tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52968820966491352102024-02-02T09:10:03.015-08:00Sabu Francis<small><b>To You</b><br>
<i>Stranger, if you passing meet me
and desire to speak to me, <br>
why should you not speak to me?
And why should I not speak to you?<br></i>
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-Walt Whitman</small>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-28197851743713364652014-07-13T04:44:00.000-07:002014-07-13T08:05:16.304-07:00On Teaching<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I've used the following in my teaching -- since 1986 or so onwards. Obviously, this list got fleshed out over time. It is a result of my own learning of the subject of teaching. </div>
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<br />I am humbly putting this forward to teachers in architecture here and I hope they would be useful to those who want teaching in architecture to excel. In fact, on a larger level, this set of points is used to promote "design thinking" -- and so is useful wherever designing is done. Be it in architecture or software. I have taught both.</div>
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1. <b>Demonstrate learning in front of the students.</b> Acknowledge your lack of knowledge in some areas honestly in front of them and then rectify those in their presence. Design/Invent something or the other in front of them. Then demolish what you did, if so needed, if they did not work. Your students will understand the contrast of the two ends of this process and do the learning for themselves: They will learn both the excitement when you started on your invention. And also the maturity when you demolished it -- it conveys quite clearly that designs can fail, and good designing requires iterative thinking. Software designers, do this so often -- that they have got a name for such iterations. They call it "agile" development. I use the number of times a student iterate in his/her thinking as a a good measure of their work -- and even have used it for giving them marks, which all academic institutions insist on (More on "marks" later)</div>
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2. <b>Respect students... well, not just students ... but everyone. Respect is the default state. </b>Let them work hard, really hard to prove that they are to be disrespected. You should only reluctantly award negative points for them, and slowly let them earn their disrespect. If they do something positive, be hasty to reverse the negative points you gave. That is the only marking one needs to do. I often do not like to give marks to student works as per the needs of the academy. It promotes silly competition -- and devalues students who are slow in their gestation. Running after "marks" often teaches them to run after "money" later on ... Both are bye-products of honest search for excellence</div>
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3.<b> Students have to rise up and go beyond you, the teacher. </b>Set examples. But let the examples be only the starting points and not the ending points. If they consider you as a stopping point, all you would be doing is to teach them your level of mediocrity. If you are to be stopping point, ensure that you are very convincing to convey to the student that it is just a temporary one</div>
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4. <b>Keep your other anxieties and worries and family problems outside. </b>If you see that they could invade into your class, then be honest and tell the students one sentence that you are disturbed temporarily. They will look at you as an honest human, in touch with your feelings. Be empathetic to your class too: There are far too many hormones, etc. floating around in these students in that age group. There are just too many unwanted social pressure, parental stress, peer pressure, budding romances, etc that they have. Be real to their feelings too. Never deny anyone their feelings. Try to understand some of the underlying causes of their feelings and possibly your intervention at those underlying causes could help -- but never tell anyone that their feelings are wrong</div>
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5. <b>It is very rare for an excellent architect to be also an excellent teacher. </b>Excel in your subject of teaching when you teach. You can surely be an excellent architect when you work as an architect. </div>
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How much ever you think your works as an architect are great, and is a result of some neat thinking -- the end work should not be the focus. The thinking you used can be. Be surely proud of your thinking, knowledge and the processes you use. Honest pride. Pride that others can check the reasons for. </div>
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But always state that good work is a bye-product and often a serendipity. Too many good architects with really excellent thinking ended up with bad works only because there were scoundrels and mediocre people who were in the execution team, and there were other issues way beyond the control of the architect. </div>
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And in case of really good works, there would often be touching stories of modest people who did their part in the team but whose contribution did not surface and get to be known.</div>
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6. <b>Do not throw your age at the students. </b>They too would one day be your age. Possibly with a more rewarding journey than yours. Their grandchildren could even possibly end up being older than yours. Age does not necessarily equate to wisdom. I sometimes do a mental exercise right in the beginning of their session, to reduce their traditional Indian "awe" of teachers. (Will explain this exercise later) A better approach is to get to understand their issues deeply, come down to their level and then grow along with them with you. Take them along to a much higher standard -- and leave them. And ask them to go even beyond. You are like a trained pacer who is next to an amateur in a Marathon</div>
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7.<b> Safeguard and promote the right context. </b>Most of the teaching I do is not about the subject itself. It is setting up the context for the subject to surface in the minds of the students on its own. So lot of time is spent in showing students how to argue out points. Promote debate. Show them how to distinguish between senseless arguments and focused replies. I often give lots of exercises to weed out logical fallacies (Lot of neat material available on the Internet) </div>
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Possibly setting the context is often the only thing one need to do -- I am a big fan of the talks of Sir Ken Robinson on TED. Listen to his advice carefully</div>
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8. <b>Ensure that the student own their learning. </b>When I look back, the things that I remember and take pride in, are those that I believe I have learned myself -- with seemingly no help from my teachers. But now that I have grown older, I am so humbled by my own teachers: For they actually allowed me to think that it was me who was owning the learning. The truth is that the teachers of course had contributed. They had setup all the background work for me to honestly believe that I did it all on my own. And then they stepped aside. </div>
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Teaching is often a thankless job. That is part of the deal. The thank-yous will surely come later. The real "earning" of a teacher comes in much much later. I have had students, some of them whom I had not even noticed when I taught them, contacting me on Facebook etc and thanking me effusively, sometimes at odd hours, after years... saying things like "That talk you gave then. It just made sense to me. I hadn't understood it then. I am so grateful" That kept me going as a teacher</div>
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9. <b>Indulge in rhetoric. But not repetition. </b>Rhetoric allows you to centrally come to a point from many different directions. Rhetoric can also get boring -- especially to those students who got convinced about the point and you went around again reinforcing it using another route. Rhetoric of course makes lectures often one-sided and lengthy. I am still struggling with this point and have not got it fully right. </div>
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However, I noticed one side-effect of good rhetoric: Though It makes a class terribly one-sided (the students just listen, not many participate) but then I often set in motion a lot of interactivity and debate among them after I leave the class. Real learning happens with our students outside the class, in the canteen, in the streets .... give them enough material in your rhetoric for them to interact there<br /><br />I abhor teachers, who put up material such as a chart, or a power-point and has absolutely nothing else to say about the topic being taught. No rhetoric. Nothing. That is not teaching. That is like telling the student "I have not done my work. I don't have enough material to be convincing in my teaching" The disrespect given by the students can even make them hostile to the subject itself</div>
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10. <b>Do not objectify a class. There are individuals in there</b> -- I have never believed in stereotypes or generalizations. More so, when it comes to students in a class. Stereotypes/collectives usually leads to fallacies of reification and so on. Be empathetic to the individuals listening to you.<br /><br />In a class, each is listening in his or her own way. The way each mind works varies quite a bit. When you place a topic in front of a class, this individual here is internally asking "Why? Why should this work?" The person at another end is saying "What? What is this all about?" Another one: "How? How does this work? Show me the steps" Someone else is mulling over: "What else? What else can be done in this situation" and so on. </div>
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To an untrained teacher, all students seem to be just one "average" person. That is a myth. The average student does not exist. Stereotypes of many colleges are plain wrong and unjust to those who want to bloom. That is why I do not agree to be so well sharply defined for a lecture that you lose the objective and the sensitivity to this point. Often that introduces rigidity. Instead, the teacher should be good at the subject matter, and the thinking that supports the logic of the subject. That is more critical than a "written" lesson-plan. The teachers should be able to nimbly change his/her rhetoric depending on who finally did turn up in the class<br /><br />There is a limit to how much material one can "push" into a class. Do not hold the image of "pushing" when teaching.<br /><br />The analogue that a teacher needs to hold is that of "pull" ... look at a bunch of individuals who <i>pull </i>the material from you. Encourage different kinds of pull, by keeping in mind the above set of questions that may occur in the minds of your individuals in the audience. Do not expect everyone to do the pulling -- do not expect a miracle. There is never complete attention in a class. But if sufficient pulling does happen, they will then help you by becoming agents for pulling others into becoming interested in your talks. When you design your rhetoric into your speech, often you need to do it as answers to these kind of questions in the minds of your students.<br /><br />In due course of time, there is cross-pollination among the students. The student who was asking the "why?" question would sow the same kind of curiosity in the student who habitually asks "how?" and so on and so forth. That is a very rich way for students to learn. That is also the reason, there should be rich interaction between students from different years in the same course. </div>
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11. <b>Understand and carefully use the "Socratic Method" </b> -- I find that to be the best way to teach but it works usually on a one-to-one mentor-mentee style of teaching and not so much at a classroom level. I use the Socratic Method when assessing any architectural design. I almost never, would comment on the end-product of the student. I never give focused advice such as "Why don't you shift the staircase to this location?" etc. Instead, I start with a position of innocence and honestly try to really "buy into" the students design. Such as "Wow, you made the staircase here. That is really good" Then I go on to raise another point that can be contradictory for the location the student had used for the staircase. </div>
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The danger of this way of making the student surface his/her own internal contradiction is that if done carelessly, it can turn into sarcasm -- or at the very least, it points out ironical and comical situations. The biggest irony being that you started by wanting to accept and "buy into" the design. But then you pointed out contradictions -- making the student wary of you.</div>
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Students can feel insulted -- especially if they have worked hard for days on it -- and are exhausted. </div>
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Socrates was very famous for getting people irritated by the way he encouraged questioning in the other person. A skilfully done "socratic method" exercise can be deeply disturbing to the student. In case of Socrates, it resulted in so much irritation in his audience, that he was forced to drink Hemlock! The socratic method and the above issue of "socratic irony" is widely discussed on the net. Lots of material there on how to do this. However, it takes a lot of time to get this method right. </div>
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I am still developing this for my teaching. It is only recently that I find that I am being found less irritating to some students... hehehehe.... I know, for example, do end up bit irritating on Facebook to some. But the rewards are enormous. Good students invariably grow leaps and bounds because of this, and they thank you for it -- because they really OWN their internal learning process</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-64817157534781396002013-11-23T22:23:00.001-08:002013-11-24T06:43:48.888-08:00Don't be a plastic penguin<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">I get a lot of enquiries for architectural internships. Many students are either confused or highly opinionated on the kind of internships they need. So this note is for them. Partly, this also applies to other design fields such as software design, product design and so on — in any situation where there is “architecting” going on.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">To become a good architect one need to be good at using both sides of the brain. An architect needs to grapple both with empirical knowledge as well as abstractions. Our field is very unusual in this requirement: most fields can work by gravitating towards one or the other but usually not both.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">Those interested in pure sciences and maths for example need to worry only about rational thinking using abstractions. They do not really need much of empirical knowledge. They can introspect and work out internal contradictions in their theories and get productive work done; with no real connection to the outside empirical world. That is how Andrew Wiles sat through for over seven years working practically in secrecy to prove the much talked about Fermat's last theorem. Simon Singh wrote a fascinating book about it. </span><span style="color: #042eee; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;"><u>http://simonsingh.net/books/fermats-last-theorem/who-is-andrew-wiles/</u></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;"> The advantage of abstract rational thinking is that knowledge can be quickly built up because an internal abstract framework is usually available on which things can be pegged.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">Then there are fields such as medicine where much of the knowledge is empirical. Doctors can become better and better as they get more and more experience; as they absorb more and more information from real world situations and stitch them up using empirical, heuristic techniques in their mind. Of course, the process of building empirical knowledge is fraught with danger. I know of several doctors who have remained stupid and cannot really stitch up empirical knowledge -- even when they get experience. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">It is not fully their fault: Building up of empirical knowledge is not amenable to an internal structure on which the knowledge can be built. A swallow does not make a summer, so making patterns out of experience requires a lot of humanity and depth which some people lack; especially those who cannot look beyond their work into other aspects of life. Also, if a doctor does not really encounter a difficult case, he would remain ignorant of the salient aspects of the case for years. I will again come to this point later on when I discuss empirical knowledge in architecture</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">To reiterate: Architects need to do both kind of thinking. We need to have abstractions. After all, no such project existed when an architect is given a plot to design. The architect is forced to conjure up one. The architect then has go all the way to empirical knowledge too. Such as, select the appropriate brick-bond for the external wall to reduce leakage, etc; which requires practical experience in that area. A discerning, sensitive architect would be considered quite mad by those around him or her -- because s/he would be dancing around in many areas in his head. In the initial years the thoughts of such architects tend to overwhelm the audience with the areas of concern: there are just too many an architect is sensitized to. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">Young architects getting hitched to non-architects need to take care. A newly wed architect can easily bore his non-architect mate as he gets into lot of details which his mate may regard as unnecessary. The famous architect, Mies Van Der Rohe had said “God is in the details” and many architects understand that just too well. They happily get into details where others fear to tread; and in the process, lose the audience.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">So now the question of internships: In any architect's life, an internship is very crucial — because that is the time the empirical side of the architects brain start getting inputs and gets built up. As noted before, building empirical knowledge is quite tough. There is no pre-existing framework. It is easy to misunderstand reality as one can easily keep working on some part of the real world while ignoring more important parts. Nicholas Taleb captured part of this issue in his books “Fooled by randomness” and “Black Swan” — though in those books the subject was not architecture or design.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">It is possible to be misled when choosing the office where a student can do an internship. Some architects “pre-select” the area of the work they want to be involved in. Some professional architect's eye may be on a coffee table magazine or some award; and therefore may never get into those areas of practice which are really difficult and messy. I would never work with such architects or recommend them for internships. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">One of the saddest aspect of architecture is that those who really need architects cannot afford them, and those who can afford architects can easily design and construct their built-environments without the help of any architect: The rich can easily build, demolish, and re-build till they get their environment right. So many architects unfortunately are working on the wrong problem — the real problems out in the world are not really the ones that many practising architects end up solving. It is not that cute little farm house which won an award. It is not the high end interior for a corporate office. It is often not even an office building that is now internationally recognised. Architects nibble at some 1% of the real design problems in the world.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">So, the young architectural student out on an internship need to understand the challenges worth fighting for. Learn to ask the hard questions early in life. As empirical knowledge does not have a framework, the only substitute is to get deeply involved in many aspects of life: art, culture, ethics, philosophy, economics, psychology, sociology and so on. The only real way to build up empirical knowledge is to get exposed to as many facets of life as possible. Here is a nice article which explains why it is important to go after the right "pain" in one's life: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-manson/the-most-important-question_b_4269161.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-manson/the-most-important-question_b_4269161.html</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">Pick a small to medium size architectural practice where the architects are deeply involved in a lot of such questions concerning life — not just the architecture being designed at that point in time. If one or more architects in that office have done some theoretical work or teaching, then the chances are that could be a good office to work for. If I was to do an internship, I would shy away from “brand” architects as most likely I would only sit in one corner doing some minor modification of some drawing that nobody is interested in. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">Internship should be a “two-way” process. Unfortunately, many students get into a pre-school “learning” mode with their mouths open like silly plastic penguins one finds all over India which is a lame substitute for dust-bins, often with the words “use me” painted on them. Yes, such students would get used and only rubbish would be placed into their mouths. A good intern should try to be in a position of influence (or at least gravitate towards that) where he or she has the freedom to exchange knowledge and indulge in healthy debates of life in that office. Obviously those debates must be based on sound background knowledge; and not just emotionally charged opinions. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">If you want a quick summary: Internship in offices with noisy, healthy debates are the ones I would recommend.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">This note also applies to fields such as software design; which is traditionally not regarded as “architecture” I have seen far too many silly software and websites that end up solving some non-essential part of life. There too, the designer has not got a proper grip on the empirical world around him/her.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">All the best. May all architecture students bloom to become wonderful architects working on real problems</span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-49043996876230062032013-09-23T03:50:00.000-07:002013-09-23T03:50:02.185-07:00The Rot in the Column<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>This was originally written in a discussion group here: </b><a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/cbsarch/GzNxTwjYJ-k">https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/cbsarch/GzNxTwjYJ-k</a></div>
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<br />When we sift the debris from any building collapse, there is one body that is never recovered: She is our muse. Her name is architecture. It is our collective shame that we have never been able to peel the layers of rot in the column of systems that go towards holding up architecture in India. I'll make a small attempt here. I hope this is not regarded as finger pointing or even sanctimony. Even if I may come close. Usually, I do not indulge in generalizations and reifications. However there are some topics that can be discussed in a general manner, and I believe this to be one.<br /><br />We all see architecture as it exists out there in the real world. Architecture is experience. Many of us think that is all there is to the subject. Even architects. But architecture happening in the real world should ideally be an outcome of careful thought processes, much of which are never discussed or systematized by architects and other consultants. Like an iceberg that will show only a small percentage of its volume above the sea, there is quite a lot which is hidden. I've always maintained that the <i>product</i> of architecture comes out of the <i>processes</i> of design. The product is what we see out there...but the processes are sadly hidden; locked inside architects offices. Unfortunately, amnesia sets in when processes are allowed to be hidden, and quite often architects simply forgets to carry out the required processes. How many of us really carry out a climatology analysis or site analysis or user-behaviour study for a project before working out its design? In fact, how many of us leave our project design in any analysable form for future introspection when things start collapsing?</div>
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In fact, many architects don't even recognize that there are processes that needs to be systematized. They just take out their sketch books and furiously draw out the final forms that the iceberg need to take shape. They are so eager to get the project into the real world; that the careful checking of what ought to pop-up above the ground is never done.<br /><br />At one conference, a famous architect was proudly claiming that he got his pear shaped design for a project when doodling on a pad during a flight. Flight of imagination? It was so romantic! I remember all the 2000 students attending the conference giving a thunderous applause on hearing that architect's passionate explanation. Today, that project is out there in the tropics called India. And people working inside that building are huddled at computer monitors within umbrellas. Umbrellas? Why? Because the pear shaped building has so much glass, that the glare from outside prevents normal viewing of a computer monitor!<br /><br />With this kind of trend-setters that exists in our field, it has become very easy for non-architects to come into the profession and get into some nooks and crannies of architectural practice. Many architects often don't take up such projects or are ousted out by the unscrupulous. So we have a huge set of "interior decorators" and "interior designers" who are not trained in understanding the processes behind the product called architecture. And as architects; we have never been able to get such untrained quacks in line because many of our own learned and recognized peers do the same thing. These quacks happily play around with the internal columns of buildings thinking that it is quite similar to making quick sketches on a flight. With disastrous consequences.<br /><br />Why is it that architects abhor the processes of design? For understanding that, we need to look into architectural education. That layer of the column has quite some rot. There is a rot in both teaching and learning.<br /><br />It actually does not start at the level of the architecture college, but just before it. There is this absurd career oriented demands; that our society place on our kids. Anxious parents and their kids crowd in front of mark lists anxiously looking at how they "performed". As if there was a circus over there. The result is that budding architects are so marks-oriented that they forget that marks are only a bye product of their knowledge. Instead, marks become an end product by itself. Later on in their career, the same architects substitute "money" for "marks".<br /><br />If only they had clarified the concepts, then these kids would have been able to look deeper into the water later on in their lives. In the pecking order of our society, the profession of architecture does not score high. Everyone knows the kind of dirty people who are involved in it, and overprotective parents would not want to place their dear children in such company. There are other reasons too: The salary earned by fresh graduates is very low, etc. So everyone is clamouring to become an engineer or a doctor. Nowadays "management" (whatever that means) is also a good career option. But not architecture. Even if the child can grow up to an important architect, she has no choice: She is made to believe that architecture as a subject is not a profession "comparable" to that of engineering or medicine.<br /><br />As a teacher, I have had first hand experience interacting with kids who came into architecture simply because they did not get engineering or medicine. They just do not have a love for it. So what do they do? Some actually develop the love as they grow out of their adolescence; only to be thwarted and insulted by bad teachers and even worse, they are pulled down by really bad management who is out there only to fleece and play politics.<br /><br />But some students go onto develop, what is colloquially known as, a "crush" for architecture. There is no maturity in that love. Many students are affected by deep sense of inadequacy. They dress up their liking for architecture with a veneer of false bravado. They sprinkle their talk with arbitrary definitions. They huddle amongst their own peers and their intellectual capability sink to the lowest level within their peer group; usually the most vociferous. Some speak in soft cultivated "cultured" tones, as if just <i>sounding</i> knowledgeable is all that is needed. Some even quote from books without understanding that much of those books themselves ought to be hurled through the fire of critical thought. I find that much of architecture students either aimless or aping. As nature abhors vacuum, the intellectual space of many students is invaded by false intellects who do verbal antics ... and students often lap them up.<br /><br />Much of the antics are done by badly trained teachers. They don't do any reading of their own, and even if they do; they have allowed the faculty of critical thought to rust. They come to colleges for varied reasons... for most, it is a stop-gap arrangement. I have found very few professors who are genuinely love teaching. And the reason is simple: I believe one can only be in love with <i>teaching </i>only when one is in love with <i>learning</i>. Only then can one empathize with the state of the students. Let me not make the mistake of indulging in bad thinking here: Of course I cannot generalize. Of course, there are genuine teachers, and genuine students too. But the odds due to the rot in the system are so badly stacked against them; that they are very few and far in between.<br /><br />I have encountered some surprising examples of bad teaching. I was taken aback by teachers who had no clue how the sun moved across the sky dome ... their knowledge of climate was so appalling. I used to snicker at teachers who could not formulate the right logic to explain the processes of architecture. I was dumbfounded at the kind of bombastic statements made by teachers who dramatically explained architecture as if it is something that can evolve out of poorly defined philosophies. Leaving things half-explained, in a mystical manner, was actually considered "hep". I used to think that students would object but when I turned back to look at the class, I was stunned. They were very impressed with such talk of these emperors' new clothes. My points were difficult to grasp and I left many students confused. I sadly realized that personalities ruled education. The depth of character or knowledge do not mean much to a hormonally influenced adolescent.<br /><br />A knowledgeable surgeon, Dr. Nobhojit Roy, spoke at a congregation of architects and students, and he had a surgically incisive point to make: "When we open up a patient for surgery, we often have an insurmountable task: After all, we don't have an endless supply of raw-material. In fact, we don't have any raw material! Whatever nature has given that is there inside that body... and some of that now gone bad and needs repair. So what do we do? We wrack our brain, and do our best. Fortunately, our best is sufficient and more often than not we get the job right. That happens because we are damn meticulous in whatever little we can control. We don't let it go out of hand. We are rigorous and thorough. Now look at your own field: Architecture. You can start with your imagination. Nobody can stop that. You can pick out and invent and use any raw material. But then what do you end up do? Ape everyone else or the foreigners! And then do a bad job of it. It is a shame that you can't even be original. That is possibly because you are not rigorous enough"<br /><br />When he was saying that, I was looking at the faces of architects and students. I am sure some of them genuinely thought that they were doing original stuff. But this was like a sock on their jaw. Originality in architecture does not mean <i>pretending</i> to be original... If you need originality, you need <i>rigour</i>. You can't get the former without the latter.<br /><br />The rot in education goes even higher up, into how education of architecture is monitored and licensed: There is this preponderance towards separate "colleges" of architecture. These are colleges are like hermaphrodites on separate islands of knowledge; insulated from others, mating with itself and producing mutant unworkable knowledge. And that sense of false bravado that I spoke about keeps the spirit and joviality alive in these colleges. It is important for such students to proclaim that they <i>simply hate </i>mathematics and science. Some of them go on to dictate hard working structural engineers and end up making impractical structures. Some of those structures eventually collapse.<br /><br />I have interacted with students on Orkut and other Internet forums, and I find that there is this special identity that they achieve when they proclaim their artistic side of their life. But I have often implored why should the artistic side of a person be at the loss of clear reason? Einstein was a reasonably good violinist. Albrecht Durer was a mathematician by training. Richard Feynman, the Nobel prize physicist, was very good at sketching and playing the bongos. The list is quite endless, actually. But such arguments often fall on deaf ears.<br /><br />Many students don't even rise up to the occasion when doing their thesis. I get endless requests on the net from students asking for "ideas" for their thesis. Even a cursory peep into a dictionary would indicate that a <i>thesis</i> needs to be <i>original</i>. It is that last chance for students to do a thorough and rigorous interpretation of architecture. No wonder, in India, we don't have much original contribution to the body of theoretical knowledge in architecture. And many students consciously decide to miss it, because they are caught up in producing work which they think will please the jury! These students, who by now ought to have been adults, are behaving like school kids wanting their teachers to hold them by their little finger to take them to the loo.<br /><br />The students cannot be blamed entirely. In many colleges, there are strict rules regarding the kind of thesis that a student can do. They are not encouraged to talk about processes. "Where is the design? Where is the design?" is the constant refrain from professors. Thesis <i>MUST</i> end in a design, they have been forced to believe. So students take a simple detour: They think first about the design and invent all kind of hogwash to write in their report which substitutes the processes of a design.<br /><br />Moving to the next layer of rot: practice of architecture. Students who are ill trained, who never really liked the subject for all its complexity, who grew up from adolescence into adulthood and learnt some bits and pieces of truths along with an enormous amount of misunderstandings... students who were forced to think about the product instead of the processes of architecture ... all such students land up on the door of architects who themselves were <i>all of that </i>once upon a time. I have always made a distinction between one who has a formal education and a learned person. Those who are only formally educated often don't grow up holistically. Our marks-driven syllabi often get a student to get formal education, but all the other qualities that uplifts the character of person to become a "learned one" are often missing. For e.g., many fresh graduates are not good thinkers or good listeners. Quite a few of them end up as sycophants, as they were so used to saying "yes sir" to diplomatically solve problems with their teachers.<br /><br />Another speaker (from the US) who had come to talk to practising architects on business mathematics and profitability was amazed at the muddled thinking among practising architects. He attributed it to one simple reason: "In India, we have always believed that people should be gainfully employed as soon as possible. Whereas the emphasis in many other countries is first on getting the student's thinking correct. Money will come as a bye-product of that thinking but sadly nobody recognizes that to be true here" Once again, a product v/s process confusion. Fresh graduates yearn so much for money and recognition that they don't realize that they are falling prey to the darker side of their character (like petty jealousies and unfair comparisons) when they rebel against their employers to start their own practices. Thus, India is full of half-baked practices. Most of them with one (or a small group) of personalities at the top of a pyramid. I can count the number of non-personality driven architectural practices in India on the fingers of my left hand.<br /><br />And what about the rot in a well settled practice? I feel we don't emphasize the word "<i>practice</i>" sufficiently enough. It means something that ought to be repeated. And with every repetition, one needs to remove something that was bad and introduce something which is better. That can only happen if we get the theories that go into the workings right. But those theories must be constantly rectified and enhanced as new knowledge come into our lives. After all, architecture happens at the meeting point of multiple streams of knowledge. Research; unfortunately, is regarded as a big unnecessary bore. After all, architects in India gets this license to practice for life. So what is the point of it anyway? With the result, architects get their "researched" information about building materials, climate, etc. from unscrupulous building material manufacturer's representatives who come into offices with "knowledge" packaged into slick brochures.<br /><br />And the very few architects who do want to contribute to theories in architecture are often seen indulging in their own petty jealousies in conferences, workshops and competitions. In fact, as researchers in architecture in India are quite a rarity, those who are here in India often attempt the corner the field to themselves. The people available for proper peer-reviewing are spread very thinly across the country. When a paper is sent for a blind review, it is very easy for a reviewer to do be swayed by his/her personal opinion of the person rather than the contents that was sent for review. There is not a single peer reviewed journal of architecture in India, to the best of my knowledge.</div>
