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All angles and curves
GO PAST the sober, almost sombre, looking buildings of the Polytechnic and Tidel Park campuses, and suddenly the reds and oranges, the ochres and chromes, the blues and whites and the sandstone hit you. But as you draw nearer, the sharp angles, the straight lines and a variety of curves, the squares and the rectangles and the range of slopes stop you in your tracks. It's a building that is anything but Madras, but it could well be the forerunner of the Madras buildings of tomorrow. I only hope none of them provide the same kind of experience newcomers have here. This fantasy of a well-known Bangalore architectural firm leaves every newcomer with the feeling that, like me, he's negotiating a maze as he goes up and down the stairs, bends round angles and tries to look around curves. Certainly the freshers I kept asking the way to my appointment, seemed as lost in the maze as I was... but we all eventually got to the right place.
When asked what I thought of the building, I couldn't help but pun ``Nifty'', for it is certainly smart, stylish and eye-catching, reflecting what the National Institute of Fashion Technology is supposed to preach. It certainly shows how good use could be made of a triangular plot, designed to take full advantage of the plot's shape. But for old timers like me, the entire area appears to becoming home to a NEW Madras, with NIFT's building likely to soon become a signpost of sorts for this Madras. And though that's the Madras of tomorrow, the Madras of the Science City the whole area is beginning to be called, there seems to be something lacking about it. Was it the crowds I missed? Or the bustle of people in congested space? Or just plain human warmth? Clinically clean, expansive space with just a few to occupy the area makes me miss my Madras, the Madras of people and languor, inefficiency and chaos and shortages, but always a city that is all too human.
Clinical cleanliness and efficiency and Rs.500 crores worth of gleaming equipment are, I suppose, what Science Cities are all about — even if the danger of housing robots is the price that has to be paid. Madras's Science City encompasses much of Guindy-Taramani and is home to about 60 educational and research institutions, ranging from technical universities and research centres to NIFT and polytechnics, not to mention the American-launched International School, which has managed to find space here. It's an area that claims to host 1,500 Ph.D holders, 3,500 research scholars and 1,500 research projects in science, engineering and technology. I look forward to them fulfilling the dreams of those who raised them and contributing to a better Tamil Nadu, leave alone the country.
While those may be the dreams, some things never change. NIFT's students and faculty shifted into the new buildings about six months ago, even while work was — and is still — going on.
But the building has not been formally inaugurated, and so has not got the attention it deserves. But that's about par for the course these days, isn't it? Nothing really change, does it?
NIFT Chennai is, however, up and running despite no formal opening of its new home and with much to still get in place.
What's missing has not stopped the show from getting on the road fashion designers, garment manufacturing technologists, knitwear designers and technologists, and accessories designers, about 30 of each every year. NIFT started in Delhi in 1987 and regional centres, including the one in Madras, were opened in 1995.
After operating from the Co-optex campus on Pantheon Road, both faculty and students must see the move to Taramani as a gust of fresh air sure to blow away the cobwebs and mustiness of their previous location.
S. MUTHIAH
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