role of architecture in nation building

“Sleepless nights, fingers full of paint, stubbed toes and an endless row of coffee mugs”, does this sound familiar? Surely all the architects reading this are nodding their heads, but mothers would have the same reaction since surprisingly this scenario is picked out of an article on motherhood.

Innovations are progenies of a creative mind that has been nurtured with knowledge and has the potential to benefit the world. An architect, during his professional lifetime, gives birth to many ideas, and the journey from conception to execution requires innumerable months of patience, endurance, and care. Like a mother, the architect infuses his idea with countless variables making it fit enough to make an outstanding remark in the world.

The epiphany of architecture being analogous to motherhood is beyond conception and continues into the process of animating life.

The role of an architect is to direct human evolution by not merely building a habitat but giving life to it. Habitat encompasses our home, our city, and the overall nation. It is the locus of our habits, a context that reinforces and allows daily routines. Thus, the creator of a habitat is a sculptor of habits for the large group of people constituting a nation.

A CREATOR OF CULTURE

A human body is incomplete without the mind; similarly a nation is incomplete without its cultural significance. The cultural identity of a nation is unanimously made up of the micro cultural backgrounds of the people residing in it.

To justify the above statement, consider a blank notebook, where the architect is the author and he/she decides to write a story of a nation, the protagonist being the people and the main storyline revolves around culture. The architect is designing the nation with variables and setting a path for its development. Out of the many design principles to be accounted for, cultural significance is a recurrent one. This paradigm of architecture following culture can be moulded into architecture creating culture.

Culture, in its true sense, refers to agriculture and to the process of tilling, tending and cultivating the plant life.

During the formative years of a child, the mother guides him/her and provides a medium for the development of an identity. This identity is retained by the brain and becomes a part of the consciousness. For an architect, creating a culture for a nation involves an arrangement of the countless variables available at his/her disposal to make human life and its flourishing possible. It is a medium consisting of built environments and social conditions where human life can thrive or wither. As a result, architecture has the potential to shape the nation’s environmental medium in which the human organisms reside.
The genesis of a democratic culture is a seed planted by its creator in the minds of a thousand people through its built environment.

DEMOCRACY THROUGH ARCHITECTURE

The democracy of a nation is strengthened and developed by its society where architecture acts as a catalyst and source of energy. The key to a democratic nation is its social context which is determined by religious and economic segregation.

Urban syntax of a nation is circumscribed by the accessibility between its private and public spaces. This accessibility generates social interaction among communities, eliminating their differences due to religion and economic conditions.

Architecture is a versatile form of art that easily blends with every aspect of our lives. It is ambiguous where many, equally plausible interpretations are certain and hold an independent place in one’s consciousness.

Post-independence of India, when Le-Corbusier was commissioned to design Chandigarh, he took an approach of dividing the nation into sectors, each of them being self-sufficient with specific functions. A distinct demarcation of residential, industrial, commercial, educational and leisure facilities ensured that the public spaces were approachable. This triggered social interaction and accentuated democracy. All residential buildings were built in the same style, with restrictions on height and material for a sense of unity and familiarity.

The synchrony of an organic flow of our minds and bodies with the objects around us is a rhythmic pattern initiated by a sense of familiarity which is recognized and brought to life by the architect. Familiar experiences provide a framework, making it easy for a person to latch onto the set guidelines and fill them with his thoughts.

A built environment consisting of a small housing unit to an entire planned nation, infuses its people with a culture of social harmony devoid of inhibitions, fostering an autonomous nation.

NATION’S FOCUS: PEOPLE

Democracy is by the people, for the people, of the people. The relationship between architecture and nation, through its people is decoded by apprehending their psychology.

Consciousness is the process, subject to time, of getting aware of ourselves, the world, and the relationship between the two. The perception of our built environment is an amalgamation of visual, sensory, emotional, spatial, and haptic experiences. These perceptions are organized by the brain which is formed through a series of micro consciousness, scattered and formed over time. As a consequence of the residual sensory and muscular memories, human beings tend to associates themselves better to a spatial arrangement consisting of such experiences.

An architect needs to be empathetic while designing a nation and has to be sensitive to people’s memories, stories, and experiences. The nation built is a metaphor for a better version of these stories reconstructed.

A holistic understanding of a nation is beyond its architecture and planning and extends into a sense of place that is a derivative of the consciousness of its residents, where they finally become a piece of the urban fabric, a fractional embodiment of the nation itself. The culturally Built environment is a nation’s tool for communicating its power and an avatar of its people.

HOME AWAY FROM HOME

The infrastructure in rural areas being underdeveloped has led to redundancy in economic, commercial, educational and health facilities. Urbanization has forced people to migrate to cities in need of these facilities. In the process of migration, these people get detached from their home but the consciousness of the space remains imbedded in their minds. They try to fit into the lifestyle and syntax of the city making it their new home.

In spite of the abundance of resources and amenities provided in the city, the sense of belonging keeps calling them back to their hometown. This pull was observed at a large scale in recent time, during this global pandemic which has caused an upheaval in the entire world. The reason for people gravitating back home is the identity of familiarity and comfort that they seek.

As a visionary, the architect has the ability of designing a nation with wholesome infrastructural advancements i.e. in the urban as well as rural areas. The built environment can provide solutions for the problems of our present condition and plan a better future for the nation. Equal opportunities and resources shall be available for the growth of the youth that form the backbone of a nation.

Evolution of schools, colleges, commercial amenities, healthcare facilities will reckon an increase in the rate of economy. It will also establish a cultural modification in the people wherein education will get its due value. Literacy will be followed by better employment opportunities, observing an exponential decrease in migration.

The loss of connection between people and their hometown can be avoided, nourishing their experiences thus building up the nation’s consciousness through their identity and power.