Sitting under a creaky fan, 80-year-old Swaminathan talks about Vaastu Shastra and his great grandfathers. He talks of the clay, brick, mud and the history that went into the making of the 200-year-old ancestral house that he lives in. As the evening sun peeps into the mutram from the ventilation above, architecture students listen in rapture to the old man’s stories. “The wooden pillars with intricate floral carvings on the top are resistant to termites,” he points out. “In those days, a mixture of limestone, palm jaggery and kadukkai was used for plastering.”
Last Monday, a group of 40 architecture students from various city colleges were taken on a study trip to an agraharam at Tenkarai village near Sholavandan.
The quaint agraharam which has over 60 houses flanked by a 12th Century Shiva Temple and a Krishna Temple, is one of the two surviving colonies, the other one being at Thuvariman.
“There are certain typical features of an agraharam house such as wall-to-wall construction and ventilation only through the ceilings,” observes Professor G. Balaji, Dept. of Architecture, Thiagarajar College of Engineering. Students studied other architectural elements like Madras terrace, centre storey, thinnai (verandah), mutram (courtyard), rezhi (corridor) and thaazhvaram (pathway).
The trip to Tenkarai was part of a larger architectural listing project jointly launched by Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) Madurai and Tamil Nadu State Chapters and Department of Architecture, Thiagarajar College of Engineering.
The nation-wide project carried out in various cities before will document old heritage buildings in and around temple town.
Noting that many of these monuments are fast disappearing either due to thoughtless vandalism or sheer neglect, Dr. Uma Kannan, Convener of INTACH Madurai Chapter and Vice-President, Thiagarajar College, says, “Documentation is of vital importance but it will never be the same as seeing a live building – the feel, the emotion and the bonding can never be replaced. Documentation can only be done successfully, if original structures are in existence, and preserved, in order to study them.” She adds, “All the advanced engineering skills and refined technology cannot restore these traditional structures back to their original forms for the simple reason that these buildings were not built with advance engineering skills in the first place. Therefore these endangered heritage structures are a tribute to the crafts men of the past.”
“The purpose of the documentation is to make available material for future architectural research and study. The buildings may not be there in the coming years, but the document can remain for the younger generation to know about our rich past,” says Dr. S. Suresh, Convener, INTACH Tamil Nadu Chapter, who has done a post doctoral research on Chatrams built by Rani Mangammal and Tanjore Marathas.
Suresh takes the instance of Tanjore, Kumbakonam, Pudukottai and Chennai, where the listing project is complete. “The listing is an exhaustive process. We look into every single detail of the buildings being listed.”
The architectural listing undertaken at Chennai has been brought out as a book ‘ Madras: An architectural guide’ .
“Another objective behind the project is to spread awareness among students and public. The youth need to be sensitised towards our heritage, so that they can go around spreading the word,” says Uma Kannan. “Heritage preservation is much more than the conservation of historic structures, it means preservation of culture, traditions, communities and their social practices.”
While elaborating on the varied architectural heritage of Madurai, Art Historian and Retd. Professor of History, Dr. R. Venkatraman, takes the example of the Thiagarajar Chettiar Mansion on TPK Road. “It is a very distinct building, known for the confluence of Chettinad style and Italian Renaissance architecture,” he says, adding that not many know about the numerous Italian and Greek statues adorning the mansion’s garden.
Modelled after the famous Villa Rotonda in North Italy, the mansion has ornate Doric pillars and lofty arches. “Not many know about such beautiful heritage structures. In a city like Madurai, people may stumble upon something of heritage value quite easily,” he says.
