Towards an Architecture of Ethics
Anisha Shekhar Mukherji September 2024
I: The Language of Architecture
The sessions themed on the Practice of Repair, as indeed the entire Conference on Architectures of Transition in South Asia, in revealing the scales and kinds of contemporary practices, brought home the immense potential of architecture. A rare opportunity to see, hear and learn from the ingenuity and commitment of a range of participants, it threw up many questions — as any worthwhile platform of ideas should — not just in the planning and construction of buildings, but also in its larger meaning of allied design fields and ways of living.
It also generated disquiet. There was a glaring contrast between some of the remarkably inspiring work presented here, and most of the architecture that confronts us in Delhi, and elsewhere in India or South Asia. And within the conference hall, not only was the very same architectural vocabulary used to explain completely opposed approaches, but also aspects of practice that do grave harm to people and the planet, were rendered benign with the aid of fuzzy phrases.
For instance, is it reasonable for offices employing processes and outcomes of heavy-industry that lead to eviction of citizens and destruction of nature, to claim they are contributing to improvement and re-development? That they follow an architecture of collaboration — when they essentially engage with official agencies who rarely allow any say to those who inhabit or use such architecture? Can small firms by default consider themselves sustainable, even if they eschew local materials and skills? Should design be presented as an intellectual sport or a logistical challenge? Should it negate cultural beliefs and traditions? Does applying crafts as decorative motifs on a structure of industrially fabricated materials, count as context-sensitive design in South Asia?
There is an imperative necessity of a rigorous vocabulary to clearly convey characteristics of architectural practice, and to reveal how images that certain words summon up can lead us to a crisis. This is not mere quibbling. Unless we speak and write in words that describe architecture accurately, we can neither assess its quality, nor decide what ought to be its priorities. This malaise of obfuscation is not limited to South Asia or indeed to architecture and design. In the words of Ivan Illich, it is a world-wide strategy of exclusion and monopoly created by Disabling Professions.
Needless to say, a more truthful vocabulary will not automatically generate architecture with corresponding qualities, just as knowledge of all the correct words does not presuppose the production of great literature. Vocabulary is but a tool. It should, however, be a tool used to clarify what we practice — not to delude others and ourselves into believing we are doing what we are not. The use of such a vocabulary cannot happen in a void. For this, we must have some consensus about the philosophical objective and practical purpose of architecture. If we agree that this objective is to create empathetic environments for habitation that fulfil spiritual as well as material needs, we may accordingly reframe the terms of reference to help us create such environments. Terms which help us in constructing a language of architecture allied to its first principles, as well as to evaluate the direction of its transitions.
Dehumanisation of Labour
An important aspect of mainstream architecture today hidden in architectural discourse, is that it is the outcome of ‘profit, privilege, and usurpation’ — traits that inevitably accompany colonisation as underlined by Albert Memmi from his primary experience in North Africa more than half a century ago. It would be presumptuous to suggest that ‘[t]he sickness of the world, technologically boastful and humanly inadequate,’ as Nadine Gordimer puts it, can be solved by architects. But we can at least, acknowledge the dehumanisation of labour in our profession — as anyone who has even passed by a building site, cannot but notice. This is not confined to construction sites, nor unlinked to the debilitating poverty we see all around us in South Asia: at traffic lights, in slums, in the tragedies of children picking trash, in reports of people starving to death or dying to earn a paltry 800 rupees to clean sewers.
The dangerous and deeply exploitative work all over the world in mines, factories and industrial-centres where building materials are produced, may not be directly visible to many of us. Information on this has, however, long been in the public domain. Even so, contract documents, conventional building processes, and labour laws rarely ensure congenial, safe or fair conditions for construction-workers. Nor do they give them any creative role. Indeed, they put them and their families — in South Asia, often obliged to camp on building-sites — at great peril.
