The route from Chembur to Churchgate is a straight line. What it also is, is architect Samira Rathod’s way of describing urban design. A practicing architect Rathod, is also the editor of SPADE - a biannual journal that explores design through seminars, lectures, films and writing amongst other media. Rathod elucidates, “Everything we do is design. Be it simple tasks like arranging things in a drawer or taking a detour to avoid clogged routes that help us reach our destination faster.” To a layperson, art or design seem elusive, often solely elitist pursuits that are penchants of extraordinary minds and evolved intellects. But as Rathod affirms, “We live by design”. Art, design are in fact how we interface with our environment and our everyday choices and our smallest decisions.
Broadening the spectrum
It is only when we put forth our uncaring, unthinking sides that function on some auto-pilot mode, that we stop actively communicating with our surroundings. A messy, unkempt space screams of negligence while a well looked after one is aesthetically appealing, silently speaking volumes about the taste, interests and of course the effort put into it. There is always the debate about subjectivity, good design and bad design or good aesthetic and bad. But how does one traverse through these concepts if not through conversations that stem from a collective, inclusive and informed understanding of the issues on hand?
SPADE emerged as a platform to address these very ideas; to propel its readers or those involved in its various programs, to actualise their learnings in more tangible ways. Starting from November last year, SPADE has initiated a six-part lecture series on the theme “Where the real world lies”.
The first episode titled ‘Projects|Process’ looked at deconstructing the end product by focusing on the journey or the process that one undertakes to reach their final goal/s. Speakers like architect Zameer Basrai, artist Dhruvi Acharya and filmmakers Avijit Mukul Kishore and Rohan Shivkumar shared their individual stories, their approaches and their experiences for their listeners to learn from and grow. The second episode held only recently in April this year was on ‘Theatre and Cinema’ where its speakers, Sunil Shanbag and Ketan Mehta focused on space and how it plays out between these two art forms. The third episode that opens tomorrow is called ‘Landscape, Art and People’ and has a broader vision with two talks on two separate days as well as a photography exhibition in its fold.
Talk one - ‘Cities and Forests’ focuses on landscape, ecology and urbanity and has as its speakers Rahul Mehrotra and Riyaz Tayyibji, two architects well-versed on the subjects. ‘Tracing Narratives’, the photo exhibition opens alongside the first talk and explores Indian Landscape Design in addition to delving into the idea of the ‘Indian Garden’. Put together by landscape architect Aniket Bhagwat and his team from Landscape Environment Advancement Foundation (LEAF), the show opened in December last year and has since travelled to various cities across the country.
Talk two, ‘Landscape, Art and People’ is scheduled a few days down the line. Moderated by journalist-writer Sidharth Bhatia in conversation with artist Jitish Kallat, artist-curator Leandre D’Souza and Bhagwat, the talk will revolve around public art in relation to space, landscape, the environment and the inter-connectedness of it all.
Keepers of design
Reiterating that the rigour and attention to detail that Kallat as director of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2014-15 put in, is what a process entails, Rathod is only glad to have him on board. Rigour also means patience and time, virtues which are lost to the times we live in. Chatting over the phone with Rathod, the conversation meanders to the Byculla Zoo that she points out is not just home to animals, but to ancient, on the verge of extinction trees like baobabs. This is a fact most city folk and zoo goers would be oblivious to. Trees, that you cannot hurry into a patch of green for decorative purposes; trees which have been keepers of history and time. “Why can’t just a cluster of trees be our idea of a garden or some greenery?,” exclaims Rathod, who would like to breaking away from the conventional way of looking at green spaces within the urban landscape.
No art emerges from a vaccuum. So to understand art or design or any form that is culled from either, one needs to turn to its immediate environment. “The pathetic state of public art in our cities is represented by the giant oversized steel painted flowers thrust on our traffic islands, or at best by mermaids with entangled tails or large flying faucets defying laws of gravity, not to forget the glistening rhino, the hot favourite for years. Art still largely resides in mediocrity, and for the many, its appreciation is in the mimetic iterations of religious idols”, says the note on ‘Landscape, Art and People’.
D’Souza’s art organization ArtOxygen/ArtO2 - Breathing Artworks, took art literally to the masses with ‘Bori Bunder at Platform 8’. An outdoor exhibition held at CST, where several artists displayed their work, the show examined the close ties between the city, its people and the railways. Taking art out of its traditional environs like museums and galleries redefines notions of both space and access. The show resonates with what Rathod believes in, constantly barraging the public mind with good design. She feels strongly that good art is a small but sure harbinger of change.
Applying it often to her own architectural practice, where design is an intrinsic element, Rathod is weary of giving in to run-of-the-mill demands. Pandering to bad taste because a certain aesthetic might be in demand only makes sure that the toxic cycle of poor quality never ends. Referring to her generation as ‘catalysts of change’ rather than active changemakers, Rathod promotes the idea of small in a big way. “Small decimates better; small engages well; small doesn’t distract and allows focus; small provokes thought better; small allows detail; and in detail is dignity”, writes Rathod in SPADE ’s blog. Her preference to “nudge not push” so as to attain higher recall value, is probably just what the crowds need, in a city that is constantly grappling for space.
Cities and Forests on May 12 at 5.30 p.m. ; Landscape, Art and People on May 18 at 5.30 p.m. at Chemould Prescott Road; Photo show: Tracing Narratives is on from May 12-27 at the same venue
