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Papers by Saptarshi Sanyal
Construction Matters (Proceedings of the 8th International Congress on Construction History, Zurich, 24-28 June 2024), 2024
Few building projects reveal as unusual a trajectory as the Golconde dormitory does. Realized bet... more Few building projects reveal as unusual a trajectory as the Golconde dormitory does. Realized between 1935 and c.1948 at Pondicherry, India, this impeccable-looking modern structure has intrigued architectural experts due to its formal characteristics and environmental performance. Yet, the story of its construction, one not obvious from its appearance or performance, remained untold. By peeling away these (outer) layers however, a rich and textured history of how Golconde was actually built appears. The project’s patrons, leaders of a spiritual community (Ashram) in Pondicherry, configured the construction process as an outer realization of a spiritual pursuit. The profound meaning and significance thus ascribed to the act of building provides a critical apparatus to uncover the palpable experiences of Golconde’s largely amateur workforce, an unlikely combination of mostly seekers within the Ashram and few trained professionals. These builders persisted with producing a structure in a material unfamiliar to them, reinforced concrete, and its other components—all with considerable precision. Analyzing records they left behind help to forge a narrative where Golconde’s material operations, in effect, become legible through the human relations underpinning them. In such a narrative, the people enacting these operations appear as vividly as physical things they sought to create. The paper therefore proposes that the term “labor” proves inadequate to describe these builders and their efforts, as it presumes built projects to be transactions. Rather, the Golconde project’s narrative is better understood as one of “work”, a far more inclusive conceptual frame to explain the culture of its construction.
Landscape, 2023
This abstract gives a glimpse into the multi-scalar imagination and realisation of Santiniketan a... more This abstract gives a glimpse into the multi-scalar imagination and realisation of Santiniketan as a 'nest' in spatial and philosophical terms. The site of an educational experiment in late-colonial India catalysed by the enlightened Indian and global figure Rabindranath Tagore, its nuanced values as evident in its spaces and architecture, seem to appear rather reductively in its UNESCO World Heritage inscription as a 'property'.
RILEM Bookseries, 2019
Built within the new capital of British India, the Imperial Record Office: now the National Archi... more Built within the new capital of British India, the Imperial Record Office: now the National Archives of India is considered an important representative example of culmination of imperial architecture. An integral part of a city of the Empire that continues to this day as democratic India's capital, the building's design and construction raises questions on the nature of architecture in one of the most significant British capital city building projects in the subcontinent. In pre-existent scholarship, the architecture and urban environment of Imperial Delhi has predominantly been accepted as a product of the past, as a 'garden city' with neoclassical expression. The proposed paper would share the process of generating new knowledge about this structure, carried out through documentation and investigations of the materials, fabric and construction along with the analyses of space planning and design. This brings forth unique aspects that testify the actual development of architectural modernity. Planned within a historic city in the early decades of the twentieth century, possessing both an airport (modern) and cantonment (typical of the pre-modern), these findings about the Imperial Record Office are exemplary to represent a paradox in Imperial Delhi's built environment. The paper aims to demonstrate, through this case, how this building's architecture was simultaneously a product of the past and an envisaged future. It shows how the structure's attributes embody the complex process of an emerging modernity, dressed in a façade of architectural classicism.
Architekturen, Jul 6, 2023
By focusing on how image-making practices and architecture are inextricable from one another, thi... more By focusing on how image-making practices and architecture are inextricable from one another, this essay explores some ways in which the photograph is a site of architectural production. The postcard is seen as an artefact of popular cultures over time, and the author draws attention to its representation of fragments of urban and architectural modernity, while also simultaneously underscoring the uneven nature of such modernity. Studying the photographic gaze then becomes an important agenda in uncovering new histories of modernity that, rather than clear, colonial taxonomies and categories linked to places, races or societies, are contested and plural.
Architectural Research Quarterly
Proceedings of the VI International Conference on Structural Analysis of Historic Construction, SAHC08, 2-4 July 2008, Bath, United Kingdom, 2008
The Imperial Record Office in Delhi: An Architectural Paradox, 2019
Built within the new capital of British India, the Imperial Record Office: now the National Archi... more Built within the new capital of British India, the Imperial Record Office: now the National Archives of India is considered an important representative example of culmination of imperial architecture. An integral part of a city of the Empire that continues to this day as democratic India’s capital, the building’s design and construction raises questions on the nature of architecture in one of the most significant British capital city building projects in the subcontinent. In pre-existent scholarship, the architecture and urban environment of Imperial Delhi has predominantly been accepted as a product of the past, as a ‘garden city’ with neoclassical expression. The proposed paper would share the process of generating new knowledge about this structure, carried out through documentation and investigations of the materials, fabric and construction along with the analyses of space planning and design. This brings forth unique aspects that testify the actual development of architectural...
