buses and autorickshaws and us. Where are the rickshaws of yore?
(46) Pigeons on my rooftop. Animals in the city. What architecture can do to look after them…
(47) What can we do about the cows roaming our streets?
(48) When does the countryside end and the city begin? Why we need more than dirt, filth & chaos to define the boundaries of a city.
(49) Alternatives to fully air-conditioned spaces
(50) Where will our servants and domestic help live? Buildings for the poor
(51) What do you feel about the new building coming up next to where you work or live? Does your voice count?
(52) What’s wrong with our airports and railway stations?

I have spent my entire life in Delhi, and therefore my questions have a focus on issues to do with Delhi, more than of other cities. But these thoughts are as pertinent for Kolkata or Pune, as they are for Delhi. All Indian cities are facing the same problems, and architects and citizens are grappling with similar concerns everywhere in the country. Let’s become more sensitive to our environment, our habitat.

So, let’s ask the question : What’s wrong with our architecture? And also, what's right?