Letters.

PATIENCE EXHAUSTED

SIR: In your March 1998 issue (page 47), there had been an announcement for an international architectural and urban planning competition. The main theme of your magazine was the architecture in the Middle East. As a consequence of your advertisement, we decided to participate and submitted our design. And, after a very long evaluation process our project got the first prize out of 46 professional teams. You will find out project and the jury report attached.

Unfortunately, following the announcement of the results the organizer cut every means of communication! Naturally we expected to be invited to the ceremony of awards. But it did not happen at all and we could not get the $50 000 prize. It is the same with the other teams whom you already know. For example, Dr Abdelmohsen Farahat from Egypt came second (one of his housing projects was also published in your March 1998 issue, p46).

Mr Davey, we have waited with an almost endless patience until today. But now we think that it is time to take this case to the international world and publicly known by other architects -- again via your magazine. We hope you evaluate our unpleasant story and keep the architectural world informed as you always mention in your letters and issues.

Yours etc

CEM ILHAN

Profis, Istanbul, Turkey

OBJECTIVE OBJECTION

SIR: I was a little surprised when I read the article on MVRDV's Dutch pavilion at Hanover (AR September, p64). The article is a mere (and a little swift) description of the building. There's nothing more of what we can see from the photographs ourselves.

There is, yes, an attempt at interpreting the building within its cultural context, but I found this very generalized and superficial. What most surprised me reading the article was the not-mentioning of Rem Koolhaas and his works. From the first photograph I had in mind Koolhaas' Bibliotheque Nationale de France and his writings on 'Bigness' and container buildings. What I want to express is that the similarities between MVRDV and Koolhaas appear evident (you only have to look at the books they wrote) and it seems to be a lack of information not connecting the two Dutch architectural experiences that today offer some of the most innovative ideas. I had heard that American, but particularly English, critics have always blamed Koolhaas and his projects, but I kind of didn't believe that ostracism could be so heavily evident.

It may seem that I'm a great fan of Rem Koolhaas, but I assure you it is not the case; the kind of architecture I like is quite a lot different. I'm simply a fan of objectiveness and historical exactness.

Yours etc

NICCOLO SEGATO

Rome, Italy

CRY FREEDOM

SIR: Please take three minutes out of your life to do your part. Madhu, the government of Afghanistan, is waging a war upon women. Since the Taliban took power in 1996, women have had to wear burqua and have been beaten and stoned in public for not having the proper attire, even if this means simply not having the mesh covering in front of their eyes. One woman was beaten to death by an angry mob of fundamentalists for accidentally exposing her arm while she was driving. Another was stoned to death for trying to leave the country with a man who was not a relative.

Women are not allowed to work or even go out in public without a male relative; professional women such as professors, translators, doctors, lawyers, artists, architects and writers have been forced from their jobs and stuffed into their homes. Homes where a woman is present must have their windows painted so that she can never be seen by outsiders. They must wear silent shoes so that they are never heard. Women live in fear of their lives for the slightest misbehaviour. Because they cannot work, those without male relatives or husbands are either starving to death or begging on the street, even if they hold PhDs. Depression is becoming so widespread that it has reached emergency levels. There is no way in such an extreme Islamic society to know the suicide rate with certainty, but relief workers are estimating that the suicide rate among women, who cannot find proper medication and treatment for severe depression and would rather take their lives than live in such conditions, has increased significantly. Th ere are almost no medical facilities available for women. At one of the rare hospitals for women, a reporter found still, nearly lifeless bodies lying motionless on top of beds, wrapped in their burqua, unwilling to speak, eat, or do anything, but slowly wasting away. Others have gone mad and were seen crouched in corners, perpetually rocking or crying, most of them in fear. One doctor is considering, when what little medication that is left finally runs out, leaving these women in front of the president's residence as a form of protest.

It is at the point where the term 'human rights violations' has become an understatement. Husbands have the power of life and death over their women relatives, especially their wives, but an angry mob has just as much right to stone or beat a woman, often to death, for exposing an inch of flesh or offending them in the slightest way. Women enjoyed relative freedom, to work, dress generally as they wanted, and drive and appear in public alone until only 1996. The rapidity of this transition is the main reason for the depression and suicide; women who were once educators or doctors or simply used to basic human freedoms are now severely restricted and treated as subhuman in the name of right-wing fundamentalist Islam. It is not their tradition or 'culture', it is alien to them, and it is extreme even for those cultures where fundamentalism is the rule.

Everyone has a right to a tolerable human existence, even if they are women in a Muslim country. If we can threaten military force in Kosovo in the name of human rights for the sake of ethnic Albanians, citizens of the world can certainly express peaceful outrage at the oppression, murder and injustice committed against women by the Taliban.

Yours etc

SUZANNE DATHE and others Grenoble, France

Letter from Delhi

Arun Rewal reports from the Indian capital desperately in need of an urban architecture.

