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SOLID AND VOID
VOL 28 (4)
DECEMBER 2014
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Printed & Published by Maulik Jasubhai Shah on behalf of Jasubhai Media Pvt Ltd (JMPL), 26, Maker Chamber VI, Nariman Point, Mumbai 400 021. Printed at M B Graphics, B-28, Shri Ram Industrial Estate, ZG D Ambekar Marg, Wadala, Mumbai 400031and Published from Mumbai - 3rd Floor, Taj Building, 210, Dr D N Road, Fort, Mumbai 400 001. Editor: Maulik Jasubhai Shah, 26, Maker Chamber VI, Nariman Point, Mumbai 400 021. Indian Architect & Builder: (ISSN 0971-5509), RNI No 46976/87, is a JMPL monthly publication. Reproduction in any manner, in whole or part, in English or any other language is strictly prohibited. We welcome articles, but do not accept responsibility for contributions lost in the mail.
Nerolac “Earthmatters” in association with IA&B presents
a panel discussion between eminent architects on the theme
“Sustainability...A way of life.”
55
The Black, The White & Everything in-between.
A surveyor’s map that captures and reflects the principles of
contextual design to understand the fabric of a city.
58
The Wall Dialect...
A parlance between the solid and the void.
66
Solidity of the Void
The Void hypothesis has been exploited by every field, every
school of thought and yet a Solid conclusion evades us.
79
the stone jaali
a critical inquiry into daylight performance.
91
Frames of the World
Drawn towards capturing images of doors and windows across
the world, Kunal Bhatia reflects upon the many readings that one
can derive from them.
Printed & Published by Maulik Jasubhai Shah on behalf of Jasubhai Media Pvt Ltd (JMPL), 26, Maker Chamber VI, Nariman Point, Mumbai 400 021. Printed at M B Graphics, B-28, Shri Ram Industrial Estate, ZG D Ambekar Marg, Wadala, Mumbai 400031and Published from Mumbai - 3rd Floor, Taj Building, 210, Dr D N Road, Fort, Mumbai 400 001. Editor: Maulik Jasubhai Shah, 26, Maker Chamber VI, Nariman Point, Mumbai 400 021. Indian Architect & Builder: (ISSN 0971-5509), RNI No 46976/87, is a JMPL monthly publication. Reproduction in any manner, in whole or part, in English or any other language is strictly prohibited. We welcome articles, but do not accept responsibility for contributions lost in the mail.
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SOLID AND VOID… Text: Aastha Deshpande
E
mptiness is both a state of suspension and possibility. The possibility includes retaining the emptiness.
Our contemplation is directed toward the phenomenological potential of absence or presence and place making and a commentary on the nature of space. Examining how a void can be a space of experimentation that challenges its existing forms of its occupation and suggests alternative transformations to be ‘solid’. While the void is a laboratory for possible modes of life, the solid is the life. The qualities of ‘nothing’ will be explored in this issue as an essential space where the tangible coexists with the intangible, the measurable with the immeasurable. A state of absence that elicits enigma and is further translated through materiality to architecture or a state of ‘presence’ and existence of a physical entity. “Architecture is the void; it is up to you to define it.” - Luigi Snozzi The concept of a ‘void’, nothing, emptiness or zero has been perceived as negative by some and for some has had as much relevance as any other physical element, or ‘solid’, and even considered positive where imagination renders it a reserve of fecund possibilities. Depending upon the ratio, the solid or the void can both suggest presence, absence, density and weightlessness and are also processes involving negation- and hence the immense faith in them. They offer a plethora of possibilities; the ability to transform the static to dynamic, to be a blank canvas and a piece of art by itself, to be filled in various fractions and each time fuel a fresh hypothesis, to evoke a sense of emptiness (void) or of liberating fulfilment (solid) and its innate nature to define its own boundaries or the lack of it.
Indian Architect & Builder - December 2014
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Image courtesy: Wikipedia.org
The Black, The White & Everything in-between. A surveyor’s map that captures and reflects the principles of contextual design to understand the fabric of a city. Text: Dhwani Talati Padiyar
The Nolli (then): or Architects, Planners, urban enthusiasts, and most readers here, the Nolli is a known tool. A map, a concept. As urban design and architecture students, we have spent endless nights on analysing Nolli.
F
The Nolli map provides an immediate and intuitive understanding of the city’s urban form through the simple yet effective graphic method of rendering the built spaces or the ‘solids’ as black and open spaces or ‘voids’ as white. The city, thus conceived, is an enormous mass that has been “carved” away to create “outdoor” rooms and is rendered intelligible and vivid through this simple graphic convention.
