Society. Spaces. Screens

Abstract

Now that digital and computational technologies have almost become ubiquitous, perhaps it is a good moment to reassess what may or may not have been its influence on the architecture of housing and urbanisation. This paper wishes to reassess the relation between form and content in housing design. What does that mean? Like the call for abstracts of this conference suggests, either technologies are altering practices, or there are reactions against technological shifts, or there are landscapes on earth where perhaps technology has not yet reached. Similarly, one can think about how technological shifts have or have not yet influenced all the questions relating to housing and housing design, for that matter this can also be extended to architecture in general. In fact not just technology but there are so many other factors that may or may not have influence on the questions of design of housing in our times. For instance, there are questions of demographic shifts, changing economy, changing climate, large tracts of existing buildings, heritage questions, class questions, among others. Disciplinary and even cross-disciplinary practices have chosen to respond such shifts with very specific set of relations between technological or social changes and the built environment, or they have responded with very loose relation between any social change and the question of form. During the modern era these approaches were exemplified by the works of Patrick Geddes on one side and Corbusier and other modernists on the other. Many of the post-mid-20th century architects, including several in our times as well, represent this tension between social content and form, in various ways. This paper will discuss some of these tensions between form and content, animating the discipline today. It will particularly focus on the pedagogical notes collated from various studios and courses offered by the author at architecture schools in India.