Liquid Concrete

Concrete jungle. A buzzword from the 8217;80s. Something no one except unimaginative planners and ruthless builders ever liked. The image, like the material itself, has solidified in our minds and is unlikely to crumble anytime soon.

Yet the concrete has become malleable, throwing up more possibilities today to exercise the imagination than ever before: The Sydney Opera House is an example.

Ironically, apart from the many engineering possibilities, concrete also allows the architect to imagine forms that are more organic, fluid and suggestive of natural forms. The entire idea of the concrete jungle8212;the apparent opposite of the organic8212;can be subverted in the process.

A step ahead, many of these buildings allow the viewer or visitor to experience their inherent organic quality in intimate ways. The entry of light and darkness, for example, can appear like a dense forest or anything else that the person experiencing it believes it to be. We appreciate them for the lightness they bring to the place they are situated in: The global urban concrete jungle.

One can8217;t but help note the irony in all this8212;that concrete in its new avatar is able to create sophisticated structures that soothingly mimic nature while being a part of the hard-edged city.

So, with their functions extending to visual and sensory gratification, are these buildings works of art? Classifying art has become harder apart from irrelevant than ever. While designing a contemporary building, architects and engineers visualise the entire structure as a giant, sculpted work, and there is no reason why it shouldn8217;t be experienced as any work of art is8212;simultaneously through the sensory and the cerebral. Of course this puts them within the ambit of art. In fact, such buildings are even more exciting because living and working in or even entering them is a highly interactive experience.

Take the Baha8217;i Temple in Delhi. Its lotus shape has elicited more interest in architecture among the public than any other contemporary building in Delhi. Inside, in the midst of sacred silence, there are more people excitedly exploring the form and space than meditating. A more conscious version of this is the Guggenheim in New York. With its spiral, ribboned exterior and interior, it is one of the most exciting museum spaces in the West. Visitors find themselves in a seamless space, walking up a gentle ramp, gliding from one show to another.

Can8217;t this elaborate form be called sculpture? Yet given its function, which is to house and protect precious objects at all times and in all kinds of weather, they may have been hard to complete without a new understanding of concrete and a 20th century imagination. This should encourage us to re-examine concrete itself.

If, as is emerging, some buildings have sculptural qualities, we are faced with another question: Why are buildings still expected to be decorated with artworks on the exterior? In India, even older, remodelled buildings continue to commission murals on their walls, just as the new and still expanding Delhi Metro has commissioned 8216;potential8217; artists from art colleges to create works for the stations.

Should our policies not shift from putting up pretty pictures on the surface to actually incorporating the sensory into the larger shell itself? Perhaps we can by working with artists at the inception stage. Challenging as it is, this is the way to go.