Zoo Station

I have, on this blog, lamented several times (including very recently) about the complete absence of architectural sensibilities in modern-day India. It almost seems like the pre-independence art deco movement was the last time anyone used their brain and imagination to build. This is very strange because India has such a rich architectural tradition, so to see these monstrosities all over is embarrassing. The trend in Hyderabad and Bangalore, for example, seems to be to build ugly-as-fuck sprawls with ugly-as-fuck buildings to go with the sprawl. Hopefully, there is an inflection point (in wealth terms) when people do pay more attention to design, planning etc.

Given these biases of mine, it was refreshing to read Shoba Narayan's piece in Mint which addressed some of the issues articulated above. Let's start at the bottom.

India has no dearth of builders, ranging from the Hiranandanis to the DLF Group. But without a single exception, most mass-market builders lack imagination. They loathe taking architectural risks and, as a result, the homes they build lack individuality. I should know; I live in one such flat.

Corporations, thankfully, are donning the patron mantle and encouraging architects who think outside the box. TCS has hired Carlos Ott to build its eco-friendly Chennai campus. The Ananda Group uses Hong Kong-based Indian architect, Chandu Chadda, for all its properties, including its newly opened resort in Mauritius. Infosys, thankfully, has continued its patronage of Indian architects even for its projects overseas.
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Architects are (or can be) the barometers of a society’s aesthetic sensibilities. Good architecture can become a cultural and travel touchstone. After all, there are two ways for a city or country to get on the tourist map: You either have history or you make history. We, in India, are blessed with a 5,000-year-old architectural history that we perhaps take for granted. Unlike Dubai, which is building the “History Rising,” tower, we have history in spades. Our problem is how to channel all this into tourist income.
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In my mind, cutting edge architecture is the one thing that can take an obscure location and turn it into an instant tourist destination. Consider: Had you heard of Bilbao before Frank Gehry put it on the map with his Guggenheim museum? Similarly, Cincinnati was hardly on the tourist circuit until the recent unveiling of the Rosenthal Museum—a tour de force by the staggeringly talented Iraqi architect, Zaha Hadid.

Using architecture as a tourist crowd-puller doesn’t always work. Kuala Lumpur, for instance, invested a lot when it hired Cesar Pelli to build what was then the tallest building in the world—or at least a contender. Even though Pelli inventively adapted the local minaret idiom in his Petronas Towers, KL never really became an architectural destination like Bilbao. In order to become a travel destination, the buildings have to have a certain insouciance, a certain star quality; and not all of them have that even if they were designed by world-class architects. Daniel Libeskind’s design for the World Trade Center memorial was perfectly respectable, even sincere, but it lacked the oomph factor that would elevate it from an important building into an icon.