Architecture of Optimism.

 

The Covid-19 pandemic and the resultant national lockdown has left its ripples across all segments of the life the lockdown has also left its shadow on the architects and designers as projects at all levels have come to a grinding halt in the country. One thing that’s clear from this pandemic is that there won’t be a flip of a switch that will suddenly fill malls, airports, office buildings, parks, and arenas with people. There will be a gradual re-engagement with our communities, and therefore the architecture that defines those communities are going to be layered with a cautious optimism. Whether it’s new buildings that are about to be designed or existing architecture that now needs to be re-imagined, in many ways this is a time for an architecture of optimism which doesn’t seek to glorify form rather, seeks to express its purpose in every aspect of the design, one that promotes wellness and celebrates life. It makes people feel safe and can be trusted while still being inspirational. It’s the design that supports the human experience at every scale and level of our daily lives and more than anything it’s an architecture of a future age, the emerging recipe of design ingredients for a more immediate new normal.

In India, during the lockdown, the balcony became a space for expression of anxiety, isolation, appreciation, and of reaching out to the community. From clapping hands and ringing bells to lighting of candles on apartment terraces it has been offering a moment of joy and solidarity during some very difficult times. Traditionally, Indian homes had always been designed for human interaction: courtyards in the middle of the house or a verandah right on the street so that you could see people go by. Intense urbanization created the need to go vertical. While we connected with people across countries, our connect within our neighborhood ceased to exist. However, the pandemic has allowed us to tune back into the neighbor-hood and we began to once again feel the need of common open spaces that forge this bond even further. As times change, so will our priorities. Instead of chasing material goods and luxuries, one might now seek peace and tranquility. These semi-outdoor or common open spaces could serve the dual purpose of becoming windows to ourselves and the world.

In planning for a post-covid world, the primary area of focus needs to be the streets and the informal low-income housing settlements where thousands of individuals compete just to share a toilet, disconnected from sanitation or sewage infrastructure. Look at the street. People like you and me are constantly dodging cars while buying fruits and vegetables. For us, maybe this can be a once-a-week event, except for many people, this is often a part of their daily routine. Streets are not designed holistically or democratically. Most developments in urban India are imposed on the citizenry, devoid of local citizen input, resulting in chaos. The very last thing we'd need after the pandemic is another top-down directive. In the olden days, traditional house forms across India had a clear sense of an outside public zone and an inside private or safe zone. This outdoor ‘threshold’ from the street was also where someone coming in from outside could wash up then enter. It may be time to bring this back new boundaries will come into play. But the challenge will lie in extracting freedom for human relationships from within these boundaries. This requires thoughtful architecture which is centered around people and not space, adding resilience to the living space, be it condominiums or low-income housing. A great crisis such as this has the potential to create systemic changes and that is what we should be moving towards.

What is the future of architecture, of monuments, temples, mosques and elaborate landmarks, if all life goes online? Will great complexes like Angkor Wat, the pyramids, the Taj Mahal, the churches of Goa, and the railway stations of Mumbai become mere reminders of recent history the physical age before the digital one? As the pandemic rages, atleast for some time in the foreseeable future, expanded digital platforms are likely to become the medium for large public participatory events. Yet, what is the real value of a city, unless it is formed out of active public participation? Why would numerous people come to live together in one place if there were no reasons to connect to each other? Is the future city then a wasted place? In a country that has never had outstanding modern edifices to public life museums, libraries, theatres, concert halls nonetheless, a massive array of buildings will still suddenly fall silent with social distancing. The vast chains of hotels, vacation resorts, malls, shopping centres and stadia across India will lie empty and forlorn, doomed to decay. Or they could be given a new lease of life? 

Any future rethink of architecture must widen its humanistic arc to incorporate everyone within the city’s participatory life. The old idea of the town must be given a brand new direction. More than ever, the government using the architect community must take insightful and radical positions. As the old requirements from spaces die out, new ones reveal themselves. The three main areas where such new ideas could play out are hospitality, commerce and entertainment but the probabilities for change are endless. The pandemic has clearly acknowledged the immense shortfalls in our urban life and architecture’s brief are going to be valuable as long as it creates vivid and unapologetic solutions for a brand new reality. The profession’s most tragic failure has been its inability to take a stand on cultural and social patterns of city life. Retaining for itself the comfortable and irrelevant postures of design, its failure will become all the more obvious if it doesn’t participate in redefining a brand new, post-pandemic character for our cities.

In the end, that's where the difference will lie. Will we be saddled with a new set of urban ruins, adding crumbling hotels, stadia and malls to our existing stock of Mughal tombs and derelict monuments? Or will we take necessary even outlandishly experimental steps to form a diverse and unique skyline? At a time of such upheaval, the choices that we don’t take may affect us more than we know. The entrances to towers and lifts will be switched to eliminate human contact. This may require adoption of advanced technology in elevators and entrances, like voice-enabled elevators and key card entry systems respectively for the residents and visitors. There'll be sanitization of common areas, which can become a compulsory exercise for societies with large common spaces, like leisure rooms, play areas, clubhouses, gyms and pools. While many societies provide a standard arcade for a few of its projects, the thought of getting a daily needs store in every society are going to be a more wanted attempt to reduce the probabilities of immense crowding at one store.

But before all of this, communicable disease had already moulded the places we pass though architecture, design, and urban planning in enduring ways. Right now, the lockdowns on movement and social interaction are critical to keeping the coronavirus cornered. These spatial interventions have a extended lineage, however, enshrined within the buildings that emerged from 20th century modernism. Within the deadly wakes of cholera, tuberculosis, and flu pandemics, early 20th century architects saw design as a panacea to the sickness of overcrowded cities. Just as those scourges scarred and then reshaped cities, so will ours.

As our time in isolation creeps on, the denial of physical interaction has underscored the crucial social infrastructure that supports our well-being. As all folks emerge from our homes and re-engage with our communities, the one thing we'll be trying to find is an underlying trust within the places and spaces into which we’re emerging and, the hope that we will safely be together again will fuel an optimistic re-thinking of the built environment. The time to define this architecture of optimism is now. The longer term of our cities depends thereon. As all life goes online within the wake of the pandemic, it’s time to imagine a brand new future for urban architecture, one that's radical, equitable and optimistic more than ever.