The Rise of the Villament:

The New Investment Buzzword That Will Hit Goa

Villament has already become a buzzword in Bangalore’s real estate lexicon (Anshul Dhamija, TOI: 2011). It is a concept that is gaining popularity, writes Dhamija, with those who want the luxury of a villa and yet crave the comfort and convenience an apartment affords. A villament is a large duplex apartment, usually with a double-height living room, large balconies and, most importantly, a terrace with a garden which gives the feeling that one is on the ground despite living in a high-rise building. Although the Goan real estate market is still rife with villas and apartments as separate building types, one can wager that the arrival of villaments is not too far off.

 But before we focus on the impending arrival of villament-type developments in Goa, let us reflect on the current popular building type in the real-estate market, the vacation-house. In his seminal essay ‘A time for space and a space for time: the social production of the vacation house’ (Society and Architecture: 1980),  sociologist-historian Anthony King broadly defines the vacation-house as the occasional residence of a household that usually lives elsewhere and which is primarily used for recreational purposes. He argues that the capitalist economy produces not only a surplus of wealth, but also, for a sizeable minority, a surplus of time.  King claims that the motives of owning vacation homes include seeking compensation for city living, understood as escaping from perceived overcrowding, noise, traffic congestion, air pollution, and the pressures of city life (p.194). No wonder then that the elites of the large metropolises like Bombay and Delhi seek to own a vacation home in Goa, as it is perceived as a perfect holiday destination with its sun, sea, and sand, apart from the Europeanised atmosphere that they don’t find anywhere else in India.

 However, the vacation house is not simply a house; its very architecture differs from a full-time residence.  King argues that the ideological preference for ‘nature’ results in a preference for country or semi-wilderness locations, preferably with extensive views. He says that these  purpose-built houses have features which integrate the ‘indoors’ and ‘out of doors’ and at its most extreme, whole walls and roofs are cast as windows, giving extensive vistas of vegetation, or views of distant fields and beaches. King further elaborates that in densely settled vacation areas, the vacation homes are of courtyard plan, where their occupants turn their backs on the outside world to gaze at the enclosed vegetation of the court within. The vacation-houses also use artificially produced ‘natural’ materials like the rough-cut timber, cane, grass matting, hand-woven fabrics; again these are attributes, King claims, of an ideology that is anti-urban, anti-industrial, and desirous of a ‘simple life’. The strongest criticism that King confers on this type of lifestyle is that “[o]nly for the materially satiated did the ‘simple life’ have an appeal; the ‘Great Outdoors’ was attractive only if one had comfort within” (p.213).

During the 1990s, large vacation houses in Goa were generally the affairs of the super-rich, like the Mallyas, who owned sprawling properties on ‘virgin’ sites overlooking the sea. Now, the situation has changed as a large number of the rising urban upper class, from Indian metros, are buying second homes in Goa. The surplus wealth created in metros gives these urban elites an advantage to invest in a comparatively cheaper real-estate market of Goa.  The investment though is not limited to buying vacant land and villas, as many are also buying apartments to fulfil their need to have a second home in this Europeanised holiday destination. But it stands to reason that these investors will not be happy with simply buying any apartments. They would want their apartments to have the feel and features of vacation-houses. And this is where the concept of villaments with catch up, as it promises the luxury and feel of a villa yet is relatively affordable due to the stacking of many units on one piece of land.  With the villament-type developments, the holiday homes in Goa are all set to go high-rise.

Increasingly, Goa as a tourist destination is not just in demand to be consumed for its ‘sights’, but worryingly,  through ‘sites’, by the process of ownership, of this land and properties, by tourists (Trichur: 2013). So, “What can we understand about a society by examining its buildings and physical environment?” (King: 1980). To say the least, the current real-estate developments in Goa reflect the aspirations of urban Indian society much more than the local needs of average Goans. While popular belief directs attention against the nibbling away of land by the poor migrants, one should be aware that the large, elite, property sharks from the Indian metros, ably aided by the local real estate industry, are taking bigger bites of this scarce land, and that too as a second, or a third, helping, in their insatiable lust for property ownership and leisure.

