Roads are being widened. Trees being felled. Foam issuing forth from lakes. In the rush to make cities ‘global’, there is increasingly a feeling of alienation among its inhabitants. But there are committed people, working away from the glare of the limelight, to restore a way of living that is sustainable and inclusive. Continuing the legacy of R.L. Kumar, who was deeply passionate about vernacular architecture, is the team at The Centre for Vernacular Architecture (CVA), led by his wife Madhu Bhushan, a social and women’s activist with Vimochana. Commemorating Kumar’s third death anniversary, which falls on June 23, CVA Trust, in collaboration with friends in Udbhava, Open Studio, Good Earth and Kalminchu Trust for Vernacular Livelihoods, has organised a lecture by Professor Ashis Nandy, political psychologist and social theorist, titled The Vernacular Architect and his Ghosts , at the National Gallery of Modern Art.
“Ashis and Kumar shared an intense relationship. Kumar got to know Ashis at a very young age. Ashis gave him a framework of understanding the world. They struck an enduring friendship,” Madhu reminisces.
Although the contribution of CVA is immense in the alternative structuring of the cityscape, Madhu stresses that in these times it is important to focus on the absolute need for vernacular practices in architecture.
“Some have a problem with the word ‘vernacular’. Vernacular immediately gets associated with tradition and tradition with negatives, such as caste and being anti-women. But it is not the specifics of it that we need to focus on. But the way we look at the world. The universal hegemonic modernity has come from the West and that comes from Colonisation. The continuities between the past and the future, between towns and cities, between rural and urban areas have been broken. Contemporary modernity is so systemised and so is colonisation. There are also economic underpinnings of it that are so exploitative.”
R.L. Kumar was born in 1962, and was a chartered accountant; he gave that up to join Centre for Informal Education and Development Studies Collective, as a philosopher activist. In the 1980s, he established CVA, which was registered as a Trust in 2009.
“Kumar tried to bring back the skills of the craftspeople. For him architecture was not just about design. It was also about knowledge paradigms, especially of carpenters and masons. For him, architecture was not about making a roof or a wall. It was about how much you are at home with the world. How do you dwell in this world in a way that is more sustainable and more humane?”
Madhu adds that in Kumar there came a point where his thinking and doing came together.
“He was a person of the mind and of the hands. His basic engagement was with the people and with the material. He worked with locally available, natural material, not material that is industrially processed.”
Over the years, R.L. Kumar built bonds with architects and masons who worked with him.
Sathyaprakash Varanashi, an architect who works on eco-friendly ideas, and so is able to appreciate R.L. Kumar’s greatness says: “Good architecture evolves from aesthetic and social sensibilities which can be achieved by anyone who has the capacity to observe and absorb how people live. R.L. Kumar was one such example, who didn’t study architecture, but came from finance background. He had social concerns and an inclination towards rural architecture. Kumar combined his concerns for the poor, reciprocating to the skills of masons and carpenters, while satisfying the client’s needs. His greatness lies in bringing these diversities together.”
Stanley George of Good Earth, speaks of Mr. Kumar with fondness.
“He was a self-taught architect who had great mastery on materials and good sense of spaces. His architecture represented his passion for people, environment, materials, craft and the protest against mundane, conservative styles of his time.”
Khalid Rehman, an architect with CVA, speaks of his association with R.L. Kumar.
“I joined CVA way back in 2003, as an intern. I received six months training and continued working with them as a junior architect. I learnt a lot from Mr. Kumar. He promoted building what you design. It wasn’t just designing a house. I learnt how to use natural products, and how to develop a relationship with the masons and carpenters. His design capabilities were excellent. I owe my career to him.”
