The City as a Place of Learning and Healing

It was 33 degrees centigrade at 7.30 am.

But, as we crossed the Yamuna, we noticed a perceptible drop in the temperature. Even in its denuded, smelly state, the river exercised this effect on the climate.

What must it have been like living in Delhi, I wondered, in the time of Shah Jahan? In the Red Fort, right on the banks of the river? Ringed around by trees and orchards, within and without. And green fields extending beyond the expanse of the Yamuna?

Of course, as always, the emperor and his family would have had the best of it. And further north along the Yamuna, the noblemen with their large havelis amidst their garden-orchards, would also have been close to the cool breeze.

The river, in fact, permeates the very conception of the Red Fort. Court-histories of Shah Jahan record that: "he envisioned that streams of water should be made to flow through the proposed fort and that its terraces overlook the river.1 But, as I reflected on the inevitable benefits of privilege, I realised such a location was not merely a simplistic situation of using power for personal benefit. It also accommodated a larger public function. A dense collection of small, private dwellings or buildings would have in practical terms, blocked the river breeze and the river view — as well as public spatial access to the banks.

It was the low-density of built structures ranged within trees and gardens along the Yamuna, and the provision of open public spaces, that made the river-front permeable. Just behind the enclosing city walls, the urban landscape as well as that within the Fort featured many orchards amidst which were set a very few buildings. In contrast, it was the western end of the Red Fort and the city, farthest away from the river, which had a relatively denser built-mass. This device of constructing a small proportion of built structures close to the river, helped to reduce temperatures in two ways. It increased the bio-mass in the vicinity of the Yamuna, and it channelised the micro-climate created by the Yamuna deeper into the city. This configuration may be seen as another version of the ‘jali motif’ — the perforated screens that interspersed and connected what seemed to constitute the continuous facade of the imperial pavilions along the river banks. Such urban and architectural planning ensured that the breezes and cooling effect of the Yamuna were not just confined to the imperial palace-pavilions, or colonised by those lucky enough to be located next to the river.

Not that the Yamuna riverfront was taken over entirely by private, or even by imperial functions. The Red Fort commanded a swathe of the central river-view towards the eastern end of the city, and its high fortification walls did come between the main Chandni Chowk street and the Yamuna. But on either side of the Fort, the view opened up through public gardens. There were many public ghats too. Flanking the banks on the city-edge beyond the Red Fort, their airy pavilions and chattris stepped down along wide steps to the river itself. And the sandy embankments at the foot of the river-front walls of the Fort were also open to the public. Even 200 years after the founding of Shahjahanabad, despite the appropriation and apportioning of many gardens and open spaces, and the incursions into its physical and social fabric by the British, a fair number of these still remained — as shown in records such as paintings of the river-facade of the Fort from as late as the 1820s, or the detailed 1846 map of Shahjahanabad, or photographs of the city from a little before or around 1857.

It seems incredible to me that in all my under-graduate years at the School of Planning and Architecture, I was unaware that the Yamuna flowed practically under our noses — located as we were on its erstwhile banks, just a few kilometres south of the Red Fort. In the late 1980s and early 90s, the intimidating width of the Ring Road and the looming bulk of the Indira Gandhi Stadium, effectively obscured all sight or sense of the river. On the few instances when I did venture beyond them, as during a memorable bicycle relay-race at our college festival, I was concentrating much too hard on evading the traffic (and ensuring that we did not lose our lead!) to even register the proximity of the river.

That I missed this vital component of Delhi may have been merely my lack of personal association with it, growing up as I did in far-flung army cantonments all over India. But neither do I recollect the river — the very reason for continuous inhabitation in the region of Delhi from pre-historic times — figuring in the academic design exercises set to us by our galaxy of distinguished faculty, which included many very famous architects. We did go far afield within and outside Delhi to study various architectural and natural contexts. We were also frequently dispatched to the ruins of Firoz Shah Kotla in our neighbourhood, to observe and analyse its buildings. Indeed, we could scarcely escape the sight of them right from first-year — especially those of us who had places assigned next to the windows, and spent a good portion of our time gazing out from our class studio on the third-floor. But the Yamuna did not have any presence or role in developing our design thinking.