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I believe that doing proper research in India, is really tough. Especially in the context of a practice. In my practice; it has been extremely difficult, if not impossible, to explain to my stand to my staff. My surprised employees who would look at me strangely when I claim that yes it makes <i>a lot of sense</i> for an architect to understand computing ... Because in these complicated times we need to parametrize many things and do a lot of computing. Those can <i>no longer</i> be done manually. So most of these employees either leave on their own or are retrenched. And sadly, my office can't afford to employ any more of such architects. Because neither do these architects have the kind of skills my office needs nor do they have the correct attitude towards learning.</div>
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I have not spoken about the rot that affects our muse from the world outside us: The bad, untrained contractors who don't know the difference from a column and a beam. The building authorities who are clueless about the information they should ask from architects -- they ask only for the bare minimum information which satisfies their current requirements. It is dreadful to think of the kind of information that would be made available by these authorities, say, in case of some large disaster like an earthquake or a massive fire or an epidemic. Then there are the untrained builders who can't neither understand economics nor construction ... the list is quite large.</div>
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Sadly, I still believe that we architects play a major part in influencing the members of that list: If we were to show to the world outside that we are worthy of respect and that we have substantial knowledge that can be profitable to them, then maybe they will take us into confidence when formulating their own strategies. I am yet to see one workshop or conference, where builders, contractors, architects, building material manufacturers, economists, building authorities sitting together to discuss what is meant by "profits" in our industry.</div>
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I must admit that I was part of all this rot at sometime in my career, in some form or the other. Mostly, as one who was affected by it. Yet when I look back I was still contributing to it because I was finding reasons not to tackle the rot. Fortunately, at a personal level, I was able to extricate myself to some extent . Hopefully I have grown wise to admit my mistakes. What I ended up doing (or was forced to do so... take your pick) is to walk out of confrontations and situations. But I think that is not a complete solution... so I cannot be placed above blame either. Part of the challenge is to be right there in the stinking marshes of bad architectural practice and attempt to do something good. Trying to pre-determine the kind of practice one ought to do is actually quite selfish. If one is a professional, one needs to be professional in all contexts: a professional needs to do his/her work facing it all.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I don't think anyone can be placed above blame. We all need to do some deep introspection and work out some cooperative systems to keep the rot at bay or at least keep it to a minimum. We need to do that all levels of the "column" that supports architecture in India. In education. In practice. In research. In monitoring and licensing. In approvals of buildings. In construction. In building economics. In fighting quackery. Architecture is collapsing in India all around us. Mainly due to shame</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-45834602870845399582013-03-12T09:36:00.003-07:002013-03-15T09:13:00.340-07:00The circle that danced: The story of Pi<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; line-height: 19.1875px;">Madhava was a troubled man. He mumbled to himself. He was pacing up and down his house muttering angrily. Something was eluding this Malyalee that nobody understood. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; line-height: 19.1875px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; line-height: 19.1875px;"><i>(People from the state of Kerala, in South India are often called "Malyalees")</i></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; line-height: 19.1875px;"><i> </i>The fact that he mumbled to himself was quite well known in that household. All the children in that traditional "naal-kettu" (house with a courtyard) sometimes giggled in the background at this eccentricity. But not loudly. For Madhava can suddenly stop his pacing and give that angry glare of his, another well-know trait, which can strike fear in any child. </span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">Every once in a while, people would see him suddenly dart into his room. Nobody knew what he really did there, because he was quite an intense, private person who had resigned himself to the fact that nobody understood him. Only a few trusted and loyal students, knew what he did there. They were privy to his work: he would scribble some notes on "ola" (coconut leaf) which was the medium for writing in ancient Kerala. He was a mathematician and an astronomer; terms that the ancient people had not fully understood or defined.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">Everything keeps moving in Kerala. </span><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">Every leaf trembles. Each and every branch sways. In Kerala, there is always movement all around. It was Nature's way of teaching the concept of iteration (cyclic repetition and re-examination) to this mathematician, Madhava; who often used such a device in his work. However, during sunsets, the effervescence due to these natural iterations dies down a little bit.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">The quiet hush of a Kerala twilight comes in quickly in the evening. The dappled shadows of the gently swaying trees that shrouded the horizon soon morphs into darkness. It is almost akin to the sudden sunset in a valley: For the thick greenery which enveloped every horizon around any given space in Kerala was akin to being inside a valley; a valley of thick, ever-moving greenery.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">Madhava paused his pacing as he saw the silhouetted giggling children prancing in the traditional Kerala house courtyard that evening.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">A child came with a lamp. </span><span style="font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">"Deepam, Deepam, Deepam" ... she chanted as she carefully manoeuvred into the courtyard, with one palm gently shielding the flickering flame on the lamp from the evening breeze.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">That traditional chant "lamp, lamp, lamp ... " echoed around the house. </span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">It was a warning to the demons: Darkness will not conquer that household. The lamp will now serve the purpose of throwing light into that house making the dusk really beautiful.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">The child kept the lamp right at the centre of the courtyard. Seeing this, all the cousins came rushing towards it; throwing long shadows all around the courtyard. There were many children</span><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"> in that large household. They were a joint family ... </span><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">As if on cue, the children formed a circle around the lamp and bowed respectfully to the lamp, moving together in rhythm. They did this most evenings, as a ritual.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">That evening, however, was different. </span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">The children's excitement could not be contained. For just a few days back the festival of Onam had just ended and they were all mesmerised</span><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"> by a dance they had seen the women-folk performing. Onam was the festival where the much beloved mythical Kerala king, Mahabali is said to visit every household in Kerala. Malyalees believed that Mahabali was so close to them that he wanted to ensure that they were doing well at least once a year. That was Onam. The legend of Mahabali is yet another story, which I will not get into as that would be a digression from this quaint little story that unfolded that evening.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">The children had seen many ladies perform the traditional "kai kotti kalli" (Literal translation: a play involving clapping of hands) during the festival. And they had confabulated among themselves to perform that dance that evening. The dance started with the ladies gathering in a circle around a lamp, gracefully stepping back to form a circle; and dancing around the lamp in a curious rhythmic fashion.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">That is what the children did. T</span><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">hey started this dance. As there were no photographers around to capture that event that day, here is the video from YouTube which shows such a dance performed by ladies. The tradition continues even today by many women-folk of Kerala, especially during Onam.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">Madhava stood transfixed as he witnessed the little children dancing. The children had learnt every step of the dance, and he saw them stepping a few steps in one direction (clockwise) around the lamp, and then turn back and step in the opposite direction (counter-clockwise) Every now and then they would clap their hands in rhythm to the song they were singing. The clapping gave a momentary pause in the dance so that every dancer could correct herself and catch up, in case there were errors. Every once in a while, they would step towards the centre of the circle, the lamp; and then step back once again to resume the iterations around the lamp.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">If one could only capture the smile that slowly occupied Madhava's stern face... It would have captured that very moment when Madhava got enlightened. His smile was brighter than the lamp in the courtyard. He chuckled as he ran into his room to scribble some more notes into his "ola"</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">The original "ola" written by Madhava was lost in time. Luckily, some of the students had preserved the work in their own notes. Subsequently, many scholars pored over Madhava's work and they have been wonderstruck for quite sometime now. He was possibly the first mathematician who discovered a remarkably accurate method to calculate the value of Pi. </span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">In Madhava's text, they saw a series written down and they were mystified why one term was a negative -- going in one direction, and the other one was a positive one -- going in the other direction, and the entire series kept stepping rhythmically in that fashion into an infinite series. They were most mystified by the fact that once in a while, the series corrected itself; eventually rendering the value of Pi with amazing accuracy. </span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">Many centuries later; something called the Internet happened in this world and a website on the Internet gave the essence of these scholars' interpretation of Madhava's work. </span><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">I now quote the appropriate section of Wikipedia verbatim below. </span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">It seems they are still not sure how Madhava managed to write the equation for Pi. Moreover, they still are not sure how Madhava got the correction terms. Maybe if they were present that evening at Madhava's household witnessing the little children dance in the courtyard, the Wikipedia entry would have been different.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"><b>Start of quote:</b></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">Madhava's work on the value of π is cited in the <i>Mahajyānayana prakāra</i> ("Methods for the great sines"). While some scholars such as Sarma</span><span style="line-height: 10.828125px;"> </span><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">feel that this book may have been composed by Madhava himself, it is more likely the work of a 16th century successor.</span><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"> This text attributes most of the expansions to Madhava, and gives the following </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_(mathematics)" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; line-height: 19.1875px; text-decoration: none;" title="Series (mathematics)">infinite series</a><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"> expansion of </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; line-height: 19.1875px; text-decoration: none;" title="Pi">π</a><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">, now known as the </span><a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz_formula_for_pi" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; line-height: 19.1875px; text-decoration: none;" title="Leibniz formula for pi">Madhava-Leibniz series</a><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-15" style="line-height: 1em;"></sup></span></div>
<dl style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; line-height: 19.1875px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.2em;"><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><img alt="\frac{\pi}{4} = 1 - \frac{1}{3} + \frac{1}{5} - \frac{1}{7} + \cdots + \frac{(-1)^n}{2n + 1} + \cdots" class="tex" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/8/a/b/8ab4250b12745723ec164ace71e47473.png" style="border: none; vertical-align: middle;" /></dd></dl>
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which he obtained from the power series expansion of the arc-tangent function. However, what is most impressive is that he also gave a correction term, <i>R<sub style="line-height: 1em;">n</sub></i>, for the error after computing the sum up to <i>n</i> terms. Madhava gave three forms of <i>R<sub style="line-height: 1em;">n</sub></i> which improved the approximation,namely</div>
<dl style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; line-height: 19.1875px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.2em;"><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;">R<sub style="line-height: 1em;">n</sub> = 1/(4n), or</dd><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;">R<sub style="line-height: 1em;">n</sub> = n/ (4n<sup style="line-height: 1em;">2</sup> + 1), or</dd><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;">R<sub style="line-height: 1em;">n</sub> = (n<sup style="line-height: 1em;">2</sup> + 1) / (4n<sup style="line-height: 1em;">3</sup> + 5n).</dd></dl>
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where the third correction leads to highly accurate computations of π.</div>
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It is not clear how Madhava might have found these correction terms.The most convincing is that they come as the first three convergents of a continued fraction which can itself be derived from the standard Indian approximation to π namely 62832/20000 (for the original 5th c. computation, see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryabhata" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Aryabhata">Aryabhata</a>).</div>
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He also gave a more rapidly converging series by transforming the original infinite series of π, obtaining the infinite series</div>
<dl style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; line-height: 19.1875px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.2em;"><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-right: 0px;"><img alt="\pi = \sqrt{12}\left(1-{1\over 3\cdot3}+{1\over5\cdot 3^2}-{1\over7\cdot 3^3}+\cdots\right)" class="tex" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/0/0/0/000ef86aee7800e9ae19c8f3bd7b496a.png" style="border: none; vertical-align: middle;" /></dd></dl>
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<span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">By using the first 21 terms to compute an approximation of π, he obtains a value correct to 11 decimal places (3.14159265359).</span><span style="line-height: 10.828125px;"> </span><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;">The value of 3.1415926535898, correct to 13 decimals, is sometimes attributed to Madhava,</span><span style="line-height: 19.1875px;"> but may be due to one of his followers. These were the most accurate approximations of π given since the 5th century</span></div>
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The text <i>Sadratnamala</i>, usually considered as prior to Madhava, appears to give the astonishingly accurate value of π =3.14159265358979324 (correct to 17 decimal places). Based on this, R. Gupta has argued that this text may also have been composed by Madhava.<span style="line-height: 1em;"><sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-gupta-pi_17-1" style="line-height: 1em;"></sup></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-81011077172993765442013-03-06T09:30:00.000-08:002013-03-06T09:30:32.626-08:00The "Why" of BIM<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I believe one needs to ask some deep "why" questions which will lay down the objectives of open source BIM. I subscribe to the thought explained by Simon Sinek in a TED presentation: <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html">http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html</a><br />
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A lot of useful innovations have happened because leaders asked and answered the question "Why" first before answering questions such as "How" and "What"(Simon Sinek explains not only in the context of business but also in social movements, such as Martin Luther King's points...)<br />
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So first of all, I recommend we really get into the question "Why". This article is based on some discussions that is happening currently in a Google group in India, exploring open-source BIM.<br />
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Why do we need Building Information Modelers and why is it important to think of it once again ... not just take off from what is currently existing. (To be graceful to what is existing: We could do our exercise and later on realize that current standards are useful, but we need to carefully tick-off on each of the following points before doing that)<br />
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<b>1. Because we need to support the entire spectrum from concept formation all the way to construction</b><br />
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Designing is a spectrum. It starts hazily from an architect's mind and proceeds towards final, crisp stage. Ideally, BIM should cover the entire spectrum. There has been some attempt from the West to computerize early stage designing. (e.g. SEED ) but those did not take off. Currently, it is taken as granted that BIM is done towards the final stage.<br />
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No doubt, there are companies that have tried to use BIM in earlier stages too ... and some commercial organizations confuse us further by claiming that things like massing, etc. can also be done using BIM for helping in the early stages. But the theories behind that approach need to be investigated. What we must realize is that information management is necessary at all stages of designing and all the way into construction. It is not just help in "visualizations of massing" <br />
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Earlier the information is handled; better it would be for design. Currently, it is assumed that all the messy, hazy stuff that happens during the initial design stage is best done by architects using their favorite methods ... and later it can be transferred to computers. One of the prime reasons why many architects ( especially experienced ones) do not take to computerization and BIM is because they see a disconnect between the early stage and the final stages of design. Currently the situation is: Early stage = NO computerization. Final stage = Computerization. Ideally, what I have been striving towards for last 20+ years is to look for computerization as a help, not just a thing to be used entirely, who can sit side-by-side with an architect and later on engineers and other consultants EVERY STEP OF THE WAY.<br />
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<b>2. Because we need to record design intention, not just the design</b><br />
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Many think of architecture as the way it is finally seen out in the real world. That is just the tip of the ice-berg. But beneath the surface, there has been a lot of decisions that went to make the building what it is. What is also needed is to record all the intent, nebulous qualitative attributes, decisions that were forced due to management practices, etc. The reason this is important because architecture can be put to many unusual uses and situations. A building may get converted later on its lifetime. A warehouse can become a clubhouse. An award winning building may later on be found to have very serious problems later on and when the problems surfaced, there would be serious people wanting to investigate what went wrong so that the same causes do not surface in other buildings.<br />
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The most dramatic example of such a situation was what happened before the collapse of the World Trade Towers. The context was never experienced before, and so nobody could really predict how the buiding would perform in that crisis. Sadly, this was the SECOND project of the same architect which had seen dramatic failure. The first one, the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex, was equally dramatic but it was demolished not by terrorist attack but by the state who found that the award winning project of that architect was almost completely useless. Finally it was dynamited. As per Charles Jencks, architecture historian, it marked the day when "modern architecture died". Pruitt-Igoe is a famous study that is spoken among architecture researchers but not much outside. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe</a><br />
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This issue can be seen in earthquake relief, emergency situations, fires, etc. Sometimes one may need to model movement of people through the building. There has been many cases where people move en-masse towards the wrong exit in case of a fire. Recording design intentions can be very useful in such a case, because one can assess what kind of management directives and steps should be supported and what should not be. For e.g. An irritating client could insist on closing a window opening (it has happened with me) and later on it was found that for the lack of that window, the apartment did not perform correctly climatalogically<br />
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<b>3. Because we need to save time</b><br />
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Saving time happens on multiple levels. One is saving the mechanical drudgery of making drawings, models, printing etc. That gets saved when there is a single BIM model to refer to. But more subtle is the saving of time when the management of the design process is properly supported. To give an analogy: Calculators did save time for calculations, but when the financial planner got a spreadsheet, he did not get just some calculator with additional capabilities but it opened up a lot of "what-if" calculations that the planner could now do and then use those creatively. Much, much more time gets saved. The approach to BIM therefore should NOT be just "okay, we need to have a very good way to put all the geometric information together, holistically" Yes, that is one goal. That has been somewhat achieved by current BIM but that is not sufficient<br />
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<b>4. Because we need to respect the end user as contributors to the model</b><br />
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As per Stephen Covey: "Problems are solved twice. Once in the mind and once in the real world" Modeling is NOT the whole sole property of people like me and others developing BIM, the people who make the proposal. But a model should ideally be open to receiving inputs, sometimes even at the last moment, from the actual user. This trend can be seen in many other data standards too. For example; when Tim Berners Lee proposed the HTML standard it was a "hand-me-down" set of data constructs that the end user had no choice but to use. But that approach is changing. Today, HTML 5, XML allow for new elements to be inserted by the user as he deemed fit, that follows meta-rules.<br />
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If you look at BIM standards carefully, you will notice that much of it is still archaic data-structure approaches of yesteryear. (I can give references and my insights in this later) I suspect, much of the current BIM standard has been manipulated so that the commercial organizations that helped create them could ensure that their own proprietary software continue to get traction<br />
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<b>5. Because we should respect the D-R-Y principle</b><br />
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DRY = "Don't Repeat Yourself" is a well established concept in computing. Any form of redundancy that comes into data structures can wreak havoc. DRY was a term I think invented by the Ruby-on-rails people which essentially mean the same thing. However what is "repetition"? There are obvious ones and unobvious ones. But opinions vary which is which. A piece of data which is repeated to me; to someone else it may look quite harmless and done just to get some specific job done and therefore can be accepted. For e.g. Using construction lines to draw other elements is a known practice among draftspersons. Often the construction lines are left behind quite harmlessly. It may be okay when we speak about drawings but when it comes to modeling, if some object was created only for creating some other objects (say a CSG model) and then if that is left behind it can confuse others using the data.<br />
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In architecture models, there is one major issues that many BIM and CAD programs do not think is very critical: That is repetition of "spatial volumes" For e.g. If I draw 4 walls that enclose a room to the visual eye, there is a space that is enclosed but then it is not measurable as the data-structure cannnot glean that out. So people are instructed to happily insert another volume that denotes the space -- and architects do that without knowing the implication --- that is very subtle redundancy there and that can lead to, and often does, very serious problems during automated objective analysis of the data. For e.g. If the data is to be queried for the area of the room inside, it may initially give the right figure ... but when, during some modifications, the walls are moved around (which also should imply that the object denoting the space of the room should also be modifed- -- but many time it may not get modified due to oversight) then we have a very serious problem because the room will still reveal the old area and not the new one after the walls were shifted<br />
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<b>6. Because we should also respect all kinds of design processes and thinking</b><br />
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When designing, an architect often starts delineating the spaces in the early stage of design. Usually. But not always. For e.g. as an architect I often work in that way. But there are architects who may work on the built-forms earlier... or it could be a mix. Even with spaces, there is no really rigid rule which kind of space need to be represented first. I had adopted an unusual approach for a hill-resort I was designing in Munnar, Kerala in India. When I went to the site, I first located the various views that I wanted to capture -- so effectively, I was first working out the potential locations for the window openings rather than the rooms to which those openings would go. I had to have a modeling system that allowed me that -- lots of windows hanging around inside my early model; without knowing which rooms those windows would eventually belong to. Later on, when I figured out what are the rooms that resort needed, I arranged the rooms to take advantage of the previously located windows.'<br />
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Current BIM standards are extremely rigid on the way data is arranged. For e.g. In most BIM, I doubt whether one could create an opening without first creating the wall into which the opening is placed. That approach looks logical. People sometimes wonder, how can one construct an opening if there was no wall around it? That is right when construction is concerned; but when an architect wants to start thinking about a design he may want to first think of the openings and then the walls.<br />
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There is a much-bandied term called "ill-formed" objects in CAD and BIM (objects that geometrically could be constructed on the screen but cannot exist in the real world) There have been data-structure approaches such as the "split-edge" data structure proposed by Yehuda Kalay and others from Berkeley which tries to put all the data in a non-redundant manner into the computer. But then I found it too rigid and not respecting the need for architects to sometimes think non-linearly, or out of sequence. That is why I find that current BIM is more construction oriented instead of design oriented<br />
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<b>7. Because we need to incorporate concepts that have found to work in other areas such as management, computer programming etc</b><br />
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Today, the "agile" process of software development is very well known and respected. Many programs are designed using those principles. I believe that approach (i.e. the spiral-development approach using Agile) is very useful in designing and the data standards should help achieve that. In an agile process, the design is quickly developed, criticized, tested and then dismantled if so required, so that the next design cycle can be quickly started. What happens in traditional CAD and BIM is that the process starts gathering a lot of complicated stuff as the representation proceeds. An architect finds it extremely difficult to dismantle something that he has modeled just so that he can re-examine the holistic again in another agile cycle. Conventional CAD/BIM is not very respectful of the agile process<br />
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Another concept that I would love to see in BIM is "just-in-time-designing" which is derived from "just-in-time manufacturing". In JIT manufacturing, there is a lot of advantages because inventory costs can be very low, and errors removed fast. Some JIT processes are now seen in computing too (JIT compilers, for example) I strongly believe that just-in-time techniques should be available to architects too : Often the decisions that go towards making a really good design come and "click" into place at the very last moment (i.e. "just-in-time") The data standard should be respecting such a need. Again, this means the data should be very light and should NOT pick up too many heaviness as the design representation progresses<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-50041684752963534612013-02-27T01:48:00.002-08:002013-03-07T10:34:53.172-08:00The story of TAD<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In this article, I would like to explain the inception and progress of a new way of designing architecture using computers. This has been my central focus of attention since 1989 and frankly, there is a lot that needs to be explained. However, I have attempted to go through this story briefly, pausing only to explain some intricate concepts. I hope those of you who are interested in this way of designing architecture will find this introduction useful.</div>
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I did not get into computers intentionally. I often claim that I was walking on a road minding my own business when I fell through a magical open manhole which pulled me into the world of computing. Myths aside; I remember almost the day when that happened. I was leaving architect Hafeez Contractor where I was working as an associate. I was not in conflict with Hafeez's office. Which made my exit more peculiar. Hafeez did not want me to go and he even had his friend and structural engineer; Kamal Hadkar, to intervene. I remember chatting with Kamal for hours at his office when I was exiting Hafeez. And along with Hafeez, Kamal is one person I respect a lot: A very innovative structural engineer; one of the stalwarts in his field who could keep pace with Hafeez's imagination. Kamal and his office had done several complex projects of the time: The new Stock Exchange building ('Dalal Towers') at Mumbai, with its amazing spiral staircase, shell shaped canopy...
