Today, the City's Historic Centre Is a Hub So Intimately Connected to The

62 | Blueprint Palace | 63 Devigarh Palace Hotel, Udaipur, Rajasthan, 2000 Today, the city’s historic centre is a hub so intimately connected to three-storied homes, the ancient structure was the life of Dresden, its resurrection was a matter of urban urgency. unfortunately dwarfed by houses that were The idea of long-term settlement then implies a city with a varied becoming multiple dwellings; soon the structure history, where historical remains are not merely consigned to a became an insignificant reminder of its own dead archaeological heap, but participate in daily reality. In India, history. A few years later, builders branched on to the value of much of archaeological history is suspect. Sporadic apartments and built high walls along its southern walled compounds of madrassas and tombs that appear in erratic face, threatening the building. Since then, some corners of Indian towns remain fleeting reminders of some past of the madrassa’s domes have collapsed, and glory and nothing else. Other than odd moments of pride, their at night, the old structure is used by a floating participation in civic life is hollow and disjointed. Is it any wonder population of migrant labourers as a shelter. A sign then that they need to be at the entrance remains the only reminder that the physically protected from building was once a place of eminence. Was its vandalism by their own citizens? protection a civic responsibility? In my neighbourhood in Delhi, For too long I had envisioned history and its relics as a fixed a sultanate madrassa had stood and unquestionable form of goodness from which to measure for many years in splendid the present. Archaeological remains were like cemeteries where isolation. But when the area aspects of real value lay buried under the tombstones and began to grow from single to only a minor sign showed up on the surface. I never feared the left Aurangzeb stops at McDonald’s before a beheading, watercolour, 2007 above Chandigarh Ruins, watercolour, 2011 right Wrecking ball rock-cut temples, watercolour, 2007 below Dhaka Ruins, watercolour, 2011 64 | Blueprint Palace | 65 Devigarh Palace Hotel, Udaipur, Rajasthan, 2000 destruction of the madrassa. Even after the domes were willfully that the final expression would be unique in itself. Part history, destroyed, I often went there to bask in their silence, to remind part contemporary entity. But it was an uncertain pictorial myself of the actual life that throbbed in the foundations. In the semi- approach to salvage. darkness, the light that entered the broken roof magnified the flapping of bats’ wings, and hastened new plant growth in the In an urban study done several decades ago, Leon Krier, a interior. The archaeology of the place could not be ransacked, only Luxembourg architect, had foreseen this state of the Indian city its building artifacts could. and suggested the possibility of providing temporary quarters to its migrant poor. Through elaborate drawings, he found living How then does archaeology contribute to a city’s urbanity? In a space on the great open plazas of Le Corbusier’s government proposal for a museum in Gangtok, it seemed important to give an buildings in Chandigarh, along the open flanks of Fatehpur indication of the larger historic setting of Sikkim of which it was Sikri in Agra, in old forts and tombs, and in other large-scale a part. In between the traditional and the contemporary, the thin monuments. Employing the historic space of Indian landmarks, line between continuity and the expression of change, a vocabulary he found ways to accommodate some of the millions who of exposed concrete block was developed along with a painterly trespass into urban areas daily. Unlike bureaucrats and historians expression applied to individual elements. In Krier did not see antiquity and the modern city as incompatible. contrast, the important enclosing forms of the building were designed to reflect prevailing Both belonged to the citizens, and if imaginatively harnessed, techniques. It was a position of compromise he felt, their spaces could be used equitably and efficiently. Yet, that used adaptation ahistorically in the hope in the present state of urban indifference, history and the New York Ruins, watercolour, 2011 66 | Blueprint Palace | 67 Devigarh Palace Hotel, Udaipur, Rajasthan, 2000 modern city exist as natural enemies, needing each other, Three, four and five storeys of ramshackle plaster but carefully demarcating their boundaries. The fear that if you walls in a relentless cordon of blight surround the allow people to use their monuments in unconventional ways, ancient facade till little remains. Where visual they will then destroy these places, still persists. As a result plunder has happened, can physical plunder be far archaeological ruins are enclosed behind high walls, or controlled behind? The old structure occupies an awkward by draconian legislation. place in its changing surroundings. The fight to save it will always be a losing battle. The coexistence Obviously when local residents around the citadel