This is a model of the Alai Darwaza.
Made in wood (Balsa and Tun) at a scale of 1: 50, the model is not only remarkably well-detailed and crafted, but it also captures all the essential features of the Alai Darwaza. The profile of its arches; the division of its elevation into a clearly delineated base, body and dome; the variation in texture through patterns, carving, and jalis — all these distinguishing characteristics of this building have been communicated even at this small-scale.
What is even more remarkable is the way in which this model has been made.
As a historic building, information about the Alai Darwaza is inevitably incomplete. When I started searching for recorded information, I found that measured drawings of the Alai Darwaza were not easily available in the public domain. I however, discovered some basic documentation of it in a series on Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). This publication, A Historical Memoir of the Qutb: Delhi by J A Page, Superintendent of ASI, was first published in 1926. It has been republished by the Director General of ASI, and is an important resource on the Qutub complex. Apart from some photographs dating from that time, the Memoir contains some drawings of the Alai Darwaza: a Cross-Section, North and South Elevations, and a scaled down Plan.
Useful as these drawings are, they do not date from the fourteenth century, the time that the Alai Darwaza was constructed in. They thus do not represent the Alai Darwaza as it may have originally been, but as it is surmised to have originally appeared. The Alai Darwaza was extensively repaired in the early 19th century, with some changes made to its facades. The drawings by the ASI as printed in the Memoir, depict the Alai Darwaza based on conjectures about the original appearance of those parts of the Alai Darwaza which were repaired in 1816, and measurements and studies carried out by the staff of the ASI of the extant parts of the Darwaza in the early 20th century, as well as conservation work and excavations on its south face carried on from 1910 onwards.
This information about the Alai Darwaza is very much less than that normally available for model-makers. In newer buildings, drawings are more easily accessible since the process of design followed is that details are first worked out through various drawings by architects prior to constructing the buildings. These drawings are then available to make models as required. For the Alai Darwaza, since only a few basic drawings were available, as a prelude to commissioning the model I had to specially take a series of photographs from the inside as well as the outside of the Darwaza. This was necessary to communicate the three dimensional aspects of the building as well as to explain its important structural and special details. To further clarify my understanding, I undertook some geometrical and spatial studies of the plans and elevations, to see if there were any links I could uncover between the size of the building, the proportions of its different parts, the location and size of its doors and windows, etc. It emerged from these studies that there was a strong geometrical and spatial relationship between various parts of the Alai Darwaza, which was very useful to determine missing measurements and decipher discrepancies in measurements.
This was then the basis on which the modeller had to make his model.
Not an easy task. Pammi ji undertook to take on this task. And with his team of Mohan Lal and Rajesh, he fulfilled it in time — within two months — creating a model of great aesthetic sophistication.
Making this model is thus not just about craftsmanship — though it is beautifully crafted. It is equally an intellectual exercise: to study and distill the information, and match this with thorough knowledge of the materials that the model was to be made in. To then decide how these materials could best be put together in order to simulate the distinguishing characteristics of the Alai Darwaza. This requires visualisation of a special kind: it requires that the appearance and space of the building is assembled in the mind, and then translated into materials and processes completely different from that of actually constructing a building in stone, bricks and mortar.
There are very few takers for wooden models these days, primarily because of the rise of plastic models which are cheaper and faster to make. But plastic models come at a greater environmental cost and cannot produce the same aesthetic or tactile effect as a model of wood. Only a discerning few, who have the means to pay for the effort and hand-craft invested in a wooden model, and are also concerned about ecological impact, opt to get models made in wood.
And there are very few model-makers who are willing to respond to this challenging task. As Pammiji says:”Jaise kayee janwar lupt hote jaa rahen hai, wooden models banane-wale bhi lupt ho ja rahen hai.’
How and why does Pammi ji manage to continue?
The first reason that he does so is the sheer challenge. The second is that he cannot find it in himself to refuse to make models for people with whom has had a long and happy working relationship with — Snehanshu, in this case, whom I asked to request Pammi ji if he would be willing to make this model. At fifteen hundred rupees a day for a skilled model-maker, a team of even two or three people requires an outlay of ₹80,000 to 12,00,000, excluding the cost of material and equipment and tools. This is an expensive proposition, and there is no continuity of work. Pammi ji has therefore branched into interior-works. This is how he subsidises his model-making enterprise. He values this craft and does not want it to become extinct, and he values the stimulus of the intellectual and creative challenge of making a model with his own hands.
For a new building, the design process is that architects usually start with planning out interior functions. They then generate door/window-positions, connections with the outside spaces and exteriors based on these functions — in tandem with the overall requirements of the site. All this further informs the building materials to be used and the external and internal appearance. Architects, therefore in many ways, work from the inside out.
I asked Pammi ji about the way in which he starts to plan a model. He said that he first studies the exteriors and the facades, and then mentally works his way into the building. He visualises the space inside through the medium of the material that he will make his model in. He then refers to the plan to structure his understanding of the facade and the elevation, mentally subtracting thicknesses of the material. This is then the reverse of how architects visualise their designs of buildings.
This ability of Pammi ji of working from the outside in, to reach how the internal spaces would look and be fabricated was especially important for this model — because, unlike most models, it was not meant to be just seen from the outside. The inside of the Alai Darwaza was to be both visible and accessible, especially to blind or visually challenged students.
The immediate objective of making this model was to use architectural models as tools for teaching history, an exercise initiated by Professor Radhika Chadha from the Department of History at Miranda House. How does one explain the main features of historical architecture for visually-challenged students of Miranda House, especially the structural logic of basic building elements and techniques? A tactile 3-dimensional model was felt to be an effective way to communicate the forms, proportions, volumes and profiles of built structures. By appropriately scaling down these built spaces, the students would be able to touch and explore doorways, ceilings, roofs, internal and external wall surfaces, etc.
For the Alai Darwaza, three important areas needed to be accessible to them. These were:
- the square floor plan;
- the walls that transition from four-sides to sixteen-sides and form the base for the circle of the dome;
- and the circular dome itself.
Within these three broad areas of the interior, the important structural elements of Alai Darwaza needed to be included so that students could understand the geometry and volume of the spaces and how the building was roofed. The exterior, as mentioned in the beginning, had to be made such that even just through the sense of touch, the main elements of the facade as well as the entrances and ways of spanning them, could be easily understood. This then was how the project of using architectural models as tools for teaching history for visually challenged students was conceived, and the first part of it completed.