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But I was a troubled person and I stuck to my decision. </div>
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I liked the atmosphere and work ethics at Hafeez's office and the churning that was happening there. However I was not very happy in the way architectural designing and practice were being carried out at that office. I sensed that architecture was becoming more and more complex; yet we were using very archaic methods to both design architecture and express it later in reality. A lot of mistakes were happening in all that hurry. I told Hafeez, without fully realizing what I may get into: "I need to pause and think on how architecture is to be designed and practised. Maybe I will get into computing because I sense that it could help" That was somewhere in 1986. I was 25 years old.</div>
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The only knowledge I had on computing then was one short course learning Fortran during my 8th Semester at IIT; something that most of us architecture students there hated and none of us could relate to. All we did was write a program for obtaining the Fibonacci series. My prof was quaintly trying to introduce the concept of "iterations" -- I should thank him because iterations indeed is a central concept not only in computing but also in many things that a designer does.</div>
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Later on, when I really got into the subject of architecture representation, I realised that we are saddled with insights on orthographic drawings, perspective, etc. that were discovered during the Rennaisance -- almost 600 years back. Sadly, most architects accept that situation as a given. I guess many of us are so caught in the maelstrom of designing and the immediacy of construction, that it is difficult to take a step back and look at deeper concepts unemotionally. </div>
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What is even more puzzling is that after almost 25 years, I still find not many architects really understanding all this. I get all sorts of reactions, when I suggest that our traditional way of looking at drawings are completely out of sync with the complexity of today's information age. Many are terribly confused. Some graciously believe I am very eccentric and opinionated about this and politely step aside. A few are even quite vocal and emotional; almost on the verge of being hostile.</div>
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In the intervening 25 years, use of computing in architecture has surely evolved. But I am not sure if the evolution is in the right direction. Each day I wake up, I tend to re-examine the concepts of TAD; my central contribution to computing in architecture, and ask myself whether it is still relevant today. I examine this really critically. And each and every day, I truly find the TAD approach extremely relevant. This despite a long hiatus (I was embroiled in some other issues in my life) I feel like Rip Van Winkle: Waking up to see a changed, distorted world. A world where people have no time to think through deeper issues. </div>
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To add further to the confusion, I am quite critical about the so called new developments in architectural computing: Generative design, for example. Or the way BIM is currently carried out. Some of those architects who were initially puzzled and often annoyed with computing 25 years back, have jumped on to the bandwagon of the new BIM and CAD age without applying critical thought. I am still yelling in the background: "Hey, you still have got it wrong. There are serious issues that have to be considered" I was recently at a workshop given by an excited professor on new and clever approaches in architectural computing to students at a college in Navi Mumbai. She got scared when I got up to express my opinion and requested me not to ask any question as it may confuse the audience. </div>
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Some architects wave goodbye to me as they are happily carried on that train of branded software programs. Many of them gleefully use pirated software in their architectural practices. Some of those software companies are happy for the piracy: They have a smug smile of a pusher standing on the sidewalk handing free heroin shots to youngsters. Once hooked, they will surely will have to pay for the habit for the rest of their lives. (This has turned out alarmingly true for many architects in India: I've heard of offices getting legal notices for using pirated software. Those architects are arm-twisted into buying expensive legal software. They surely have to pay for the habit of using counterfieted drugs ... err... software)</div>
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It is not just that architects today are sucked into the glamour of software generating complex geometries. At least one can pardon them for that: Complex geometries does require software to do our work. However, concepts which I thought are rather easy to understand are skipped completely or glossed over. For example; I am yet to meet an architect who can fully understand the merits and disadvantages of solid modellers and surface modellers. For most, it is just some stuff happening in the innards of the software. "Why should that matter? Finally, I get to design and construct some real neat buildings, right? So what is all this fuss all about?"</div>
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If I draw an analogy now with a similar cavalier approach that was seen in the evolution of automobiles: People thought, why the heck should it matter how the engine worked and whether they used fossil fuels or not... After all, I can get from point A to point B so nicely. But now many do realise that ills automobiles have brought into the world: nasty accidents, pollution, global warming, wars to get to fossil fuels… and so on. </div>
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However, the same people happily use software that have come too fast off the oven without thinking through the deeper concepts. There is a growing population of architects getting into computing rather haphazardly with nary a blink of the eye. Many of the current approaches often does more harm than good, but architects are bedazzled by clever user-interface tricks, fancy looking geometries and insidious branding strategies adopted by commercial organisations.</div>
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Ill thought architectural design process can lead to really serious consequences out in the real world. When it comes to contributing to the problems of the world, architecture will easily lead over almost any other field. But are architects really listening? I wonder.</div>
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I think I must stop this vitriolic and explain what happened next in my life after I left Hafeez. What are the central questions asked by my way of looking at computing in architecture?</div>
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There are two that I began with:</div>
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a) Are we really representing EVERYTHING that needs to be represented in architecture?</div>
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b) Can we really handle ALL the questions that come flooding during the architectural design process?</div>
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And later there was a third one based on my understanding of the world at large</div>
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c) Do we really have the wherewithal to understand the COMPLEXITY of issues that architecture can get into?</div>
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I will explain these questions as I go along. Here is a bit of history of TAD.</div>
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My first question was assisted by my childhood friend, V. Narayan. He was having his own epiphany moment those days. He was supremely frustrated with the casual approach and lack of sensitivity in computing. He later moved to the US. </div>
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I drew a closed shape on a piece of paper and asked him; "You know what is peculiar about this? If I personify this paper on which I have drawn a shape as a person and asked that person what was the area of that shape, that person would happily give me the answer because it is already aware of the shape drawn on his 'body'. But me, as an architect, when I draw this shape on that paper; I really do not know the area. If I need to calculate the area, I will have to work with that shape once again, this time work out the geometry of that shape and then laboriously calculate the area. Isn't that a redundant procedure?" Narayan thought about it and said "You are pointed in the right direction. Once of the central principles of computing is to avoid repetition because if you are forced to repeat, mistakes can easily creep in. Now if you draw the shape once and to calculate the area, if you are forced to go over the points again … now that is asking for trouble" </div>
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Sure enough, this is one common mistake that can happen when using a drafting software: Sometimes a shape is drawn by placing lines that touch each other. They look continuous but actually aren't from the viewpoint from within the software. If you now need the area, you need to go over the vertices again. You miss one and you will get the wrong area.</div>
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The first program I wrote on a hand-held programmable calculator was a simple one that read out areas as I typed in the dimensions of each side of any shape with rectilinear corners. It was in BASIC and it did not have any graphical output. That propelled me to go further. I then wrote the same algorithm in a Turbo-C program with a nice spreadsheet type of interface. The foetus of TAD had just taken seed.</div>
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I realised that as an architect, we always deal in "well-formed" shapes. Shapes such as a figure of eight or a moebius strip cannot be really constructed (well a moebius strip can be constructed, but I wonder the practical architectural use of a one-sided surface) and my approach completely avoided those "ill-formed" volumes. (Which begs a sideways question on the fad on 'non-Euclidean' geometries in architecture… which strictly speaking are really not non-Euclidean at all. But I will desist as that topic is a digression)</div>
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Architecture does not have a concept of a "line" … that is just a drafting legacy we inherited from the Rennaisance and never questioned. The reality is that we always deal with volumes. That a volume has to be represented via its edges is a fait-accompli one is taught repeatedly at architectural schools.</div>
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While playing with all these algorithms, I stumbled into another discovery: That drawings really are not as complete as we make them out to be. An architectural drawing is simply the "remains of the day" after having "eaten up" the spaces that went into the design.</div>
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Let me draw an analogy to understand this issue: A coral reef is formed after the soft-bodies within the coral have all died and vanished into the sea. What is left behind is the exoskeleton of these organisms. In a similar fashion, when an architect conceives a design, he is trained to look at spaces as living, breathing "soft-bodies". Many architects use "bubble diagrams" to conceptualize space relationships in the initial stage of designs. However by the time that piece of architecture is created he has to create walls -- the exoskeleton-- around the soft-bodies and only those walls are seen as lines on the drawing. The soft spaces within the walls are not really represented.</div>
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Architects traditionally are taught to "re-create" those spaces in their eyes when they look at the drawing. So one glance at a drawing showing four walls enclosing a space will tell the architect that indeed there is a room in there. Hmmm…so what is this "soft-body" that I am talking about?</div>
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The subtle point that is sometimes difficult to convince architects is that when one represents architecture; it MUST be a complete representation. The architect must deposit ALL the constituents of the representation inside the medium so that they can be clearly picked up by someone else (or a computer program) objectively. Conventional drawings miss out on representation of spatial volumes, and there the background training of an architect is needed for the architect to interpret the spaces. A poorly trained or a fresh architect may miss out identifying some spaces.</div>
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In any subject of enquiry; knowledge that one is interested in appears in the "foreground" which is placed on a "background" of topics. The background only forms the context of the subject. For example; if one is learning how to draw; the actual drawing that one does would be the focus of attention -- after all, that is the subject of one's learning. It forms the "foreground". The canvas/paper/etc on which the drawing appears would serve as the "background". If a writer were to write a story, then the words he uses form the "foreground" and the medium on which the matter is written is the background. In short, there is a clear demarcation between the foreground and the background in all subjects. </div>
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Another word for the "foreground" is the "figure" and the "background" can be called as "ground". Architecture is one of those fields which is unique: Epistemologically, the subject shows a "figure-ground" confusion (Fig 1). Let me explain:</div>
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An architect needs to often focus his attention on the spaces within his design. In such a case, the "figure" is the space; and the walls form the "ground". However, sometimes the focus shifts from spaces to the built matter. In that case, the built-matter (walls) become the "figure" and spaces form the "ground" </div>
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When focussing on spaces, all the built-matter used to demarcate such spaces are not caught in his attention. Such built-matter is only the "ground". For example; when designing a classroom an architect may have to worry about the number of students in the class and how they may be arranged around the teacher, whether the various sight-lines in the class are appropriate, circulation of people within the class, whether all the chairs, tables can be accommodated properly; etc. All those questions are asked of the "space" within the classroom. When asking such questions, strictly speaking, the walls that are around the classroom will not play any part. (For e.g. whether the walls were made of brick or stone or cardboard partitions will play no part in answering such questions regarding the internal space)</div>
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However, the architect will soon enough need to focus on the walls (built-matter) of the classroom: Will they reflect light properly into the class? Will the walls attenuate sounds from outside? will the material used on the walls absorb sounds of the right frequencies? and so on. At that point in time, the space itself may not play much importance. And of course, there are times when the architect has to think both about the spaces AND the built-matter together. E.g: Acoustic performance of the entire classroom, energy consumed in the class, etc.</div>
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Cup_or_faces_paradox.svg/200px-Cup_or_faces_paradox.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Cup_or_faces_paradox.svg/200px-Cup_or_faces_paradox.svg.png" /></a></div>
<i>Fig 1: Figure-ground confusion: Our attention is drawn sometimes to the "vase" formed by the white portion, sometimes it is drawn to the profiles of two faces.</i><br />
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I believe, epistemologically, architecture is a very difficult subject due to this figure-ground confusion. I believe deep down this is the reason most attempts on using computers to help architects design focusses on the built-matter and ignores spaces. There is an unstated hope that the visual examination of the drawing will give cues to the architect on the spaces in that project. This approach has been taken because it is impossible to leave a computer in an ambivalent state: one where the computer works on the "figure" at one point and later it has to reverse its attention and allow focus of what was earlier the "ground" </div>
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One crude way for a drawing to speak about both the built matter as well as the space would be to delineate the spaces redundantly after having drawn out the walls. So one not only would have to draw the four walls of a room, but insert a rectangle inside the walls to demarcate the space within. However this is a very error-prone approach. If one were to later shift the walls, and then forget to reshape the rectangle demarcating the space, then obviously it would be an error.</div>
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Indeed, even conventional hand-drawn drawings also side-step this "figure-ground" problem by focussing only on representing the built matter. This has been the age-old tradition of drafting. It has got so ingrained in us, that it is almost second-nature for an architect to figure out the spaces within the drawing by looking at the marks on the drawing and then interpreting the spaces therein. It is very difficult to tell architects that indeed this can be error-prone. The fact that it is actually time-consuming is also sometimes very difficult to establish.</div>
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One crucial reason why it is important for the medium to know all that has been represented is so that you can get proper assistance in objectively working with your design. For example; If I am able to represent both built matter and spaces in a computer, then I could write a program that would help me perform accurate calculations without my intervention. </div>
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Let me give a more mundane example of this issue; in fact one that prompted me to make TAD an object-oriented design software. </div>
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I was very young when I started my own architectural practice. I was all of 26 years. I obviously did not have any 'body of work' or notoriety for other architects to find it attractive to join my office. What I did get were some draftspersons. They were hardworking alright but they were trained only to do technical drawings and not really get into designing or even understand what was in the design. </div>
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Before stepping into the world of computing, I attempted using conventional, popular drafting software for my work and I used to get frustrated leaving instructions for my draftsmen: I used to draft some initial plans on the drafting software but before I could fully finish it, I would get pulled into some meeting or a site visit or something else that pulled me out of my office. I would then request one of my draftsmen to complete what I had done. But when I returned, I found that quite often he would be sitting idle because he did not know what was the real-world meaning of the shapes I had drawn. Is that rectangle the master bedroom? Is the other one the kitchen? It quickly became apparent to me that if the software did not capture the entire representation; which included the meaning of the shapes, the half-drafted plan would serve very limited purpose. If the software forced the architect to look at what was on the screen, interpret it, and then give instructions to the rest of the office verbally; that is a serious bottleneck during designing.</div>
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Imagine you are using a spreadsheet, but for some reason you are forced to use only the digit "9" inside that spreadsheet. Obviously, that would be a big handicap when placing information into the spreadsheet.<br />
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<a href="http://www.concept-w.com/works/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/math-clock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.concept-w.com/works/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/math-clock.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<i>Fig 2: Yes, you can create a clock using just the number 9 and some other mathematical operators. But it is indeed cumbersome</i><br />
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Here is a clock (Fig 2), that shows all the numbers on its faces using the symbol 9. It can be done, but it takes a lot of effort to read the clock. Now if we try to do some calculations in that spreadsheet with such a limitation, obviously we are seriously hampered.</div>
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So the first point that I need to stress upon: An architect's conventional drawings do not capture the entire representation of a design. Drawings are mere snapshots of the design process. They dont represent everything that needs to be represented. If only one person is working on a drawing, the situation can be tolerated; but not if communication has to be established within a whole team of people -- and if that team is a dynamic "just-in-time" one then it is really frustrating. (Some author calls the working of an architect's office; a "dynamic, multi-organization" which gets formed and re-formed for each project)<br />
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Part of the reason why often conventionally architectural design is a meditative, individualistic exercise is possibly because of this issue: Much of the communication between the architect is a very subtle and personal and idiosyncratic and even private process; something that cannot be easily communicated with anyone else.<br />
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Apart from being incomplete, the shapes on a drawing do not carry with it meaningful nomenclature which can be used to objectively understand the design without errors by an onlooker.</div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">I grappled with this issue of having to represent both spaces and built-matter non-redundantly. I could solve part of the problem by reversing the conventional approach where one first placed marks for the built-matter and left spaces as bye-products. Instead, in TAD, I first represent spaces and the built-matter are considered as bye-products of having drawing the spaces. For example; if I were to draw a room, I will draw two rectangles one inside the other. The inner rectangles represents the inner space, and the outer rectangle represents the volume of the entire room including the walls around the space (i.e. the silhouette of the one room building) This served me immensely, because in the initial stages of designing in my office, I was often grappling with issues dealing with space requirements (e.g. area of the room, floor-space-index consumed, etc) </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">I quickly realized that actually one could represent the entirety of architecture by collapsing ALL elements as various types of spaces. This led to a "taxonomy" of these spaces. I found that any architectural design can be broken down into a set of "atoms", "envelopes" and "connectors" -- three different kinds of spatial volumes which are found in every architectural design. It is the arrangement of these three types of spaces that form architecture. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">Here is a brief explanation on how this taxonomy works: An "envelope" is the silhouette of a building: the shopping bag into which you place other spaces. An "atom" is simply those spaces that are typically not further sub-divided in the mind of the architect. A "connector" is any space that connects any other types of spaces. If we now place such spaces in our design, we will find that the built-matter is a boolean subtraction of the volume occupied by atoms and connectors from the volume occupied by the envelope. So here is a way by which one can talk both about spaces and built matter non-dedundantly; by enumerating the spaces within.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">As this is just a narration of the history of TAD, I will not get down into explaining how this taxonomy works in detail and why this way of looking at architecture is a complete representation. A separate paper dealt with this taxonomy in detail and I presented that paper to the Indian Institute of Architects in 1991 and I got the Special award for architectural research in 1991</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">The name TAD stands for "The Architect's Desktop" It is my belief and conviction that we architects could evolve a complete system of practice (a "desktop") that truly helped architects work on design responsibly. The designing component of TAD is actually called "TAD Designer" but most of us using it, use the term "TAD" as a synonym for the designing module.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">I also selected the word "TAD" because the word "tad" meant a "little-bit" or a "small boy" I then felt that a small change in the way we look at architecture can really help us elucidiate all the elements of a design. If you want to understand TAD, all you need to do is to simply reverse your expectations from a drawing: Place the spaces first and then let the built-matter emerge as bye-products. That is an oversimplification; but it can put you in the right direction.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">I have used TAD extensively in all my projects and I have consistently found that it helps communicate among team members very accurately. It works excellently in the early stage of designing -- so much so that I have found that pencils disappeared naturally from my office. The hazy, early stages of designing are where architects traditionally use pencils. I found that in my office, we moved on to TAD quite early and it helped us move extremely fast in cutting through all the confusion of a design in the early stage. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">This aspect, in fact, was put to test by Prof. Athwankar, a perception researcher at IDC (Industrial Design Centre) at IIT Bombay. He devised an experiment where he sought to find out when a person well versed with TAD moved into actually using my software. He found that the architect (Anjali Iyer who used to work for me) who was chosen to do a small design problem (which was videotaped) started using TAD very early in the design stage -- which was quite surprising for Prof. Athwankar as he normally have seen people grappling with a design using pencils, paper, etc. and started using computers only when things were quite clear -- a stage that is often reached after quite sometime. Anjali, on the other hand, started using TAD quite early as she solved the design problem</span></div>
