Is house part of one’s pretension? Or is it the pretensions that shapes a house?


There is a famous saying by sir winston churchill, “ we shape buildings, there after buildings shape us”. This we have felt is quite true, as its always a mutual process on what we are and what space we occupy. This idea of house becoming a strong identity of pretension, is more in a consumer state like kerala, where in an agricultural society like tamil nadu or in predominant industrial societies, there are less importance given for the image of a house.
For such societies houses are a little more than a shelter while the co existing environment is more important than the image. We can also come across different communities who value the idea of co existence, and hence continue living together in-heriting the houses from their past generation.
In a pragmatic society, where there more primary economic opportunities, there are less importance given to the image or the idea of identity. The idea of an image of the house will be secondary to ones thoughts on his familes education, food and social existence. Such societies will have a very predictable economic growth. In a society where secondary and tertiary economies are more prominent, where there are multiple chances of sudden influx of wealth, people see imageability as a main tool to establish their sudden importance in the society. With a predominent number of NRIs and the influx of foreign investment in last three decades, kerala has been witnessing this specific situation of creating houses for displaying ego and power, and hence there are large fissures which have developed in the coherence of the society. Houses should have been a social decision while its been taken as a very personal agenda in such societies.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

De Earth , a philosophy in the making

Image
Philosophy of our practice has evolved over time. Each project, each client, each context is a new learning. As your journey progress, you will find cliffs, valleys, sharp turns, junctions and sometimes even roadblocks. But more you travel, more you learn to negotiate these, appreciating your little experiences, continuing your journey in the right path. Your philosophy get nurtured along. When we realised the potential of having a philosophical body in practice, we renamed our firm, to “de earth”, with a tagline, “nurture, create, belong”. This was around 10 years before. It helped us to conceive projects not just as professional assignment, but as an extension of our life. When we agree to take up an assignment, we were just not signing an agreement, but then sharing dreams, ideas, concerns, habits, potentials and limitations of our client. We nurtured these as if it’s ours. Being sensible to the actual need of the client, was one of our most important baseline. The idea o...
Read more

My journey in architecture ..

Image
I want to talk more about the philosophy of our practice and why we think architecture is beyond its physical form. But before that, it seems equally exciting for me, to travel back to my memories, and to uncover a journey which made me realise the need of a philosophical body of work. I remember receiving a very strange toy, as a birthday gift, from my maternal grandfather, probably when I was not more than 7-8 years old. The memories are so vivid, as the ‘toy’ was with me for long. It was a house, inside a glass box, and when you switch it on, there will be dancing lights. It wasn’t meant to be a toy. But he chose to give me that. My mother use to later tell me, he wished I build beautiful houses like that and one for her, rather than wishing my birthday. my journey with architecture begin there. By the time I finished matriculation, I had this feeling, that I need to be an architect, without knowing what actually it means to be. May be, since everybody else told I can d...
Read more

How does a house influence its neighborhood?

Human beings are social animals. We cannot exist in isolation, so our house. Each of our life is so dependent on the context, the immediate neighborhood, ecology and society. Its hard to alienate a house from its neighborhood and vice versa. While physical boundaries give a certain level of clarity on ownership, there are several natural and social factors which are beyond these physical boundaries. Huge compound walls and gates, isolate a particular land from the rest of neighborhood and this can result in alienation of people and loss of quality relationships. We cannot deny our neighbors right for path, right for view, right for air, right for wind and right for light. Its very important each of our design reflect positively on all boundaries, rather than looking at the street edge alone. Character of a house, its visual significance, size and the way the mass responds to the streets, etc will largely influence the comfortability factor of using the street and hence the behav...
Read more