The Nolli map, as an ichnographic plan, presents the city with an exactitude that allows one to immediately compare size, position and shape. This is to be contrasted with a pictorial representation that, because of perspective, diminution of objects of the same size, convergence of lines, and overlapping shapes necessarily distorts the image in order to simulate a perceptual point of view. Undeniably this way of seeing and understanding the city has advantages and yields an intuitive “feel” much as any picture or photograph might provide. Nonetheless the Nolli method, like any scaled plan of presentation, has distinct advantages. It provides a conceptual view that enables a consistent frame of reference based on exact and comparable information and avoids the perspective distortion and fragmentation noted above and the pre-editing implicit in a singular point of view. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2014
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The Wall Dialect... A parlance between the solid and the void. Text: Mansi Pandey
Indian Architect & Builder - December 2014
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I
nterdependence is a fundamental law of nature. The experience of emptiness (void) refers to the lack of something (solid). The fact that we normally do not realise the void is directly related to our perception. All spaces are intimately linked and cannot be defined or conceived apart from the very existence of each other. They cannot be termed as positive or negative spaces without an innate recognition of each other. Similarly, our perception of spaces and surroundings depends on interaction, interrelation, dependence and exchange between these. A wall was derived as a simple defense mechanism; for the caveman against the beasts and for the kings and the cities against their marauding enemies in the form of high fort and city walls. One of first evidences of defensive walls were the ancient walls of Mesopotamia, for governments they functioned to mark territories: the Great Wall of China, Berlin Wall. The walls by their basic nature also provided privacy: the earliest traces of walls used in houses were witnessed in the villages of Banpo in China and Skara Brae in Scotland. The walls have been an active canvas for capturing and communicating the everyday stories and issues of mankind, throughout his evolution. The upper Paleolithic cave paintings in the cave of Altamira (Spain) and Lascaux (France), captured the encounters of man with wild mammals, while the rock art in Bimbhetka caves (India) depicted the lives and times of the people that lived in the caves through scenes of childbirth; communal dancing and drinking, religious rites and burials, and reflected the social beliefs and cultural milieu from which it emerged. The mankind has continued to use walls as a backdrop for their social setting and to communicate with each other in the form of graffiti and advertisements. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2014
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Indian Architect & Builder - December 2014
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Solidity of the Void The Void hypothesis has been exploited by every field, every school of thought and yet a Solid conclusion evades us. Text: Aastha Deshpande Indian Architect & Builder - December 2014
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V
oid, nothing, abyss, vacuum, lacuna, darkness… the presence of absence has many a word to define it and its state of (co) existence. There is no detection, definition or acknowledgement of absence sans presence, for, to be able to be aware of a nonexistence, one needs to be cognisant of what was to exist in the first place. For this very fundamental reason, the concept of zero was discovered in ancient India only when there already existed a number system to quantify ‘presence’. The Greek argumentative query to ‘zero’: ‘How can “nothing” be “something”?’ was thus an answer in itself. Zero is an ingredient of everything. It speaks of lack as opposed to excess, darkness as opposed to light, silence as opposed to sound, void as opposed to solid. The Void is a philosophical concept of nothingness manifested. The notion of The Void is closely affiliated, though not exclusive, to several realms of
metaphysics, including agnosticism, existentialism, monoism, and nihilism. The Void is also prevalent in numerous facets of psychology, notably logotherapy. The manifestation of nothingness is associated purely with to the presence and absence (partial or complete) of ‘something’, and with human attempts to identify and personify it. Perhaps one of the central paradoxes of all concepts of the Void is that it is not possible to speak about emptiness by itself, its mere existence (or the lack of it) is due to the Solid. This is akin to Laozi’s idea in the Tao Te Ching that the Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao, or Wittgenstein’s ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’ in the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus. Perhaps one of the most remarkable aspects of the human condition is, however, our perennial desire to discuss something (or rather, lack of something) that remains ultimately elusive and impossible to entirely encapsulate through the compartmentalising process implicit in words. Eckhart Tolle has alluded to this problem of language by suggesting
Indian Architect & Builder - December 2014
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the stone jaali a critical inquiry into daylight performance Text & Graphics: Melissa K Smith Research: Dharmesh Gandhi, Vishal Garg (Guide), Rajan Rawal (Co-Guide)
Indian Architect & Builder - December 2014
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Frames of the World
Drawn towards capturing images of doors and windows across the world, Kunal Bhatia reflects upon the many readings that one can derive from them.
Text and Images: Kunal Bhatia
S
ince time immemorial, architecture has been a fundamental expression of mankind and a reflection of a society’s economical, social, political and technological standing. While innovative engineering or artistic embellishments might be common parameters to understand a structure and define its merits, much can also be understood from elements that may be as inconspicuous and ordinary-sounding as its doors and windows. At a first glance, they reveal knowledge about the fundamental constraints that may have shaped them: such as the climatic zone in which they were built; the structural know-how during those times; the materials that were popular and readily available or simply the presence or lack of wealth of their patrons. Standing at a threshold, doors and windows not only govern physical factors like movement; tangible conditions like light, sound and air; but also reveal some unsaid equations within communities, relations between their inhabitants or distribution of power within society.
Still images have the power to make one pause. And as one looks at these images, one can’t help but wonder more not only about the larger structures that these doors and windows are a part of and about the eras in which they flourished, but more importantly, also about the people that lived behind them or passed through them. On a further look, there is also an uneasy sense of intimacy to these photographs. Though no people are in direct view, their presence within the frame cannot be completely ruled out. From obvious indicators like clothes hung out for drying or drawn curtains, to an unoccupied bench or an empty flight of steps - humans and their elements quite literally breathe a sense of life into these images.
One of the many red-brick government buildings in Kolkata’s BBD Bagh with its characteristic blue windows. Indian Architect & Builder - December 2014
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