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Now for the second fundamental question that was asked when designing TAD: Can we really provide answers to ALL questions that can come flooding when designing an architectural project? Traditionally, computer software are written by "software analysts" who sits with a user and extracts the points troubling the user. Some data structure and/or algorithm are then placed into the software to satisfy to help user get answers to those problems. However, what is important to realize that the problems elucidated by a user is often very temporal: The user has no choice but to narrate what happens to be troubling him as per his experience; often for the projects he has handled up to that point in time. It takes a lot of time and effort on the part of a software analyst to extract abstractions which can later be used to solve such problems generally in the software. The software analyst usually would take only a sub-set of problems that were expressed by users. Once the software is actually put to use, users often would turn up with more and more problems that were hitherto elusive; and then the software would have to go through a revision. Sometimes, a revision is not possible because earlier data-structures inside the software tends to dictate the future course of the use of the software.</div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">Unfortunately, designing opens up a foutainhead which is constantly throwing up all kinds of issues and problems to the designer. Many of these issues come specifically for one design problem but may not exist in another one. It is impractical for a software analyst to enumerate each and every issue; and design the software and revise it continuously to cater to all of those. (If you now pause for a moment, you would realize that even drafting software goes through a large number of revisions -- now you know why)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">The approach taken in TAD was very novel for the fact that it was written in 1989 ... (such an approach is quite common nowadays in many software but it was really novel when used in TAD) My solution was very elegant: I gave part of the problem of enumerating internal data-structures directly into the hands of the actual end user. As an architect starts using TAD, he can keep modifying the internal data so that it suits exactly the kind of problems that the architect is facing. I call this approach "just-in-time" modeling. So the model of data that the architect works on is actually not fitting into a template given by the programmer (in this case, me). The architect can himself/herself change the model just as he encounters issues in his project. To faciliate this, I had created a simple computer language called "ARDELA" (Architectural Design Language) which is actually nothing but a specialized object-oriented version of Prolog with certain built-in predicates to do geometry calculations.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">When one works with TAD, the architect is actually silently developing parts of a big ARDELA program using the interface of TAD as an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) The architect does not realize that he is writing a software program, of course; as they are called to simply work with graphical shapes using reasonably familiar graphical commands. TAD actually creates an elegant OOPS (Object-Oriented Programming System) with classes and objects as defined using the OOPS paradigms seen in languages such as SmallTalk, Java, etc. But the fact is that all that complexity is hidden away from the architect. TAD internally places all the architect's wrok into an ARDELA program and it is that program which is available to query the design objectively, just-in-time.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">Due to this 'just-in-time modeling' approach, I and my office, have been able to TAD in many different situations. TAD not only excels in early stages of designing, but it has also found use in post-facto analysis. TAD was used for two research projects carried out by IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Bombay for modeling energy calculations. I worked on an approach called TADSIM that helps calculate heat built-up inside buildings. My co-researcher, Dr. J.K.Nayak and me published a paper on the same.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">The third question; that of handling complexity in architecture, has occupied my mind for much of the last few years. I had presented a paper at Frankfurt eCAADe conference in 2007 on the same. The taxonomy used internally in TAD models architecture uses a fractal system of arrangement of spaces. A few years back, a very important and interesting book was written by Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz and Aristid Lindenmayer</span><span style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: HelveticaNeue, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.24;">,</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> that explored fractals in botany. It was called the "The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants" They demonstrated that much of the complex plant forms can be mathematically explained without oversimplification. Today, L-Systems (The "L" is for Lindenmayer) are often used to model plants and trees. Fractals are used nowadays to understand complex natural forms and phenomena, not just in plants. Using fractals to plumb complex issues have found its place in many areas of life; from understanding stock-market movements, to predicting earthquakes, to problems found in lungs and kidneys, etc. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I now believe that fractals not only exist in the natural world, but one could use fractals to even model and understand man made forms such as architecture. The taxonomy provided inside TAD could offer one clear direction.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">Use of fractals to model architecture can be one way to ensure that the complex, messy world we see in built-structures can be explored and understood without oversimplification. This is an exciting area indeed, and I see a lot of hope in solving some of the really intractable problems in architecture, urban-planning and indeed in all kinds of designs.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">TAD has evidently stayed the distance over quite some years. In the meantime, a new terminology "BIM" (Building Information Modeler) has come into architects' lives. I strongly believe that much of the concepts in BIM have been silently manipulated by commercial organizations who have vested interests. I believe BIM still has not got it right because it speaks about construction issues of the built-form and not really the entire design process. An architect needs to wade through a lot of information even during the early, hazy, messy stages of designing. And I believe an approach such as TAD would help. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">TAD Designer, the designing module inside TAD does have some limitations: Currently it does not have extensive geometric capabilities and that seems to detract people who want to use intriguing shapes. I believe that is just a mechanical limit because most of the programming was done by me; and I have my own limitations. Now that I have decided to open-source the development of TAD, I should be able to place all kinds of geometrical modelling capabilities into TAD without sacrificing its internal concepts. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Open-source of the internal coding of TAD is not just a curious coincidence. I believe that one need to open-source not just software, but also our own creations as designers. If the design intent of architects are to be exposed to other designers, and if others can contribute to a design as it gets evolved; I truly believe we could revolutionize designing and help create socially relevant designs.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I have been nibbling at open-sourcing architecture using TAD via a website; <a href="http://ww3.teamtad.com/" x-apple-data-detectors-result="0" x-apple-data-detectors-type="link" x-apple-data-detectors="true">http://ww3.teamtad.com</a>, It has not yet picked much momentum as I have spent very little publicising that effort. I am hoping that more and more people would join this initiative and open source both TAD as well as architectural designing itself.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In this article, I have tried to give an overview of what went into the creation of TAD and some background stories. There have been many people who have helped me think through the concepts; especially almost everyone who worked with me at my office, Sabu Francis and Associates (SFA), and a few other architects and professionals have also contributed. I am grateful to all. I've acknowledged all of them separately at my website here: <a href="http://sabufrancis.com/tadcontributors">http://sabufrancis.com/tadcontributors</a></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I welcome feedback on this along with any kind of contribution to this "magnificent obsession" that has taken up much of my life.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-76645493810371196632013-02-09T22:24:00.001-08:002013-02-10T10:12:54.146-08:00Handling complexity: What India really contributes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>It has been quite some years since I spoke about this, but I think my experience with Konkan Railway needs to have a wider exposure. This article is partly based on something I wrote in a private discussion group among my IIT friends on Facebook</i>.<br />
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The objective of this article is to share my optimism about India and the way we do things here. I have a lot of optimism about Indians and the way we work. Of course there were a lot of scoundrels and calamities on the way but I tend to always see the full portion of the half-empty glass.<br />
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Let me stick to one example. I worked quite closely with Konkan Railway, so in one sense I could be biased. But on the other hand, I could be revealing some insights. I think Konkan Railway as a project has been discussed threadbare to the point of almost disbelief.<br />
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So I wont go there. <br />
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Let me tell you about my experience when designing the headquarters. Initially, I too was hesitant when I got the job -- designing their headquarters; that too in just 45 days from inception to handing over was a challenge to anyone and I was just too young (27 years). I was amazed that it got done and the thought struck me how details sometimes are so different from helicopter-views.<br />
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I had to contend with 15 railwaymen -- many of them picked out of retirement and brought back into service. All of them cranky in their way, very demanding; and tough to please. I thought they would create a hurdle in the project's management. They didn't. In retrospect, and when I later on married my experience in IT and my readings in management (Mythical Man Month, for example) these old fogies will run circles and ellipses around any project management guru.<br />
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They are the unspoken heroes and their way of working was amazing. I saw, for example, the Konkan Railway system of managing files. They called it a "single-file" system. Everything pertaining to a project went into one file and that was circulated around. It was bulky, clumsy but it worked charmingly well. Everyone who had to take a decision got a complete holistic view of what was going on. Most of the time, they did not write separate reports: Many officials would just turn over a paper, and write their comments on the back of the page; so one got to read the file in two directions: One in the forward direction, and one by looking at the reverse side of the pages for the decisions and recommendations <br />
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(A method that I have seen another friend of mine, Dr. Nobhojit Roy, use for his diaries. I think talking about Dr. Roy's ways of working will take a lot of effort and space. Let me not digress here)<br />
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They had several other ways of working. For example; Nobody lifted their intercom phone. It was always on speaker-phone. Anybody in the cabin would be able to overhear what was going on. I quickly realized that they wanted everyone to hear.<br />
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There are many other points that I noticed in the way they worked:<br />
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The interior design did not ask for a clock. Instead they had "countdown" counter that read out the number of days left for the project to be completed. When the staff trooped in for work each day, the counter will boldly indicate the number and prime them.<br />
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Each cabin had a mini traffic signal outside the door: Red indicated that the person inside was really busy and should not be disturbed. Amber to indicate that please knock and then enter. And Green was to just breeze in unasked if you wanted to meet the person inside.<br />
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Many years later, I was teaching MIS at a management institute, and I realized how naive many of the Western approaches were. Some Japanese consultants were visiting the interior when it was being constructed; and they refused to believe that the entire thing would be over in the total stipulated time of 45 days. It was 15,000 square-feet with all kinds of issues, spaces, requirements ... all in the middle of a working office. But it really did get done.<br />
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17 years later, Konkan Railway bought another floor in the same building and I did that one too -- equally speedily. In the meantime, Konkan Railway had stopped being a "corporation" (Initially it was on a BOT scheme, but later it was handed over the railways ... and yes, there are stereotypical imagery of the "railways") So indeed, the new Konkan Railway was boring, bureaucratic and all that . But the new interior also was done quite fast.<br />
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And when I went to do the new interior, I was happy to notice that the 17 year old office interior I had designed was more or less being used using the same arrangement I had made. They even had replicated my modules in some other portions of that floor space.<br />
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On a side note, this project was the one of the first in my practice that utilized my own design software; TAD. I never made any drawings for this initially. I just plonked my computer with my software among the officers of Konkan Railway and quickly fleshed out the layout of the interior directly in the software. It was running on DOS those days. Those of you who are interested, can take a look at TAD here: <a href="http://ww3.teamtad.com/">http://ww3.teamtad.com</a> The second Konkan Railway interior, and indeed, every project done by SFA was developed around TAD.<br />
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So what is the point of this article? Indians solve really tough problems reasonably well. Konkan Railway is a project that has been admired and acknowledged all over the world. It did not come up in a vacuum There were lots of complex detailing and handling of complex activities, such as this interior. They were also done admirably well. I think the biggest contribution that Indians make is the ability to work on the "holistic" instead of just being analytical (divide-and-conquer) when solving a problem. We offer the perfect foil to reductionism. I guess that many top organizations have realized that and they are quickly moving in to India to set up their R+D cells. Google, IBM, Microsoft, Adobe ... they all have their research cells here to tap into the Indian way of handling problems.<br />
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I had the opportunity to visit Copenhagen and I was struck when someone pointed out to a group of 6 out in the street and remarked that there is a "crowd" out there. They had a metro, a railway with two different kinds of trains if I mistake not, amazing road work, cycle-lanes and what not ... All that, and a crowd of 6.<br />
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I then remembered my work for the control-office building of Konkan Railway (which later on did not come up ... another story) As part of that exercise I got intimate with the working of the control offices of both western and central railway. I was given some numbers ; and those numbers flashed on my mind: Churchgate station alone handles the entire population of Denmark in two days. Huh! Hmmm... and they were talking of a crowd of 6.<br />
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This is not to deride and make a strawman of the Danish way of handling problems. Indians know how to join seemingly opposite points of view where the Western world use derivatives of the age old Greek method of the law of the excluded middle. Lotfi Zadeh explains that aspect of Buddhism quite admirably, when he explains how he got onto fuzzy logic. My life tells me that not many Western approaches know how to work with the "synthesis". Not that they simply cannot solve complex problems at all. I've had other experiences with the Danish, and they have their own ways of working which also works admirably well. I should write another article on my experience with using, beta-testing and writing documentation for Visual Prolog, quite an efficient and off-beat computer language developed in Denmark.<br />
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I just believe that the world has not yet recognized the way we Indians work, and I truly take pride in having being involved in some part of the new Indian workforce and methods of working. My company, SFA (Sabu Francis & Associates for short) grew up in this milieu. Hopefully, this way of working will be spread far and wide by those who had worked for SFA and have now spread out.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-22064058902576535502013-02-01T15:35:00.000-08:002013-02-01T15:57:01.831-08:00Ride my donkey<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This article is on how to understand critical thinking, writing and rationality; and feigned rationality. I was anyway planning to write one for my students, and I recently got an opportunity. Sometimes arguments are brought to one's doorstep, to be discussed threadbare. This blog article is also my response to some very recent happenings on the Internet. I guess, as a medium, Internet is still growing up and many of us are still grappling on how to discuss a topic formally and yes, rationally.<br />
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The way the events unfolded:<br />
a) An organization I was involved with decided to chip in with some help for the marriage of some women in the villages<br />
b) The event was publicised on Facebook<br />
c) One person decides to object to it on the event page; stating that initially she liked the idea but on closer examination she found the approach incorrect. That by itself was quite fine. However the tone was a bit aggressive with some hidden innuendos and quite bad net-etiquette (e.g. usage of a lot of question marks, which suggests being perplexed, hidden agenda, etc) One of the founders found the tone objectionable but worked on the meaning anyway<br />
d) A discussion ensued which resulted in some more clarification, and eventually we removed the vagueness and clarified the description of the event<br />
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I would have thought the matter would have ended with a sober response; such as: "Okay, I have now made my point. Mission accomplished. Let them at least raise at least some money, after all the organization is known for its good work"<br />
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But guess what? The matter did not end there. It resulted in a kind of a "Whoopee! Got the chaps! They changed the description Oh, and did we laugh about it, etc". And all that on her blog.<br />
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She has remarked quite clearly that she was making a rational point, and she claims we were not really entertaining that. So let me now enter the subject of her discussion and not about the event or the organization and discuss the logical fallacies she herself is making regarding the subject of helping women, based on the exact words that she used. This is not an allegation on the person. I am merely using this opportunity to gain some insights into logical fallacies and incorrect argumentation.<br />
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I have heard this kind of pseudo-intellectual talk from my IIT days and it is high time I need to explain how sometimes arguments are made quite irrationally. I think some do this quite innocently, possibly because they really do not know formal argumentation.<br />
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The basic message that she seems to promote is that she knows what it is to improve the lot of tribal women and our organisation simply does not know what it is all about.<br />
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Note: This is not to prove one point or the other. This is just to understand how do we get into a topic and what could possibly the way to argue the point<br />
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So let me start with the initial reaction that this lady had given and I will discuss that in detail. The rest of the conversation is possibly not very important because it mostly continued in a similar vein on the part of most of the authors in that thread.<br />
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This is what she had started the conversation thread with:</div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18px;">After reading about your cause of funding 25 marriages for "our sisters in villages", I feel you'll are sending out the wrong message on so many levels. Women are better off without men who call off a wedding for monetary reasons. Your cause only reinforces dowry, a patriarchal society reducing these women to "inferior" beings. What about educating, empowering these women and making them self sufficient instead of just paying for their weddings????</span></div>
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1. <i>After reading about your cause of funding 25 marriages for "our sisters in villages", I feel you'll are sending out the wrong message on so many levels. </i></div>
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This sentence is fine. Almost. Talking about feelings is always correct. Nobody can question feelings. The part which is a bit odd is "message on so many levels" is a dangling statement. What levels? Is that explained later? If so, then that is fine. If not explained clearly, it ends up being very suggestive that there could be some hidden agenda. It ends up as an innuendo.</div>
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2. <i>Women are better off without men who call off a wedding for monetary reasons.</i></div>
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This is an over-generalization and also a sweeping statement. It implies that women are better off without men of a particular kind of ethical behaviour. Are things so clean and clear-cut? People are complex creatures who are both good and bad; and there are women who can still derive benefit from being married to such men. This sentence also hints that the monetary reasons for calling off weddings are only due to a conspiracy against women. Poor people call off a wedding because they simply cannot afford it. Can't that be a reason? What about two poor souls deeply in love, who cannot marry because neither have enough money?</div>
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3. <i>Your cause only reinforces dowry, a patriarchal society reducing these women to "inferior" beings.</i> </div>
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This is called a slippery-slope argument. She starts with a point which she assumes to be correct (She states quite emphatically that the cause "only reinforces dowry" note; In any argument we should not start with a conclusion but arrive at it. In this case, if her hassle was with dowry we need to clearly establish that our cause is indeed to reinforce dowry) She then keeps sliding away into "reinforcing dowry", "patriarchal society" "and reducing women into inferior beings" ... if one were to hazard a guess, if that slide along that slope were to continue maybe one could easily slip in many other ills in the society too -- hmmm drunken husbands? corruption? and it can go on and on. A casual reader could even get convinced. </div>
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Here is the formal explanation of the fallacy of the slippery slope: <a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Slippery_slope">http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Slippery_slope</a> </div>
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Slippery slope arguments when told extremely fast, which does not allow much time for the listener to react can often convince the listener. It is a popular technique among glib salespeople. Hmmm.. You want a devious website? here is one describing the use of slippery-slopes for sales <a href="http://www.solo-e.com/articles/internet-marketing/website-design/13-steps-slippery-slope-online-sales-letter-307.shtml">http://www.solo-e.com/articles/internet-marketing/website-design/13-steps-slippery-slope-online-sales-letter-307.shtml </a></div>
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4. <i>What about educating, empowering these women and making them self sufficient instead of just paying for their weddings????</i></div>
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What about all that? This one is called a non-sequitur fallacy. She has stated some premise and her conclusions do not seem to be connected to the premise. For example; if I were to add this to her sentence thus: <i>What about giving wholesome, nutritious food to the ladies?</i> it would go quite well with what she is stating. And the list can then continue to more "good" alternatives which on closer examination may not have much to do with the premise.<br />
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Non-sequiturs are used dramatically in comedy shows and I've seen some hilarious non-sequiturs used on Radion 91.1 FM after the end of their fillers each day on "Babbar Shair" <a href="http://www.planetradiocity.com/radiocity/city.php?id=19&title=Mumbai">http://www.planetradiocity.com/radiocity/city.php?id=19&title=Mumbai </a><br />
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In some arguments, non-sequiturs can be easily spotted and are indeed, quite humorous. But in some emotionally worded (or sometimes cleverly worded) arguments, it may be difficult to spot non-sequiturs. Read here more about the fallacy of the non-sequitur here <a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Non_sequitur">http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Non_sequitur </a> Pay extra attention to the subtle ones<br />
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I have just enumerated a few fallacies that I found just in the first paragraph of the initial statement itself made by this lady. I have possibly missed several other logical fallacies in that thread. I am sure there are many in her blog too but I am not going into all of them here. I do have one comment on the specific article she wrote about this on her blog: She is making a Straw-man argument there, which is best explained here: <a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Straw_man">http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Straw_man</a><br />
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Now my students reading this may wonder, so what is the answer to this question of helping tribal women. My answer is: The answer is not very simple and surely cannot be gleaned over an Internet discussion. My recommended strategy to extract an answer is to examine the subject using the Socratic method; which I will explain later in another article. Briefly, the Socratic method starts with a position of innocence and then questions each premise carefully for internal contradictions. It takes time but in the end, one often gets to know what could be the correct answer (often the answer is contextual -- works for one situation but may need to be re-examined for another context)<br />
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It is sad that the lady assumed some kind of controversy here. I tried telling her later in a private message that gender issues are extremely complex and taking binary (i.e. on-off positions) are too simplistic. Sadly, she did not respond to my query. It turns out that she has even blocked me on Facebook, for some strange reason.<br />
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Whether the organization is really doing something deep is not the issue here; at least I know for the fact that there is a lot of genuine effort that would indeed help some monetarily. It may be just a small little thing but I know for a fact there is no conspiracy here.<br />
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Yes, indeed, the money collected could be used for the wrong reasons and one need to guard against that. If points on how to protect and use the money correctly were discussed, the discussion would have been more productive. We could have passed on constructive suggestions to the charity who is behind this effort.<br />
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It is amusing to see that the author fervently believes that she is really making a "Rational" argument here. In fact her blog proudly declares this "When rationality, music and causes collide " I wish she would read up on logical fallacies. Else, she is welcome to attend my classes.<br />
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Some of my friends wonder why I bother so much about fine points on argumentation. Firstly, I must confess, like anyone here; I too am bothered about my own argumentation capability. As an architect, and later as an IT person, I have heard just too much arbitrary arguments which wastes too much time and in the end, only the points of the more "impressive" personality seems to be registered. I get vexxed when students make such points because later on they are to conquer the world and I wonder how they would do so. A healthy amount of skepticism and a capability to look deep inside all the corners of an argument can indeed reap a lot of benefits. And when I hear claims of feigned rationality, well, I can seriously get on the verge of being impolite.<br />