I wonder why?

Was it because it had already been rendered invisible and superfluous in the planning of the city? Is that why the Yamuna continues to evade the collective imaginations of generations of graduates and practitioners from reputedly one of the premier institutes of architecture and planning in the country? And so, does it mean that the first step in making the Yamuna and other rivers relevant again, is to make them visible? To create free and public access, and release their banks from colonisation by large buildings, tarmac, high fences, barred stretches, and noxious use?

And how about the rest of the city, away from the river?
If we look at Shahjahanabad, pre-1857, we see that even those of its parts located away from the Yamuna, were devised with an ever-present awareness of the river and its canals and feeder channels. And with a sense and sensibility that made water a central part of planning and living in the city; that ensured that topographical routes, natural courses and routes to the river were not interrupted, built upon or polluted.

Trees lined Chandni Chowk and Faiz Bazaar: the two most ceremonial and important streets in the central east-west and southern part of Shahjahanabad, where the maximum amount of traffic and activities were centred. Canals drawing from the river-system flowed down their length. Large public gardens — which were essentially orchards — were located adjacent to these streets, and formed the grand finale around their junction with the imperial chowks right in front of the Fort. These acted as heat sinks: cooling tempers, shading the ground, recharging ground-water levels, filtering dust, and creating places of beauty.

Neither were the poorer people rendered invisible, or pushed only to the outskirts.

They were a part of each precinct and neighbourhood, making the city a place of mixed land-use and mixed-income groups. Availability and ownership of space in Shahjahanabad was not reduced to a single denominator of wealth. It revolved around an overlapping basis of multiple affiliations. The home of each nobleman or prosperous trader or important official did not just house their families, but also incorporated around them various other homes and families with whom there was a mutually dependent relationship of patronage and service.

Neighbourhoods, mohallas and katras were organised according to shared trades and professions, and accommodated many income and skill levels related to those communities of trades. Just as within the walls of the Fort, space was organised not merely for imperial use but for a multiplicity of interlinked functions from karkhanas to kitchen-gardens to courts of justice. And for active users, including administrators, soldiers, attendants, craftspeople.

Large havelis — around which smaller habitations clustered — disposed throughout different precincts instead of being concentrated in just one part of the city, repeated the same urban motif of social and spatial permeability. Architecturally, these havelis echoed on a smaller scale the pattern of buildings within the Fort, set around and within fountain-courts or gardens of orange, pomegranate, and other fruit trees. Fountain-courts and small orchards similarly formed the theme around which smaller homes in the city were arranged.

Like an Escher painting, as you zoom in and out of the city and Fort, different variations and scales of this interlinked pattern reveal themselves, simultaneously simple and complex. Tried and tested in the Indian subcontinent from Harappan times, this pattern was composed of sequences of walled courtyards-verandahs-halls-pavilions: a fluid building typology with some of its finest examples visible within the Fort, as analysed and described at length in The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad.

It is not as if the Fort and the city lacked formal ordered and structured avenues, forecourts and gardens. But these were not segregated into manicured, superficial showpieces. They instead allowed and encouraged multiple functions by varying users. As one moved into the residential areas from these avenues and public gardens, greater degrees of architectural freedom and territorial adaptation of spaces were permissible. The French traveller, Francois Bernier, was an inhabitant of the newly established city in the mid 17th century. He condescends to grant ‘that the capital of Hindoustan is not destitute of handsome buildings, although they bear no resemblance to those in Europe’.2 But it is really this lack of resemblance that seems to get in the way of his appreciating the logic of the city.

