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How to adopt a totally new approach to creating architecture has recently been a major subject of debate. Globalization has made us realize that the Western experience is only one of many architectures in the world, yet Western architecture has imposed itself to the point of suffocating the others. “Colonization” is the term used by many to define the primacy of the West, a primacy that has cost previously subaltern populations dearly. The response to this entirely ideological assumption, is decolonization. The imperative is therefore to deconstruct the Western narrative that has subjugated the world.
Like cancel culture, decolonization has become a de facto mantra sustained by academies – paradoxically by Western academies, especially in the United States. Like all ideological slogans, however, the decolonization mantra lacks subtlety. Especially in Asian countries, the Western influence has not been just one-way. In order to take root in different areas, it has of necessity adapted and hybridized with the different contexts. Take for example what happened in Africa in the early 1960s when most of the countries on the African continent gained independence. As part of their modernist drive, the new rulers and elites chose the language of Le Corbusier and Gropius for their new architecture, not only because fascinated by these Western typologies, but also because they wanted to create healthier, more orderly cities able to compare favorably with those in the Western world from which they took inspiration. The upshot was often hybrid architecture, both modernist and local, and so impossible to label “colonized”.
India presents a very similar situation. Le Corbusier’s Capital Complex built in the 1950s in Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab, is well known. Now, after more than 60 years, for those who know the city it can hardly be described as Western, having been “re-semanticized” by local life...
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The Architectures of Diversity
Durganand Balsavar
The editorial “Architectures of Diversity: Reinterpreting Practices in the Indian Subcontinent” by Durganand Balsavar...
Architecture as Gift Exchange
Peter Rich Architects
Introduction by the editor Peter Rich titled “Architecture as an Exchange of Gifts: Standing on the Shoulders of Past Generations.”...
a for architecture
a for architecture
a for architecture designs two villas in Nashik, Maharashtra state, India...
