Salil Sakhalkar

The advent of Technology has begun to invade all spheres of our private and community life, inevitably so, before we have learnt to master its use and control its abuse like a medicine with a double edge. The expanding economy is responsible for the industrialisation. the rhythm of our life replaced by the harsh ills of the massive urbanisation as a result of industrialisation - one such victim is the poetry of the environment, we cherished in this land of rich relationship between man, nature and the environment socially and individually in a harmonious climate of thought and feeling.

It is my intention to probe the conflicts in this harmonious relationship with the environmental implications of the built structures and to reveal the problems, with which the designers and architects are concerned, for the aesthetic form, on one hand, and the society, on the other, with its cherished values if social structure, cultural identity and personal experience.
In the old times, man worked with his hands. The land was the key to his learning and experience. The creation of the object - whether the pottery or his ‘habits’, expressed his environmental involvement and identity.

Today, what we built with the impersonal technology, not as part of the qualitative environmental identity but to assert the massive pressure of quantity, without showing regard to experiential involvement of significant social and individual concern - i.e. embodying and perfecting the man-world relationship with formative disciplines and the human factors - the predicament shared by the artists, designers and architects alike.

Today , it is unfortunate that the ‘saleability’ of building activity has taken over by the environmental abuse and has created a diffusion of values respected by Good Design, making the Man-Environment relationship, not only confused, but Savage and In- Human. To illustrate this point, let us examine the environmental assaults on the human factor in Mumbai and Bangalore city.

The high structure at Bangalore or Mumbai have been raised at a time when an enlightened team of futuristic and dynamic experts in Architecture, Civil Enquiring, Structural engineering, Sociology and other fields, warned us on the evils of the unplanned growth for the city, drawing the massive in-flow in search of livinghood, the shortage of lad for habitation, inadequate facilities for communication and Transport (especially in Bangalore), and other hazards, and proposed the concept of the satellite cities. Whatever its merits, it has had in its hypothesis, its analysis and its concept visualisation was indeed a far-reaching solution. All was ‘utterly’ neglected for ‘butterly’ gains. What a shame that such a decision has landed Bombay city in an irreparable doom - high structures - each enveloping a couple of thousand head of human cattle, kept away from day-light, fresh air, safety and security - the basic needs of the human being. Structures so high that Fire fighting equipment available are inadequate. A five Star hotel, in one of the Indian Megapolis, built so disrespectfullly, where the Fire Smoke travels though the air conditioning ducts suffocating the occupants to the death, no Fire alarm riased. All so Devastating.
Now, look at the exterior environment.
No parks, no open spaces, no walking surfaces and no public conviniences and no public transport terminations, no accomodation for servicing labour - giving rise to slums now, on footpaths and side-fencing, with rapes on public hygine. No space reserved for refreshments - people therefore swarming around the road-side hawkers for their daily and dusty bread, for their noon fills and jaundiced pani-puri for the evening fills.
High structures, as a product of parallel economy and builders’ ‘saleability’ approach to constructions, divorced completely from the basic elements of Good Design - Form, Function and above all the Human Factor, lacking individuality, communal involvement, social identity and environmental entity - with the sequential order.
Structures on the other hand, for Mass Housing, reflect yet another phenomenon - alienation of one family from another, disintegration of the social and family structure. lack of personal identity, sequencial order of planning of the paths, vehicular trafic, signaling system and public heatlth measures, totally uncared for.

posted by Salil Sakhalkar @ 9:18 PM