He avers that ‘there are no streets like ours of S.Denis', and '[t]hat which so much contributes to the beauty of European towns, the brilliant appearance of the shops, is wanting in Delhi'.3 And so he cannot shake off his disapproval of the shops here, where:

‘For one that makes a display of beautiful and fine cloths, silk and other stuffs striped with gold and silver, turbans embroidered with gold, and brocades, there are at least five and twenty where nothing is seen but pots of oil or piles of butter, piles of basket filled with rice, barley, chick-peas, wheat, and an endless variety of other grain and pulse, the ordinary aliment not only of the Gentiles, who never eat meat, but of the lower class of Mahometans, and a considerable portion of the military.’4

Bernier also observes that the ‘two principal streets of the city’ have ‘open shops, where, during the day artisans work, bankers sit...and merchants exhibit their wares’; that the ‘houses of the merchants are built over these warehouses, at the back of the arcades; and that the ‘rich merchants have their dwellings elsewhere'.5 He writes about ‘the five streets apart from the two principal ones’, amid which are ‘dispersed the habitations of Mansebdars, rich merchants and others’... [i]ntermixed with these different houses is an immense number of small ones, built of mud and thatched with straw, in which lodge the common troopers, and all that vast multitude of servants and camp-followers’.6

And he notes that the ‘dwellings of the omrahs, though mostly situated on the banks of the river and in the suburbs, are yet scattered in every direction'.7 Himself dependent on the influence and patronage of a nobleman to whose household he was attached, he cannot shake off his disapproval of such a layout, of the many 'wretched mud and thatch houses’8 that are seen throughout the city.

Leaving aside his conviction about the superiority of streets and cities of in his own country, what does the record by Bernier as an independent, outside observer, tell us? To me it reveals a number of things about the physical form and social structure of the city:

• How it is designed to be inhabited by the rich and poor alike;

• That it is the richer inhabitants who travel out (to their large estates, private gardens and baghs in the suburbs), while the very heart of the city makes space for the poor;

• That there is an endless variety of people who throng the market in front of the Fort and the 'royal square’ adjoining it — the same space, where at night are encamped the Rajas who are assigned guard-duty for the Fort, and where the royal horses are exercised in the morning; 

• That the main entrance streets of the city have markets — not empty promenades or un-peopled vistas;

• That these markets do not just display expensive 'lifestyle' stuff (as in the malls today) but also basic grain and staple food for all, that include the less affluent;

• And that these markets additionally accommodate artisans too, the mainstay of the economic system and the industrial base of the city — i.e. they make space for skills and knowledge as well as goods. In other words, the economic, technical, industrial, commercial, recreational aspects of the city are seamlessly integrated.

Such an urban character — democratic despite a political dispensation governed by a monarchy — is worth applauding and emulating. All the spatial and architectural clues of an inclusive city are here: multi-functional flexible spaces catering to mixed-land use and mixed income groups; a proliferation of public open areas used differently by various people at different times of the day. A city that makes the rich (who can afford it) travel out to the periphery of the city and keeps the centre accessible for the less rich while creating opportunities usable by all classes and kinds of people; a city that organises market and support activities on main travel nodes. A city that celebrates the river it draws life from; that gives back to the earth to stands on.

A humane, equitable and ecologically responsible city.

Yet, like Bernier, our references for urban models are increasingly based only on those that generate an impressive public appearance and show, or are characterised by imposing and awe-inspiring regularity. The Dutch educator and architect, N J Habraken, in his masterly analysis in The Appearance of the Form, explains the different world-views and ‘fundamental collective images concerning shared space’.9 These govern both the role, and therefore, the form of public space. In Western contexts, these are generally inviolate and cannot be questioned. Thus, predetermined geometries and fixed boundaries define and present public space with authority. In many Middle-eastern and eastern cultures, however, public space is an arena as well as an outcome of negotiation. There is less obsession with creating form. Instead the emphasis is on a complex web of relationships and usage, which in turn generates and accommodates particular social and territorial patterns.

To put this in context, imagine for a moment that the India Gate vista leading up to Rashtrapati Bhawan has colonnades and arcades hosting a variety of goods for the rich and the poor; space for formal markets and spontaneous pop-ups; for craftspeople to work; for tailors, watch-repair stalls, food stalls. Not prim lines of trees but dense orchards and scaled public spaces — free and open for street vendors, musicians, story-tellers, artistes and orators to practise and perform.

