Form Of Theory

"Form" of Theory in Classical Hindu Architecture

1. the function and field of architectural practice, the subject [s] of its representations, it's tasks; it's abilities in describing the actual, or participating in the actual,
2. the object of study in architecture, the corporeal, the building, and the way it engages with the Brain to produce, what one may term provisionally; architectural meaning...
3. the possibilities of proposing or speculating encoded within the Architect's methods. The Historical Authenticity of these methods... or, the Logic by which one can make Sense as an architect.
4. the study of classical Indian architecture: identification of systems of spatial organisation, architectural organisation and skills to recognise the significance of architectural actions on the student's part. Induction of a rigor; a certain critical self-awareness on part of the students.
5. the previous 'grand narrative of Architecture To understand the functioning of the classical and characterise the diagrammatic it constitutes ABOUT architectural activities, to see such as, on the one hand, power structures and on the other as a 'past synthesis' in Indian history which acted as the regulative architecture.

Framework

'Form' of Theory in Classical Hindu Architecture: course map. From top - to bottom, the three 'cuts' progressively defining the 'form'. Starting from a conventional 'linguistic' interpretation and ending with a 'morphogenetic' interpretation. From left - to right, the strucure of study, the concepts entalied and the subject of study.

There exists at least one dimension of the architectural which lends itself to rigor and acuteness (not to mention precision) crucial to any theorisation activity: The aspect FORM in the architectural: as a kind of mathesis, either following the nominal semiologic nomenclature (as, for example, the construction of relations between architectonic and stereotomic signs, distribution of the symbolic and iconographic over such; and signification); or in terms of compositional and structural (not constructional, though the two expressions might be identical) arrangements that in terms of various structural and formal 'classes' come to construct the 'syntax' of the built object.

One can discuss the form of content and the form of expression within the architectural, even with the building.

The course concerns coding particular and intrinsic to the profession (it might suffice to say that a pattern of repeated acts is potentially a code). The codi.ng in form of writing (as in language, treatises) and in Making (as in the semantisation and reutilization of techniques) become the object of interest here. It is understood that though these seem to constitute a discipline on their own these codings may be derived (translated) from other explicit branches of knowledge a understanding; or, much in the manner of representations, directly from the very 'stuff of life'. That is, from the latent patterns of social and cultural or the habitual.

Course Contents

WHY STUDY THE PAST? TWO PERCEPTIONS OF ORDER :
(a) ARCHITECTURE AND THE BODY. (b) MACHINE, MACHINIC, BwO?.

1. The universe of virtualities: Architectural representation of Order as a grammato-logical system.
   Introductory : Rhizome, R+., Power/Knowledge?, Cynical Reasoning.
   ………
2. What is architectural Practice ? Various perceptions…. 1. Apprenticeship/Craft?. Artisan's Guilds: Shreni. and the council (various histories). 3. Post-Renaissance models of professionalism. 4.…and architectural education: Beaux Arts, Modernist; Post 1968. 5. Contemporary "Institutionalisation" of the profession in India.
   Who the Architect?
3. Architectural Representation. <ol type="a">
4. "Mental Objects" / Salience and Pregnance
5. "Artistic Representation".
6. Cultural Representation.
7. Coding, architecture and the latency of codes.

Terminology: Signifier, Signified, SIGN. Linguistic Significance/Signification? "SYNTAX" . Morphology, TYPOLOGY. , 'Arbitrary Nature' of the [architectural] sign. Difference. . A Componential Analysis of the Architectural Sign : | "Column" |.

Discussions of Indian Architectural Representations.

1. A.K.Ramanujan: "Is there an Indian Way of Thinking? An Informal Essay" : Narrative Space in Indian representations - literature, painting, music, building. The CONTEXT SENSITIVE and the CONTEXT FREE.
2. R.Lennoy: The Speaking Tree (Part I and selections from other sections) : The 'Oniric', Plastic and Representational "nature" of Indian art and architecture.
3. M.A.Dhaki: Indian Temple Forms: Self Similarity and Self Reflexivity in Indian Architecture {IDENTITY} and the {object}.
4. A.K.Coomaraswamy: Early Indian Architecture, vol. I - IV. Mental Images, Mental Objects; genealogies. Series formation in Ancient Indian Architecture.

Considering the System in Indian Treatises. Analogies in Indian Linguistics.