Before the colonial decimation, it appears that professional practice in our part of the world ensured a more responsible working environment. Consideration of the cosmos and the Earth as a whole, and for what already exists on or around a site, were essential prerequisites to any construction. Technical manuals unequivocally qualify this, and that all members of the building team are to be treated with honour: architects, supervisors, masons, wood-workers.These are not just hypothetical ideals, as accounts of actual work show. A palm-leaf manuscript Bayacakada (Vyayacakra or ‘Expense Cycle’), records transactions of money, goods and services in the construction of the huge and iconic 13th century Konarak temple. It reveals a relationship of accountability and trust between patrons, supervisors and workers. Even till the early 20th century in different parts of the sub-continent, those who craft structures in the indigenous tradition — from everyday houses to specialised functions of temples, dharamshalas, mosques, palaces — exhibit great creative ability as well as freedom to exercise that ability, as documented in a special report of the Archaeological Survey of India.
The Practice of Repair
Despite the break-down and extinction of many aspects of our cultures consequent to colonisation, some part of our world-views and their rich knowledge base still survives. We are heir to philosophies that guide us to own responsibility for our actions and to see ourselves as an indivisible part of different forms of existence. This bank of wisdom is vital to revisit in order to resolve our current crisis in architecture, or at least to look for ways out of it. One of these ways lies in the practice of repair. Repair is defined in the dictionary as: ‘to go back'; ‘to put something that is damaged, broken or not working correctly back into good condition, or make it work again’; ‘to correct or improve something’. These different meanings are all relevant for South Asia, especially in the wake of the trauma and aftermath of colonisation.
The sessions in the conference that were centred on repair, urged participants to clarify how they interpret and incorporate repair in their architectural practice. The commonality underlying all the presentations was a deep involvement with the passage of time, with materials, with particular cultural world-views, and with local communities. Though they expanded on different aspects of repair — ranging from continuing tradition to mitigating climate-change to conserving social and skill-structures — all of them stressed the imperativeness of repair. That it is the only way to halt the earth’s destruction; its disembowelling and dumping caused by endless toxic production. Repair is thus, not merely limited to techniques, but at its core, is a sense of real responsibility towards the world.
Repair makes us materially richer since less money and resources are generally spent in repairing things vis-a-vis replacing them. As a bespoke design solution requiring specific responses to what will always be specific, special conditions, repair cannot be done without a network of relationships with people and places. Beyond a mundane level of fixing things, repair can therefore lead to richer life experiences, and a heightened awareness of ourselves and everything around us to integrate the physical with the metaphysical. Giving credence to traditional wisdom — in understanding geometries and geographies; in extending the life of buildings and materials; in reawakening responsibilities; in creating visual, spatial and inner harmony — thus embraces repair in all its meanings from ‘going back’ in a literal and larger sense, to ‘improving and putting something that is damaged, broken or not working correctly back into good condition.’
The Cult of the New
If it can lead to so many good things, why is architecture today so averse, even hostile to the idea of repair? This is because repair is presented as old-fashioned and unfashionable, and actively discouraged at all levels. The fact that we are now educated in an idiom steeped in a materialist scientific view, which downplays or denies the validity of spiritual frame-works, also greatly diminishes our sense of responsibility at personal, professional and societal levels. Ezra Pound, when he articulated the creed of modernism to “Make it New!” in 1934, was not merely voicing a sentiment limited to the avant garde. He was echoing and further shaping a narrative of ceaseless consumption in the garb of ‘making works fundamentally individual.’ Such feverish haste to make, such heady value given to the new, can only exist in opposition to that which already exists. This is seen in its most extreme form in the fashion industry, where role models celebrate hectic buying and discarding through trends that change every season.
Repair also stands in the way of the economic imperialism of powerful countries and centralised corporations. Government policies in many parts of the western world from especially the 1930s onwards, deter repair through deliberate strategies of planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence. Popular writing bolsters reckless extravagance, while depicting reuse as boring and sordid or at best, an eccentricity — and in one case, makes ‘exaggerated economies’ even a cause for murder!