Imagine the city as a place of learning and healing. Imagine the effect of the simple expedient of planting many native fruit, medicinal trees and shrubs. Big garden-groves lining the wide dusty roads. Of planning for people rather than vehicles. Of cleaner air and happier citizens. And withal, more bird and animal life, cooler temperatures and less road rage, I daresay— even in May.

If that flight of imagination seems utopian, naive, or just plain difficult, we can instead invest in an effort of memory. Of a lived summer not so long ago. An uncertain summer, when despite the ominous fear of the virus and the devastation and havoc especially wrought on the poor, the streets and skies were unprecedentedly welcoming of vegetation, birds and animals.

And if we are to continue to imagine transformations, why then, as Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel sing: ‘I'd rather be a forest than a street’.10 

And if not, I’d rather get the forest into our streets and our cities.

Notes:

1 p.406, The Shahjahanama of Inayat Khan, Begley and Desai.
2 pp. 248-9, Travels in the Mughal Empire, 1656-68, Francois Bernier. First Published London 1891, Reprint Asian Educational Services AES, New Delhi, 1996

3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 p. 245
6 p. 246
7 p. 247
8 p. 246
9 p. 34, ‘Sharing’, The Appearance of the Form. Awater Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2nd edition, 1985.
10 From "El Cóndor Pasa (If I Could)”, a 1970 cover by Simon & Garfunkel (with English lyrics by Paul Simon, on the album Bridge over Troubled Water ) of "El Cóndor Pasa’ — the 1913 orchestral musical piece composed by the Peruvian com- poser, Daniel Alomía Robles, based on traditional Andean music.

Shahjahanabad in c.1846-47 (X 1659, OIOC, BL)

 River front with pavilions and ghats, north of Red Fort (53/30, OIOC, BL)

Augmenting Living Buildings : Conservation of Historic Buildings

‘Augmenting Living Buildings – Retrofit, Repurpose, Recondition'

Lecture given on 18 January 2024 

for Faculty Development Program conducted by Balwant Sheth School of Architecture in collaboration with the Council of Architecture

Our session is themed on the conservation of historic buildings — and their  processes, challenges, execution and commissioning.

I will briefly share the structure that we will follow in this session. 

• I’m going to first speak about how the processes, challenges, execution and commissioning of conservation of historic buildings, are fundamentally related to our understanding of what is heritage.
• So I will begin by clarifying these keywords heritage and heritage buildings, and explore the different meanings of heritage; what is common to these meanings and what is not. 
• I will move on to what are the lessons that we can learn from the specific process and challenges in specialised conservation work of heritage buildings; and how can we extend these lessons beyond the specialised field of conservation architecture to the field of architecture in general.
• I will explain this through my experience with the specific case study of the Jantar Mantar site, with which I was associated for many years.
• And we will have a discussion following all this, to gauge how far these lessons have been communicated in the session.

 I.  Let's begin with understanding what are heritage buildings.

The Oxford Dictionary has 3 definitions of heritage:

1. A property that is inherited;
2. Valued things such as historic buildings that have been passed down from previous generations. 
3. Relating to things of historic or cultural value that are worthy of preservation.

The first meaning, which is the broadest understanding of heritage as anything that is passed down and inherited will cover a large number of buildings that make up our built environment. And therefore that can or should, come potentially under our ambit as architects, whether or not we have a specialisation in conservation or not. The 2nd two meanings are specifically with respect to what are called historic buildings.

What are historic buildings? Who decides what buildings are historic and have cultural value? Normally, it is the government, which through legislation designates buildings as historic. There are also cases, where society as a whole or through communities, decides that a building has historical value, even when there is no designated governmental recognition or protection. For instance, the recent case of the Army Public School in Mhow which was being demolished, and the students there, as well as serving and retired military officers and other concerned citizens, stepped in, formed a human chain, and stopped the demolition — at least for now.

Architects also come into the picture in both these categories: very often, architects are engaged by governments or society to help decide whether a building is historic or not. 