"SANSKRIT SYNTAX": Discussing Indian Grammars: Panini and Patanjali, with specific references to Etymology. References to A.K.Coomaraswamy and M.A.Dhaki cited above.
Bhritahari and the Sphota Siddhanta. References to R.Lennoy and A.K.Ramanujan above. Akasha: Space as Meaning and Sound.
Natyashastra & and Bharata's Rasa Siddhanta. Chhanda Sastra and Music.
Of architectural grammatologies as advance mappings of order: virtualities, bodies and typological law .

Raja Bhoja's Samrangansutradhara. Introducing the text.

1. SAMRANGANSUTRADHARA: Reading the text, its anatomy, and understanding Raja Bhoja's descriptions of ARCHITECTURAL
2. Tradition(s) of Treatise writing in India: {Nagara} and {Dravida} shaili. Significance of Samrangansutradhara to Classical Indian traditions of building.
3. The Hetrarchy of Reading Raja Bhoja: Architecture as Body without Organs, building as Organisation.

{Rejecting the dominant occidental paradigm of Corporeal, or the building as a 'model: the Vitruvian triangle, syllogistic, functionalism, binary logic, organisations}
The Body without Organs as Organisation:

1. Reading : BwO? and Organs - 1: Prescription of Morphologies and Spatial Organisation in Samrangansutradhara.
   BODIES WITHOUT ORGANS/. <ol type="a">
2. The System in Samrangansutradhara.
3. Space organisations in Samrangansutradhara. : R+, Rhizome, Striations in space (Urstaat).
4. Integrative principles in Samrangansutradhara: Self-Differentiation, Self-Similarity, and metaphysical 'inwardness' in architectural organisations.
   algebraic progression-BY-dichotomy.

Reading : BwO? and Organs - II: Morphologies and Referential Principles Samrangansutradhara:
ORGANS WITHOUT THE BODY/.

1. Urbanism and Redundancy.
2. Vaastu Purush Mandala and the integration of references. Jati and social organisation. Military organisation. Stratification of meaning and construction.
   The Constructional System (BRICOLAGE) and the Matrix (crust) of symbols.

</ol>

Reading concerning the System in Indian Architectural Treatise: For Organisation and Organs in Samrangansutradhara: The Temple; the Gate, the Palace and the Fortress, the (absence of) the theatre.
Closing Discussion: ARCHITECTURE AS AFFIRMATION.

Summarising the course so far. (De)construction of Classical / Folk / vernacular classification Indian Building.

The question of Sociality and The Architectural: Labour, Elite, Identity and the system of Indian Architecture.
Architecture as Gaze, or Darshana.

Interlude.

• CLASSICAL INDIAN THEORIES OF MEANING AND ARCHITECTURAL GRAMMARS SAMRANGANSUTRADHARA AND THE VIRTUAL SPACES I ARCHITECTURE. ARCHITECTURAL
  GRAMMATOLOGIES AND SOCIALITY. AUTHORITY.
• ARCHITECTURAL ANALYSIS: ORGANS/BUILDING. ORGANS AS "GROSS CONSTITUENT UNITS" (ARCHITECTURE. THE NAGARA STYLE SHRINE: K.KHENDERIA MAHADEV)
  AND THE TERMS 
• architecture as:
  CONDENSATION. THE DIAGRAMME, THE fossilic, UNDER-WRITING; THE 'ABOVE' AND 'BELOW' SIGNIFICANCES.
• The Sun Temples at Konarak and Architectural Making. ARCHITECTURE AS AN 'ORGAN'.
• The 'codes' of reading buildings in India: 17th century documentation,
• Architecture and Structure: morphologies and spatial organs, the latency of codes displaying Brahmin - King pact as agency to power.
  Symbolism of the Dome and Womb
  The conceptual male and female as formulators of the Organ.
• Architecture as Media and surface - representations. Iconography, pictogram, hierarchies of 'reading'.

Actuality: introducing the Virtual-Actual. The gaps and pores of the virtual {architecture - state} and Power: Architectural analysis as Analysis of Resistance.

TYPOLOGICAL Inventions: Reorganisation of space, Re-Constitution of the Organ: THE TOPOLOGICAL.

1. Bhojpur, Raja Bhoja and the Svargarohanprasada. <ol type="a">
2. Reading the temple as "Dream Work".
3. The Building as a Diagramme of the Organ.

Meenakshi-Sundereshvar, Madurai. The Temple-City : And "Architectural Anthropology".