This industrialised world-view that made us hostage to colonisation is now our overarching aspiration in a situation akin to the Stockholm syndrome. Influential theorists tell us that ‘the South Asian countries — outside the foreign enclaves — were, and are, so largely stagnant, with most of their people traditional in outlook and inclined to accept things as they are.’ This is accompanied by a dismissal of our ‘supplementary beliefs’ identified as ‘the glorification of frugality’ and ‘the moral superiority of self-employment and independent work to wage-employment.’ Positing tradition as stagnant and ‘remote from the realities of the modern world’ is an instance of the burden of images that certain words are made to carry as part of the mythology of imperialism. All of this puts pressure on us to embrace the Cult of the New, and the extreme exploitation it is bound up in — Malignant Growth in the words of the economist Amit Bhaduri. Those who challenge this interpretation of tradition, remain voices in the background that the mainstream chooses to ignore.
Distinguishing Attributes of Repair
So, as we see, despite all its positive meanings, repair can be re-presented with negative connotations. It can also be hijacked. In the name of repair, control and economic imperialism is often perpetuated by utilising large-scale mechanisation. Even when repair extends the life of materials, it may paradoxically lead to dispossession: as when adaptive reuse of buildings changes their function and displaces original residents. Therefore, to examine how repair may be applicable in developing a philosophy and vocabulary of architecture appropriate for the different situations that confront us in South Asia — whether in conservation, post-disaster work, or everyday buildings — we need to first clearly comprehend its essence. A time-tested methodology in our tradition to understand and represent the essence of anything, is based on identifying its lakshana: its distinguishing attributes.
To me, the most distinguishing attribute of repair is Frugality. From this, arise its other important attributes: Continuity; Optimisation; Innovation; Decentralisation; Freedom; Justice. Frugality is implicit in the wish to improve or make something work again. It implies careful use ensured by continuity of rigorous knowledge — about regions, materials, techniques. Frugality is also the basis for the ordered proportions of traditional art and architecture, which yield optimum aesthetic and structural solutions, link back to characteristic rhythms of the natural world, and hold the potential for spiritual realisation.
Frugality can be best met by thoughtful designs that emerge out of shared experience. Due as much to necessity as to a culture of repair, these are manifest in details that extend the life of expensive materials such as stone or metal — which in pre-industrial times constituted a small part of total production. Or in the measured use of thatch, wood, sun-dried bricks, bamboo which return gently to the earth and can be replaced frequently. Or in the optimisation of industrial materials through ingenious fixes with whatever is at hand, pejoratively termed jugaad. It is frugality which forms the gracefully rendered spaces in mud we still see all over villages in the subcontinent; that structures the skill and knowledge of craftspeople — perhaps best epitomised in the manner in which silver is delicately extended into thin strands of filigreed jewellery; and that spurs the innovative repair-wallahs all around us, who can mend practically every item of daily use including complicated watches and the latest I-phones.
II: Adopting a Philosophy of Repair
Frugality and its accompanying attributes can best be met in a decentralised work-system when there is more freedom of decision-making, more opportunity for creative engagement, and more room for negotiating justice — in comparison to systems where power, money and authority are concentrated in a few hands. Adopting a philosophy of repair which recognises frugality as a core attribute, thus implies that the intrinsic value of something is derived from the value given to mindful and fair use. Frugality is therefore, the very opposite of the meanness and thoughtlessness imposed by extractive, rapid and centralised processes.
Traditional belief in much of South Asia celebrated such attributes in design, and also saw in repair an opportunity for renewal and transformation. Such a belief flows naturally from a sophisticated conception of life as a cycle of being, becoming, dissolving, and regenerating. At a practical level, repair was accorded a designated time-table by giving it ritual status. Depending on the requirements of different types of architecture and materials, different practices were followed assiduously on a periodic basis at an individual as well as a community level. These ranged from frequent mending and painting of homes before seasonal festivals, to more comprehensive ritual restoration as in the Kumbhabhishekham/Jirnodhara of temples every 12-years. Repair was additionally linked to social responsibilities, as Rajni Bakshi explains.
For example, in Adilabad, there was a festival some weeks before Diwali in which groups of people went dancing in the streets and threw stones at the roofs of homes. This inevitably broke at least 10-15 tiles in each home. Then just prior to Diwali as people cleaned and painted their homes, these tiles were replaced. Each family would have the tiles made by the local potter. The festival became an excuse for not only cleaning and renewing the house but also giving business to the potters.
