CARACTERÍSTICA DEL CONCEPTO:

vehicle through which I can explore the human condition.

I fear that the internet generation is being robbed of their curiosity, discovery and wonderment.

Instead of having to search for things and the connections between them, young minds are overwhelmed by images, emotions, ideas and facts. As every young man knows, whatever is left of his curiosity is instantly gratified by the click of his forefinger and like magic the most forbidden fruits can be tasted, at least in his jaded imagination. The luxury of boredom does not challenge him to think and to seek. He was born into a hyper-world. Like a chef in a restaurant, he no longer yearns to taste food; only to produce a flood of new menus and exotic dishes and thrust them ad nauseam onto a client’s plate. Drawing and drafting software have robbed our youth of the talent and the skills of sketching; the ability to instantly juxtapose one design idea over another on transparent sketch paper has gone. Architects have ceased to be designers and are now clever machine operators, unless they arrest themselves and start to think with their hands. The real problem is that drafting is not architecture and buildings are not architecture either. Architecture is the magical spatial aura and the experientialism contained in the material shell; it is not the shell.

In the United World College of India the Mahindras wanted to create a new learning culture in which people from various societies would seek common values and a common vision to which they could devote themselves later, in their adult lives, through various callings. On the face of it they wanted some buildings in which they could teach some courses.

Though they could not articulate the other dimensions, they were sophisticated patrons who could step beyond materiality and imagine the unspoken, the unseen and hope for transcendental experiences in spatial complexity. This shared curiosity about the nature of a campus, of a designed community and of a little society we would all create generated a vibrant dialogue and an adventure.

In the new capital of Bhutan and the buildings that make up the National Capitol Complex, the Royal Government seeks an abode for democracy organized within the Buddhist and Bhutanese tradition. It is a country with living traditions of Himalayan culture. It is unlike many of its neighbors where more powerful nations have taken over and created fossilized ‘museum piece’ cultures – a kind of a static amusement park for tourists; a physical shell with no soul. The bane of globalization is

that it tends to homogenize dynamic vernacular experiences into preordained amusement park experiences, like the New Urbanist townscapes in America referring back to a romantic small town past that existed only on Hollywood sets. In the valleys of Bhutan culture is alive, with its own style and vernacular. Vernaculars are always changing, morphing and unfolding as new technologies, information and functions diffuse within the society. What is important as democracy and its related new institutions emerge, along with the buildings that house them, is to conserve the essence of Bhutanese culture, while expressing it through contemporary buildings. This challenge was not articulated in the architect’s brief, but this problematique was certainly in the mind of Lyonchen Jigme Thinley, the country’s first elected Prime Minister. It drove my thinking too. But none of this was ever written down or expressed in budgets, bills of quantities or specifications. This most important aspect of the work lay in the realm of curiosity, speculation and a bit of magic. Much of the work we are doing employs wonderful traditional woodcarving, massive white masonry walls, overhanging roofs to protect the walls from rain, and the traditional iconography that instills meaning.

We are speaking a clear Bhutanese architectural language that has grown out of a particular history, climate, economy and society. We have to speak that language while designing.

In the mainstream, ‘cutting edge’ architecture of the West these concerns are no longer central to architectural dialogue. Architects there are arguing about isms – modernism and postmodernism. The debate does not conceal the fact that most of the architects are into self-projection and bent upon becoming famous by making spectacular stunts, like a fire-eating trapeze artist in a circus, or like a thrill ride in Disneyland. Put together, all of the notable buildings of the past two decades are nothing but a giant amusement park littered across the global landscape, or perhaps a junkyard of worn out stunts and wrecks left over from megalomaniacal follies. The issues of vernacular, of experientiality and of just plain conviviality are lost to these creatures who are very concerned about their visibility, being watched, being talked about and just plain being famous. It is good to be well known, but let us not smother humanity with the garbage dump we are creating.

I must confess that at a vulgar level I also enjoy a bit of pornography and spectacularly contorted structures doing things that are not meant to be possible or affordable. I also derive a perverse pleasure from the garish displays of ill-earned wealth and ill-spent income flaunted by rude film stars, corrupt politicians and spoilt princes. But something inside me makes me catch myself and ask,

‘What am I doing?’ An inner voice tells me to step back and think. Architecture over the past few decades has lost that inner voice, and all the critics and art historians have become sycophants of the tastemakers. Even the universities and the museums have become stooges of the global amusement park.

