Studiocommune

Attic Talk 1 - Architecture of Society In his work ‘ Empathetic and Embodied imagination: Intuiting experience and life in Architecture’, Juhani Pallasma writes Contemporary architecture has often been accused of emotional coldness, restrictive aesthetics and a  distance from life. This criticism suggests that we architects have adopted formalist attitudes, instead of tuning our buildings with realities of life and the human mind. In all honesty, don’t we usually design our houses on the basis of functional and aesthetic criteria,rather than imagining them as resonant settings and backgrounds for situations of lived life? “Let us assume a wall: what takes place behind it?” the French poet Jean Tardieu asks provocatively.But do we architects have the same curiosity for life?  It is in this context the idea of Architecture of Society becomes relevant. Beyond the  structural identities,  society lends itself the quintessential production of space...

Sometimes we ask the wrong questions, most often we never question. In the process of creating a product, we forget to ask who the object is or will be or what happens in the life of an object? As architects we often forget to ask: Who is a house? Who are the people who meet the house? What conversations take place? What culture is born? At a time when even the minutest of an artifact and its position in the house is dictated by the architect whose hegemony imposes a kind of aesthetics on the society, the transition from a house to a home takes multiple encounters between the object, the people and the environment. Every encounter adds a new layer of meaning through constant conversation, adding to newer narratives - multiple formations of a new house; a new HOME.  A house is never static, the textures, the paint, the objects, every spec of dust particles, movement of the people etc. constantly alter the very essence of its sole existence. For an architect, designing a house...