Design for Dissent (2/4)

An Issue of High Design Tradition and a Solution from Folk Environment

Religious institutions have been among the socially and politically significant sites reflecting the high-design traditions for a long time in settlements all over the world. For religious buildings, it has been said that they are built primarily because of their social and political significance and are even meaningless for purely religious purposes ¹. There have been ample examples of a close relationship between religious and government institutions where the latter borrow the dominantly established political power of the former. In words of Jean Halgren Kilde, 'from Rome to Antioch to Carthage, the largest public buildings were temples dedicated to a panoply of gods and governmental buildings erected on behalf of the emperor, himself a godlike figure' ². The architecture of Malkata Palace of Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III deliberately reflected the Temple of Amun Ra, with details that portrayed the throne rising out of primeval swamp exactly as Atum, the creator god rises out of the primordial mound in Egyptian mythology and his successor, Amenhotep IV who declared himself Akhenaten, had the city of Amarna designed to establish the pharaoh (himself) and his family as the only necessary political and religious authority, surpassing the priest in the city ³. The states which have reformed to democratic societies like India still carry residual attributes from religious dominance and its influence that increases the distance between the government and people, which itself can provoke revolutions or rejection of the state in its entirety when pushed towards extremity ⁴. If we compare a classical Indian temple's layout with that of Central Vista, with Indo-Saracenic style architecture, developed by British architects in India, the similarities in layout between two sites developed a thousand years apart with widely varying sociopolitical circumstances still reveal a similar approach when it comes to the celebration of the political head placed at the end of a central public pathway and a series of places for the devotees or the common people at intersections of pathways running across(Figure 1 and 2). 

Figure 1: People's places(red) and Deity's place(yellow), Surya Temple, Modhera

Figure 2: People's places (deeper red) used for the expression of dissent and the President's Residence - Rashtrapati Bhawan(yellow), Lutyens Delhi

Just like the end of a public pathway can be a tool to reinforce power, so can an edge of a public square. The site of St Nicholas Church in Leipzig, with an adjacent public square, is an example of such a place. A combination of both these situations, with long pathways reaching a court at the edge of which the symbolic powerful entity is placed, can be found in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City and Jama Masjid and Red Fort in Delhi. 

For the two kinds of places, religious and secular, it has been said that ‘religious architecture is not defined by some inherent qualities but by its opposition to secular space’ and that ‘secular is confirmed by the very existence of its opposite’ ¹. According to this definition, we would find all non-religious public infrastructure to be secular. While the political relationship established through religious sites and by extension, palaces is largely prescriptive or dictatorial in nature, there have been ample examples of secular spaces in the folk environment, which form the broadest possible sample constituting the majority of all built environment, providing a much more reliable data set for theories and concepts ⁵. Apart from the streets and nodes, places around common public resources emerge to be such secular places - like a market. While in a temple the relative importance of specific areas and geometries including the choreographed movement of devotees is dictated by religious principles to be established, in a market, the relative importance of a shop is decided very organically by the availability and need of its services or goods. A market is a place where the movement of common folk dictates the organization of shops as much as the position of shops with necessary goods dictates movement patterns. Mostly used pathways of villages organically emerge as the bazaar streets or common grounds and shops with the most important goods or services attract other shops, creating commercial nodes and squares. Planned contemporary markets that adhere to the same relationship, produce secular and democratic places.

Figure 3: Hand-drawn plan of organically developed Lakshmipur Market, Lakshmipur, West Bengal

Figure 4: Figure-ground of a planned contemporary market, Connaught Place, New Delhi