This vulgar aspect of the human spirit, call it a need for ‘thrill’, triggers a rush of excitement that replaces true curiosity. The crowds that mob to the wreck of an auto crash are driven by a crass desire to see spilt blood, not by any curiosity of what could be done to prevent more such accidents, or even a concern for the fate of the victims. The thrill of the tallest tower, of the most sensuous and seductive curved form and the most audacious structural feat are all ghoulish responses from the animal in us, not the refined considerations of a well tempered mind and a focused society.

Architecture is not a structural feat, an amusement or a spectacular personal statement. It is a considered, thoughtfully articulated, well-tempered response to diverse desirables, not the least of which is uplifting the human spirit. To discover this truth one must be able to analyze and understand complex situations. The cut-and-paste and the rubber-stamp solutions that typify our urban landscape

and the stunts that draw crowds are a travesty of architecture.

What I am hinting at is what I described earlier as the element of exploration and discovery that architecture entails. It could be the intense curiosity of solving a specific problem right on the drawing board, or it could be the thrill of a serendipitous discovery while browsing through books.

Intense curiosity can emerge from travel, writing, reading and just meeting people and exploring one another’s minds. Meetings can be causal encounters. Intellectual companionships can emerge, grow and later fade away. But the element of mutual discovery is what it is all about. In architecture there is always that moment of discovery in each project, where one defines the essence of the work of art, experiencing transcendence and achieving a moment of epiphany.

My personal interests and hobbies have all revolved around this central theme and passion.

Architecture is just my formal work, merely one form of this search that comes in different manifestations. So my personal life involves a number of compelling initiatives in my need to understand what I do not know and do not understand. I want to enter unknown territory, dissect it, take it apart and put it back together again. That ‘territory’ could be a new friend, a vast sand desert, or a novel. Surely each new design problem is a passionate form of exploration, driven by curiosity.

I find people my most intriguing pastime. Every person presents a new conundrum or puzzle:

what are the values which motivate them to be passive or active? What makes them reactive to their context, or proactive to change it? What are their personal visions and their objectives, and what path have they chosen to get there? What gives them a ‘lift’? What makes them laugh? What makes them cry? Why are they afraid to be themselves? I like hard working and focused people who know where they are going and are developing the skills and techniques to get there. I like people who have a grasp of who they are and what their living and working environment is actually like. I like ‘in-your-face’ kind of lively people who wear their emotions on their sleeves. Friendship becomes a kind of mutual exploration of values, patterns of thought and structure of behavior. Friendship is emotional attachment, but most of all it is intellectual companionship, driven by questioning the nature of human existence and by an honesty in proposing answers. From a base of honest expression one can share ideas and study how one idea relates to another. One can see such relationships between ideas as concepts; concepts about the human condition and society shared by intellectual companions.

Friendship is my main hobby and I have friends from all walks of life: owners of great industries;

drivers; socialites; cooks; professors; attendants; artists and inventors. What they earn, where they come from and how much they are worth are just interesting facts that decorate their search for meaning. Income and social status can be very boring attributes if they constitute a person’s totality.

The ‘search’ is where the fire of friendship burns and what we share. At India House that search is a quiet one; it is in the whispers over a drawing; in the annoyed glares exchanged over errors; and in the smiles confirming something beautiful. It is through work and sincere effort that companionship is shared. Everything else is irrelevant.

My interest in people leads me to a love of reading about them, because good literature is a study of human nature and of perseverance within the human condition. I like works like The General in His Labyrinth, Love at the Time of Cholera and Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel García Márquez; or Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being; or Kenzaburo Oe’s narratives, A Personal Matter and Nip the Bud; Shoot the Kids. These are profound as they drag one into new worlds, new situations, sentiments and nuances. Through their characters we find ourselves dealing with their world. Through our curiosity we evolve a worldview.

Friendship becomes a kind of mutual exploration of values, patterns of