This paper, published in the International Journal of Arts and Sciences Vol. 8(8), January 2016, ... more This paper, published in the International Journal of Arts and Sciences Vol. 8(8), January 2016, is an exposition into findings related to the dwellings of Rabindranath Tagore, at Santiniketan in Bengal, India. Tagore, one of modern India's foremost cultural and literary figures, spent forty years (1901-41), most of his very prolific and creative adult life, in the houses he built here. As regards disciplinary approach, the investigations take an architectural perspective, revealing several ideologies and approaches of Tagore, based on historical context as well as personal philosophy. The paucity of Tagore's direct references to his houses in his writings makes it imperative to rely on in-situ analyses and written allusions about space and architecture. In doing so, the paper also attempts to realize the immense potential for understanding and appreciating Tagore's genius through his architectural creations, while placing these within contemporaneous endeavours of discovering an Indian and pan-Asian identity in the then colonised nation.
Books by Saptarshi Sanyal
Indian Architecture in Postcards, A New Perspective on A Modern Heritage, 2023
By focusing on how image-making practices and architecture are inextricable from one another, thi... more By focusing on how image-making practices and architecture are inextricable from one another, this essay explores some ways in which the photograph is a site of architectural production. The postcard is seen as an artefact of popular cultures over time, and the author draws attention to its representation of fragments of urban and architectural modernity, while also simultaneously underscoring the uneven nature of such modernity. Studying the photographic gaze then becomes an important agenda in uncovering new histories of modernity that, rather than clear, colonial taxonomies and categories linked to places, races or societies, are contested and plural.
Focusing on a private collection of 60 postcards of modern architecture in Mumbai, New Delhi, Kol... more Focusing on a private collection of 60 postcards of modern architecture in Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Agra, the contributors to this volume explore the many dimensions of modern architecture in India from the 1890s to the 1970s and share their own perspective on these objects.
Experts on architectural history and visual studies, as well as postcard collectors provide new insights into a territory and its architectural heritage which is still largely unknown in Europe, and reflect on the postcard as a medium for historical research.
Construction Matters (Proceedings of the 8th International Congress on Construction History, Zurich, 24-28 June 2024), 2024
Few building projects reveal as unusual a trajectory as the Golconde dormitory does. Realized bet... more Few building projects reveal as unusual a trajectory as the Golconde dormitory does. Realized between 1935 and c.1948 at Pondicherry, India, this impeccable-looking modern structure has intrigued architectural experts due to its formal characteristics and environmental performance. Yet, the story of its construction, one not obvious from its appearance or performance, remained untold. By peeling away these (outer) layers however, a rich and textured history of how Golconde was actually built appears. The project’s patrons, leaders of a spiritual community (Ashram) in Pondicherry, configured the construction process as an outer realization of a spiritual pursuit. The profound meaning and significance thus ascribed to the act of building provides a critical apparatus to uncover the palpable experiences of Golconde’s largely amateur workforce, an unlikely combination of mostly seekers within the Ashram and few trained professionals. These builders persisted with producing a structure in a material unfamiliar to them, reinforced concrete, and its other components—all with considerable precision. Analyzing records they left behind help to forge a narrative where Golconde’s material operations, in effect, become legible through the human relations underpinning them. In such a narrative, the people enacting these operations appear as vividly as physical things they sought to create. The paper therefore proposes that the term “labor” proves inadequate to describe these builders and their efforts, as it presumes built projects to be transactions. Rather, the Golconde project’s narrative is better understood as one of “work”, a far more inclusive conceptual frame to explain the culture of its construction.
Landscape, 2023
This abstract gives a glimpse into the multi-scalar imagination and realisation of Santiniketan a... more This abstract gives a glimpse into the multi-scalar imagination and realisation of Santiniketan as a 'nest' in spatial and philosophical terms. The site of an educational experiment in late-colonial India catalysed by the enlightened Indian and global figure Rabindranath Tagore, its nuanced values as evident in its spaces and architecture, seem to appear rather reductively in its UNESCO World Heritage inscription as a 'property'.
