///From Mughals to Moderns///
Starting from the Indus River Valley civilizations that began almost 5000 years ago, in what is present day Pakistan, and continuing to the formations of Mehrauli in the 8th century, Tughlakabad in the 13th century, Agra in the 16th century, Shahjehanabad in the 17th century, the British Raj New Delhi in the 19th and early 20th century and Chandigarh in the mid 20th century, India has supported some of the largest, most meticulously organized urbanization developments in human history.
And within these built environments we too find some of the greatest instances of architecture as well, impeccably scalable up to the larger urban visions that subsume them.
Though we will not be visiting Mohenjo Daro, our Critical Thinking class will culminate in the birthplace of the Indus River—the provenance of all Indus civilizations—where we will be employing the same 5000 year old technology used in Mohenjo Daro to construct contemporary architecture.
Prior to our visit to the himalayan region of Ladakh, we will begin our class in Delhi, examining its own historic 7 cities and the architectural remnants that survive, and proceed thereafter to the post-independence master-planned city of Chandigarh, for which Pandit Nehru (India’s first Prime Minister) commissioned the Prophet of the International Style, Le Corbusier.
Why visit a historical site to understand its history?
First of all, we are architects and operate continually at the human scale. Part of the experience of this historical journey will be to physically inhabit these urban and architectural schemes, to traverse their vast tracts and take solace in their cold marble and sandstone volumes in the heat of a Delhi summer.
Secondly, histories are continually dynamic narratives that morph according to the milieu recounting them. You must not accept history as unassailable dogma, as an inviolable object of infinite delicacy that cannot withstand penetrating criticality. Question the decisions of the architects and planners of these developments, and consider the implications of longevity and socio-historical instability on the built environment as you forensically discover the vestiges of past architectural interventions buried under centuries of inhabitation.
What architectures and/or urban plans were and were not successful? Why? What does modern day Chandini Chowk, Lutyens Delhi, and Chandigarh suggest about the plausibility of these grand design visions in a contemporary world?
Critical Thinking
The principal objective of this course is for the student to cultivate an ability to generate a clear, cogent critique of the phenomena they encounter corresponding with the built environment. And, really, what better place could there be to do so than in some of the most ambitious urban developments of the past 300-800 years?
An architect, or any critical thinker for that matter, can only ever generate a superficial critique of a given architectural event and the social milieu surrounding it by simply engaging such a physical entity through books and the internet alone.
Our interrogations will be first and second hand.
Students will be required to submit analytical essays prior to departing for India, as well as for delivering lectures of their findings at significant sites in India.
While travelling through Shahjahanabad, or Chandigarh, while marvelling (and wondering) at the exquisite power of the Taj Mahal, of Fatehpur Sikri and Jantar, students will compose analytical drawings that capture his or her own interests and reflections on site. Once the trip is concluded and we return to Bangkok, students will then be required to re-write their initial analytical paper, this time incorporating their personal experiences and critical reflections, and illustrating these with their analytical sketches.
This assignment relate in many ways to the journals of young Louis Kahn or Le Corbusier.
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