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RADAR
FEATURES
COMMENT
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| | RADARBOOKS
| Architecture from the Edge |
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Barry McNeill and Leigh Woolley. Montpellier Press, $60.
As an architect and academic from another
edge (Perth), this book documenting the
creativity of architecture from Australia’s
margins struck a chord. Expecting to find a
discussion of the qualities distinguishing
Tasmanian architecture from its mainland
equivalent, I was surprised to find relatively
little of this line of argument. Instead, the
book reads largely as an attempt to justify
Tasmania’s rightful inclusion in the canon that
is twentieth century Australian architecture.
A number of themes familiar to all
architects, such as the retrogressive cultural
nostalgia protecting much nineteenth century
building stock, the associated undervaluing of
twentieth century buildings, and their
compromising by unsympathetic later
alterations (or outright demolition), are also of
concern to Taswegians. And, in accord with
the orthodox narrative of Australian
architectural development, architecture in the
island state has evidently experienced the
same series of transitions from Arts & Crafts,
Federation and Modernism to Nuts & Berries,
Brutalism and Postmodernism.
Being a fringe-dweller, I am sympathetic to
the book’s aim to supplement the otherwise
eastern states-biased exemplifications of
architecture in Australia. However, the
discussion of the condition of the “edge” and
its creative idiomatic potential – the
examination of “Tasmanian Qualities” – is an
opportunity not fully pursued. In contrast,
there is an effective, often interesting
contextualising of Tasmanian architecture
relative to international trends and historical
events. Indeed, the key message of the book
is that Tasmanian architects explore and
operate with global ideas in a regional setting.
Again, it is the impact upon those generic
ideas of the powerful qualities of the
Tasmanian landscape and light and the
distinctiveness of architectural response that
tantalises but remains unarticulated.
The authors’ acknowledge that this is “not
a professional volume or academic treatise
but a starting point for a general reader”. Yet
there seems some confusion about the book’s
real audience. It is, like much Australian
historiography, a kind of “who’s who” of
Tasmanian architects that would seem of
most interest to architects. However, there
are few drawings and no plans, but plentiful
colour photographs illustrate the featured
buildings quite beautifully and will appeal to
generalist and specialist readers alike. In the
end, importantly, this is a book promoting and
celebrating Tasmanian architecture’s
Australian affiliation.
Kate Hislop
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| Geometries of Power: Imperial cities of Delhi |
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Chris Johnson. University of Sydney, $19.95
New Delhi and Chandigarh are paragons of
modernist conceptions of the city. Along with
Canberra and Brasilia, as William Logan
argues in his foreword to this book, these
new towns encapsulated Modernist ideals of
universality, functionality, and geometric order
in distinctive plans that we now regard as
twentieth century heritage. Each also
represented an epic journey into unknown
territory, bringing, so the story goes, order out
of chaos. If Chandigarh was, in this view, the
ultimate triumph of Modernism’s universalist
tenets on the world stage, in Le Corbusier’s
account the struggle towards that goal
spanned his whole career, beginning with his
youthful “Journey to the East”. It is telling,
however, that Corb’s notes and sketches from
those early travels were published late in life,
as he selectively re-presented and ordered
the projects and his seemingly chaotic early
impressions and passions.
Chris Johnson’s Geometries of Power is
best appreciated as a further contribution to
that distinctly Modernist genre of architectural
reflection through travel. To discern order
within the apparent chaos of an exotic milieu
is the stated aim of his selective analysis of
the geometric bases of spatial order and
political power in the historical development
of India’s capital city. An illustrated
compendium to a public lecture, the concise
text – aimed at an Australian audience with
little direct knowledge of India – is enlivened
by the author’s evocative sketches. These
give shape to the impressions of other travel
writers on India such as William Dalrymple,
from whom Johnson takes his first cues.
Johnson’s open, exploratory approach
draws freely on his own impressions and on
a range of secondary sources, but little of the
most current and relevant scholarly literature.
In five short chapters he addresses the
multiple historical and mythological orders of
Delhi; geometric aspects of Hindu geomancy;
the superposition of Hindu and Islamic
ordering principles in the case of “Old Delhi” Shahjahanabad); order and geometry in the
design of imperial New Delhi; and finally, the
resurgence of earlier geometric and
geomantic tendencies in postcolonial Indian
architecture. As a travelling observer, whose
trips to the field have evidently been intense
but brief, Johnson shares his spontaneous
impressions and opinions, but never allows
himself to linger on any topic. The book is
about “universal themes” that, he suggests,
readers might explore through their own
experience of the places described.
Logan’s foreward indicates a wider
comparative-historical context for Johnsons’
“themes”, notably in the interpretation and
conservation planning of other former colonial
cities in Asia. It is unfortunate, however, that
Johnson does not allow himself more room
to reflect critically on the context and
presuppositions of his research, not least his
assumptions regarding the pan-cultural
universality of relationships between
geometry and power in urban design.
Edwin Lutyens, the central figure in
Johnson’s reading of New Delhi, held rather
problematic views in this regard. He had little
interest in, or regard for, India’s architectural
traditions other than as a foil for his own
prejudicial convictions regarding the
universality of western classicism. Likewise,
despite his obvious passion for his topic, the
sometimes surprisingly terse and judgemental
style of Johnson’s text suggests a curious
detachment from the contexts and subjects
of his inquiry – including his own professional
peers in India, past and present.
This is disappointing in view of the author’s
own significant experience with comparable
issues of order and power in public buildings
and spaces as the NSW Government
Architect. As Johnson himself has argued
elsewhere, the distinguishing character and
power of cities is usually embodied at a more
subtle but pervasive level of order than the
ostensive architectural icons and geometric
axes and figures with which he is exclusively
concerned here. In imperial India it is at this
unassuming, “normative” level of socio-spatial
order that the legacies of colonial rule were
perhaps most deep-seated and powerful.
While the Viceroy’s “outsourced” metropolitan
consultants (Lutyens and Baker) inscribed
their grand geometric scheme upon the ruins
of the seven previous imperial Delhis,
Johnson’s own counterparts in the British
Indian government – the staff architects and
engineers of the Public Works Department –
were responsible for the majority of the actual
designs for New Delhi and its buildings. In
particular, they called upon long-developed
norms and standards to design the expansive
residential subdivisions and leafy bungalow
compounds that so clearly distinguish the
imperial palimpsest of the British in India from
their Mughal and Afghan predecessors. As the
now considerable body of scholarly literature
on the colonial architecture and urban
development of British India has established,
it was the characteristic geometry of the civil
“lines” and military cantonments – determined
by sanitary and strategic rather than formal
criteria – in which the British employed their
most effective tactic as an imperial power: to
“divide and rule”.
Peter Scriver
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