(This article was first published on 13th September 2015 in The Goan Everyday)

Charles Correa: The Nehruvian Architect

Writing in The Guardian (19 June, 2015), architectural historian Joseph Rykwert hails Charles Correa as the “premier architect of India whose authentic modernity superseded stale colonial imports.”  Of the many tributes that have followed Correa’s passing away, Rykwert’s seems most problematic. Nonetheless, it allows us to reflect on the nature of Correa’s work.

But before I proceed to an analysis of Correa’s work and philosophy, we need to acknowledge the role of Nehru in appropriating modern architecture to represent post-independent identity of India. He achieved this in one swooping move by commissioning of the Modernist international architect, Le Corbusier, for the design of the new city of Chandigarh. The exposed-reinforced-concrete buildings of Chandigarh, built between 1951 and 1965, stood in complete contrast to the colonial architecture of pre-independent India. This was a dramatic change from the styles prior to independence. Consequently this modern style inspired many Indian architects that followed, and Correa was no exception.

Correa’s post-colonial modernity is amply demonstrated in the design of New Delhi’s Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) building, completed in 1986. The building is situated on the outer road of the historic Connaught Circle. Most of the buildings here belong to the neo-classical style adopted during the late colonial period. However, the architectural aesthetics of the LIC building make no effort to blend with the existing context. Correa’s twelve storey creation is supposedly modern as it is fully adorned with a glass façade on its north face. But was Correa’s choice of the modern architectural style for the LIC building simply a personal preference, or was there a deliberate ideological rejection of the “stale colonial” history that Rykwert derisively mentions? 

As historian and theorist Kenneth Frampton notes in the introduction to the book Charles Correa (1996), although, in the initial years of his career, Correa was influenced by Le Corbusier, he moved away from the French architect’s ideas of international modernism as he found “inspirational depth in the mythic and cosmological beliefs of the [Indian] past."  

This shift is unmistakably demonstrated in the project Jawahar Kala Kendra (JKK), which was completed in 1992. Affirming the same in the above book Correa states that “the Jawahar Kala Kendra in Jaipur, is a… contemporary construct based on an ancient perception of the non-Manifest World, as expressed in the vastu-purusha-mandalas - those sacred Vedic diagrams that have been of seminal importance to Hindu, Buddhist and Jain architecture over many centuries … [T]he program for the art centre is disaggregated into nine separate groupings, each corresponding to the myths of a particular planet: for instance the planet Guru (which symbolises learning) houses the library… The central square, as represented by ancient Vedic shastras, is a void.”  Although, like many of Correa’s works, the aesthetics of JKK is also aesthetically modern, subtle Brahmanical ideas can be gathered from his architectural philosophy, especially in the plan-form, as in his use of the concept of the mandala. In his book The City Shaped (1991), historian Spiro Kostof deciphers the use of the mandala for urban design as “a mystical symbol of the universe in the graphic form … with as many padas as there were to be residential quarters, and only within each pada, inhabited by members of a particular professional groups…” And it is here that the mandala as inspiration reveals its problems. When employed as a design element, the mandala is a means to divide the area on the lines of caste as understood by the reference to ‘particular professional groups’. If the mandala represents the discriminative varna-based ideology of caste-Hinduism why then did Correa choose it to feed his designs? Was it merely rhetorical or was it a measure of his philosophy?

Part of the answer lies in the way in which post-colonial India embraced architectural modernity to project itself to the world. Dedicating the Jawahar Kala to India’s first Prime Minister, Correa writes that in “[g]uiding the new nation in its first decades after Independence, Nehru also wanted to look backwards and forwards in one decisive gesture: rediscovering India’s past whilst simultaneously inventing a new future.”  Although Nehru had unleashed the modernist Le Corbusier on India as a catalyst to move away from colonial identity through the design of Chandigarh, I suspect that Correa’s interpretation of collating ‘ancient’ Vedic concepts with modern aesthetics would have pleased Nehru more. It was this ability to juxtapose ‘ancient Indian’ concepts with modernism that emblematises Correa as an ideal Nehruvian architect.

Even though postcolonialism may have wished to represent itself as departing from the past, it was in many ways just as discriminatory. So, while it may have liked to say it was different, better, and therefore modern, it really just carried into the contemporary moment all of the baggage of the past. In fact, this is itself indicative of the problem, because it shows how deep-rooted Brahmanical influence is – that even when there is an intention to break from the past, it continues to imbue the present.