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You may be wondering why this article is called "Ride my Donkey" I picked that from something that I heard Kamal Hassan say in an interview which was aired once-again after his recent controversy. He had to change the name of a movie simply because some politician thought of deriving mileage from that controversy and you can hear Kamal say about it here:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/E98TyIozQc0?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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(See the part after 9minutes 30 seconds) He says that he was used as a donkey for someone else's political agenda.<br />
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So it is not just the big guns like Kamal Hassan who are used as a donkey for various agendas. Some smaller souls who are trying in their own way to get some help where it is needed also get taken for a ride. I am not really sure whether a donkey was ridden in our case. I hope not. After reading her blog, I did get the feeling that the person was consciously or unconsciously reinforcing her own image as a "women" saviour; for reasons best known to her.<br />
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And let me end this on a positive note to the lady if she decides to read this. It is with the same positive humor she ended her blog: Madam, please do take my blog as a educational lesson. It could, just might, help you sometime. All the best wishes in your endeavour to help women. I am sure you will now make really good arguments<br />
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P.S: I am deliberating not mentioning this lady's name or give a link to her blog here. I hereby declare that is NOT made as any justification or defence of the organization I am involved with; referred to in this topic. This is my personal stance as a teacher, and it is meant purely for educational purpose only and it is not to slur anyone</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-85134673968749450302013-01-01T09:01:00.000-08:002013-04-13T01:46:47.173-07:00The girl is dead. Ignorance is still alive<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>(A version of this was published earlier in India America Today)</i></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">The girl is dead.(The girl who was gang-raped in Delhi died today in Singapore) But ignorances thrive.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">The sadness is not just for the passing away of a brave girl who fought so hard. The sadness is also for our society who will quickly forget the lessons. The sadness is also for the fact that people just dont get the multiple axes on which such crimes happens: It does not happen just in buses and by strangers ... but quite often by known people right inside familiar settings... even their own homes. What is even more sad is the wake of sadness and destruction left behind in the lives of those who are alive, that comes behind many such incidents. When sexual abuse happens to someone in childhood, some of them grow up and become rapists and perverts themselves. Horridly enough, in some other cases the impact can be much longer lasting and harder to trace: They can create an atmosphere for such demons to come into society.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">The deepest sadness is that as a society, we simply CANNOT discuss such topics and how they could affect others. And any discussion will often be met with extremely hostile backlash or, even more dangerous, extremely superficial stereotyping</span><br />
<br style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;" />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">There are over 52% in India who have been sexually molested as a child. That means one in 2 we meet on a daily basis have been affected. That obviously does not mean there is a wake of sadness behind each of them. But some of those who do end up growing into extremely troubled adulthood with a wake of broken relationships OR they themselves turn into rapists and abusers OR BOTH! (I would not be surprised if one of the molesters on that fateful bus was himself a victim of childhood abuse) </span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">But many do turn out to be perfectly normal -- those are the lucky ones.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">Which is why the topic is completely taboo and confusing... people get bewildered how can one even discuss such a "dirty" topic as sexual abuse that happened in childhood. Especially when there are outwards signs of normalcy.</span><br />
<br style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;" />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">But why just blame ordinary people? Even doctors get aghast and confused that childhood abuse could be the reason for a broken family of the adult who was once abused.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">Doctors search for immediate causes and not faraway aetiologies (aetiology == the subject that deals with causes) from the past. What is bewildering is that such doctors have actually seen adults limping because that adult had got the polio virus in the childhood. But when it concerns the warped behaviour of adults who were once molested as a child, it is a complete no-no. Many doctors simply will not even entertain such discussions. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">What we have to realise is that that the habitual quarrelsome person we meet in our neighbourhood may have been either a victim of such child abuse or married to one. That furtive, loner, scared lady who hardly talks to anyone maybe one such person who was abused as a child. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">Sadly, even that cheerful, ebullient person who is the cynosure of all eyes is privately a very damaged person -- who has driven his or her spouse up the wall because privately that person simply cannot be intimate -- the childhood abuse from that person's past continually haunts that person and has damaged the intimate moments with that person's spouse. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">Note that I am not gender biased: Childhood abuse happens to both males and females. Adults of both sexes can be damaged by this.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">Many such adults seem normal on the outside. Often they are actually stunted in their understanding of relationships. There are adults with such a horrid childhood experience, who look at adult relationships as a 13 year old teen would: Someone who quickly fall in 'love' with her school teacher. They are the ones who get impressed by a stupid, lovey-dovey Facebook update or some SMS message (sent often by devious people who know how to exploit such troubled people) </span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">They have no understanding of what is true love, and what kind of depths of effort people really take to conserve relationships. And when the spouse also has some problem of his/her own (neurosis, some issue during adult life such as a business loss) then it is like a nuclear explosion in that family; a double-whammy.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">When some person grows up and becomes a rapist, at least the world knows that there has been a serious problem. But I am talking about the hidden millions who experienced horrendous childhood events, and end up breaking up families in very insidious ways -- that is the cesspool from which future rapists evolve. So at one end of a time-scale (during childhood) a person experiences childhood abuse. At another end in the same generation, or possibly next generation -- a rapist comes into action. To establish connections are extremely difficult. In fact, it is horrendously difficult because there are many times the child himself or herself may not have realized that sexual abuse is being performed (See the videos by Arpan in the reference below that highlights this). Many victims of this social ill are completely in denial or insist that their trauma was long over.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">In India, because of the proverbial "family" system we have, many such people do not get affected. I believe women are the stronger sex, and that sadly is often used as a ruse: They are expected to forget and forgive and lead a normal life. And men with such childhood experiences have to show their "mardaangi" and have to simply accept life with a smile… Result? Some males go on to rape and molest others. Some males end up loners and weird people. Some such ladies create havoc by not being able to seed the right values and crisis-resolving examples to their children. Some ladies go with very superficial and mean, stereotypical ideas of what is a male (Many of the gender jokes that ladies giggle over are actually </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">propagated by very sad females who were once abused as a child)</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">Confusingly enough, trouble does not erupt always ... because families built around such people are not just another statistic: Yes, on an average, Indian families are happy. Maybe much more than families in other countries. There is a lot of resilience in our family life. Indian life sees lot of extreme conditions and our way of working is flexible to accommodate many issues and work around them. But every once in a while, that fails. And with the old family structure disappearing (joint-family had its advantages), this has started breaking down. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">Our strength as a family is just a perception; an "average" understanding, but families and individuals cannot be treated as a statistic. An individual cannot take on the property of the collective statistic. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">When you look closely there are lot of destruction around. There are people out there who are suffering enormously because either the mother or the father have been affected by this stupid, horrendous thing that sometimes some idiotic males do to children. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">Sadly, the same person who is a perverted child molester is also a kindly grandfather or even a bread-winning father or a generous uncle, or a successful contributor to society or otherwise a kind man. So it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for families to deal with such people. Many do not want to remove dirty skeletons from the cupboard because it may end up soiling a person who was otherwise regarded as a nice person. (This last point was quite delicately explored in Mira Nair's "Monsoon Wedding" ... she depicts the mixed up character of a child abuser in that wedding)</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">Many people are in denial. In fact, there are many who were abused as a child, and are now having troubling relationships, who actually will NOT acknowledge that their odd behaviour is because of such childhood experiences.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">Unfortunately most such perverts who started it all are all males. Yes, many time it is that damaged male who starts it all (Formal literature does indicate a few females who have also indulged in perversions towards children … but they are very few or possibly have been undiscovered/under-reported)</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">But to vilify the "male" is simply the wrong way to tackle this problem. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">Nature needs both the male and the female to further life. The mortise and the tenon are both needed to hold a joint properly in place. Let me not beat around the bush: the penis and the vagina are both needed. The raindrops from the sky are the penises which seed the vaginas on the earth for the cycle of life to continue. There is nothing shameful there. It is when we stereotype either of them, and not regard a union as holy, that it ends up being a shameful topic. That is the context into which monsters are born who do horrendous crimes.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">What is needed is insight, education, understanding and an in-depth dispassionate look at the subject OPENLY and one MUST BREAK THE CYCLE OF CHILDHOOD ABUSE … else the victim quite often ends up either being the perpetrator himself/herself OR sow the seed around him/her who may then perpetuate such crimes. The latter situation (where no overt problem surfaces in a family where one spouse had experienced childhood abuse, but comes up in another generation) is extremely, extremely hard to check or prove.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">It is extremely silly and sad that people are trying to remove curtains from buses so that such crimes do not happen. It is equally silly when I hear posters that say "Don't tell me what the girl should wear. Tell your sons not to rape" Of course one should educate sons to be respectful of girls. (And girls to be respectful of boys) But that is just not where the problem is. I am sure there must have been child molesters in that crowd of people protesting -- silently giggling to themselves -- knowing that the attention has NOT been drawn towards them.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">What is needed is to open up the curtains inside ones own homes. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px;">Have discussions inside families and outside. Counsel/treat those weirdos, who are otherwise seem normal and and responsible and gentle, who then go around raping children who in turn grow up and rape or be passive to rape or break up a family which sows seeds in the next generation for rapists or other perversions to come alive ...… oh, I have told all that …. I am repeating myself … </span><br />
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References:</div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><a href="http://arpan.org.in/whatwedo.html" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">http://arpan.org.in/whatwedo.<wbr></wbr>html</a> </span></div>
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<a href="http://www.jimhopper.com/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">http://www.jimhopper.com</a><br />
<a href="http://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=bridalmagazine%20child%20abuse&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CDIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.meredithmaran.com%2Fmag_bride_abused.htm&ei=5WHFTqWrIYjlrAe29OHFCw&usg=AFQjCNHjIv1yTGAFwDKg4VlUKnW8ogIMLg" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">When A Sexually Abused Child Weds (Bride Magazine)</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-79818421542042449122012-12-09T05:56:00.003-08:002012-12-09T06:12:42.613-08:00Love, from a distance<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}" style="color: #333333; line-height: 1.38;">She does not know me. She does not know that I exist. When I turn up at the door, I am shoo'ed away. I am an architect, I plead. I lean towards her and say quietly: "Your architect...remember?" hoping that would ring a bell. But she can't listen. She just cannot. Who can know the architect? So I meekly turn away.<br /><br />This is my story. Somebody may talk about this someday. I now know how it is to love someone from a distance. Unrequited love.<br /><br />I have seen her grow up over the years. I remember the very simple beginnings. She was a bare piece of earth: Forgotten and trampled upon. Not really aware of the lives that lay dormant inside her. "Mother earth": that is what she was. Even then I knew, kind of intuitively, how important she would be to the children's lives.<br /><br />I nurtured her. Or I thought I was nurturing her. Some of the nurturing was quietly meditative. Some was boisterous and had all the anger of a passionate architect, in the throes of creative upheavals. I finally managed to lift her up from her misery on the ground, and there she is now: Resplendently contributing to the world. Possibly words fail her, memories too fail her and she possibly can't express what I feel. Maybe she does have something to say but haven't got the clue how or why.<br /><br />Then ... just as I had predicted, the children came and gathered into her bosom. I was taken aback by the speed at which they came in. One after another. I happily sighed seeing growth happening.<br /><br />I admire the chatter of children around her. I hear that and I respect that. I feel I have contributed to their lives too but others don't think so. They think I talk too much about her, and yet they wonder why she does not tell anything anything about me. They think I am taking all the credit and can't fathom how I can do that at all.<br /><br />I had worked quite a lot for her. She possibly does not know or possibly think that I don't care. Possibly, she thinks that I am not grateful. But she had helped me setup my house. And I am ever grateful.<br /><br />She has now aged gracefully. She still looks more or less the way she had looked when she settled down in these parts. Maybe a streak here and a wrinkle there but nothing much more. I am kind of proud of her. I am also proud of what I contributed, though for some reason I am not part of her now.<br /><br />So, I finally wrote this. Beatles had expressed it aptly: "Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup. They slither as they pass. They slip away, across the universe"<br /><br />Oh. I think I did not tell you who she is.<br /><br />...<br />...<br />...<br />...</span></h5>
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<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}" style="color: #333333; line-height: 1.38;"><br />She is Vighnahar, a large housing society that I designed many years back in Nerul, Navi Mumbai, India. My residence is in the very adjacent colony next to Vighnahar and as luck would have it, my bedroom overlooks her. A very serendipitous twist of destiny. It was from her fees, I could buy this residence where I now stay. This colony was also by the same builder. Though I was not the architect for this one, the builder allowed some financial jugglery. I am truly grateful to her.<br /><br />When I was placing an air-conditioner in my bedroom, something prevented me from installing it into the only window on that wall overlooking Vighnahar. Instead I broke open another opening in the wall for the AC. I was curious to know how Vighnahar would grow.<br /><br />I had designed a large garden nestled within 9 buildings. To nurture the children who I knew who would come. And for the old who take their walks quietly comfortable seeing the kids playing safely. I was acutely aware of the 222 families who would settle down into her bosom. Their heart beats. Their songs. Their laughter. Their tears. Their upheavals. Their fears.<br /><br />I hear the chatter of her children through that window every day. It comforts me. Like little sparrows twittering.<br /><br />I sometimes see activities happening in that garden; the way I had predicted: The top of the under-ground water tank being used as a stage for some colony function. I was beaming from four floors up, in the next colony: I had prepared that water tank for the children when I designed her. But obviously, nobody saw me. Humility is sometimes forced upon arrogant architects as life happens all around.<br /><br />Sometimes when I take a walk around, I stop at the gates. The same one I had designed. I get shooed away. They maybe taken aback by the sight of this decrepit and dishevelled chap peering in. It feels like a scene from Guru Dutt's Pyasa. So I come back and admire her from my bedroom. Love from a distance.<br /><br />She has indeed aged gracefully. A couple of years back, they replastered it entirely and I was on my toes to see what colours they will put up. To my pleasant surprise, they repainted her exactly in the same colour scheme as before. I was pleased as a plum. A few wrinkles here and there, but nothing much more. Everyone knows her. She is an important landmark in Nerul.<br /><br />I will keep the window open and hope to continue to see her from there. At least that way, I can pretend that I am Shah Jahan and outside is my Taj Mahal… I hope the world will at least permit an old architect think about his love in that fashion. I hope the world will understand … one day… one day… one day</span></h5>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-11053527257097422562010-12-27T22:33:00.000-08:002010-12-27T22:42:42.393-08:00Making a reasonable sculpture<div><div><div>Some of my students/friends on Facebook been asking for the story behind this sculpture I had made when I was in IIT ... so here it is now:</div></div><div><br /></div><div><span><a href="http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2601473&l=f798d61100&id=539255548" style="color:rgb(33, 88, 148)" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/photo.<wbr>php?pid=2601473&l=f798d61100&<wbr>id=539255548</a></span></div> </div><div><div><span><br />Spring Fest 1980 was my first full fledged festival I was attending at IIT. It was exciting and the mood was very nice. I did not have any reason for participating in anything in<span> the festival, but I was a keen observer. Those days, I had just come from Mumbai and was quite "shell-shocked" (to put it mildly) by what IITians were doing. It didn't strike me that what one can do is actually all there within oneself. We just need to surface that capability out.<span> </span><br /><br />I was walking around the campus, and events were happening everywhere. In one corner I saw this large group of people doing all kinds of things with clay. I told myself "Hey, why not? Let me see if I can do this. At the worst nothing will happen. So I will get nothing and anyway I was starting with nothing. And that is okay" I was about 45 minutes late and asked the organizer of the event if I could join in. He shrugged his shoulder and said "As long as you submit on time"<span> </span><br /><br />I dived in.. and what you see in that photo is what I made that day. It has a striking resemblence to my grandfather whom I admire greatly. I remember keeping his image in my mind as I worked furiously with the clay to meet the deadline. I won this event and I won the same event within the 1st three positions in all the subsequent Spring Fests (save the last one, where; if memory serves me right, the event was not held)<br /><br />I love working with clay. The only experience (if I can call it that) is a TV program on Doordarshan which I remember seeing as a kid, where a sculptor made an amazing bust of Abraham Lincoln as he explained the life of that president. By the end of the talk, he had also finished the bust. It was truly remarkable that within half an hour one could make a bust. It gave me the confidence that something can be done in a limited time.<br /><br />There are some lessons I learnt in that one episode: It put me on a road where (as one of my friend put it) I am on a "perpetual churn" of self-discovery. I was quite a reserved chap during those days (in fact nobody would believe that I am a reserved person today; other than those who knew me during my childhood and teens) I realized that the biggest hurdle is the one that we create for ourselves in our mind. There are many, many talented IITians I know who simply wasted their lives because they wake up each day and don't want to be comfortable with the imperfections they may have.<br /><br />C'mon, what is the worst that can happen if you try out something and it does not turn out nice? Maybe you think friends would laugh at you... but that is not true. Real good friends will not laugh AT you. They will laugh WITH you and calm you down, if your plans dont go right. So just dive ahead and do exactly what you want. Maybe whatever you did is what the world wanted and you will miss contributing to the world, if you thought the world will not accept your imperfection. Even today, I have no clue whether I did an absolutely good job or not with this bust. In fact, recently a trained sculptor pointed out that the forehead of this bust is sloping -- and so it surely can be improved upon.<span> </span><br /><br />The act of sculpting also has lessons for your life:<span> </span><br /><br /><b>Firstly: Choose the right clay.</b> </span></span></div><div><span><span>Somewhere inside; one's genetics and basic growth does play a part. Well, we cannot control this aspect for ourselves. Our "clay" has already been given to us. But it does have lessons on what we can give to our progeny. I tend to take a lot of trouble to ensure that my kids and my students get as much of my attitude, learning techniques, my excitement and curiosity. These are values that I want my kids to grow up with. Because that is how they'll get the real clay they'll get to work with when they grow.<br /><br /><b>Secondly: Get the right amount of water in it.</b> </span></span></div><div><span><span>Too much or too little water will destroy the sculpture. Similarly, whatever we do with ourselves; whatever ingredients we put into our efforts, make sure we don't overdo it or underplay it. I know many who remain silent and secretive. They don't want the rest of the world to know what they are up to. They go under a pretence of modesty, when actually they are silently devaluing the other person. One of the best thing you can do to yourself and your friends is to expose both your pride and your vulnerabilities. At the same time, don't go over the top, overwhelm your friends and give them a message that they cannot do what you've done. If you are truly transparent, friends will then always chip in when they see sincere work. Like the way Paul Ryan, Pratap Singh Khanwilkar ( my friends from IIT days) and others chipped in to clean up that day for the presentation of this sculpture.<br /><br /><b>Thirdly: Ensure that you knead the clay really well.</b> </span></span></div><div><span><span>Somehow I've always got this right. Not just for this sculpture for all subsequent sculptures. This bust is now over 30 years old and it has not cracked though it has never been baked (One small part of the nose got chipped because it fell down one day. I was surprised it didn't split open) To me, kneading clay means churning everything that I learn inside me very well, holistically. If I dwell too much time on one aspect of a creative problem I'm working on, I whisper to myself "You are getting stuck in one corner of the problem. Go knead the other part too"<br /><br />The simple summary: It is not the need for perfection which should drive you, but the fact that whatever that you have inside you may be good enough to propel you forward. Just make sure you maximize your own efforts.<br /><br />Hope I didn't bore you with this</span></span></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-58559417390481651772009-11-03T06:15:00.000-08:002009-11-28T10:05:25.471-08:00Rabble rousersThere are two types of people in this world; those who say that there are two types of people and those who do not. In a similar vein, there are two kinds of people who talk about design in India: Those who talk about design and those who think that they can talk about design.<br /><br />Many say: "Architecture has not grown up in India". Of course it hasn't." There is not much original design knowledge around." Of course there isn't. "If only we could start afresh thinking about architecture." Oh yes, I've heard that before: If only we could...whatever. And so it goes.<br /><br />I used to work at Hafeez Contractor, a very long time back. He is one architect everyone loves to hate and nobody knows where to slot him. I've seen many strawman arguments about him, and some even more subtly veiled arguments where they snicker about his work in darkened auditoriums showing slick power-point presentations on really <span style="font-style: italic;">good</span> architecture (which ironically often means works from outside our country espousing vague untested philosophies or sometimes are commissioned works for the rich like farm-houses, etc.)<br /><br />Before I give the impression that I am trying to defend the architecture of Hafeez, let me make this clear: I am not defending his works. I think they are mostly terrible and for very valid reasons which can be clearly and objectively explained but I am not going to enumerate those here. I am merely defending his place in our country. He is out there making some impact and that cannot be merely wished away. Many want to brush him off but the bloke is back like a thorn in the side that refuses to dislodge.<br /><br />But before that, let me share some of my experiences I had when working with him. When I was there, his office had just eight people. I was fresh out of IIT and there were some intelligent and hard-working blokes there. We used to work like dogs, pigs, work-horses...whatever you want to label us. I have never remotely seen any other office putting that kind of energy behind their works. It's almost 20 years since I left him and I still have to see such an office.<br /><br />Hafeez had a fantastic work culture. He would lead from the front. He did not expect us to come early for work if he himself could not come earlier. He worked quite transparently: Mostly sitting alongside his staff. He still does that. He did not have a cabin. Still does not. If he shouted at someone, everyone knew about it. He was not afraid of his mistakes. He was not in awe of his own capabilities.