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This paper is an exposition into findings related to the dwellings of Rabindranath Tagore, at Santiniketan in Bengal, India. Tagore, one of modern India's foremost cultural and literary figures, spent forty years (1901-41), most of his very prolific and creative adult life, in the houses he built here. As regards disciplinary approach, the investig...
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... He criticized Euclidean structures' cold, monotonous designs. Instead, he was inspired by nature's complicated fractal patterns and emphasized harmonic interactions between all architectural aspects, culminating in Udayan (Sanyal, 2015). Tagore's architecture emphasized collaboration. ...
... He stated, "The architecture, as realized at Santiniketan, cannot be seen as a personal vision alone because much of it was collaborative in effort." Tagore's associations with eastern masters of the plastic arts like Okakura Kakuzo and Arai Kanpo enriched his architectural practice, leading to experimentation within the physical structures (Sanyal, 2015). ...
... Tagore pioneered utilizing modern materials as well as local materials to highlight centuries-old Indian architecture at Santiniketan (Santiniketan -an Architectural Journey, 2016). Houses like Udayan, Udichi, and Konarka had 'jalis' or lattice screens made of pre-cast concrete decades before (Sanyal, 2015). Tagore's insight shows his intention to merge modern Indian identity with architecture without copying indigenous forms or Western classicism. ...
This study delves into Rabindranath Tagore's architectural philosophy for Santiniketan, emphasizing the symbiotic relationship between nature, art, and built structures. Drawing inspiration from global trends and local practices, Tagore merged sustainability, vernacular materials, and artistic collaborations to create a unique architectural landscape. The buildings of Santiniketan not only resonate with the essence of Bengal's rural spirit but align with the architectural currents of the early 20th century. Through a thematic analysis, the paper underscores Tagore's innovative approach, including harmonization with nature, commitment to sustainability, and the fusion of art into architectural spaces. However, the study also suggests potential avenues for further research, including a more comprehensive exploration of socio-political influences, individual artist contributions, and post-Tagore architectural evolutions.
... This 'staging' of the Poet's Home -as I explain elsewhere, where each house had a spatial name -was a significantly inventive, tactical, spatial production intertwined within registers that render Visva-Bharati comprehensible. 31 The immaculate materiality of Golconde that tempts architectural historians to invoke modernism's canon overshadows a substantive history of its realisation within the auspices of the Aurobindo Ashram. Aurobindo himself was reluctant to use the term Ashram, owing to its socio-structural associations with Brahmanical asceticism, signifying withdrawal from the real, living world. ...
Two seemingly disparate cases in late-colonial India help to critically foreground how architectural histories can productively narrate
connections across many cultural fields and agents.
... East was the favored location of three of the houses in Uttarayan, a term that signifies the apparent movement of the sun into the northern hemisphere in India. The houses were named Udayan meaning dawn, Udichi to rise, Konarak or sun's rays and were a play upon Tagore's name Rabindranath with its etymology in the Sanskrit word Ravi (Rabi in Bengali) meaning sun (Sanyal 2015). ...
The architecture of Shantiniketan is an example of contextual modernity, derived from the rural vernacular and ancient Indic forms, all creatively synthesized to produce something new that had no direct precedent. The houses built for the noble laureate poet Rabindranath display a modern sensibility yet are rooted in ancient Indic ideal of living in harmony with nature that Tagore imbibed and promoted. The dialogical relationship of architecture with natural surroundings occurred in the house’s location on the site, connections between interior and exterior spaces and flow of spaces, mimesis of natural forms, and use of natural materials. The five houses designed by Surendranath Kar, between 1919-1938 and collectively known as Uttarayan, were rooted in the local building vernacular and scaled to the human body. They were conducive to Tagore’s habits of living, thinking, and working, and his deeply felt desire to be amidst nature. His artistic creativity inspired by nature’s rhythms was sustained by their unique design. They nurtured his creative self and supported its growth towards individuation. They were ‘dwellings’ where Tagore was most at home.
