Something new that I learnt

One of the things that I learnt recently from a particular article that I was supposed to read for the Cambridge interview, from an architectural magazine, was about university campuses architecturally and how their context in terms of their location and their objectives is essential. This article was purely based on American university campuses, and did not look at other campuses in the world, although these were claimed to be ‘global’ trends. I further had a discussion about this very topic with two Cambridge interviewers, hence broadening my vision even more. The context of a particular structure is very important to grasp, as this determines many other things – weather patterns of the area, patterns of living, cultures, traditions and so on. This in turn helps in attaining certain functions in the campus according to that. For example, Columbia University is located in New York city, and hence it has to comply with the surroundings. Because of the lack of space, it is not possible for the university to be spread out and have large sprawling parks and grounds. Every university should ideally fit into the city/town, and this is done by the architecture of the university.

One important term that I learnt pertaining to this was collegiate Gothic. The point of this article was to scrutinize the universities and examine whether campuses fit into the cities or not, and if they didn’t fit in, how they were altered and renovated. What campus architects do, is that they follow revivalist styles of architecture, especially Gothic architecture, which is what is collegiate Gothic. Also today, when there are several schools of thought in architecture that have progressed and developed with time, campus architects stick to the centuries old Gothic architecture. This is ironic, since universities stand for progress, education, change and so on. Yet, the architects play safe with revivalist styles. Instead of making the campuses more and more functional according to the technological changes taking place in the world, they are still ‘stuck in the past’. This is one of the knowledge issues. There is a perfectly reasonable argument in favour of the revivalist styles – the architects want to maintain their architectural roots, and hence satisfy their emotional side. However, this is also seen as a disregard to change. It is important for the world to accept changing perceptions.

Another knowledge issue that arose from discussion was whether the trends that are followed in America apply to the rest of the world. The omniscient view taken by the article was somewhat deceptive. It is not possible to make generalizations for the entire world as there will be differences. American university campuses are very different from campuses in other countries. I had particularly discussed about Indian universities and American universities. For instant, in America, great importance is given to ‘campus life’ and related social lives of the students. This does not necessarily exist in India. This is very clearly seen in the architecture of the campus. Indian colleges have rundown buildings (think HR College as in Mumbai to take an example amongst many others). However, alongside these rundown buildings, there also exist fabulous campuses such as Louis Kahn’s IIM Ahmedabad. There are different cultures that coexist in the world, hence owing to different architectural languages. Every region has a characteristic architectural style, and this cannot be undermined.

To conclude, I want to say that architecture is like a language. Every region has its own architecture, every person has his particular needs from architecture and so on. It is not right for anybody to generalize architectural styles and set rigid trends that everybody must follow. At the same time, however, it is important to evolve in architecture as it is important in other fields. This is a reflection of changes in the world, and they should be constructively be applied.