<br /><br />One day, he called me to his desk and showed me some of his works he had done when he was a student at Academy of Architecture: He used to put up enough sheets for one design submission to cover all the four walls of an entire classroom. He completed his post-graduation in the US in half the time. (One year instead of the usual two)<br /><br />He knew the minutest of details of 'boring' mundane stuff such as the <span style="font-style: italic;">nahani</span> trap connection to the outside drain pipe. I have seen him come to construction sites and sketch out solutions to seemingly insolvable problems that stumped consultants. And for those areas where he was not clear about the structure, etc. he had enough people to advise him. (Though lately some of those consultants are probably exploiting him... at least that is the impression I am getting from outside)<br /><br />I do grant that in all the hurry a lot of mistakes were committed... which was part of the reason I left the office, but one simply cannot deny the knowledge the chap had. Which is much more than what I can say about the nay-sayers who only pretend they can understand Derrida and Zaha Hadid and some obtuse schizophrenic French philosophers.<br /><br />As explained earlier, I do agree that much of Hafeez's work is crap. I left his office (amicably one may say. We are good friends) when I realized that it was a conscious decision of his, NOT to really use his knowledge but go with the tide. Such a sad waste of energy and knowledge.<br /><br />I fully agree to the sad state of architecture in India. Many of these so called "knowledgeable critics" do not realize that they are one prime reason why mediocrity exists in India. Let me explain why I state this and this is not the first time I have tried telling this: I have said this before also, and I shall say this again. And I'll indulge in this rhetoric till the point gets driven home.<br /><br />Excellent path breaking architecture can <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">only</span> emerge from a context of ordinary architecture which is <span style="font-style: italic;">reasonably good</span>. Excellence in any area can only emerge out if it is challenged and chased by other works which are almost as good. The competition to do something good can really make some of the participants in the race rise up to the challenge.<br /><br />In architecture, the context in a country such as India would be housing for the masses. But which fresh architect would want to do oh these works for the masses? The reason being such works mostly are funded by builders. Oh, which self-respecting fresh graduate would want to work for builders ("Aren't they scoundrels?" is the veiled thought) And why do they get such warped opinions? Because when they were in college as students they were exposed to pseudo-intellectuals who warn them about "bad" architecture and hint that self-respecting architects should stay away from them. They show those slick crisply made power-point presentations where; l0-behold, examples from outside our context are shown and stuff like deconstruction, etc. are discussed and the students rarely catch on that all the intellectual show during the presentation is merely that of an "emperor wearing his new clothes".<br /><br />The saddest situation is when these chaps talk about cute little farmhouses, row-houses, bungalows and interiors seen in coffee table magazines and proclaim some deep design thoughts. I have always maintained that it would be ridiculous for anyone with some modicum of design knowledge to do injustice to such works. It would be a crying shame if one cannot design a good row-house, bungalow ... anything where the design context is known. (i.e. wherever the end user can be identified) I have always told my students that they should sob into their pillow if they cannot do a good job in those areas. So I don't particularly care to attend seminars/lectures/slide-shows where they talk about such works. Nothing really new to learn there.<br /><br />But try to take up the challenge of design for anonymous users, where the design is used all 24 hours. Housing for the masses being the best example in this category. Now, do a good job or at least a tolerable one in that category and you may have a point about your design capability.<br /><br />If only I could drive out these rabble-rousers and tell them to go and take up the challenge, if not themselves, at least they should have the grace to tell the audience to do so. But then they are busy drumming up immature biases in fresh minds.<br /><br />I know a simple, yet talented architect who was almost crying because a promising student who had initially agreed to join him refused to do so, because he wanted to do cute row-houses and my friend was someone who simply did whatever that was thrown at him.<br /><br />The pseudo-intellectuals remind me of a joke. They are like those army recruits who collectively take a step back, letting a dumb fellow to come out in front when asked to volunteer for a mission critical job. No wonder the mission of achieving excellence in architecture in India is dead even before it has started.<br /><img hidden="true" style="border: medium none ; position: absolute; z-index: 2147483647; opacity: 0.6; display: none; width: 1px; height: 1px;" src="data:image/png;base64,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%3D" id="myFxSearchImg" />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-74404634541409259732009-04-21T01:49:00.000-07:002009-04-22T07:02:42.540-07:00The emergence of a new paradigm for a design officeRecently my old house at Chembur went in for redevelopment. Part of the reason was the termite infestation in that building. A corner of my mind did not miss the irony: The puny termite actually got the building down... even if they did it indirectly through the hands of a builder.<br /><br />Scientists have been marveling at the cooperative capabilities of termites, ants and such like insects. If you get down on your knees and see them at work it would be hard to grasp what was really happening. At an individual level; each termite is probably doing very little. But when you put all their activities together something entirely different comes through: something that is distinctly not possible by each of the termite.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework/skaalid/theory/gestalt/gestaltimages/closure.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 136px; height: 151px;" src="http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework/skaalid/theory/gestalt/gestaltimages/closure.gif" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />In Gestalt theory, there is something called the principle of closure which is best illustrated by the diagram shown alongside. <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><span style="color: rgb(51, 0, 102);font-family:Minion Web,Century Schoolbook,serif;" >The principle of closure applies when we tend to see complete figures even when part of the information is missing. We see three black circles covered by a white triangle, ev</span></span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><span style="color: rgb(51, 0, 102);font-family:Minion Web,Century Schoolbook,serif;" >en through it could just as easily be three incomplete circles joined together.</span></span> <span style="font-size:78%;">(http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework/skaalid/theory/gestalt/closure.htm)</span><br /><br />In other words, a new shape emerges out of the collection. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Equivalently, when the termites are at work; their efforts are greater than the sum of what each one puts in. Scientists have abstracted this phenomenon and have noticed it in several areas. They have given another name to this phenomena: They call it <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/emergence" title="A phenomenon that simplifies complexity">emergence</a>. It is a response to simplify complexity.<br /><br />What could be the reason why the termites behave in such a fashion? My guess is that left to each individual, the environment around them poses too many factors that the individual cannot assess and respond to. Hence nature has given them a way to work cooperatively together as a collective super-organism. Even if a few o<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Termite_Cathedral_DSC03570.jpg/260px-Termite_Cathedral_DSC03570.jpg" title="Termite cathedral built by cooperative work of termites"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 260px; height: 347px;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Termite_Cathedral_DSC03570.jpg/260px-Termite_Cathedral_DSC03570.jpg" alt="Termite cathedral built by cooperative work of termites" border="0" /></a>f the termites do not fit into that cooperative (due to genetic malfunction and other reasons) the gestalt will still work because there are so many of them who work together.<br /><br />There is a lesson for us architects and other designers here: Modern life has brought in so many complexities that I believe it is beyond the capability of even the most talented architect/designer. Earlier, our offices used to be personality driven: i.e. one or a few talented personalities used to spew out the knowledge which was used by the design firm to solve design problems they were given to solve.<br /><br />Today, the horses have already run away from the stables; so there is no point closing the stable door. We cannot hunker down in our design office and hope that each design office can tackle all aspects of design and provide a good solution. Do we know what all issues we need to be knowledgeable about? Let's see: Environment, climate, psychological, social, political, sustainability, energy, pollution....the list is actually quite vast.<br /><br />If we need to handle all that, we need to emerge out from our individual offices and that too in masses. We need to set up collaborative systems so that we become a super-organism.<br /><br />In one area of design; namely software design, such an approach has already yielded results. The open source movement in software brings together large collective of software programmers and users who can pore over the design and improve it. Even if all users do not participate in the actual coding of the software; the <span style="font-style: italic;">potential</span> that they could (if they so desire) is good enough to keep the software clean and powerful. There are no vested interests who can manipulate the software so that only very few people succeed and reap the benefits.<br /><br />I believe this approach MUST come into all kinds of designing; not just software design. It is inevitable that it will come. Why do I say it? At the risk of repeating myself; not only are the issues that a design office beyond the capability of the most talented among us but the issues are coming in thick and fast. Take for example; housing for the middle-income and low-income group in India. Under no circumstances can the design demands of this population be catered to by the existing architectural offices in India; even if every one of them work full time. The reason is: logistics. The sheer numbers involved in this growing economy of India can exhaust all individual efforts.<br /><br />Hence an open source movement in architecture is the only recourse. And this is how it will work:<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar" title="The Cathedral and The Bazaar are referred in Eric Raymond's seminal paper on the open source movement">The new design office would not be a closeted cathedral. Instead, the doors would be open to a bazaar of people who can come in and go.</a> The architect who initiates a design will form a temporal organization for a particular project and build up a daisy-chain of fellow consultants and assistants who will work on the project at hand. The same consultants/assistants may or may not work on other projects. Each consultant in that daisy chain would in a similar fashion build up their own "daisy-chains". Responsibilities and rewards will be shared along the daisy chain. I have been promoting <a href="http://www.teamtad.com">TeamTAD</a> to achieve this objective. It is possibly the world's first open source movement in architecture.<br /><br />Two immediate objections are often presented to me when I come to this point:<br /><ul><li>a) Will my talent get to be seen and recognized? (i.e. who owns the copyrights?)<br /></li><li>b) How will I make money?</li></ul>The open source movement in software design were also initially considered non-intuitive and perplexing probably because of these two 'objections'. However time has settled these controversies: Every person who works on an open source software project is acknowledged. In fact, it is illegal to remove the name of anyone who had worked on the software earlier. So the whole daisy-chain of acknowledgments are preserved. At a first superficial glance, it may look as if this is a rebellion against recognition of talent. But that is completely wrong. Architects will definitely get acknowledged and recognized for their work using this system.<br /><br />Curiously enough, such offices will highlight the true capability of individuals even though each are involved in a cooperative process to do their work. This was proved in open source software. For e.g. The world has sat up and recognized the efforts of Richard Stallman (Free Software Foundation), Linus Trovalds (Linux, GIT), Brian Cohen (BitTorrent) .... and all of them did their work cooperatively along with others.<br /><br />The second aspect on how money is to be made is a bit more tricky... It is complicated by the fact that many confuse the <span style="font-style: italic;">freedom</span> to take a look at a design and criticize it to be synonymous with "<span style="font-style: italic;">zero price". </span>Richard Stallman, the father of Free Software Foundation (FSF) often clarifies it by saying that the "Free" of FSF stands for "<span style="font-style: italic;">free as in freedom</span>" and it need not be "<span style="font-style: italic;">free as in free beer"</span><br /><br />It is important that fellow designers are given the freedom to peep into the source code cauldron as the software is being cooked. Unfortunately, the act of peeping into the source code gives the feeling that one can take it and run away with it to do whatever you want (Well FSF allows even that, as long as that when you give the cooked design to someone else you will give the same rights that you yourself had received i.e. that other person can also look into the design) Many FSF software are also "free as in beer" and that fuddles the issue even further. So how does one really make money with open-source stuff?<br /><br />This was best answered in a book on the business aspects of open source (and the book; by the way, was also <a href="http://www.dreamsongs.com/IHE/IHE.html">given away using the open source model</a>!) This is what the authors; Ron Goldman and Richard Gabriel, have to say in their book "Innovation Happens Elsewhere: Open Source as Business Strategy"<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The phrase "innovation happens elsewhere" captures the essence of the idea of adding just the smallest amount of innovation necessary for competitive advantage. It is common for people working for a technology company to suffer, at least a little, from the belief that all the really innovative people in their particular technology happen to work at that company. This can cause such a company to work too hard to produce every last bit of related technology, which is often not the best competitive approach. Many advantages accrue when a company adopts the attitude that most innovation happens elsewhere and focuses on choosing the best outside innovations and figuring out the right distinguishing features to make its products competitive.</span><br /><br />What they meant was that it is wise for a business to let the mass of people working on the open source project do the actual innovation, and the clever business man should be able to wrap a business model around the innovation and be able to make money via the "wrap". He gives several examples on how this has succeeded. An interesting example is the success of Turbo-Pascal of Borland. It was the first high quality, extremely low-cost compiler... where the innovation actually was done elsewhere (by a person/s in Denmark) Though Turbo-Pascal was not an open-source system; it bucked the trend and in a way proved how business models can be built around external innovations.<br /><br />What we need is to adopt suitable business strategies for the new open-source kind of architectural practices. I do not know what forms such business strategies will appear; but I've already seen some very innovative economic practices among some architectural firms that have grown quite big. For e.g. Cubellis is a firm in US, made from a collection of smaller firms who act as shareholders. Profits are equitably divided among the shareholders as per the work put by them. Though not yet an open-source firm, it is a sign of things to come. They have grown from a 20 man office in 1986 to over 300 people with offices all over the world. They were recently in India scouting for collaborations.<br /><br />The profit motivations of a business can be separated from the talents that the business itself has. Hitherto the Internet, it was believed that in order to earn money we need to shut down our shutters and work privately, with some tricks up our sleeve. But that need not be the case. Open-ness can be eminently profitable. Much more than what can be achieved through manipulations behind close doors. It is like the builders of my house saying "let the termites do their job...and we'll come and still find a way to do business". We do have lots to learn from the termites... even business.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-90082838528253592312009-04-02T09:42:00.000-07:002009-04-04T00:36:46.968-07:00The relentless waves of art and architectureThis is the transcript of a lecture of mine which I had given at the D.Y.Patil College of architecture, Nerul, Navi Mumbai.<br /><br />Art and architecture comes at us like the onslaught of waves at a seashore ... relentlessly, continuously, one after another.<br /><br />The Dutch painter; Vincent Van Gogh's story ( <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Van_Gogh" target="_blank"> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Van_Gogh </a> ) is one that of intense introspection... his need to contribute to the world around overwhelmed him, made him continuously restless... he never fitted in anywhere. Only his brother (Theo) believed in him completely and supported him as much as he could. (Both the brothers were eventually buried side by side.) Vincent died unrecognised and unacknowledged, except by his brother, and a very close circle of friends- many of them who were as eccentric as he was. You can feel both the "mother earth" inside Vincent and the rise of the male testosterone; the raw energy that propelled him even though it also made him fairly incommunicado with the opposite gender. (He experienced unrequited love several times in his life) He tried many things in his life (tried to be a miner, a priest, ... ) Nothing gave him that sense of complete satisfaction, he even cut of his ear once in a fit of rage...eventually ended up taking his own life.<br /><br />Many consider his paintings to be a major deviation from the art scene of his time...in fact, I personally believe he paved the way for the west to accept Indian philosophy and the Buddhist way of looking at things. (e.g. the generous acceptance of contrasts and in-betweens) Hitherto, western art and philosophy had certain reductionist approaches which were not easily dislodged. I am no art historian, but even a casual reading of Vincent's work would indicate this.<br /><br />It was not just his paintings that made many people sit up and think but his life was also a story that simply had to be told. And what a story it is! .... it was narrated by Irving Stone who wrote his biography "Lust for life" That book is so riveting that it almost does manage to stand on its own merit rather than derive the strength merely from Vincent's life. To me, that book is the other wave that got set in motion See <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lust-Life-Irving-Stone/dp/0452262496" target="_blank"> http://www.amazon.com/Lust-Life-Irving-Stone/dp/0452262496 </a><br /><br />And then the movie made after on his life (the screenplay was based on the book). A classic directed by Vincent Minnelli and George Cukor (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lust_for_Life_%28film%29" target="_blank"> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lust_for_Life_%28film%29 </a> ) where Kirk Douglas (the father of Michael Douglas, a current hollywood favourite) plays the role of Vincent. This movie is a must-see, and sometimes they used to show it on some Indian TV movie channel. Don't miss it ever, even if you have read the book. The handsome, craggy face of Kirk Douglas and the way he goes about clumsily in his large frame is very impressive indeed (Vincent was a very muscular type -- opposite of what an artist is supposed to "look" like) It was nominated for many Oscar awards, and won quite a few. To me this movie is yet another wave crashing at the seashore.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/0gCORHq_-2Y&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0gCORHq_-2Y&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />And then the song: "Vincent" made by a then fairly obscure American musician, Don McClean ( <a href="http://www.donmclean.com/" target="_blank">http://www.donmclean.com/</a> ). He supposedly never compromised on his music and so never begged in front of Music producers/radio stations and hence never went onto the real high end acts. His song, "Empty chairs" is beautiful not just for the music but also for the amazing lyrics of a love gently lost.<br /><br />Much of his music was redone by many other artists. For e.g. his very lengthy song; American Pie is an all-time favourite which has seen covers done by many other artists. To me, his song "Vincent" is probably a musician's condensation of what Vincent and his work was all about. Here are the chords and lyrics <a href="http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/vincent.htm" target="_blank">http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/vincent.htm </a> ... and here is the YouTube.com video (which is quite a good composition on its own) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gCORHq_-2Y" target="_blank"> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gCORHq_-2Y </a> I feel, the composer of that YouTube presentation has understood what it means to be an impressionist (one of the styles that Vincent Van Gogh painted in) where nothing is presented in "pure blacks" but as fleeting impressions of his life and works. In the whole song, there are very few instances of the word "Vincent". The crafting of the words is so subtle and intense -- many interior designers and architects can learn quite a few things from the words themselves! (e.g., when explaining a color scheme to a client!) "Starry, starry night/Flaming flowers that brightly blaze/ Swirling clouds in violet haze/Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue"<br /><br />Don Mclean did have a few big hits but as he was not willing to compromise his artistry he did not get much airplay. Other musicians respected his talent though, and now ... for another wavelet ... this time generated by Don Mclean<br /><br />Roberta Flack, when attending one of Don Mclean's performance heard his love songs ("And I love you so", "Crying" are two very touching love songs) which inspired her so much that she wrote a song about Don Mclean himself! It is called "Killing me softly with his song" <br />Here is a beautiful rendition of the song by another person (on guitar) <br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/g4UyGUoPyS0&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/g4UyGUoPyS0&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Later on at Wikipedia, I learnt that actually Roberta Flack was inspired by another musician <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lori_Lieberman">Lori Lieberman</a> who was the one who had actually heard Don Mclean. She wrote a song called "Killing me softly with his softly with his blues" Well...how inspiration comes from many directions...<br /><br />So the waves keep pounding on the seashore, relentlessly, one after another. Where did the waves originate? In the above series; it was from the restless heart of Vincent Van Gogh.<br /><br />Such things have happened in India enough number of times in the past, though we do not get to hear of them much as they are often not documented. For e.g. the troubled life of Dada Saheb Phalke -- how he went around influencing the Indian art and film scene. (The painter Raja Ravi Varma was one of Phalke's influences ... that "wave" is not known much. Ravi Varma also influenced a lot of calendar art) Phalke had seen an emotional movie about Christ which inspired him to take up movie-making.<br /><br />Film director, Kamal Saroop is now documenting his life. The life and works of Kamal is also a story waiting to be told sometime... he was one of the directors of Ghasiram Kotwal, the movie and today he is a big influence on the Indian underground alternative movie movement. He was also one of the assistant directors of Gandhi, the Attenborough movie. A website <a href="http://www.phalkefactory.net/" target="_blank">http://www.phalkefactory.net </a> is assisting in the documentation of his movie making. It will take several years before the movie comes out, and I hope we all get to see the intensity that was Dada Saheb Phalke.<br /><br />But why remain in the past?<br /><br />I can see many of you, maybe after several whole nights of hard work, finding that wisp of inspiration in the early morning dew; crafting something so intense and with so much thought that it would set into motion waves that will continuously lash at the seashore of art/architecture in India.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-47596168059560377542009-02-11T09:21:00.000-08:002013-03-03T11:34:47.254-08:00Where is the lotus in the marshes?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
When I left IIT; I remember rationalizing that either fame or fortune (or both) awaits us IITians! Oh; the naivety of adolescence and the male hormones! Combined with the smugness of architects from IIT. I remember a particular conversation I had with my fellow batch-mate Pratap Singh Khanwilkar on how one could go on with our lives from thereon. He went on to invent a unique left-ventricular assist device and achieved both fame and fortune. I've achieved neither. Indeed I may only be remembered for some immodest noises and some <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">questions</span> I've asked here and there on architectural representation theory. And the answers to those questions will take a long time; surely.<br />
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The route Pratap chose was first go abroad to seek his objective. That is a well traveled route. His life story is very interesting and worth told (will do that sometime) But what about those who walk on the road not often trodden? So the question for today's blog entry is where is the real challenge in architecture in India? Indeed where can we get fame and fortune in our field? ("At least fame <span style="font-style: italic;">please</span>!" I can see the plead in some of my students' eyes) ?<br />
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I've seen an almost uniformly standard response to this question from many of my students and quite a lot of architects I know. And I am not very happy with it. Good architecture means doing projects that are conceptually well thought of, well designed, well-built and they must look good ... especially when there are nobody in those '<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">in</span>' projects. What is wrong with that? Nothing (other than the last bit about people) The 'wrong' is not directly in this stance. But it is in the context where such stance is played out. I'll explain what this means shortly.<br />
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I've seen this approach in seminar after seminar; slide-show after slide-show. In my youth I have often cockily mocked at this stance. Much to the amusement of my audience: They were giggling in the background ... not because I was making a point but because I never had a great piece of work to boast about and many of them had actually taken the trouble to see my works. I realized this later: An architect from the south who had heard about me was sadly and deeply disappointed by my works when he actually saw my portfolio. He thought I was making great architecture and my portfolio was a damp squib. According to him what I said and what I did were two different things.<br />
