Re-thinking Indian modernity from the margins: Architectural politics in Trivandrum in the 1970s (original) (raw)
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The architectural production of India's everyday modernism: middle-class housing in Pune, 1960-1980
ABE Journal - Architecture Beyond Europe, 2019
The large-scale appropriation of modernist architectural features in everyday housing projects in postcolonial India is remarkable. This article examines how regional architects adapted their engagement with architectural modernism to the evolving circumstances of architectural production within the context of the developing world. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s “field theory”, it presents a detailed case study of two decades of residential work by Architects United, a medium-scale architectural practice founded in the Indian city of Pune in 1961. While the architects’ earliest projects demonstrated an opportunity and desire for architectural innovation, this approach became increasingly restricted as new patterns for housing provision emerged, resulting in a more subdued and hybrid form of modernist architecture. The paper makes use of the architects’ previously undisclosed archive and oral history to demonstrate that these architectural adaptations were the indirect result of governance practices and societal change, particularly the government’s stimulation of co-operative housing initiatives and the emergence of a postcolonial middle class with distinct housing expectations. As such, this “peripheral” case exposes some of the processes that have been overlooked in the rhetoric of Architectural Modernism as a Western import in India, which is primarily centered around the discussion of exceptional public building commissions by “global experts” or their Indian disciples. The paper further highlights the need to investigate the processes of architectural production, in addition to the built product itself, so that a pluralistic rather than romanticized understanding of architectural practice may emerge.
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The post uprising colonial modern state zealously ushered modernity in the Indian Subcontinent. In the domain of architecture it produced a building frenzy from implementation of urban improvement schemes to raising infrastructure including buildings patronised by the government, Indian rulers and the masses. In a departure from the state’s view to impose the Eurocentric, universal idea of modernity as the only legitimate form of architectural expression, the corpus of buildings built at the turn of the century was a hybrid product of entanglement of tradition and modernity. Indeed, the various actors engaged in the production of buildings, from patrons to designers including architects and Mistris (craftsmen) negotiated modernity on their own individual terms in the absence of any established framework. Types of buildings ranged from state buildings for governance to opulent princely palaces to innumerable every day buildings. This Paper examines the many trajectories of architectu...
2019
Dans l'Inde postcoloniale, les projets d'habitat ordinaire témoignent d'une appropriation à grande échelle des caractéristiques de l'architecture moderne. Cet article analyse l'adaptation par les architectes locaux de leurs positions envers l'architecture moderne aux circonstances sans cesse mouvantes de la production architecturale dans un monde en voie de développement. Se fondant sur la théorie du champ élaborée par Pierre Bourdieu, l'article offre une étude détaillée de constructions résidentielles réalisées sur quelque trois décennies par Architects United, une agence d'architecture de taille moyenne fondée en 1961 dans la ville de Pune. Si les premiers projets témoignent d'une certaine liberté ainsi que d'une aspiration à l'innovation architecturale, cette tendance tend à s'affadir tandis que de nouveaux modèles d'habitat émergent, tendant vers une forme plus modeste et davantage hybride de l'architecture moderne. L'exploitation d'archives inédites, ainsi que celle de sources orales, permet de démontrer que ces adaptations architecturales résultaient indirectement de politiques publiques et de changements sociétaux, comme l'incitation gouvernementale à des initiatives d'habitat coopératif ou bien l'émergence d'une classe moyenne postcoloniale aux aspirations spécifiques en matière de logement. À ce titre, cet exemple « marginal » révèle quelques-uns des processus qui ont été négligés dans les discours sur le modernisme en architecture en tant qu'importation occidentale en Inde, discours essentiellement centrés autour de commandes exceptionnelles d'architecture publique passées à des « experts globaux » ou à leurs disciples indiens. L'article souligne aussi la nécessité d'une recherche sur les processus de la production architecturale, en plus de l'objet construit, afin qu'émerge une compréhension davantage pluraliste que romancée de la pratique. Haut de page Entrées d'index Index de mots-clés : architecture postcoloniale, modernisme du tiers-monde, pratique architecturale, coopérative d'habitation Index by keyword : postcolonial architecture, Third World Modernism, architectural practice, cooperative housing Indice de palabras clave : arquitectura postcolonial, modernismo del Tercer Mundo, práctica arquitectónica, cooperativa de vivienda
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