1. The City as Ritual, the city as Religious / Programmed Experience, Ritual space and the code of the city.
2. The etymon of Dha, Stha, Kha and the sacred experience.
3. Political underpinning of path-structures.

</ol>

THE TEMPLE AS MEDIA; f{++/+} AND f{+-/+} CONSTITUTIONS. THE TYPOLOGICAL. Meenakshi-Sundereshvar, Madurai. The Temple-City : II. And Primitive Territorialization. . DOUBLE ARTICULATION of the f{++/+} AND f{+-/+} CONSTITUTIONS . The Temple as Structure, the temple as Power, Inscription, as Underwriting, Palimpsest. Architecture as the underwriter Suppositions and other TOPICS.

SUMMARISING : ARCHITECTURE AS AFFIRMATION.
INDIAN ARCHITECTURE AS STRUCTURE, REPRESENTATION.
IDENTICALITIES AMONGST SOCIAL/CULTURAL FORM AND FORM OF THE ARCHITECTURAL (BwO?);
FORM OF BUILDING (Spatial Structure, Spatial-Temporal Organs) BUILDINGS (fossilic), BUILDING (Labour)
the ARCHITECTURAL TOPIC (or Plateaux).

MAKING BUILDINGS {IN} TRADITION.
ORGANISATION OF THE PROFESSION: RHIZOMATIC ORGANISATIONS OF CONSTRUCTION SITES AND LABOUR.

1. Conventional understandings of Architectural Making in India: <ol type="a">
2. Transformations of Nature (A.K.Coomaraswamy)
3. Architectural Schools, Shrenis & Vrata, Crafts. Components, Classification of Work BRICOLAGE.
4. Systems and Economies of Patronage.

Economies of building.

1. Morphologies, Components and Standardisation.
2. The Guilds, Jati and Caste.
3. Land, Seasons, Diurnal Rhythms, and Agriculture.
4. The Social; HABIT and MAINTANENT of the built.

"Discipline and Mobilise".

1. Subaltern Studies - the Classical (Sanskrit and Grammatological) and it's Under-classes.
2. Present Day (Modernist) 'Nation'-State, its Repression and the Maintanent

</ol>

POWER \ KNOWLEDGE

1. AS THE INTEGRATIVE IN ARCHITECTURE.
   <ol type="a">
2. POWER \ KNOWLEDGE - i : Measure, Dimensioning, and Structure in Architecture ~ Darshana (the Gaze): The Body of the King and Gaj.
   The Presence of the Bodies of the King, and the Priest : Marking Their Gaze as a purposive intention Architecture.
   As a result, the Body of the Temple, the Body of the Palace.
3. POWER \ KNOWLEDGE - ii. : "Aleatory" objects = The Flux in Meanings of Form Anarchic Inscriptions of the Gavaksha-Amalka and other Markers -- Delineation the basic Ideograms, Calligrames and Hieroglyphs -- and the resultant continuous spatial organisation of surfaces.
   Split Representation
4. POWER \ KNOWLEDGE - iii : Mechanisation of the Design Process.
   Organisation of the Site Rhizome as Temple as number. or equation. as line.
   Temple as line, Layering of Phases and Rituals Construction.

ITS SUBVERSION BY THE way OF BRICOLAGE.

1. BRICOLAGE : Architectural Organisation as BRICOLAGE.
   The "Savage Mind". The City . Multiplicity by the way of Collage.
2. The Heterological : Buildings a the Inscription of the Other. Heterologies. Analysis in Architecture: the Double sense of the Corporeal (i.e., the Real) as the VIRTUAL - ACTUAL. Contradictions between the 'already mapped' Sanskrit and the built, between Concept and Workmanship

</ol>

OPENING UPWARD: CLASSICAL INDIAN URBANISM AS AGGREGATE OF THE ARCHITECTURAL.

1. City and Ritual : Sacred and the Profane, Eternal Return, Urbs and 'Logos' : Freud's Rome , Idea of the Town : "deep" inscriptions of the city .
2. Architecture of the City - Theory of Permanence of Urban Artefacts and urban Form.
   Markers and their milieu. Sociality as the 'other' of urban artefacts. Subversives and Order in the city. "Aleatory" (irrational, chaotic) city vs. Stable (mathematic, rational essences of) city.
3. the city as a representation of State Theory, (is = is = , and not (is becomes)

Summarising:

Studies: Ritual Form, and Difference (Aleatory vs. Stable) : and differentiation in meaning.

Academics | Lecture Courses