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The truth is: I've been an honest architect and that honesty to me; includes being honest to the extent of not manipulating the contexts my projects are placed in. (What is this I am talking about? Just a bit more patience as I grapple with my words; please.) I have always put out my efforts at the maximum capacity that I (rather; my office) had at any point in time. It was due to a promise that I had made to myself when I left IIT: I will not refuse a job just because it is too low-down or by some scoundrel with absolutely no taste for architecture.<br />
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Now for two digressions that can unravel my mysterious explanation on the issue of the <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">real challenges</span> in architecture in India today :<br />
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One concerns a famous violinist who was deliberately misplaced. The other one is about a book I read recently: "The Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell.<br />
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Washington Post conducted a now <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html">famous experiment</a> : They requested Joshua Bell; a very accomplished violinist, to perform some complicated classical music in the subway -- that too using a Stradivarius violin. The results: Practically nobody even noticed the music; let alone Joshua or his even more famous Strad.<br />
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So: The context can often make a huge difference in appreciating or even "tagging" something as being good.<br />
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Malcolm Gladwell goes on to prove in his book that it is not just the context that contributes to the success and recognition of a person; but also the right timing and back breaking-work. Talent comes in last and even if one has it; just a bit of it will do. Sometimes even a minor age-difference can be crucial in certain fields ( like sports). Though I largely agree with the book; the point were made rather simplistically; I must add... some of the points were simplified to the extent of making them trivial. For e.g. His points regarding correlating rice-cultivation with success in mathematics were not fully convincing.<br />
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When I mulled over both the Joshua episode and Gladwell's book; I thought of a scene from some TV show: A group of reluctant army recruits were lined up for a mission. One person had to volunteer. But nobody wanted to go. Unfortunately; one was a bit dumb and before he could realize what was going on, the rest of the recruits spontaneously took a neat step backwards. The dumb fellow therefore became the automatic choice. The lesson here is very simple: When you change the context; you can easily make something stand out from a group.<br />
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Which is what architects and students want to do quite often in India. They would rather hand-pick the context of the projects by simply standing back from works that may not offer them the right exposure. That is the silent aspect of a project that many will not even talk about. That is the part which I find socially irresponsiblle. When such architects display their crisp slides; I would really like to know how many projects were thrust upon them by people who forced them to do stuff they did not want to do. I have not met any one who has convinced me that they did have a wholesome set of projects. The award winning types will always take a step back from those that are destined to go into obscurity. They don't want dirt in their portfolio. That is why we see very few low or middle-income housing among the awards. The clients for such projects are the uncouth and unloving who will insist that the architect must perform at the subway with a hat out.<br />
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The "business" of the practice of architecture unfortunately has a very anti-social side to it: Those who can afford architecture don't really need architects and those who desperately require the design knowledge that architects have, those unfortunates cannot afford architects. (The rich can always order workers around and by trial and error get their own architecture exactly the way they want). So that paradox compounds the problem. We architects have not done enough soul searching among ourselves on where our real challenges are.<br />
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Now don't misread me: I am not claiming that I am a Joshua Bell. (Whether I am or not will be proved by time. Ahem. It is anyway irrelevant for this article) What I am claiming is that the award winning type of architects who have crisp slides and who have stood out by carefully weeding out projects ... well they may very well be the Joshua Bells of our field. And if they are the Joshua Bells; they surely have <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">never</span> played at the subway. They have always ensured that they will play at the top opera halls. I met one of them claiming: "Oh; we've decided to be <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">boutique</span> designers. We are not for all. We are expensive. For quality you need to be that"<br />
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Other Joshuas will have their own explanations. Now I am being generous here: Many of them are only <span style="font-style: italic;">fake</span> Joshuas. Most have used Malcolm Gladwell's methods of getting to the top: Not really much by way of talent or knowledge. Mostly, other circumstantial issues placed them and their works in the limelight. I am simply not impressed and neither are the actual users out there who have to actually live and use their idiotic masterpieces.<br />
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If we look at really good architecture in the West; you will find that they are couched in the midst of works for the common people which were of reasonable quality. Those projects were not middling. The rich nations have more checks and balances in place I guess. (There are other reasons too such as the homogeneity of the society, higher standards of living, etc) If we really have to produce real masters here, we need to uplift architecture not just in those cute bungalows seen lifelessly in coffee-table top magazines but also public architecture of the lower and middle classes; even in the 2nd and third tier cities, smaller towns and villages. All nations will have their masterpieces. And such masterpieces have to painfully shoulder their way out of the quality of the rest of the ordinary architecture. Therefore, if the ordinary architecture itself was of good quality then that nation would surely have masterpieces which will be acknowledged the world over and stand the test of time. Today; India is hardly known for any masterpieces. Louis Kahn and Le Corbusier's works do not count. They were in a by-gone era and were couched in an international context. I really cannot see anything worthwhile produced in India in the last sixty years.<br />
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I have done a lot of bad architecture in my time. My office never intended it that way. I am not ashamed about them either because I know for a fact that others in the same context would have done far worse. Today; my practice of architecture has turned around a corner. I do not do conventional architecture. Almost nothing. Is this a contradiction? No. The context changed and I am in a new context and I accept that change in typical Buddhist humility focused on each flowing instance of time.<br />
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So what do I recommend we do in India or any developing country?<br />
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If you are truly honest; don't try to manipulate the context of your projects or even yourself. Take everything and be good at everything. Peer recognition is good but don't get into that self-congratulatory back-slapping mode for our "awards" in order to choose the Joshuas among us. Go to the junta and ask them. How many awards really and truly take in the feedback of the actual users? (One beautiful book called "Personal Space" by Roger Summers elaborates on this) When our office finished the office interior for Konkan Railway Corporation; we got an unsolicited letter from their chief engineer where he acknowledged that our design was the context for everyone at Konkan Railway when they were working on their magnificient project. That recognition is much better than the awards that we give each other.<br />
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In a developing country; we have to work in the marshes. That is where the "ping" of the <span style="font-style: italic;">developing</span> comes from. When you are in the marshes you have to wade in it. And if possible you have to make a lotus bloom there. And lo-behlod; a lotus can be seen only in the stinkiest of marshes. That can take time. A lotus also takes time to bloom. Be honest at every instance when doing all of that. If you know what to do at each pure instance; you can be a Buddha. Legend has it that wherever the Buddha walks; there will be a lotus.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-46201406725096896432009-02-01T23:05:00.001-08:002009-02-11T11:54:03.948-08:00Organic Design Process for Sustainable Architecture<span style="font-size:100%;"><object id="player" height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.authorstream.com/player/player.swf?p=144812_633690397523153750"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.authorstream.com/player/player.swf?p=144812_633690397523153750" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="355" width="425"></embed></object><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:13;"><span style="font-size:100%;">This presentation was given a couple of weeks back at Bharatiya Vidyapeeth College of Architecture; Navi Mumbai. The church shown in this presentation is one of my projects at Nerul; Navi Mumbai. When the first hypar shell was de-shuttered; the workers ran away from below. They thought the shell roof will not stand on just two columns. That too the span was around 12metrex12metre.</span></span><img style="visibility: hidden; width: 0px; height: 0px;" src="http://counters.gigya.com/wildfire/IMP/CXNID=2000002.0NXC/bHQ9MTIzMzU1ODI*ODYyOSZwdD*xMjMzNTU4MzA1Mjg3JnA9MjEzNDQxJmQ9Jm49YmxvZ2dlciZnPTEmdD*mbz*zN2EyNWZiY2ZiYWM*MDJmODNlOGU5OGNhYjI2ZWI*Mg==.gif" border="0" height="0" width="0" />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-89952593831534983282009-01-28T20:27:00.000-08:002009-02-02T07:17:28.035-08:00Braiding: The whole and the hole<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.provocraft.com/projects/kniftyknitter/images/braidscarf/braid.gif"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 225px; height: 869px;" src="http://www.provocraft.com/projects/kniftyknitter/images/braidscarf/braid.gif" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />The Buddhists tell us to live in the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">present</span>. What is the "present"? That instance of time which we are caught up in at any ...err... <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">instance</span>. The sharper the definition of that instance; a better buddhist we become. But wont that make our progress disjointed and quite schizophrenic? Of course it will; if we go only by that definition: We may not be able to establish connections to the past and also understand how the future evolves. <div><br /></div><div>So we need another concept here. I call it "braiding" Here is a WikiHow article on how someone with long tresses <a href="http://www.wikihow.com/Braid-Hair">braids her hair</a>. The image on the right shows how braiding is done when knitting a scarf. </div><div><br /></div><div>Each instance of the "present" is that point in the braid where the hair comes flowing together to meet at a knot. Analogously; we move from one "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">present</span>" instance to the next one when we braid together what has happened in the past and tie them into the present. What of the past is to brought into the present instance will depend on our skill and knowledge we possess. If we try to bring everything from the past then the hair will get all entangled. If we bring very little; the braiding will get completely disjointed.</div><div><br /></div><div>And what happens beyond the knot of the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">present instance</span>? The future opens up into more possibilities... and they are again braided into the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">next</span> knot. So each instance in our life is a coming together (<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">synthesis</span>) of a previous set of options (<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">analysis</span>) brought ahead and tied. These instances are not at pre-determined spots along the braid (That is where the analogy really breaks) We live through a continuum of instances. So we experience dynamic braiding that is going on continuously. Or should I say; ideally we ideally would be doing that. Many unfortunately do try to determine what constitutes their present instances they want to recognize. They are the ones who are caught up either in the past or too worried about the future. </div><div><br /></div><div>I often explain my students the same concept using another analogy: That of pottery. When we make a pot we have to continuously work on the whole pot. However; at each instance when we work on the whole we are actually analytically braiding the past. You have to have the right mix of both the analysis and the synthesis. Of the two; I believe synthesis is often lost out. </div><div><br /></div><div>Some people unfortunately end up digging only holes: They go in a linear direction; continuously analysing. It really does not produce results and it ends up being a bottomless exercise. Fortunately; the Eastern philosophies have taught us a lot more on these matters and I think the time has come to show the world this method of moving ahead in life.</div><div><br /></div><div>I often notice that people are much more comfortable finding patterns analytically. Grappling with the whole; especially if it is large and unwieldy; is quite disconcerting. They would rather remain in the analytical hole. </div><div><br /></div><div>Here is a very nice paper on <a href="http://www.swemorph.com/pdf/anaeng-r.pdf">Analysis and Synthesis</a></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-1866979275312134102009-01-22T10:29:00.001-08:002009-01-23T09:15:52.512-08:00Second order and third order patternsSome patterns and natural phenomena are readily understood by human beings. For example: The position of an object is very easily understood. Say a stone placed on the ground. You can also displace the stone and also understand the next order phenomenon; which is the concept of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">velocity</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">:</span> It is the displacement of the position of the stone <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">uniformly </span>over a time interval. It is when you get into second and third order or even higher order patterns that human beings have problems. <div><br /></div><div>For example; if the stone is moved at a greater rate of speed (i.e. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">non-uniformly</span>) ; you get a phenomenon called <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">acceleration</span> in physics<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">If the rate of speed </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> decreases over time then it is called a </span>deceleration<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">. M</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; ">any cannot intuit such second-order phenomena very easily and they have difficulty in getting a good grip around them. Once you do not understand them; it becomes even more difficult to connect it to other aspects of our reality. It took the genius of Newton to explain how </span>acceleration<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "> is connected to </span>force<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; ">. Force being </span>mass<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "> multiplied by </span>acceleration<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; ">. Mass is a zero-order phenomena (like position) and quite readily understood by most.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div>It does not stop just there. If one looks for it carefully; one can notice the phenomenon of the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">rate of acceleration</span>. That phenomenon also has a name. It is called a <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">jerk.</span> If you don't like it for its other social connotation then you can use the UK variant which is a <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">jolt</span>. A <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">jerk</span> is very difficult to understand and come to terms with. (Yes; jerks of all kinds are quite difficult!) If you want to understand all the various patterns in physics along the lines of position; velocity; acceleration; jerks; etc and how they are connected to other phenomena such as force then look at this <a href="http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/jerk.html">page on jerks</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now you may be wondering about the point I am trying to establish here.</div><div><br /></div><div>Understanding patterns is intrinsic to a human's effort to come to terms with the world around him/her. Patterns are not just seen in physical phenomena but also in other spheres of life: economic; social; political; psychological; physiological and whatever branch people have artificially divided life into. </div><div><br /></div><div>Some of us are capable of seeing just the zero-th order phenomena. Many can see even the first order ones. A few can dig deeper and notice the working of the second order. So on and so forth. You bring together a bunch of people with different capabilities and you have a rich source of misunderstandings. A conversation between people with different capabilities regarding perception of patterns can quickly degenerate quite fast: "Why don't you just accept the situation as it is? There is nothing more to it!" would be a common refrain by a person who can see the zeroth-order phenomena and nothing much more beyond that. "But can't you see that the situation is actually caused because of this xyz happening?" says the chap who has the ability to digest the next order. A more "deeper" person will then say "You are both wrong. It is important to see the situation as a time-slice of a larger variation that is happening"</div><div><br /></div><div>I guess that is what makes people interesting. They all seem to be alike but each move in a subtly different direction. Like a babbling brook.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-44843471638907967332009-01-19T08:53:00.000-08:002009-01-22T10:28:05.436-08:00Watch out! The Eagle is flying injuredWe are witnessing three seemingly unrelated events: Barack Obama is being enstated as the 44th US president tomorrow (January 20, 2009). The Israelis are bombing the skin off the Palestinians at Gaza. The Sri Lankan army is on the last stages of wiping out the LTTE; the Tamil Tigers.<div><br /></div><div>What connects these three events?</div><div><br /></div><div>Answer: Money.</div><div><br /></div><div>A whole chain of events that can be tied to some ill-thought policies of Alan Greenspan and others like him lead to the sub-prime crisis. The US economy started unpacking its house of cards from one corner (the housing market). Fortunately, the US is already an advanced country and so it does not need extra housing. If a housing collapse were to happen in a developing country like India, etc. there would have been a civil war. Nevertheless, the sub-prime crisis brought down the level of the sea of greed and exposed people who were initially thought to be unaffected by the unfolding crisis. </div><div><br /></div><div>Most notable among them was Bernard Madoff who was safeguarding 50 billion dollars which did not exist. But other failures disguised themselves as "institutional" failures (Lehman Brothers, etc.) and tried to escape attention. But they were equally bad failures. Many rich jews were Madoff's clients. Madoff's adventures and other downfalls in the US also rippled into Europe where an erstwhile rich country (Iceland) is literally pan-handling for survival from Russia and other countries. Many have committed suicide. </div><div><br /></div><div>The once powerful Eagle is no longer landed, nor is it soaring. It is barely flying with a broken wing.</div><div><br /></div><div>Terrorism has a nefarious connection with the rich and sometimes famous. The connections cannot be established very immediately and even to explain the connections would require the skills of the likes of Frederick Forsythe or John le Carré. But the linkages exist all right. The collections from the rich trickle down through possible do-good volunteer organizations and get into hot spots such as the Palestine, Sri Lanka and Israel. (Well, I suspect some of the money even goes quite directly to Israel without even being hidden because the US government used to be quite blatantly pro-Israel) </div><div><br /></div><div>The economic collapse hastened not just the exit of an unworthy president but even the concept of a Republican is considered bad news nowadays. Enter Obama. The Jews have lost much of their money and the prospect of getting the economy to work back in their favour is also not very clear. To them Obama is literally a dark horse: They are not very sure how he may react to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He seems to utter a lot of comforting and do-good words that refer more to Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and their ilk. "Is he a hidden socialist perhaps?" Hmmm... perhaps... bad news for the Israelis. Thus; before Obama came in as a president legally, they decided to bomb the sh*t off the Palestinans at Gaza. They even got a favourable "agreement" signed by Condeleezza Rice just a few days back. So everything is signed, sealed and delivered as per their agenda and their larger motivations.</div><div><br /></div><div>And now we come to the LTTE. The Sri Lankan army has also got a serendipitous opportunity: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">(Sri Lanka was once labeled as "serendip" in a book by Horace Walpole. Hence the word "serendipity")</span> The economic collapse has also stripped money from the Tamilian diaspora who collected money for their revolution in the scenic island country at the foot of the Indian sub-continent. With the money disappearing, the LTTE can no longer afford fuel and ammunition required to keep a constant vigil against the Sri Lankan army. </div><div><br /></div><div>The LTTE is therefore on the run, with an injured eagle flying overhead. I dread the time when the eagle will land and get its wing fixed. More money will flow back into terrorism and these hot-spots. What should have been resolved conflicts will again open up for more blood-letting. </div><div><br /></div><div>We are living in complex times; indeed!</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-60977903995754142362009-01-12T20:07:00.000-08:002014-03-20T11:14:46.868-07:00The Dickensian divide: The physical and social grid in Mumbai<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Mumbai in India is a linear city: It was formed by stitching together seven islands into an appendage that hangs off from the main land pointing to the south much like an empty garden hose which is now devoid of water.<br />
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This spit of land is one of the most densely populated area in the entire world. Two main highways traverse the length of this land from North to South; roughly parallel to each other: One is the Western Express Highway and the other; the Eastern. In the usual mayhem of a developing country called India; these two highways are punctuated by various traffic intersections serviced using traffic lights that many do not follow, if the cops were not looking. These intersections serve busy collector roads that divert people into the local train stations or other business and residential areas. All the roads, including the highways, are criss-crossed by pedestrians who were never really catered to when the city was planned. It is no surprise that traffic accidents are high. Fortunately; all the obstacles such as the afore mentioned intersections -- however haphazardly managed and followed, do slow down the traffic. Hopefully that reduction in speed should have reduced the severity of at least some of the accidents.</div>
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With the rise of the economy in India, one saw the rise of the automobile. Where we once had exactly two kinds of cars to choose from (something akin to Henry Ford's old joke: You could choose any colour as long as it is black) we now have a large variety to choose from. The lip-smacking auto industry has come into India wanting to occupy suitable positions in the Indians' minds.</div>
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Hmmm... so where does this story evolve? </div>
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Somewhere down the line; there was this sudden spurt of flyovers all over Mumbai. Let us not get into the political and economic interests behind the infrastructure changes because those motivations can be quite easily guessed and left at that. The idea of these flyovers were to simply fly over traffic intersections so that those with the new cars can now get an uninterrupted passage from North to South (or vice-versa) of Mumbai.</div>
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When these flyovers were being constructed, I got a funny sensation at the pit of my stomach: Not only because of the obvious effects the automobile would have on the environment; but also other attendant problems they would bring in. I was afraid that now that the pedestrians did not have any "interrupted" points in the traffic flow; the severity of traffic accidents would be much higher. </div>
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Sure enough; after the flyovers were commissioned and the rich started zooming up and down these two highways using a new-found freedom to press on the accelerator, really horrendous accidents started happening at both ends of the the flyovers ...where the speed is usually the highest and the motorist accelerates the most in order to get into or out of the flyover. Obviously there was a hue and cry about these accidents and the "lack of civic sense" by oh-these-terrible-pedestrians. </div>
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And the solution was effective but equally thoughtless: Take these black ribbons of the highways and lift them up a bit at both the ends of each flyover and neatly tuck in a pedestrian subway underneath. The accidents may have got reduced (well, I have no statistics to confirm that but I can assume that they have been reduced because one does not hear of such accidents in the media) but now the society has got nicely stratified and gridded as per the economic class.</div>
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The rich zoom up and down the highways and the poor pedestrians scurry around like rats through Dickensenian sub-ways; criss-crossing the rich at ninety degrees. One cannot possibly get a more ironic and symbolic statement about the class divide than this. </div>