Keywords: dwelling, contextual modernity, organic architecture, harmony with nature, design grammar, vernacular housing
... East was the favored location of three of the houses in Uttarayan, a term that signifies the apparent movement of the sun into the northern hemisphere in India. The houses were named Udayan meaning dawn, Udichi to rise, Konarak or sun's rays and were a play upon Tagore's name Rabindranath with its etymology in the Sanskrit word Ravi (Rabi in Bengali) meaning sun (Sanyal 2015). ...
India is a country of diversified climatic, topological, and socio-cultural conditions. This gives a distinct character to the settlements in each region. However, owing to rapid urbanization and industrialization, our buildings are becoming more pretentious and is being built on a principle of one size fits all.
Currently, in India, the building sector accounts for 29% of national energy usage. The built-up space is projected to increase by 66% until 2030. This results in national and global greenhouse gas emissions. To combat this, we need to look into our roots, which is unpretentious, and was built by integrating the natural, cultural, and solar geometry principles. Vernacular buildings are the result of resources available and provide an optimal relationship between the natural and built environment. Despite the abundant benefits of these vernacular practices, it is often not used for new developments. This is due to increased demand for the built spaces in a short time, reluctance to adopt vernacular practices, modern construction techniques, and materials. This becomes of even more importance, especially in the cold desert regions as they have extreme temperature conditions, difficult terrain, precipitous gradient, adverse climatic conditions, rich flora, and proneness to natural hazards. Numerous multistoried buildings with contemporary materials and techniques are being constructed in hill settlements without considering the context and climate. This depletes the ecology and ecosystem of the location and also impacts the health and wellbeing of the occupants.
This research aims at mapping the residential typology in the cold and dry desert of Leh-Ladakh. The parameters studied are the thermal properties of the materials, building orientation, massing, and resource mapping. The learnings from this research will help us formulate a design response that will integrate the new technology and vernacular wisdom and yet retaining the essence of the socio-cultural interactions.
... Since it is dif cult to understand the reason behind selection of paths within the complex, observational inferences are depicted in the form of mapping the pedestrian behavior. The view shown in Fig. 19.11 (adopted from (Sanyal 2015)) is an attempt to reconstruct a visitor's pedestrian journey from the entry point. ...
Culture and tradition are based on participation, engagement, and an idea
that prioritizes equality for humanity. And “perception” toward tradition has created
the bonding between human values, tradition, and technological progression.
“Perception” is the identification, organization, and interpretation of sensory information
into coherent unified meaning to self and to the world. Since perception is
based on human interpretation and meaning; it varies with factors like culture, civilization,
and age of development. Hence, perception forms the “imageability” of the
space and altered with time and space.
The chapter would concentrate on the rapid urbanization that has led to the disparity
of identity, imbalances of the indigenous knowledge system, deterioration of
cultural and regional assets, and hence, a decline in individual empowerment. The
chapter focused on the indigenous architectural forms and knowledge system as a
part of everyday aesthetics. It attempts to grasp the physical, tangible architectural
forms and patterns of space. Therefore, define and evaluate the form, style, and pattern
of the architecture itself and space around by analyzing people’s perception
toward it. The study would culminate through assessment of architectural patterns
and built environment in two different case studies, namely, vernacular architectures
at Santiniketan in Birbhum and Jorasanko Thakur Bari and their alternative
responses to different versions and priority of nature and ecology.
