the sphere and the labyrinth

kaif came to the school today and showed us some of the work that he is involved in. industrial buildings for jewelry factories, apartment building for shah rukh khan, houses for company ceo’s and a huge institution on the outskirts of pune. the work was precise, meticulous and spartan. the aesthetic was one that attempted an international look in a context of collage like urbanity. beautifully finished and i liked the structural inventiveness. it was a vision of the future right here right now and the systems of construction are designed for it. off the rack windows, doors, glazing, railings, everything. it eliminates the middleman completely- the contractor and the labor. they are no longer necessary and therefore irrelevant.

its going to be a difficult future for all of us who love the complexity of a city. the market is a tricky place to work in. its logic is inescapable. architecture embedded within its modes of production systematically recreates and reinforces its logic.

we live in at least 25 time zones at the same time. the cycles of development have not uniformly distributed themselves across the fabric of the city. there are languages that exist in all these spaces relevant to the contexts from which they emerge. we do not have the tools to understand these. and architectural theory does not help when it romanticizes the past or mimics aesthetic notions borrowed from the west.

manfredo tafuri wrote ‘the sphere and the labyrinth’ –two spatial metaphors- one representing perfection in form closing out any complexity; and the other, a maze of meandering and confusing dead ends but rich in possibilities. how do we validate the labyrinth when the sphere is so easy to build (and sell) ?