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If any of us were to visit these sub-ways, you will see a whole different life there: Peddlers selling all kinds of goods including rotten potatoes and tomatoes and suchlike. So much for the "evolved" planning of Mumbai. Though I agree in parts on the progress made by India, I often reflect on the social aspect which is neglected because not everyone are equally uplifted or can participate in the economy. Many are pushed under the carpet. Often literally.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-14656220488595706762008-12-13T06:08:00.001-08:002009-01-08T07:18:17.046-08:00Seminar on Disaster management and architecture at Navi Mumbai<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';"><div style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; width: auto; font: normal normal normal 100%/normal Georgia, serif; text-align: left; "><div>I and Dr Roy conducted a small seminar at Bharatiya Vidyapeeth College of Architecture at Navi Mumbai. Dr Roy is an expert in disaster management and has been working in that area for the last twenty years. There were around 50 students and 10 faculty members in attendance.</div><div><br /></div><div>Dr. Roy concentrated on the immediate issues during any terrorism and came up with some points: </div><div><ol><li>Start with yourself before blaming/looking at others for help/explanations.</li><li>Do not turn up at the disaster site blindly. Turn up at the site where the victims are likely to be, if you want to help. For e.g. After an earthquake, the local people often know whether the local resources will sustain them or not. Often landing up the scene at that time is of no use because the people may have already left. One needs to know how people move during such crisis situations</li><li>Understand the real requirements of people at a disaster. In a recent earthquake at Gujarat, a lot of clothes were donated. They were of no use to the locals there because they could not adjust to the strange attire of the city dwellers. Instead, they used the clothes as fuel!</li><li>Land up at the disaster site if you are sure you can first take care of yourself. You should not become a liability to others who are trying to help.</li><li>Local knowledge is very valuable. If you don't have any then stay at home!</li><li>Be in a position to understand and distribute the knowledge of all resources available to everyone trying to help.</li></ol></div><div>Dr. Roy was not very convinced about the amount of proactive steps that can be used to actively <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">prevent</span> terrorism and disasters. There is a theory in architecture (called <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">architectural determinism) </span>which proclaim that what architects do determine the end behaviour of people using architecture. Not true at all. Architects are only one tiny part of the society's determination process. At the same time, we cannot go to the other extreme and proclaim that what architect's do will not affect people's behaviour at all. (It is interesting to note that a specialization in architecture close to my heart; environment-behaviour (E-B) that was taught when I was in IIT over thirty years back, is coming back once again hopefully to help us.)<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The subject of E-B has turned up often in the past to explain complex contradictions in architectural design. For e.g. In the understanding of the Pruitt-Igoe Fiasco where a large housing complex was dynamited in the seventies. The CSNY song; "Ohio" was written after the dastardly attack by Nixon's soldiers at Ohio State University where some students were shot down. After that event, there were many studies conducted that attempted to understand how certain kind of spaces may unconciously aid rioting.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The following architectural points were touched upon:</div><div><ul><li>The concept of defensible spaces and how architects can use defensible spaces to diffuse the effects of terrorism, and other disasters etc.</li><li>Terroriality, privacy, personalization, way-finding are all to be understood properly if one has to prevent all kinds of behavioural conflicts happening in designed environments.</li><li>Many aspects of architecture: E.g. Lighting can be used carefully in public spaces to reduce the effects <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">during </span>a terrorist attack.</li><li>An off-shoot of the subject of environment-behaviour called "Crime Prevention Through Evironment Design" (CPTD) is now considered by many architects/planners. Architects can use many sites on the net e.g. <a href="http://www.thecptedpage.wsu.edu/">http://www.thecptedpage.wsu.edu</a><br />(Though I am not sure about the word "prevention". The word "mitigation" may have been better)</li><li>Technology can never give an answer directly. It can, at best, supplement other measures. So all active form of security devices such as cameras, survellience, etc. are all to be taken in context of a proper understanding of the overal security threat. Just blindly using technology cannot prevent a determined foe. Some examples from Vietnam war were discussed, where the poor and frail managed to defeat really sophisticated systems setup by the Americans</li></ul><div>Dr Roy cautioned that there are many psychological and social reasons that are needed to be explored (E.g. The manipulation of the fear psychosis by vested interests such as political parties) He also cautioned against stereotyping while acknowledging that as humans it is understandable that we indulge in stereotypes and other generalizations because those are probably ways a human handles fear when he cannot channelize it in a more productive manner. He did not want to discuss fear psychosis because that is a big and complicated subject and a superfical analysis of it will only result in more misunderstandings of a complicated subject.</div><div><br /></div><div>As far as archtitecture is concerned; architects simply have to cross their own borders and look beyond traditional architecture. We design in the context of a society in all its dimensions and we architects must understand that deeper context. Dr. Roy gave plenty of examples from other design situations that lead to trauma and death such as traffic accidents. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>The steps to be taken proactively are not really about preventing terrorism directly but how to ensure that the concept of terror does not survive. For e.g. We should foster a sense of well-being and self-respect among all of us. Highlight the good points and just the way the forces behind terrorism is now brainwashing people to do terrible deeds, we should also be able to "brainwash" (if we can use the same term) to do <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">positive</span> things. In fact, statistically speaking, we have a better chance of positive thinking than the terrorists have in spreading negative thoughts. </div><div><br /></div><div>Unfortunately, many vested interests (powerful lobbies, politicians, those who fund the terrorists) working in the background really <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">want</span> people to continue with their fear psychosis. As citizens, we seek help from our whatever sources we get which is usually the media. But then, the media currently in India is very immature and therefore <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">adds </span>further to our problems. Few realize that the media is forced to give only viewpoints that they have been given access to. It is impossible for them to give a complete picture. If only the media gave a more balanced point of view, the horror of the recent mumbai attacks could be put in the right perspective. For e.g. More people die in traffic accidents in a year than in terrorist accidents. Many more people have died in the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">consequences</span> of improper understanding of terror (For example due to riots) than the terrorist incidents themselves. It is ironical that we actually end up killing <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">more of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">each-other</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">in <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">our own</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">country</span></span>, but our attention is caught on issues such as whether we should bomb <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">places in </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">s</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">ome other country</span>!</span></div><div><br /></div><div>If there are more people spreading unified positive thinking, then the chances of terrorists coming into our lives are much lesser because there is no thought-space available to them to encourage their nefarious activities. Unfortunately, just after a terrorist attack there is so much anger, confusion and fear that we become numb and cannot think clearly. That is when the terrorist has actually won. They return back (or die) and we are left with the continuing hatred, fear and anger. </div><div><br /></div><div>If we have to defeat the terrorists, we have to get back to thinking clearly and test out our half-baked ideas democratically with others. As Vallabh Bhanshali said in an interview "It is okay to have half-baked ideas. But it is very important to acknowledge that those ideas are indeed half-baked" <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Not to know that we do not know the full story</span> is possibly the one biggest mistake we can ever make during these events. There must be a constant striving to get more and more clarity and that effort must not be stopped.</div><div><br /></div><div>If each of us retain in us what we thought were the right approaches, we will not be testing them and that will result in a even worse problems. Again the terrorists will win. We must fight the urge to come up with 5 minute solutions and remove the feeling that a complicated explanation is synonymous with an incorrect explanation.</div><div><br /></div><div>Dr. Roy also stressed on the importance of developing databases and other resource materials and be in a state of readiness. However, he was not in favour of developing a sense of paranoia and constant fear. </div><div><br /></div><div>Architects should also be able to sit with other experts and point out the rewards and opportunities that may exist in various locations in our cities for disaster. If we can identify those spots and the reasons for such rewards and opportunities, then we could take proactive steps to reduce them. This will give lesser material for the bad guys to do damage in. </div><div><br /></div><div>One main issue that came up as the reason for the festering problem of terror is the ghettoising of our cities: That could actually result in both more terrorists being bred, and also during attacks we are likely to suffer more damage. Architects and builders are traditionally trained to think "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">plot-by-plot</span>" and not really in terms of design in the overall context of society. For e.g. A builder gets a plot for a large residential colony and makes a "gated-community" in that plot with his architect. While doing that, both the architect and builder traditionally do not concentrate on what happens to the rest of the neighbourhood. In fact our building laws don't even have anything to connect to other designs around the one we are doing. This leads to an amorphous ghetto development and that leads to a bigger failure, though initially each of these gated-communities may sound reasonable and secure.</div><div><br />What we need is to promote a more inclusive and responsible society which is constantly highlighting its positive aspects. It is often fashionable to point out where we go wrong and who is corrupt, etc. But if there is one correct thing that each of us can really do in today's complex times is to first point fingers at ourselves and see how each of us can individually contribute and ask ourselves what is <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">right </span>about us which can be brought to the forefront. We all know what is wrong, and that is all hackneyed. It is hightime we know what is right.</div><div><br /></div><div>Indian culture is actually quite inclusive and we do not really need to take examples from the US or Israel to handle security. Our problems are way different. We are quite heterogeneous and we have both strengths and weakness in the large population.</div><div><br /></div><div>The talk got stretched way beyond its allotted time and we finally finished at around 2.00pm The talk did not cover issues such as fear, anger and how to safely channelize those emotions as they are large subjects by themselves. There is a lot of unfocussed anger (Bomb this xyz country, hate that abc community, what causes riots, etc.) and we all agreed that addressing those topics superficially would not be right. A workshop is now being planned in January 2009 where other colleges and more professionals will be involved. </div></div></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-1104166476580716502008-12-11T06:57:00.000-08:002008-12-14T12:09:05.786-08:00Don't need no Rang-de-basanti!<div class="post_message">This is a true story from one of my seniors at IIT Kharagpur. Sometimes we feel that someone who is in a high position wont understand what we are going through. Take for example, the way we represent our anguishes and problems to the authorities. The Rang-De-Basanti movie is much spoken about, but frankly I felt issues could be handled in a much more mature manner. Harimohan Pillai (also architect and a great teacher) encountered something that disturbed him. He did something about it and see what happened.<br /><br />There are some typical IIT-Kharagpur lingo which some may not understand. Here is a small glossary<br /><br />KGP: Kharagpur<br />Diro: Director of the institute<br />Hall: Hostel<br />Cheddis: A famous "dhabba" outside the main building of the institute<br />Nikhils: Another "dhabba"<br />79-ers: Students who graduated in 1979<br />Hols: Holidays<br />RPans : Students staying in the Rajendra Prasad Hall (Hostel)<br />RKites: Students from the R.K. Hall (Hostel)<br />Cal: Kolkatta<br />HOD: Head of the Department<br />Convo: Convocation ceremony where students get their degrees<br />TDS: Technology Dramatics Society (A students body promoting theatre)<br />tempo: Enthusiasm. IIT Kharagpur has a "war cry" which goes like this: "IIT Ka Tempo, high hai!"<br /><br /><br />Regards<br />Sabu Francis<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Harimohan's article</span></span><br /><br /></div><div class="post_message"><div class="post_message">Coming to think of it, 79-ers have an edge, for they were on the edge of the 70s, most happening decade of independent India. When we had joined, most of us in 74 and few like me in 73, we had just got out of the Indo-Pak skirmish, followed by Bangla Desh liberation, the brunt of which was borne largely by West Bengal, with the migrants all over... KGP railway station no exception. I had seen the pathetic sight of scantily clad refugee women crouching in the battery boxes of local train coaches smuggling rice, during occasional week end trips to Cal with my Bengali friends.</div><div class="post_message"><br /></div><div class="post_message">Then we had the great emergency period of 75-76-77. We in the campus lived a protected life without much communication with the outside world. Imagine, we had no TV those days! I would like to relate an incident in which I was involved. Some of you may have heard of it.</div><div class="post_message"><br /></div><div class="post_message">We had this Nikhil's tea shop just outside RP Hall, on the main road side leading to IIT Gate. Nikhil's was most frequented by RPans and RKites. In some way</div><div class="post_message"><br /></div><div class="post_message">In some ways Nikhil had eaten into Chedi's business. One day we found that his shop was razed to ground by the local police as security measure, because PM Madam Indira Gandhi was to come for the Silver Jubilee Convo of IIT KGP. We all were sad and hoped that things would get back to normal after the Convo. But that didn't happen. Nikhil was in tears, when I met him once. Somehow I got furious, and armed with the Hindi TDS spirit of 'Juloos' those days, I wrote a short letter to Madame Gandhi. It went like this:</div><div class="post_message"><br /></div><div class="post_message">"Aap Andhi ki tarah aati hain, aur toofan ki tarah chali jaati hain, Aap ko nahin maloom, aap apne peeche sab kuch tahas nahas kar jaati hain."</div><div class="post_message"><br /></div><div class="post_message">Followed by few lines in English about Nikhil's shop demolition by police.</div><div class="post_message"><br /></div><div class="post_message">Summer hols I went home and totally forgot about this. When I returned in July, I saw from my rickshaw that Nikhil had a brand new shop in the same place and before I could open my room in RP Hall couple of cops came in search of me. I was shit scared, but they were most humble and said the Midnapur range DSP was waiting for me in the police chowki neat IIT gate. I met the DSP who took me most respectfully to Nikhil's shop for a cup of tea, accompanied by other cops. Nikhil was all smiles. The DSP then said over hot tea that he needed an NOC from me stating that I am satisfied with the re- erected shop, to be sent to PM, so that some of the suspended officials could be re-instated! I was flabbergasted, but kept my cool and gave the necessary papers. Finally when I opened my room I found a letter from Madame Gandhi herself, under my door. It said,</div><div class="post_message"><br /></div><div class="post_message">"Mujhe fakrh hai ki hamare desh mein aap jaise naujawan hain jo ek sadharan aadmi ke dukh dard ko samajhte hain. Kabhi kabhi kuch afsar satta ke nashe mein apni jimmedaariyan theek tarah se nahin nibhate. Apke hostel ke paas ki chai ki dukan ka mujhe afsos hai. Maine action le liya hai."</div><div class="post_message"><br /></div><div class="post_message">A copy of this letter was addressed to Diro - Prof. C.S. Jha ! Next morning my HOD Prof. Muni Chakravarti all smiles and beaming with pride took me to meet Diro who had summoned us. I had a cup of cha with them over small talk about what happened etc.!</div><div class="post_message"><br /></div><div class="post_message">We 79-ers jumped into our respective professions into a new decade that brought in computers and information technology. I think we are the most blessed lot of all IIT-ians, living in this age... Let's keep up the tempo high and higher...</div><div class="post_message"><br /></div><div class="post_message">regards to all</div><div class="post_message"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Harimohan Pillai</span></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-81055001068494027582008-12-09T10:27:00.000-08:002008-12-09T10:35:03.846-08:00The Narasimha EffectThe western world has recently woken up to an old story that India has grown up on. They call it the Medici Effect. I would rather call it the Narasimha Effect.<div><br /></div><div>Here is the Indian version (I've copied the story from some source on the Internet which I cannot seem to locate now):</div><div><br /></div><div>The king of demons(asuras), Hiranyakasyapa, wanted to become immortal and wanted to remain young forever. To this end, he meditated for Lord Brahma and because of his severe penance, the gods were frightened and asked Brahma to pacify the king. Brahma was impressed by his austerity and granted him a wish. HiranyaKasyapa wished that he be neither killed by a man or beast, nor in daylight or at night and neither inside or outside a building. Having obtained the wish he considered himself the supreme God and frobade all worship of gods by anyone. But his son Prahlada, was an ardent devotee of Vishnu. This enraged Hiranyakasyapa very much. He ordered numerous ways to kill Prahlada including asking his sister Holika to sit with Prahlada in the fire. But everytime Prahlada escaped unhurt. Enraged, once he asked Prahlad to show him the Lord Vishnu. Prahlad said, "He is everywhere". Further enraged, Hiranyakasyapa knocked down a pillar, and asked if Lord was present there.<br /><br />In the NARASIMHA Avatar, Lord Vishnu can incarnate himself as a semi-man,semi-lion in this world. Possibly Hiranyakasyapa did not know that.<br /><br />Lord Vishnu then emerged as a half lion, half man from the pillar which was neither inside the house nor outside, and the time was evening, neither night nor day. He then killed Hiranyakasyapa thus saving the life of his devotee Prahlada.<br /><br />A more detailed version is here: <a onmousedown="UntrustedLink.bootstrap($(this), "1a6211534ef00d6ed14ef6bb576505d1", event)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narasimha" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>http://en.wikipedia.org/wi</span><wbr><span class="word_break"></span>ki/Narasimha</a><br /><br />Traditionally, Indian culture has believed in a more holistic (synthesis based) approach to solving problems than a divide an conquer approach (analysis based) I have seen people from other countries get quite confused when talking to Indians. For e.g. When discussing a particular topic, Indians are often found to perplexingly drift onto something else. That is because Indians tend to establish connections from one area to the other quite easily. (Of course, sometimes those connections are quite suspect...but sometimes it can throw up some interesting possibilities) The story of Narasimha says that by trying to "compartmentalize" things inside clear-cut boundaries will not make you immortal. The real way to solve problems is to find out what happens AT the boundaries.</div><div><br /></div><div>The recent Western interest in what is called "The Medici Effect" is in a book that is freely available here: <a href="http://www.themedicieffect.com/downloads/MediciEffect.pdf">http://www.themedicieffect.com/downloads/MediciEffect.pdf</a></div><div><br /></div><div>It is called "The Medici Effect" because of the influential Medici family during the renaissance, who promoted the cross-feed of various domains. </div><div><br /></div><div>The recent terrorist attack in Mumbai has spun off a large set of people trying to solve it using very clear cut divisions (E.g. "Surgical" strikes into Pakistan, etc.) Probably, Indian culture has the real answer</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-15578186816813468642008-12-07T21:54:00.000-08:002008-12-07T22:11:10.050-08:00Constructive steps for a lasting peaceThe things that can be done to stop terror are quite complicated. One needs to fight at it various levels and from various angles. I am accumulating points from various sources on what can be implemented; so expect this list to change and get clarified over time.<br /><br />Long term and continous things to be done<br /><span>--------------------------</span><wbr><span></span>-----------------------------------<br />1. There are deep rooted prejudices that we all carry with us which surface and overtake us when mayhem strikes. This is being amply demonstrated on several Facebook groups and many other sites on the net. When things are calm, we must introspect and see if we can remove all our prejudices ... or as much hatred from within us as we can. This can be done by friendly discussions, sports, cultural exchange, etc. Every culture, religion, region has good points. Learn from each other. <br /><br />2. At an economic level, get as much equality as possible, without indulging in hand-outs. This is a huge task and not really in the hands of you and me. The governments should work on it. <br /><br />Nobody is looking at this aspect of the Mumbai incident: After the recent financial crisis, two countries are surely expected to rise quickly and shine. One is China and the other is India. But today the citizens are reduced to squabbling about religious issues when probably we should be getting right back to work. When we work, we produce money for the country. That money should trickle down and uplift the quality of life. When people are poor, they can be easily bribed to become a terrorist. <br /><br />3. Every religion has two aspects: A theology and an underlying philosophy. They are not the same. Theology concerns itself with beliefs regarding God, various traditions, etc. Philosophy inside the religion concerns itself with how those beliefs come together to help out people in a practical manner. Not many understand the difference. In fact, those who blindly accept God without also understanding the philosophy of the religion is quite likely to make mistakes. This needs to be corrected. So the leaders of each religion has to go about setting this right. Or there is one more choice: Become an atheist (like me) where one deals with human issues directly without first routing it through religion<br /><br />4. Dont indulge in stereotypes and generalizations. Many people do not seem to understand the fallacies they are inadvertently making on this (and other) sites. So let me quote an example I've written before here: <br /><br />Many get confused between attributes of a collective and those of individuals. Some of the attributes can be transferred from the collective to the individual. But some cannot. For e.g. I can say "This crowd of people coming from this mosque are muslims" but I cannot say "This crowd of people are bad" why? Because the entire range of "goodness" (to which the quality "bad" belongs to) can only be applied to individuals and not to the collective to which the individual belongs to. Similarly, some attributes can only be applied to a collective and not to individuals. For e.g. I can say "this crowd can move that large stone". Why? Because of the collective strength of that crowd. That does not mean each of that individual will be able to move that stone.<br /><br />Now in the above example; I happened to chose "muslims" coming out of a mosque. Don't get distracted by that. I could have very well chosen "hindus" coming out of a temple, "christians" coming out of a church, etc.<br /><br />What I am trying to establish here is that by making sweeping generalizations, we only get a convenient pattern in our own little minds and nothing more. It really does not solve problems out in the world. It is individuals who do cruel things, like indoctrinating others that generalizations are true and valid everywhere. When things are calm, the well-wisher of each country/religion MUST remove generalization and ask people to recognize and acknowledge individual human being's attributes and not mistake the crowd for the individual (or the other way around)<br /><br /><br />Immediate things to be done when terror strikes<br /><span>--------------------------</span><wbr><span></span><span>--------------------------</span><wbr><span></span>-----<br />1. Whenever such events happen, it should not be over-dramatized by the media. There should be strictly no blood or gore shown on TV or anywhere. For the sake of democracy, it should be recorded clearly and nothing is to be missed. But don't make it like a cricket game with commentary. I heard that some stupid channel was even providing dramatic background music!<br /><br />2. When an event is in progress, we need to support the government in whatever measures that are being taken. That is not really the time to say whether the NSG came late or the Navy was inefficient or whatever. Because we live in a world of "relativity" and not "absolutes" Nobody can stake claim that he knows with absolute certainity that the NSG should have come in 3 hours and because it took 4 hours, it is a big culprit. Hang on! Let people do their job. Everyone is wanting to get the blessed job done. I am an optimist. I believe even the most corrupt of politician surely is a human being and would put aside his corruption and focus on solving the problem when people are dying.<br /><br />3. Fix blame carefully. Give people a long rope so that when they hang themselves, they will do it well and proper. So don't be hasty in accusing people who caused the event. They will try to get away. Humor them for sometime (if that is what is needed) . Let them believe that they don't have a rope around their neck and only then tighten the noose...then there is simply no way for them to run. Again the media must wait!<div><br /></div><div><span>4. If by some reason we are in that event, we must fight tooth and nail against anyone who is trying to disrupt peace and cause any kind of loss. If some kind of training can help citizens in this; it would be nice. But I will not recommend that each of us becomes a vigilante which can only lead to paranoia. There are some very nice survival guides available on the net which can help</span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5296882096649135210.post-67053972087734095252008-12-07T14:28:00.000-08:002008-12-07T14:29:54.189-08:00Terrorism and fallacy of the undistributed middleThere is a simple human fallacy at work here and the way it works is as follows:<br /><br />The fallacy of the undistributed middle takes the following form:<br /><br />All Zs are Bs<br />Y is a B<br />Therefore, Y is a Z<br /><br />The above is a fallacy and it is explained in detail here <a onmousedown="UntrustedLink.bootstrap($(this), "e33a89a8d369b8a968569762546e4f30", event)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_undistributed_middle" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>http://en.wikipedia.org/wi</span><wbr><span class="word_break"></span><span>ki/Fallacy_of_the_undistri</span><wbr><span class="word_break"></span>buted_middle</a><br /><br />Instead of using Z, B, Y ... see this for yourself:<br /><br />All terrorists(Z) are found to be muslims(B)<br />Mr.Y is a Muslim(B)<br />Therefore, Mr. Y is a Terrrorist(Z)<br /><br />To complicate matters further, it is also a sad fact that all terrorists are NOT muslims because there is no consensus on what constitutes muslim ideology which these terrorists seem to follow. Let me explain that: My name is "Sabu Francis" and it seemingly looks as if I am a Christian. But actually I am an atheist. <br /><br />Add more confusion to this: Many non-muslim terrorist do not make it to the media, because they have more powerful connections. So even the first premise that "all Terrorists happens to be Muslims" is quite likely wrong.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04955027579977977204noreply@blogger.com0