In the official method laid down in our country, buildings are designated as historic buildings if they are at least a hundred years old. So, does this mean that any building which is more than a hundred years old, automatically qualifies as heritage or historic? In most cases, this is not so. Only buildings that are representative of a certain kind of period-architecture, which additionally have values of cultural significance, are officially deemed to be worthy of conservation. What we are often doing thus, is turning buildings into museum pieces. 

Does this mean that if buildings are less than a hundred years old, they cannot have historic or cultural value? What happens to such buildings? What does conservation mean in their context? What can be understood from this, is that just the age does not automatically qualify a building as heritage or not. There also has to be cultural value as well as social value of significance for a building to be declared as a heritage building.

There are also buildings older than 100 years, like the APS in Mhow, which despite being recognised as having historic value, may still be vulnerable. Another recent instance is the Sunehri Masjid in New Delhi which was slated for demolition. In this case, many architects, including conservation architects as well as people from all walks of life wrote to the NDMC, and communicated the need for conservation of this building — because of the associations this building has for us as a culture, as a people, and as a nation. Architects added their specific knowledge to counter the arguments for demolishing the Masjid, and offered viable alternatives to resolve the issue. Here, obviously the challenge was to demonstrate the importance or the requirement for conservation of such buildings. Architects can, and should thus, create such opportunities for buildings to be conserved.

This is the first challenge in conservation.

Let me explain this through the story of my involvement with the Jantar Mantar at Delhi. I don't know how many of you have visited it. I will ask you at the end of our session!

What is the Jantar Mantar? It is essentially an observatory complex. I became involved with it, because the Park Hotel Apeejay Group whose President is Priya Paul, wished to contribute to improving and beautifying its area. 

When she looked at it from across her hotel, she felt that it needed better looking after. The Jantar Mantar’s conservation is in the hands of the Archaeological Survey of India; it is designated as a site of national importance. When I was called in as a conservation architect to suggest ways of improving and beautifying its environs and landscape, I argued that this could only be done by understanding the existing buildings on site and their history. 

These buildings which are instruments of astronomy were not understood or appreciated for their scientific value by the general public, and as it turned out, even by the custodians. This is what I discovered through my own research at the start of the project — research into scientific texts, archival photographs, drawings, instruments of astronomy, etc. My research on the buildings and the condition survey also showed that the ASI was not actually conserving the buildings appropriately. This research led me to configure the entire interpretation of the site, including its pathways and landscape design, based on the geometry, the sequence, and the ways in which the instruments were used when they were made, and ought to be used even now. Thus, the improvements of the site were determined by the conservation and interpretation requirements of the heritage buildings. They were informed by their history: by what was the function of the Jantar Mantar; why were the structures in it made; what materials they were made of; their orientation; why they were located where they were; the process of construction, and so on. 

So, what is the lesson here? Before embarking on any design directions, we need to understand the site and what we are trying to conserve through structured and comprehensive research. I will give you an analogy to explain this better. A good doctor will not rush into giving medicines or even diagnosing a problem and offering a solution for improving the health of a patient, without knowing throughly what is the physiology of the patient, past medical history, basic body structure, etc. And if that does not happen, then what the doctor suggests as a cure will not be appropriate or effective for the patient. 

The same process needs to be followed for conservation. Except that, most people understand and accept the need for preliminary medical examination as the correct medical procedure, but do not necessarily appreciate or accept this for conservation of buildings. And therefore this is the first challenge: any building that already exists, needs to be thoroughly examined and researched upon before we can suggest any remedial measures, adaptation, or any improvement for extending its life span — which all come under the meaning of conservation.

I had shared some links with you. One of these was titled ‘Feasibility Report for the JM Complex’. This contains the results of the first part of my research, and based on that research and analysis, what are the ways for its improvement and beautification, and what should be the conservation philosophy and process directing such improvements. This Report was fundamental in outlining the correct approach, and in convincing the clients and the custodians for the need to follow such an approach.

