‘Urban spaces’ in Gujarat? Look at medieval architecture first!

That cities in Gujarat have grown, one can't deny. The question however, is: Is there a method to the 'madness'?

Money screams from different lanes, bylanes and corners, and the mall race remains unbeaten, its latest showcase being new-age architecture. While this new game (let's call it 'mall mania') is the 'bazaar's play' - builders and architects strictly - bystanders are left watching in mute participation.

Needless to say, our borrowing and learning from western technology works like any other borrowed work would. Hence, if architecture is the science or art of designing buildings, buildings in the urban spaces of Gujarat are yet to find a vocabulary.

If 'urban' is defined in the sense of being 'civic-minded' or 'civilised', cities in Gujarat are certainly not urban spaces. Why?

Because they lack basics, including proper street lights, water and sanitation. What we're left with in the name of 'urban growth' is creating urban forests of meaningless and abundant realty, complete with a shabbiness that is not only undesirable but also illogical.

That contemporary urban Gujarat is a polluted catastrophe is a sentence-long discourse about the obvious. The city of Ahmedabad adds the element of dust in this catastrophe.

It is difficult to explain and put into words what exactly is happening to the urban architecture of Gujarat - no wonder then, that experts are busy comparing the towns here with Bangkok and Singapore. But isn't Shanghai as far away from Mumbai as Singapore is from Gujarat?

Well, talk about the tradition of the Gujarati architecture next. Undoubtedly, it is a long and great one. The architectural beauty of a thousand-year-old Modhera Sun temple alone can put the architecture of the region on the world stage.

The stupendous Hindu-Muslim architecture of the subsequent centuries are masterpieces of world architectural heritage, too.

The late 20th century saw Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, BV Doshi and Charles Correa create some wonderful buildings here.

However, individual buildings alone cannot create the architectural language and suitable urban spaces of modern Gujarat.

Let us consider VS Naipaul's observation: ''A tradition has been broken in Indian architecture. Too much has intervened, and modernity, or what is considered to be modernity, has now to be swallowed as a whole. Year by year, India's stock of barely usable buildings grows. Old ideas about ventilation are out, modern air conditioners are in. They absolve the architect of the need to design for difficult climate, and leave him free to copy'.

Now, isn't Naipaul's observation about modernity - or Indianness in Indian architecture often being a matter of facade - very apt? In the cities of Gujarat, modern architecture has indeed become a nightmare of misapplied technology, a misunderstood modern design.

The rooms here are built, more often than not, as if for Siberia - artificially-lit with expensive air conditioner units, uninhabitable without the unit. Rows after rows of buildings done in glass, concrete and aluminium here create an infernal urban space choked with vehicular thrombosis!

Architecture and urban spaces have both reached a point of no return in the cities of Gujarat. And there is nothing the self-appointed pundits of urban design can do except 'to unlearn'.

Then, if they do glance at the street remains of any medieval Gujarati town, the exquisite grace of which has a lot to teach the modern architect and urban designer, they will know where they could go right.

And of course, they will also learn where all they went wrong.