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VOL II. ARCHITECTURE AND REINCARNATION

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Living in Mumbai, distraught as it is, an unruly and distressed urbane commune, I cannot help but wallow in its apathy. It gets its name, the dream city, not just from all the young Bollywood aspirants that migrate here, but perhaps, more so and ironically, from dreamers, all of us, who dream a life outside of it. 

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Is it the glorious and grandiose semantic of the buildings then, of its robust forts and resplendent palaces that one is wishful of? Or is it simply the ubiquitous overcrowding our cities throng with, that we want to be out of, but feel hopelessly strapped to? 

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The rat race mantra for the emerging Indian urbanity is clearly building more. Building beautifully, is reduced to a hypothesis; impractical, demanding, unviable, untimely, unnecessary. A spirit, that our history evidently shows, was second nature to  the built environment, be they be small temples, abodes, small gardens, or even large pleasure palaces. It is time to rethink and revise our directions in growth, with a focus on, as if, people mattered.   

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The call then, is for a reincarnation: of a building discipline that is critically regional, sustainable, humane and holistic; undiminished by its depletion of craft and detail; a rigor that once was unboundedly evident but now so conspicuously absent; callously lost somewhere, in translation. 

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It is with this notion, that this issue of Spade puts together projects and articles that may invoke such thinking. A mere pointer of such direction, that we rethink the measure of design and its larger responsibilities and impact; be it in sustainability, critical regionalism, anti modernism, or simply a good, responsive, value driven design .   

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Spade urges a surge, to stray away from the herd; after all, who is to know, the shepherd could be the pied piper.