This summer we witnessed the birth of India's 'official billionth baby'. Delhi's population is now estimated at 14.3 million. Some suggest it will touch 22 million by 2021. While the city grapples with shortages of power and water, politicians, bureaucrats and technocrats have been grappling with numbers to work out how about 3000 megawatts of power and 4000 mglpd of water can be provided to the city. The increasing demand for new amenities and infrastructure -- despite constant tussles to maintain the existing with limited resources -- now sounds like a line from a scratched record. Urban crisis prevails. Yet most planners on the lookout for solutions remain safely ensconced in Nobel-prize-winning models lurking in economics textbooks from the 1950s. Articulate though they may be, these positions remain insensitive to the impact on the city. The planners persistently refuse to acknowledge that the solutions to the Delhi problem are connected with conditions in the neglected smaller towns and countryside. Moh andas Gandhi suggested decades ago that creation of better employment opportunities and living conditions in the villages for the bulk of the Indian population that lives there would be a wise investment. Yet what is being done for the villages is insufficient and Delhi will continue to suffer for it.

In this new era of liberalization, financing options have made it easier to get a loan to purchase a car than affordable housing. Consequently, in the absence of a good public transport system, the vehicles on Delhi's roads have swollen to around 2.7 million. This adds up to more than the other main cities -- Mumbai, Calcutta and Chennai -- put together. In their bid to solve the problem decision-makers have lived up to their reputation by creating yet another chain of problems. The solution they have gone for is flyovers that promise only to sweep Delhi's traffic problems from one area to another. These elevated mega-structures are enough to upset the stomach of anyone who contributes to the direct stream of excise taxes used to fund them. By avoiding anything related to a peripheral expressway, decision makers are merely sweeping problems under the carpet.

Meanwhile, the first 41.5km of a 198.5km metro network are also being built. For Delhi, the magnitude of this undertaking both in scale and coverage is unprecedented. It will be the largest urban intervention the city has ever witnessed; 85.2[km.sup.2] of the city will be within a five-minute walk of a station: In terms of sheer magnitude, this works out at about three-quarters the area of Chandigarh; over 68 times the size of the existing floor plates of commercial district centres built by the Delhi Development Authority; or over seven times the area of the old walled city. Despite all this, it seems Delhi ii to lose the chance to reinvent itself. Many of the proposed stations offer poor access and a number of transit lines would require reworking of the corridor alignments to be more purposeful.

Shameful

Both the Delhi Development Authority and the Delhi Metropolitan Rail Corporation have neglected the city building potentials. They have not grasped the enormous possibilities for raising finance for redevelopment, creating platforms for improvements and maintenance or even reshaping urban precincts. In fact the governmental bodies overseeing the project have not done anything to deal with the haphazard development that is most likely to follow. The less affluent parts will he left with an elevated section, which cities like Boston have after many years recognized as undesirable. What is even more shameful is that some of the very people who are working to tear down the elevated sections in Boston are helping build them in Delhi. Like cities in the United States, we may soon be spending billions of dollars to mitigate the metro's bad effects. The Delhi summer is known to breed strange behaviour. In the heat, it becomes difficult to sleep, and it also becomes difficult to ignore what is going on around you. Con sequently all the city's contrasts, contradictions and ambiguities seem to be magnified by the scorching sun. Contrary to all expectations, summer is also a time of year when some in the government are most active. The colonial legacy of moving out has found a new form within the city itself. This summer the Union Minister for Urban Development has taken it upon himself to arrest those guilty of non-compliance to building laws. This former bureaucrat has lashed the whip on those who built more than what is allowed.

Different estimates suggest that about 100 000 people live on the streets, 30 per cent of Delhi's population lives in slums, 70 per cent of the households live in one room or less and 90 per cent live in two rooms or less. Over 200 000 people come to Delhi every year in search of new employment opportunities and more comfortable living conditions. In the absence of provisions for humane living, most are forced to adopt public spaces. For the rich and middle class, cumbersome regulations, inflated land prices and greed have become convenient excuses to infringe the public domain. Land grabbing and building more than what was permitted have been widespread. After many years, encroachments were demolished and for the first time authorities threatened to cancel leases to group housing apartments. Even as newspapers carried photographs of violations by the high and mighty -- the politicians and builders -- the action has so far been limited to the slum dwellers and the middle class. Some of the poor have recently been moved to Narela on the city's outskirts. Each family has been provided with bus passes and 12.5[m.sup.2] plots. Perhaps more such constructive approaches to accommodate the poor within the city would break this cycle.

As extremes become more pronounced, limits are breached and hope diminishes, perennially new ways of dealing with the reservoir of problems emerge. Much like the monsoon that follows, these provide a dash of respite and new rays of optimism. In this city of striking cultural, social and economic differences, the mood appears to be quite upbeat despite the urban crisis. Contributing to this are improved economic conditions for the wealthier classes. According to the World Bank's World Development Indicators, if purchasing power parity is considered, then the Indian economy is now the fourth largest in the world only behind the US, China and Japan. Also the new Forbes list of billionaires has more Indians on it than ever before. India is working hard to change its image from a nation of 'snake charmers' to 'mouse charmers'. Computers and information technology are 'in'. The government is certainly relying on this area to bail the country out. Delhi's new found prosperity is reflected in the numerous retail and entertainment outlets that are mushrooming all over. The interiors of these are no different from those in any cosmopolitan city in the world. However, what may differentiate this city is what is now a common condition in most Indian cities: filth and squalor in the public areas beyond Delhi's central Lutyens zone.