In the layout of religious sites, there is a clear distinction between the 'deity's place' and 'people's place'. The deity's place is located at the end of a single, long pathway, or at a focal position of an edge of a court, which establishes the primary axis of the layout, while people's places are the court or the path itself and the intersections of pathways running across the primary axis. Political complexes influenced by religious sites follow a similar approach, where the location of the political head is reached ultimately after going through a series of courts for the general public, crossing thresholds that become more and more strict nearer to the seat of power. The layout of Imperial Delhi and other political complexes in the world that have an authoritarian history follow a similar architectural approach, in which built mass representing the significant political bodies is placed at the culmination of long pathways or focal positions on edges of courts. The pathway, the nodes at the intersection of these pathways, and the courts become representative of people's place, visible from all politically important buildings, which are wholeheartedly occupied during protests, where masses stand appealing to political heads. This layout celebrates the political heads in similar ways as kings in palaces or gods in temples. Presence of the deity or the throne at the focal node of the site, where all paths converge, with tighter security or higher level of sacredness as one approaches this pristine, godly, above the ordinary node – the sanctum sanctorum - is a known residual attribute being carried over in present-day political complexes of democratic societies which have had an authoritarian history. 

The architectural design of a traditional market, on the other hand, presents a good example of 'people's place', where people exercise their right to choose on an everyday basis, which in spirit adheres with fundamental principles of democracy. While in a temple, the prime node is acquired by a symbol or an essentially non-human deity, in a traditional market, either the prime node is a public square or the entire market is a public street. Recently designed city of Amravathi by Foster+Partners, which is being called 'the People's Capital', follows a fundamentally different approach from authoritarian political complexes by keeping the Legislative assembly building at the center of the central pathway of the city, thus celebrating the idea of people's capital by keeping people's representatives at the prime node, and exposed to its people. Yet it hasn't been able to draw itself away from the idea of the monumental celebration of people's representatives instead of the people themselves, evident in the design of legislative assembly building. From the perspective of expression of dissent, although the design allows marching towards the capital, it doesn't facilitate a congregation of large scale in the prime node of the city. The center, which is occupied by an iconic Legislative assembly building, is surrounded by water all around, enforcing the public to remain out of the center. A political space designed to facilitate the expression of dissent, aligning with the very definition of democracy – people's rule, would perhaps situate a people's place in its sanctum-sanctorum rather than the political heads. With a public place in the center and political buildings around, we get a situation where the state is constantly visible to its people. In another context, an example of a similar arrangement is found in Bentham's panopticon, which 'induces a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power' ⁶.

Figure 5: Conceptual layout of Authoritarian and Democratic Street and Square

 

Read the next section here in which three specific protest events have been briefly revisited, chosen based on their location in places of high political value and international recognition, to identify those attributes that facilitate the expression of dissent. 

Read the final section here in which drawing from the first two sections, an attempt has been made to visualize a theoretical model of a political complex in which the expression of mass dissent is the driving force of design.

Read the introduction of this series here.

References:

1. O. Verkaaik. Religious Architecture. In: O. Verkaaik(Ed.) Religious Architecture Anthropological Perspectives. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press; 2013. pp. 7-24.
2. J. H. Kilde. Sacred Power, Sacred Space. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 
3. S. L. Tuck. The Architecture of Power. Virginia: The Great Courses; 2018. 
4. D. E. Davis. The Power of Distance: Re-theorizing Social Movements in Latin America. Theory and Society. 1999; 28(4). pp. 585-638. 
5. A. Rapoport. Vernacular architecture and the cultural determinants of form. In Anthony D. King (ed.) Buildings and Society - Essays on the social development of the built environment. London: Routledge and Keagan Paul; 1984. pp 158-169.
6. M. Foucault. Discipline and Punish - The Birth of Prison. London: Allen Lane; 1977.

Sources of Figures:

1. Figure 1: Brown P. Indian Architecture, Buddhist and Hindu Period.  pp 643
2. Figure 2 and 4: Base map tiles by Stamen Design, under CC BY 3.0. Data by OpenStreetMap, under ODbL.
3. Figure 3: Settlement study of Lakshmipur village done by second year B. Arch. students (Aditi Kashyap, Parinay Agarwal, Pranay Dilawari, Shivani T Subba, Balakumar Ravichandran, Mayank Pandey). Studio director-Parul Kiri Roy. S.P.A. New Delhi 2015