Architecture has always been the ‘anonymous’ profession. This
is one movie where the lead doesn't even get an honourable mention.
Ironically, the word 'architect' gets used pretty generously in our lives. When we hear “Indira
Gandhi was the architect of India’s victory in the ’71 war”, we know
there was a Sam Maneckshaw and a host of war heroes that fought the war. But
when we talk of the best architecture, what does the layman know? The Taj Mahal
gets credited to Shah Jahan. Many of us think ‘Eiffel’ is
some French classy word attached to a memorial, and definitely not the name of the engineer who designed it! The list
is endless. Add to this that the architect for the Taj Mahal had his hands cut off, the architect
for the Taj Hotel committed suicide and the architect for the Sydney Opera
House didn't get his complete fee, you have grounds for a new sob-a-thon.
This blog, however, isn't about self-pity, but about the endangered
species of architecture. Engineering is once again breathing down our necks.
One of my teachers told us “the Civil Engineer is your mother-in-law!” Well,
that mother-in-law has a whole family plopped on our sofas, and pushing us out
of our comfy zones.
How did this happen? Didn't we deal with this, centuries
ago? Even in India, The Architects Act was passed in the '70s, giving architects a
foot-hold on the economy.
Technology is what
happened.
Yes, the same technology architects
ignored in college (except the nerds). The same technology we let the engineers keep control of in
the industry. We were happy enough to feel that we had the control since we
hired them (the ones who got hired by the client and did not listen to us were mean !@#$^&*s).
If that weren’t bad enough, there
was new technology coming in. Things that moved, things that blinked, things
that opened or closed because other things were blinking; things that were
becoming these mean, unmanageable thingies!
Let’s look at this further in our
next blog: Who designs today’s
Super-Lith?
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