Today however, repair is not just inconvenient but also impossible in many cases. Our seasonal calendar does not promote repair skills or their systems of knowledge transmission, which are consequently disappearing and are hard to get or too expensive. Conventional economics bat for heavy industrialisation and public policies favour heavily centralised businesses. With unimpeded access to raw materials, resources and tax incentives, these businesses push for replacement rather than renewal. This makes it difficult for those with the knowledge of hand-skills who traditionally do repair work, and of which we still have the largest in the world, to live with dignity.
Further, the industrial materials with which much of our building stock is now made, are engineered to act in a composite way. In order to mend even a small part, we are forced to use complex mechanisms or break off a great deal more than that part. This is a difficult, dangerous and unpredictable exercise, since it is not possible to fix a boundary in a composite material. Finally, architects themselves have almost no knowledge of building with local natural materials. And little practical knowledge of building hands-on even with industrial materials which are touted as permanent, pacca construction — but which frequently collapse with life-threatening consequences. In the face of all this, how can repair become an intrinsic part of our collective imagination again? Can we, as the professional group responsible for architecture — the repository of all forms of human life and a field that forms such a large part of the economy — take the lead in advocating repair as the best response in the dynamics of our present environment? How so?
Making Repair Aspirational
The participants in the conference who have integrated the philosophy of repair in their work, showed us that this can aid ‘economics as if people mattered’, to quote E F Schumacher. They established clearly that activities centred on local skills create special environments that give space to older buildings and artefacts. And how this leads to cost savings by extending the life of built-materials, maintained through regular inputs based on a foundation of hand-crafts. This sets into motion a cycle of positive regeneration spreading out many kinds of jobs. Related outcomes are a fillip for more responsible tourism, for new buildings that incorporate hand-skills, for happier habitats with more community spaces and less forced migration — in what J C Kumarappa visualised as an economy of permanence rather than an economy of transience and violence.
Notwithstanding all this, even those practitioners who have managed to integrate aspects of economic, spiritual and social well-being in their work, concede that they have had limited influence on the domain of architectural practice in general. We are of course, more likely to advocate repair if it is seen as mindfulness rather than as being miserly, and if information about it being good practice, is disseminated widely. But this is not enough. Despite more than sufficient information that planting trees is good, trees continue to be routinely transplanted, chopped and killed — as a matter of course in infrastructure and building projects.
If repair is to be thus a planned, ongoing process rather than a sporadic or forced activity, we need to not just regard it as “a good thing” but actively elevate it to the status of “the desirables” at multiple levels. Architects have to first convince themselves as a professional community about the technical, aesthetic and ethical potential of repair — and also learn how to include repair in their practices. It is then that we can convince clients (of which the biggest component in South Asia is still the government) about the need as well as the attractiveness of repair over new-build.
For this, it is necessary to put in place or restore knowledge-systems that make repair possible, along with policies that make repair convenient and enjoyable, and highlight its pecuniary, participatory, and mental and physical health benefits to make repair aspirational. It is also necessary to give value to world-views not centred exclusively on consumption. These worldviews are the essence of traditions in South Asia and provide a structure for a rational, measured espousal of the material world while encouraging creative and spiritual exploration. Only when this is done, is there a chance of repair being actively incorporated in everyday life.
Priorities in Architecture
Whether we overtly identify with the practice of repair or not, it is its underlying attributes that can help us transition towards architectures that generate social, cultural, spiritual and economic capital. It is difficult to misrepresent these characteristic attributes of repair — though virtually any word can be reconfigured as George Orwell unfolds in the dystopian scenario of his novel 1984. Flying consultants long-distance or building a huge carbon foot-print with an excess of industrial materials, cannot be passed off as frugality or decentralisation or optimisation. Instead we must eschew obsolescence, detail designs that weather well, and choose local processes and skills to make congenial environments. To do this, we will have to give up the idea of novelty as a determining factor of desirability, and what the Buddhist monk Chogyam Trungpa calls ‘the bureaucracy of ego’. The obsession with appearance can then make way for the best fit for a particular situation or climate.
There are many ways of doing this. One outstanding example in South Asia is the practice of Kamil Khan Mumtaz — which categorically rejects the cancerous growth that goes hand-in-glove with industrialism and Modernism. The architectural process he advocates, logically follows from a deliberate choice of design generators based on local materials and traditions, and an identification with a cultural world-view that combines rationality and spirituality.
