Prof.Jaffer AA Khan Director MIDAS to speak AARCV-2012

Professor Jaffer AA Khan,Director MIDAS-Marg Institute of Design and Architecture Swarnabhoomi, Chennai, has been invited to be a keynote speaker at the International Conference on Advances in Architecture and Civil Engineering, at MSRIT Bangalore on 21st June 2012. He will speak on "Product Architecture" - How technology helped conceive mega projects to deal with complex urban issues through 20th Century and the beginning of 21st Century.

PRODUCT ARCHITECTURE

PROF. JAFFER AA KHAN

“The immense bubble floats gently in the atmosphere, free of the earth’ muddy morass. The transparent sphere cradles an entire city. Inside, the calendar stands always at spring, the clock perpetually at noon. The air neither too hot nor too cold, always as clean as on the day of the first creation. The people of this paradise are neither rich nor poor, suffer neither of age nor disease, but live like heavenly beings to think of beauty all day”

It is past a decade since the beginning of a new millennium, end of a thousand years and beginning of a thousand. The birth of every new millennium brings forth new ideas and new spirits. But what has this beginning brought to humanity? Are we seeing any sign of new ideas or human endeavor to reach a level of existence?

Architecture has come a long way since a thousand years since. It has evolved into different forms over the years. The most exciting trends in human habitat evolved during the 20^th century, when technology provided an immense support.

We begin our journey in 1929 from “Dymaxion House” developed by inventor and architect Buckminster Fuller to address several perceived shortcomings with the then existing homebuilding techniques. These houses were factory-manufactured kits, assembled at site intended and suitable for any site or environment and to use resources efficiently. In addition to this Fuller went to propose a “One mile Dome” over New York to save the inhabitants from the growing automobile pollution.

 The Dymaxion House and the Geodesic dome could be considered as the beginning of factory made architecture and Fuller as the pioneer of this pre-fabrication in architecture lead the way to built environment of what evolved after the World War II and beyond.

The Word War II and the end of it brought in new ideas in Europe. With industrialization and immense migration of rural population to urban areas, the cities were in crisis of handling such a volume. Hence the architect thinkers were in crisis again and mass production of human habitat was naturally expected.  But, among the several movements during that time, Archigram founded in 1960 had an extraordinary impact on future cities and integration of technology, industrial production into architecture.

Archigram as an association of young and highly experimental British architects whom, until 1974 regularly co-operated with each other as a team of independent artistic personalities. Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron, Michael Webb created “Archigram” a group name intended to suggest exaggeratedly succinct messages in matters architectural. Their most important medium was a kind of underground magazine, which was also called “Archigram” and, beginning in 1961, appeared at irregular intervals. It contained the most important themes and projects of the individual members of the group as well as other architects with whom they were friends.

In 1963, the Archigram held its first exhibition accompanied by numerous articles including by architectural critic Reyner Banham, the movement took the stage as a protagonist in a new urban philosophy, which aimed to synthesize contemporary Pop Art with the aesthetics of science fiction. With suggestive utopias as the nomadic “Walking City” by Ron Herron (1964);”Plug in City” by Peter Cook, Warren Chalk and Dennis Crompton (1964-1966), which could be newly installed at any time; and the and the “Inflatable Suit House” by David Greene (1968) they became fixture in the annals of architectural history of the 1960s and a second birth to the industrial production of architecture.

During the same time, the “Metabolists” of Japan became active and the group came up with various proposals for Tokyo Bay development in the mid 1960s. One of the first executed project worth mentioning here is the “Nagakin Capsule” tower designed and built in 1967 by Kisho Kurokawa in 1968 though most of the schemes remained “Utopian” to the period.

From the late 1960s to the beginning of 1970s saw a new breed of architects working on this movement more seriously and on real time projects. The first project to have partially been executed which won the international award is the Piano-Rogers, designed “Centre Pompidou” in Paris completed in 1977. It is architecture and engineering marvel and an inspiration to a generation of architects who encouraged factory made products as architecture. Almost entirely the “Centre Pompidou” was fabricated off site with most of the components were factory finished and assembled at site.

As the “High-tech” architects like, Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, Jean Nouvel, Nicholas Grim Shaw and others continued their work through various projects in the 1980s through 1990s; it is worth to mention here the idea of “Parametricism” as an evolving movement of the 21^st century which further reinforces the idea of “Product” as architecture. Many projects by Zaha Hadid are based on this concept, which implies that all elements of architecture become parametrically malleable and adaptive to each other and to the context. Parametricism is being considered as the most potent movement and avant-garde style in architecture today. But “Parametricism” as product architecture has the versatility to solve the complex and variegated issues of the contemporary society and has the capacity to intricately stitch the urban fabric, which consists of rich, diversified panoply of institutions and communicative situations.