It is easy to build a new house, what is difficult is to restore an old one, says architect Benny Kuriakose. Conservation of heritage can be tricky. For, it is a field where one values the creativity of the original creator more than one’s own. The focus is on doing work that is as unnoticeable as possible — just like the restoration of a Van Gogh painting, or a sculpture by Michelangelo. Tourists come to see the art because it is Gogh’s or Michelangelo’s art, and they want it to be as it was when it was first done. “So any intervention should be minimum and only done if it is absolutely necessary,” says Kuriakose, who has restored and relocated the houses at DakshinaChitra, the 300-year-old Paliam Palace as part of Muziris Heritage Project, and renovated Kalakshetra theatre (in 2015), among others. For the latter, “the biggest compliment I got was: if Appukuttan Nair (the architect of Kalakshetra Foundation) was here, he would have liked it”.
The challenge
Most people however, consider restoration as bringing down a piece of history and building a new one in its stead. For instance, the Dwaraka temple is 80% new, points out Kuriakose. “How can you call it a 1,500-year-old temple any more?” he asks. There is a lack of awareness about heritage structures and the concept of restoration, chips in J Chandrasekaran, spokesperson of REACH Foundation. And organisations such as REACH and Aga Khan Foundation and architects such as Kuriakose and Abha Narain Lambah are just a few names who are championing the cause of conservation.
Chandrasekaran throws light on the many structures that have been demolished without a thought by people who are absolutely unaware that “any heritage temple beyond 100 years if altered or broken down without the knowledge of archaeological department would attract punishment.” It was a taxi driver, also a member of REACH (it has 800 members from diverse fields connected by their passion for heritage conservation), who first saw the dilapidated condition of the ancient Thandurai Shiva temple, recalls Chandrasekaran. When a team from REACH went to inspect the temple, they saw the nearby Perumal temple, renovated into a colourful “modern tiled mega bathroom like” structure!
Promoting awareness
This is the sad plight of many such temples today. Stones and inscriptions of the old temples are pulled down. REACH aims to better the situation, help people know about their heritage, and value it, through lectures, epigraphy and inscription reading classes and field visits. Jeyarathnam says that over the past few years, there have been an increasing number of youngsters who have been volunteering with REACH for the restoration projects. “Tamil Nadu has close to 1,25,000 temples, and our aim is document all of them.”
Extending research and support towards heritage conservation, is also a group called National Centre for Safety of Heritage Structures at IIT-M. The group was started in 2013, with the aim of providing a platform to share knowledge with the public, and also to improve collaborative R&D between academia and implementing agencies. Today, one of their projects includes monitoring five heritage structures: Ripon Building, Victoria Public Hall, Siddique Sarai, Law College and Tamil Nadu Hotel, that are along the line of the underground Metrorail work. The buildings are checked constantly for any faults due to the impact of the metro construction, says Arun Menon, assistant professor, Civil Engineering, IIT-M. The centre has provided technical assistance in structural conservation works at Madras High Court Complex (terrace waterproofing works, for TN PWD), Kedarnath Temple, Uttarakhand (for Archaeological Survey of India), Rashtrapati Bhawan (for INTACH and CPWD), and Bharat Insurance building, Mount Road (for LIC) among others.
“All the heritage buildings have hundreds of stories to tell, each building should be considered a living thing. In the past, the traditional craftsmen used to assign a gender to each stone: male, female, gender neutral,” says Kuriakose. One has to go beyond seeing a house as just brick and stone, and understand the cultural context.