When we regard architecture from such a world-view, we are no longer constricted to a prism of styles or fragmented time-periods, and can focus on its essential attributes. For instance, the Red Fort, instead of being viewed only as a historic Mughal icon or a national symbol of the freedom struggle, can be appreciated for:
‘[t]he optimisation of resources in the construction and use of the Fort — visible in the manner in which built and open space are combined through appropriately sized forecourts and gardens; in the minimal proportions of built-volume; in the integration of decoration and function; in the devising of spaces for multiple functions and users through extensive use of the typologies of the pavilion and the court; in the collaborative and decentralised method that was employed to build it and the respect accorded to the team of building technicians.’
A methodology of identifying distinguishing characteristics of repair, therefore does not just set out design objectives, but also helps recognise best practices and establish how to arrive at these objectives. Our rich corpus of hand-craft is an existing asset of repair skills that has unmatched potential for this. ‘India’s crafts-sector addresses 11 of the 17 United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals directly, including Goal 12, which is Responsible Production and Responsible Consumption’, as Ashoke Chatterjee underlines. He also reminds us that the mental absorption which accompanies skilled engagement of the hand, can give meaning to life, as it did during the freedom struggle and even in the desperate times after the tragic partition of the subcontinent.
What can we actually do?
We may not think we have the wherewithal to be activists, but as Aruna Roy writes in her memoir: ‘anyone who acts on principles and stated public concerns is an activist’. Architecture is one field which allows each of us an opportunity to act on principles. To begin with, we can accept that we are not the sole players in the domain of building; that our chief role is to facilitate, not to dictate. To act on this, we first need to develop rigorous domain knowledge. Apart from just learning to build within the confines of drawing boards and computers, we need to learn how to build with our own hands and in the context of our cultural world-view. We need systems to train — and be trained by — masons, carpenters, site-workers, craftspeople in both industrial and natural materials. Through a rigorous learning of diverse materials, traditions and skills which have their own local vocabulary of language as well as building elements, we can lead the way towards ethical architecture, not one based on personal whimsy or profit.
When we correctly shovel, chisel, pick up a load of mud, lay a brick and work a piece of timber, we empathise with the gamut of skills required in construction and better understand the technical and harmonic logic underlying their best practices in our traditions. We can then work out how to develop humane parameters of architecture in collaboration with other players in the field — instead of propagating a uniform language of aesthetics and construction confined to industrial materials and technologies that disempower people. To do this, at each stage of the design process, we need to be mindful of what and how we build, and to gauge the relevance of our actions, through questions such as:
- Can we foster local economies — rather than using excessive machinery and automation?
- Can we use a greater proportion of natural materials worked by small producers/individuals?
- Can we create fair and just opportunities for those who work?
- Can we integrate ways to repurpose/recycle without difficult, wasteful, or toxic processes?
- Can design processes and outcomes, in the best traditions of South Asia, fulfil our immediate practical needs, while leading to a heightened awareness and joy beyond the material world?
When we utilise such a matrix for decision-making, we design to make the field of architecture safe and harmonious, by owning the responsibility to repair. This is part of our larger responsibilities of ensuring safe habitats as building professionals. We then open the way for reclaiming the right to repair — for which we need to both renew existing buildings, and to build the idea of renewal into architectural instruction.
In other words, we need to entirely re-orient our directions to include ‘repair’ as an integral part of our thought-process, our philosophy, our vocabulary, our academic curriculum, and our professional practice. We cannot do this alone. Political and public policy also need to give greater importance to repair over new-build; and architecture schools as well as studios need to function as centres of expertise allied to specific geographies and cultures. To reiterate then, the issues arising from the sessions on repair in the Conference that are fundamental to the well-being of South Asia, and indeed of the world, are:
- The need to use architecture to build just, compassionate and ethical societies.
- The need to build a truthful and suitable vocabulary of architecture.
- The need to incentivise distinguishing attributes of repair by elevating hand-skills and workmanship — to actually build such a vocabulary of architecture .
