The
Resuscitation project or as I'd like to call it, the facile proposition. I
couldn't. I didn't want to talk about this. Yet everyone seemed to be doing
just that. They argued about it as people usually do when they are positive
they know all about it. It wasn't considered as a holocaust demolishing the edifice
that didn't deserve to stand on the name of the massive blackout and downturn
of space. No one was complaining or even curious. It was what it was “It is the
same way it is" said a voice inside my head, perhaps my own conscience.
During the intervals of my professional activities, I asked
my fellow workers to provide a visual image which for them, most resembled the
forthcoming architecture. I got varied answers from hovering dwellings to
organic Deconstructivism underwater. I had my own, something spiritual and
ritual of the microcosm, a blurry image that still remains elusive.
It's been quite an evening of some energy expenditure. The
phrase 'await announcement' multiplied on the VR information screens,
alternating in English and Tamil (the only two languages alive). We found
ourselves stuck in Chennai, not the city, the air hub. The reason for the delay
was a rogue rocket bus which was flying in idiosyncratic patterns all over
Barcelona causing a huge delay cloud over Spain. So I sat, like everyone else,
scrolling through my mobile, checking the tickets once in a while. Surrounding
me were more people immersed into their screens anxiously waiting for the
rocket bus while one of the VR info screens showed news footage about the
history of temples and another showed the working process of the second
renovation of the Cooum River.
To a soundtrack of incongruous snatches of people
discussing, of looped recorded news, of distorted sound of side wheels, a
memory flashed within me. It wasn't an entirely pleasant feeling recalling the manoeuvre,
now emulated in the cramped station in my head and body. The same awkward sense
of things being out of sync. Growing in a chapter identified for the plebeians
wasn't tough. Cramped streets, building with shared walls, balconies touching
each other. None of the typical architectural standards were followed yet the
sector was alive and interactive all day. The noise generated in the neighborhood allowed you to connect with it. Creating opportunities to
interact, initiate and invent. Moving into a more fat and affluent chapter,
accorded a separate space to myself .A sudden privacy which seemed to be
surprising and addicting but the change in architecture wasn't helping in any
way. Sudden sound of silence and nature was only in affix with architecture
rather than life.
I shook my head realizing I had drifted off. I stayed put watching the looped news on the
information screen again and again which kept me utterly engrossed until my
flight was called.
I was finally airborne and found my head stumped flat
against the cushions as I slipped into a grainy sleep with the thought of
imploding structures of Catatonia stinging my head like Jesus's crown with all
its jutting prongs.
I have never had any intention to write about the resuscitation
project. To give an overview, exegesis, whatever. It involved many hook-ups, interfaces,
transpositions, corporate to civic, open to restricted, hard to soft and who
knows what else. Who was I? I was an Extirpator. Imploding buildings for flat
loads of cash. Reaching Barcelona, our task was to demolish the streets of
Catatonia which included Casa Mila. The sight of whose edifice forced me to
recall the same maneuver again, the same awkward sense of things being out of
sync that I had before. Perhaps it was also the reason that made it appear more
intriguing. A man standing beside me on noticing the rapt attention I was
paying to the structure, tried at one point to spark up a conversation. Tutting
sideways in its direction, he commented that it was a 'tragedy'. That was the
word he used. I didn't answer at first and when I did, I told him the word
tragedy was derived from the ancient Greek custom of driving out a goat. He
turned his back, a clear indication that he was not interested in continuing the
conversation anymore.
As an Extirpator, even the exotics is not the exotic. We
demolished Casa Mila like any other building in Catatonia. This happened over
and over again. Even when some historical dwelling, revolutionary episode had
taken place which allowed the knowledge to flash up, it was extinguished,
burned beneath the tarmac. But the aspects of Casa Mila's challenging
architecture continued to intrigue me. Every brief that was worked on, every
pitch I made to answer its challenge involved an invocation of a genuflection
to the future.
One evening I found myself stuck in Chennai, not the air
hub, but the city. The Cooum renovation hadn't helped one bit, as it became its
former self again. Aimlessly I walked through the streets noticing time had struck
the place leaving the religious institutions run by men to worship men.
Entering the facade of the religious edifice engraved with circular patterns
recalled the evolution of my vision for the forthcoming architecture, the
Mandala of architecture, my quest has taken me through the infinite loop that
circles around the physical and the metaphysical. The circle which answers
Gaudi's challenge. Perhaps the circle which has the will to create the epoch.
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