So, the larger lesson that we can draw from the process of specialised conservation work which can be applied to any existing building, is that we need to do sufficient research into materials, function, site conditions, etc. of any building before we suggest any design inputs. And this process of research — as you would have seen from the report, if you went through it — requires both primary, on-site investigations and recording, as well as accessing secondary records in the form of existing drawings or specifications or descriptions. And then finally, the analysis of all these is necessary to reach any sort of preliminary methodology or direction about what to do, and how to do it. In other words, if we are not familiar with the materials used in the original building, and their properties, methods and processes of being used in that building, we will obviously not be able to deal with how best to repair, adapt or conserve it.

Research and analysis is thus part of the process and part of the challenge of conservation work, since most clients whether in the private sector or in the government will not appreciate the necessity for doing it; or will not want to give the time or the funds to enable such research. Part of the process and challenge of any kind of conservation work is, therefore to convince people about the necessity of doing this research as a preliminary exercise both for correct design and implementation.

So, for example I had to first convince the client of the necessity of doing this preliminary research — and then convince the official custodians, the ASI, of the recommendations I arrived at through the research — for which the Feasibility Report was very helpful. Having convinced the client and having done this research, the outcome helped me to also convince the custodians to actually change their conservation approach to this site  — which had been, heretofore, a continuation of the colonial model that they had been following for many decades. In other words, though my initial role was restricted to improving the site environs and deciding the landscape, signage etc, I actually became involved with not just the site-environs conservation, but also conservation process of the Yantras. And in additionally involving other experts, such as the late Dr Rathnashree, the Director of the Delhi Nehru Planetarium in the project, and other scientist and students, and changing the conservation approach of the ASI!

What is the lesson here? That the conservation architect is as vital person who starts off the entire project by carrying out research and analysis and putting together the necessary documentation. 

Execution of the Project

Let me now come to the execution.

This was a very long process. Conservation is a long process. First, the research takes time, and then since you are dealing with an existing building or groups of buildings, you have to proceed carefully so as to not disturb the existing structure. This is also a challenge. Once the process is started off, other resource people and experts have to be involved in to even formulate an effective and practical strategy of how to proceed. In other words, this is team work.

In the case of the Jantar Mantar, it was also an active tourist site, so all work: whether installation of signage or lighting or putting in facilities, or even studying the existing structures through on-site investigations of plaster or foundations; had to be done very carefully. There had to be no disruption to existing visitor activities, and one had to be careful that there was no danger to visitors or the built-structures from any kind of physical work on site.

In this case, these built-structure were also instruments of astronomy. So, they were very specialised buildings with their own specific requirements, which had to be looked after. The level of complexity was very great. There were no precedents. And the process that the ASI had been following, in many cases was detrimental to the durability and function of the instruments. For instance, they had been repaired with cement mortar, whereas the original mortar and plaster and render was in lime. This changed use of material for plaster and mortar caused problems of water seepage and cracking. And therefore, in the name of repair and conservation, this work actually jeopardised the well-being of the Jantar Mantar. So, when conservation is done without proper research, this can happen.

The execution was also difficult because the ASI had considered these as monuments and ordinary buildings, not as functional instruments of astronomy. The need for functional restoration had to be demonstrated, the means for functional restoration had to hunted out; and the entire process had to be actually devised for them.

The other specific challenge arose from the fact that it was a site of national importance. There was also a court case challenging the ASI’s work here. Each successive DG of the ASI therefore wished to be involved with its conservation; they all had different notions about what to do; they all had to be re-convinced of our recommendations each time afresh! So, while we succeeded in doing a number of things, there were many things we could not do. It was like climbing a ladder two steps up, and one step down constantly. Also, the process of research did not stop at the preliminary level, but went all through all stages of the project — as you would have seen from the various reports and documents that I had shared, which I had put in the public domain.

This is also why I decided to bring together the research and analysis, and learnings from the Jantar Mantar Project in the form of a book, which could be understood and accessed by everybody, including specialists. The book was written and published with the same objective as that which I outlined in the beginning of my talk: the fact that the processes, challenges, execution and commissioning of conservation of historic buildings, are fundamentally related to our understanding of what is heritage. We conserve heritage only when we believe it has socio-cultural and historic significance. And the way to do this is both by physical conservation of the buildings themselves, as well as by transmitting knowledge of their significance through information that can be easily understood both by the layperson and the specialist.