(This article was first published on 16th August 2015 in The Goan Everyday)

Why is architecture in Dona Paula boring?

While walking around with some friends in Dona Paula, our discussion veered to its architecture. We started comparing buildings, appreciating some but more often bemoaned the fact that for the most part they were loud, gaudy, and, at times, completely out of scale. Most of the buildings in Dona Paula are large single-family bungalows, with high compound walls and even bigger gates, intended to symbolize the wealth of the patron within. While one bungalow was trying to impress with oversized column and pediment, the other went overboard with decorative railings and ugly pergolas. As we moved along, we came across a series of contemporary row-houses marked by sleek lines of horizontal and vertical planes. For a change, my companions approved of the work. I remained skeptical, also evasive about the reason for my continued criticism. Nevertheless, I had a feeling that, given the context, my own work as an architect would not have been very different. Why then was I critical of the wealthy neighborhood of Dona Paula?  Why did I find it sanitized, even sterile?

It was not long after that the reason for my cynicism in Dona Paula was made obvious through an architectural encounter on the outskirts of Goa Velha. Standing on the old highway was a small two storied, light yellow building with bright red column pilasters complimented by the red of its steeply sloping roofs; a narrow and linear building, modest in its aesthetics and ordinary in terms of its finishes. Yet it drew my attention because it seemed peculiarly slim and imposing. What made this architecture interesting was that the linearity of the building was a direct result of the shape of the plot on which it stood. The design of the steep sloping roof seemed to achieve historical reference to the Portuguese period architecture, an attempt which many famed architects fail.  

At the risk of being unfair, let us agitate the frame of aesthetics in comparing the building in Goa-Velha to its wealthier counterparts in Dona Paula. What stands out is that apart from satisfying the basic requirement of achieving functional as much as constructional complexity, the building in Goa-Velha has also been able to articulate itself boldly. Its attempt at style is far more than mere cosmetics. This is worth appreciating because style is mostly synonymous with the rich. It is ironic that even if the rich present themselves as ordinary, it is deemed a matter of style. The building in Goa Velha, on the contrary, makes a valiant statement of style considering its restrained access to resources.

However, apart from architectural aesthetics, Dona Paula seems to be plagued by other fundamental issues. One of these is its collective urban design. Ideal neighborhoods are definitely not created by treating the development area like a large chocolate cake and dividing it into standard pieces of plots. The British architect and urban designer Leon Krier seems to have articulated a solution to ensure that the nature of sub-division does not lead to boring and repetitive built environment. In his development of Poundbury, in 1990’s,  an urban extension to the city of Dorchester in England, Krier achieved diversity by clubbing together plots of various sizes, shapes and orientation, to design new urban neighborhoods. The strategy was simple but effective. The variety of plot sizes ensures interesting non-standard building designs. Apart from variations in plan layouts, the dissimilarity of plot sizes also guarantees an assortment of buildings in terms of height and massing. This also ensures that architects have different design challenges in different plots.

However, in Dona Paula, each bungalow tries to achieve its "bungalowness", by expressing the myriad tastes of their bourgeois owners. The overall effect is unpleasant, that of urban kitsch. The non-implementation of urban design guidelines and the lack of diversity in plots make it difficult for the locality to come together as a neighborhood. One wonders whether this is in spite of Dona-Paula being a home to wealthy patrons, or because of it. .

But on the other hand, although the row-houses in Dona-Paula provided a relief from the continuous change of architectural expression as seen in other parts, the problem is that they were all identical and therefore boring because it denied thematic variations in each plot.  In a well-designed neighborhood the buildings can be similar but not the same. The learning, therefore, seem to be that in order to achieve a cohesive but interesting neighborhood, there is a need for common unity in the urban design of the area, while simultaneously allowing for eclecticism at the individual building level.

Rather than the vulgar display of money through individual projects, places like Dona Paula require visual coherence in their architecture. Until then it will remain sanitized, sterile and boring. Architecture in Dona Paula is evidence that money can't buy taste.

( This piece first appeared on The Goan Everyday on 20th June 2015)