Buildings speak too
The habitable spaces is the bind between humans and the events in their lives. Space is omnipresent witnessing and expressing at the same time. Buildings speak. They inform. Inform us of the story they weave within. Inform us of the history it witnessed. The ideology with which a built-form is pampered ultimately defines it. So what is actually a building comprised of? A thought built to make the experience felt. Its a fine tuning of thinking and making which gives a feeling. Christian Norberg-Schulz described modernism as ” a step towards healing the fracture between thought and feeling”. We resort to history to coin out our fundamental language. In this proliferation of Post-modernism , we are only seeing our faith in past in small fragments here and there which leaves us undoubtedly incomplete and utterly unresolved.
How much does the built-form owe to its location and context? Everything. Architecture as a term coexists on another term called ‘context’. Its the basic pillars on which any built-form is erected. Historically speaking, every region has its own language, own kit of materials and methods of construction leading to its ‘region-ness’. Be it churches, temples, mosques etc. It also reminds me of an analogous ambition ascribed to the nostalgia towards history. What does it mean then? What is the relevance? In this contemporary age, we see both regionalism and contextual ism diminishing or almost absent. This puts a question mark on the very intent of any architectural block . A built-form becomes an identity of its landscape and the landscape, of its buildings. In this situation, identity has merely been left off as a ‘theme’ to replicate rather than mark a time period and its importance. I think this is a paradoxical issue we are facing today because more than less its a choice we usually make in order to make it simple by escaping our roots.
There are a lot of conventional stigmas which when reinterpreted can pour life into a built-form . For instance, say, a window can also be looked at in the sense of nature peeping to us rather than we making it functional catering to human needs. We are too much attached with our egos and needs that we fail to give it back to Mother nature. This slight bent in the way of seeing an element can bring to us wonders and open new windows of scales and proportions. A building doesn’t speak. It boasts; innocently.
” Once we conceive of human life as ‘presence’ , then the functional, too, takes on a new authority. Functions are not merely adjuncts to quantitative needs that are satisfied through material resources; instead , they consist of a respectable use , in which each and every action forms a part of the entire context. “