RILEM Bookseries, 2019
Built within the new capital of British India, the Imperial Record Office: now the National Archi... more Built within the new capital of British India, the Imperial Record Office: now the National Archives of India is considered an important representative example of culmination of imperial architecture. An integral part of a city of the Empire that continues to this day as democratic India's capital, the building's design and construction raises questions on the nature of architecture in one of the most significant British capital city building projects in the subcontinent. In pre-existent scholarship, the architecture and urban environment of Imperial Delhi has predominantly been accepted as a product of the past, as a 'garden city' with neoclassical expression. The proposed paper would share the process of generating new knowledge about this structure, carried out through documentation and investigations of the materials, fabric and construction along with the analyses of space planning and design. This brings forth unique aspects that testify the actual development of architectural modernity. Planned within a historic city in the early decades of the twentieth century, possessing both an airport (modern) and cantonment (typical of the pre-modern), these findings about the Imperial Record Office are exemplary to represent a paradox in Imperial Delhi's built environment. The paper aims to demonstrate, through this case, how this building's architecture was simultaneously a product of the past and an envisaged future. It shows how the structure's attributes embody the complex process of an emerging modernity, dressed in a façade of architectural classicism.
Architekturen, Jul 6, 2023
By focusing on how image-making practices and architecture are inextricable from one another, thi... more By focusing on how image-making practices and architecture are inextricable from one another, this essay explores some ways in which the photograph is a site of architectural production. The postcard is seen as an artefact of popular cultures over time, and the author draws attention to its representation of fragments of urban and architectural modernity, while also simultaneously underscoring the uneven nature of such modernity. Studying the photographic gaze then becomes an important agenda in uncovering new histories of modernity that, rather than clear, colonial taxonomies and categories linked to places, races or societies, are contested and plural.
Architectural Research Quarterly
Proceedings of the VI International Conference on Structural Analysis of Historic Construction, SAHC08, 2-4 July 2008, Bath, United Kingdom, 2008
The Imperial Record Office in Delhi: An Architectural Paradox, 2019
Built within the new capital of British India, the Imperial Record Office: now the National Archi... more Built within the new capital of British India, the Imperial Record Office: now the National Archives of India is considered an important representative example of culmination of imperial architecture. An integral part of a city of the Empire that continues to this day as democratic India’s capital, the building’s design and construction raises questions on the nature of architecture in one of the most significant British capital city building projects in the subcontinent. In pre-existent scholarship, the architecture and urban environment of Imperial Delhi has predominantly been accepted as a product of the past, as a ‘garden city’ with neoclassical expression. The proposed paper would share the process of generating new knowledge about this structure, carried out through documentation and investigations of the materials, fabric and construction along with the analyses of space planning and design. This brings forth unique aspects that testify the actual development of architectural...
This paper, published in the International Journal of Arts and Sciences Vol. 8(8), January 2016, ... more This paper, published in the International Journal of Arts and Sciences Vol. 8(8), January 2016, is an exposition into findings related to the dwellings of Rabindranath Tagore, at Santiniketan in Bengal, India. Tagore, one of modern India's foremost cultural and literary figures, spent forty years (1901-41), most of his very prolific and creative adult life, in the houses he built here. As regards disciplinary approach, the investigations take an architectural perspective, revealing several ideologies and approaches of Tagore, based on historical context as well as personal philosophy. The paucity of Tagore's direct references to his houses in his writings makes it imperative to rely on in-situ analyses and written allusions about space and architecture. In doing so, the paper also attempts to realize the immense potential for understanding and appreciating Tagore's genius through his architectural creations, while placing these within contemporaneous endeavours of discovering an Indian and pan-Asian identity in the then colonised nation.
Indian Architecture in Postcards, A New Perspective on A Modern Heritage, 2023
By focusing on how image-making practices and architecture are inextricable from one another, thi... more By focusing on how image-making practices and architecture are inextricable from one another, this essay explores some ways in which the photograph is a site of architectural production. The postcard is seen as an artefact of popular cultures over time, and the author draws attention to its representation of fragments of urban and architectural modernity, while also simultaneously underscoring the uneven nature of such modernity. Studying the photographic gaze then becomes an important agenda in uncovering new histories of modernity that, rather than clear, colonial taxonomies and categories linked to places, races or societies, are contested and plural.
Focusing on a private collection of 60 postcards of modern architecture in Mumbai, New Delhi, Kol... more Focusing on a private collection of 60 postcards of modern architecture in Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Agra, the contributors to this volume explore the many dimensions of modern architecture in India from the 1890s to the 1970s and share their own perspective on these objects.
Experts on architectural history and visual studies, as well as postcard collectors provide new insights into a territory and its architectural heritage which is still largely unknown in Europe, and reflect on the postcard as a medium for historical research.