This chapter brings to light how a pre-transitional context of Jorasanko Thakur
Bari grafted from a hardcore urban footprint in British Industrial Calcutta had contrasted
with a posttransitional eco-friendly setup of Birbhum in Rural Bengal from
which Santiniketan and its eco-exploratory setup was carved out. Thus there is a need of a search for qualities of regional vernacular architectural aesthetics, use of
space, and people’s perception toward it as against the more formal Bauhaus kind of
design elements of formal urban spaces and its built environment. But the chapter
does not end in contrasting and likening the two. Rather it takes another step to
bring together the best of the two worlds. Therefore, integrating indigenous knowledge
with modern technicalities may help to promote, sustain, and alter people’s
perception toward both vernacular and modern forms and patterns, and arrive at a
design vocabulary of the third kind. Hence the chapter has been segmented into
three sequences of discussion, i.e., firstly, indigenous architecture as explored
through the analyses and discussions of vernacularism and regionalism, on the one
hand, and contemporary formal architectural aesthetics, on the other hand; secondly,
a composite focus on the range and gaps of the experiences in cultural and social
contexts based on the twin cases and its allied people’s perception; and thirdly, at a
need to delineate an attempt to chart out recommendations on the basis of an innovative
and creative approach to integrate vernacular into modern architecture and vice
versa. With these three successions of discussions, the deliberation hopes to alter
general perception toward the extremities, like “Indigenous” and “Modern,” and
portray a new design vocabulary of the third order.
Keywords Forms and patterns of perception • Vernacular architecture • Modern
architecture • Perception • Pattern of space • Integration and a third order
The Architectural Humanities Research
Association (AHRA) 17th AHRA PhD Student
Symposium 2020, to be hosted by the School of
Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle
University, takes as its departure point the
tendency for architectural research to be dissected
into distinct disciplinary categories, including
‘architectural history’, ‘architectural theory’ and
‘architectural design’. This categorisation implies
that architectural research requires methods to be
applied from outside of its discipline, rather than
conceiving of architectural research as a discipline
with its own research methods. How then might we
consider our encounters with architectural research
in a way that links to our own ways of working and
conception of the wider world?
Encountering architectural research in this way
means acknowledging that architecture is not only
inherently interdisciplinary, but that it is also a
field offering its own distinct practices and ways of
relating to society and culture. It is such re-thinking
that, as this symposium proposes, opens the
possibility for architectural research to be situated
as a core research discipline. This re-consideration
of architectural research is part of an ongoing
project conceived by the Architectural Research
Collaborative (ARC) at the School of Architecture,
Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University
Addressing the duality of the individuality of domestic life and collectiveness of the dwelling, flows of intersections between lived
and architectural spaces inform a new approach for conceptualising the commonplace in domestic architecture
Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Prize winning Bengali poet and polymath, is an eminent figure in the history and culture of modern India. As the Indian Independence Movement grew in the early twentieth century, Tagore used his renown to establish a university in the rural community of Santiniketan: Visva-Bharati, “where the world meets in a single nest.” All of Tagore’s efforts — artistic, educational, and social — were informed by a universalist philosophy that he developed based on the Upanishads. Tagore’s philosophy facilitated unity between all creation, including harmony between the peoples of humanity and between humanity and the natural world.
The architecture of Santiniketan is a tangible manifestation of Tagore’s philosophy. Designed under his direction by his associates Nandalal Bose, Rathindranath Tagore, and Surendranath Kar, Tagore’s residences at Santiniketan, in particular the houses Udayan and Shyamali, illustrate Tagore’s universalism in two primary ways. The designs unify a diverse set of traditions within a Modernist framework, and provide for maximum interaction between indoor and outdoor spaces. Udayan is a synthesis of Indian, Japanese, Javanese, and European designs, finding commonalities in the traditions through abstraction and modern materials. Shyamali also draws from a variety of influences and, in service to a connection between man and nature, the design blurs the boundaries between indoors and outdoors by using the natural material of mud. The architecture of Santiniketan, because it is a product of Tagore’s unique values, does not fit easily within the major trends of Modernist architecture in India or beyond. It is best evaluated as a single thread in the contrapuntal nature of Modernism.
Culture and tradition are based on participation, engagement, and an idea that prioritizes equality for humanity. And “perception” toward tradition has created the bonding between human values, tradition, and technological progression. “Perception” is the identification, organization, and interpretation of sensory information into coherent unified meaning to self and to the world. Since perception is based on human interpretation and meaning; it varies with factors like culture, civilization, and age of development. Hence, perception forms the “imageability” of the space and altered with time and space.
