On 4th May 2021, M N Ashish Ganju left us. I had been fortunate enough to have worked with him in his studio and had the opportunity to learn from him personally some of his invaluable lessons about architecture, design and life.
I now find it absolutely necessary to share through this blog some of his teachings that I found to be the most important during my time with him. Probably there will be formal versions of such compilations by people whom he interacted with in his over 50 years of professional work, but this is not that. This is really an informal account of some of the many lessons I personally learnt and can recall in the span of around two years working with him at his studio.
1. Architecture is the science and art of transformations
What is architecture? This is one of the first questions encountered by anyone who begins to pursue a professional identity as an architect and I haven't found a more appropriate definition. This definition liberates the term 'architecture' from the built environment or specifically, buildings and brings the focus to the word 'transformation'. Mostly architecture is seen as something to do with the built environment that lasts decades and is of large scale. This perspective neglects the fact that the process of designing all the small and impermanent details that people probably don't even notice inside these monumental structures is not much different from the process of designing the monument itself. On the other hand, considering the definition of architecture as the science and art of transformations, we can surely say that if there would be no transformations in the world, there would be no architecture. When a structure is completely built and is inhabited by people, it still transforms through the day, with each passing hour as per the sun, the wind, the routine behaviour of its inhabitants, among other things, and that's what constitutes its architecture. In fact, the kind of stasis imposed by restrictions in historical monuments, keeping them only visually accessible to the community is something Ashish Ganju objected to and advocated a more 'alive' interpretation of history, towards making history a part of the community and its everyday life through his works in Mehrauli, the proposal of National Museum of Architecture and the project of re-interpretation of Indian Architectural History from an indigenous perspective.
2. Tools transform the world - externally as well as internally - hence must be chosen very carefully
While architecture is the science and art of transformations, it is very important to pay close attention to the tools with which these transformations are brought about, because every tool not only transforms the external world but the internal world of the tool holder too. This is along the lines of the famous Churchill quote - 'we first shape our buildings and then they shape us'. While Churchill was talking about the overall impact of architecture, Ashish Ganju talks about each and every process within the transformation of a site. He talks about the people involved in the process of transformation - an architect designs with a specific tool, it could be as simple as a pen and paper or as complex as a BIM software, a structural engineer designs the structural systems using another set of tools, which range from the mathematical formulae for load calculation to software for checking the stability of the designed structure, project managers use their own set of tools, and the process similarly goes up to the craftsmen on site who bring out the actual physical transformation using manually controlled - electrically powered tools like cranes and jackhammers or non-powered hand-held tools like hammers and chisels. At each step, we must choose our tools carefully because as much transformation these bring to the outside world, they do the internal world of the tool holder too.
This can be verified by switching our tools for even a week. From personal experience, I can say, a lot of times when I feel stuck designing for long hours in isolation on software (which has sadly become a norm in the profession), switching to sketching or talking about my design with a colleague helps me get out of the problem. Here, sketching and conversing with a colleague are two tools very different from the software. While the software is good for computing complex designs and visualising complicated geometry, the human element of a conversation and the feeling of sketching work very differently for our mental environment, orienting us in a more human way. Ashish Ganju always talked about the designs and sometimes sketched. He didn't touch the computers ever. At least I never saw him working on computers in the time I was at his studio. He had a tablet and a smartphone, and he hated using these two as well for absolutely necessary things like phone calls or e-mails.
He used to say that we must choose our tools very carefully to be the ones that increase our humanity over those that decrease our humanity.
The process of construction which involves many people and many processes within the overall process, in the end, results in the designed built environment, which then acts as a tool for the society. When every process is more humane, the resultant tool is too and acts as a device to increase the humanity of the society. On the other hand, when these processes of construction are more and more driven by tools that decrease the humanity of the tool holder, the resultant architecture is also dead and then further sucks the life out of its users.
3. Truth of form lies in the person shaping the material, not in the material.
Material is a dead being, shaped by an alive one - and it is the person shaping the material who is accountable for the final assembly. Hence, if one is in a situation where the most advanced material on earth is to be assembled and crafted by mediocre craftsmen or the cheapest locally available material is to be crafted by very skilled craftsmen in the trade, the latter is the better choice of the two. We have abundant cases of this not being followed in our everyday lives.
In the majority of cases, the temptation of acquiring specific materialistic goals sways people away from looking at the locally available skills in craftsmen. We force them to 'work it out', because we want that particular look we saw in a magazine or on Pinterest. The local craftsmen are forced to agree because they have to earn a living and slowly, the local crafts die and we are surrounded with cheap mimicry of the images we began with.
4. Spontaneous action as a design method
Of all his lessons, I found this one to be the most valuable.
Irrespective of the fact that there are architects and planners around to advise them or not, communities spontaneously design all the time. The role of an architect is not to impose their formally trained design method onto these ongoing spontaneous designs, but to facilitate them with their knowledge and training. These spontaneous actions emerge out of a collective consciousness of a community and must be respected. This is what makes community participation essential in the design process - where the design evolution is dependent on the feedback of the community it is going to affect. In residential projects, this happens very easily where there is only one client and the design can be reviewed and revised many times before final execution. But in large-scale public projects, this dialogue with the public is completely missing. The community only sees the end result and has no other option but to 'deal with it'.
On the other hand, traditional architecture offers us great examples of design through spontaneous action. The design of any traditional village emerges out of the collective consciousness of each village, developing over many years. In urban areas, the informal settlements are great examples of communities designing spontaneously strictly as per needs and availability of resources to them resulting in very resilient neighbourhoods. I say resilient because of the very fact that they survive despite being labelled informal and being robbed of their many rights to the city - one of them being an effective sewage system. Through his work in Aya Nagar, Ashish Ganju demonstrated this method by holding several community meetings at various stages of design development and execution of the Aya Nagar Development Project.
For the reader
If you have been a colleague, a friend or a student of Ashish Ganju, I would humbly request you to add something in the form of a comment to the valuable lessons and memories he left us with. If I have misinterpreted anything, then too, feel free to add that in your comment.
If you are unaware of M N Ashish Ganju and his works, I would suggest you visit www.greha.org which would give a glimpse into the kind of projects he set in motion. I would also highly recommend reading 'Discovery of Architecture' a book he co-authored with Prof. Narendra Dengle which dives right into their design philosophy.
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