New-found aesthetic

For the first time both the Miss Universe and Miss World titles rest on Indian heads. However Delhi's new-found aesthetic is one area which would have no chance in any contest. Recent building types conjuring images from the American suburb are the latest set of banalities assaulting the landscape. A number of these hackneyed boxes have no architectural significance. They are the latest imports brought in by third-rate architects from overseas, now permanent fixtures in a system of consortiums necessary to win projects. The methods of selecting architects are drawn from archaic and insensitive World Bank guidelines that are not concerned about creating architecture. The assumption behind the new-found practice is that large firms, especially those from overseas, know and can deliver the best. Consequently, large-scale architecture projects in the city have been left to the mercy of management firms with partners from abroad or large engineering businesses with architecture divisions. Building form and space i s reduced to hackneyed unadulterated ugliness. On the other side of the organized building activity spectrum, greedy developers are busy subdividing single family homes to flats. The face of the dreary structures that they have been creating recall icing on decadent cakes, or patterns found on the soles of some of the gaudiest plastic shoes available in the bazaar.

Unlike Corbusier and Kahn's influence that paved the way for new architectural possibilities, the architectural value of these new imports is null from inception. Corbusier and Kahn's works in India emerged from readings of a magical mysticism coupled with an understanding of ground realities and craft. Their synthesis provided the foundations for the creation of multi-layered orders that could transcend different conditions. It was grounded in realities that they sought to control and transform through their design. And, in celebrating human experiences, the architects resurrected involvement with the physical world. In response to Indian conditions, they demonstrated tactics to accommodate contrasting and contradictory conditions to create an architecture of great richness. These representations of 'optimism' and 'progress' also contributed to the advancement of building trades and the architectural profession too. In contrast, today's influence from the outside is an import that is neither sure of itself, nor rooted any-where. Sporadic expressions of consumerism and clunky technology seek an equation with modernity and progress.

The troubling results are now showing. And as a consequence most young architects or even established Indian firms have little chance to display their talents. The new prototypes are taking over and erasing the vast canvas of architectural innovation that had been developed in the post independence era. The numerous 'Malibu Housing Estates' and the metro station at Kashmiri Gate seemingly modelled as a pregnant centipede fallen from Mars bear squat testimony to this.

The best buildings under construction are still those designed more than a decade ago. Kuldip Singh's block for the New Delhi Municipal Committee's Town Hall creates a new public square across from the Jantar Mantar. The building carves out a spatial form evocative of a Gopurums, that holds together diverse elements within the complex building envelope. Raj Rewal's innovative glass domes for the Parliament Library provide for variations in spatial definition by utilizing delicate plays of light. These buildings allow means to support the 'cultural deep structures' that are embedded in traditional pattern making.

At the same time, there are a few whose work in this age of a smaller world is dominated by the desire to express an 'autonomy of the architecture'. This is a shift from the forces in a 'distanced' India, which within the first few decades of independence have aimed to express collective identities and national or regional concerns. At this stage of development, in most cases it is not the resultant form, nor the space and sometimes even the specificity of technique that is of particular interest, but the choice of the strategies that has contributed to their making.

In Gautam Bhatia's architecture there is an attempt to do away with a composite building. Fragmented programme components are often linked to place an observer simultaneously in a field and in front of objects that have been scaled down. Bhatia 'utilizes a constrained irregularity to order his architecture. Abhimanyu Dalal's architecture attempts to define a context as much as to create it. He builds his works on narratives that provide the platform to engage in a site. In Dalal's work the narrative mediates to establish connections with history, the physical environment or the architectural context of the area within which he builds. Each of these connections is established in formal terms -- a space between two gardens, a link to the sky, or a romantic reminder of Delhi's Barsati house type. Their physical manifestations are often reinvented and then composed in a fresh manner to project a new image. Closely related to the Dalal's ideas about the context are the expressions of 'lightness' and 'independence'.

A promising trend sponsored by the Urban Arts Commission is to develop visions for large precincts of the city. A recent proposal by Sanjay Kanvinde, Arun Rewal and Anuraag Chowfla carves out a new public domain within the central district's Barakhamba Road Area. The plan proposes to decongest the road, synergize the benefits of the proposed metro, provide for amenities like parking, parks and a series of pavilions to define the road edge. One only hopes that studies such as this pave the way for shifts in the creation of architecture. What Delhi needs is an architecture of the city.

ARUN REWAL

Arun Rewal, architect, urban designer and planner is a graduate of the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi and the Massachuselts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. He has worked in Boston, Dallas, Moni real, New Delhi and Paris. He currently practises and teaches in New Delhi.