at Fatehpur of monuments and malls can hardly be a matter of Sikri and the palace at Jodhpur began to remove stones from the pride these days, especially when physical activity building’s outer walls for their own use, government action was spills so frequently and easily onto historic ground. swift, and indeed essential. But in less drastic situations, would a In the civic strata of such diverse and conflicting social and less rigid reverence for history make for a better city if the use of economic values, how then do you balance the city’s needs with its monuments was made more flexible? Most Indian cities have the requirements of urban history and scholarship? already witnessed the actions of heaving populations that squat on uncomplaining, unprotected monuments. Mosques, madrassas Should the rising tide of migrants not be allowed to make their and tombs in Delhi, Georgian neighbourhoods in Mumbai, Nawabi homes in unused space? Should the architect work with private buildings in Lucknow, colonial structures in provincial towns, the intentions alone or be informed by ancient forms? The argument old architecture is besieged by the growing squalor of the city’s has too often led the professional down an inconclusive path where unrepentant growth. the expression of cultural and economic realities far outweighs Excavated Dynasties, watercolour, 2009 68 | Blueprint Palace | 69 Devigarh Palace Hotel, Udaipur, Rajasthan, 2000 other options. Unless the extremes of conservative preservation and splattered with graffiti on the outside, and filled with broken the uncontrolled way in which Indian cities are settled find some form syringes belonging to local drug addicts, the setting looked like of physical reconciliation, the monument will remain a zone of conflict. a war zone. For its uplift and resurrection, the idea that the same structure, the same neighbourhood, would become the Many years ago when working in Philadelphia, I was chosen to be home of the city’s business community was fitting, or rather part of a small team of architects entrusted to examine the upgrading wholly retrofitting. of a derelict section of the city along the river. An area prone to crime, the edge of the water was occupied by abandoned warehouses. Too often retrofitting is an unplanned exercise, the outcome of a After numerous trips to examine the structures, I came to believe sudden opportunity. Battleships have been converted into floating that the place had no future other than demolition and replacement luxury hotels, buses, restaurants, shipping containers and houses. by sturdier warehouses. So it came as a surprise when Clark, the Such a design engagement may seem frivolous compared to leader of the team, suggested that we salvage the wooden ruins and the elaborate insertion of new functions into historic buildings. convert them into houses. Not just any housing but upscale homes They do however serve the more pressing need to recycle. In the for executives working in downtown Philadelphia. So outrageous was vast spread of Indian heritage, the 4000 monuments under the the suggestion, it fell into place immediately! Archaeological Survey of India form a select minority. For the most part, an examination of archaeological remains suggests To fit an idea into a building so completely the opposite of its two conditions: either a conservative preservation that saves the original intent would obviously be the only possible resolution. In the structure in its historically authentic state, or abandoning it to grey winter light of a Philadelphia evening, the broken structures, complete dereliction. 70 | Blueprint Palace | 71 Devigarh Palace Hotel, Udaipur, Rajasthan, 2000 Structures like Humayun’s Tomb or the Gateway of India, always in The association between village and palace was one that I the public eye, will be saved and restored. But what of the numerous observed closely while renovating the derelict ruin of Devigarh. churches of Kumaon, the hundreds of abandoned wood and stone Whenever I went there, the dry, dust-filled air was a typical structures in the Nainital and Almora districts? Or for that matter Rajasthani greeting. Something or someone on the ground was the wooden temples of Himachal? The great masonry mountains that always stirring up the dirt: cows, shepherds, children, goats, make up the forts of Rajasthan, colonial post offices, forest rest houses impromptu cricket. In the evening light, the sun dipping onto the and PWD bungalows, wooden stations on mountain train routes, shallow hills of the Aravalis, viewed high up from the ramparts havelis and hunting lodges that are no longer in use, all require a of Devigarh, the village and its fields appeared to be caught in a serious rethink of their place in history. perpetual haze. I learnt to accept it as a condition of the desert. The mossy green surroundings of the palace and the yellow Do all palaces in Rajasthan need to become heritage hotels or walls of the low-lying village and its stepped well; this mixed museums? Isn’t it possible to maintain our historical buildings characteristic of poverty and royalty was a hard one to imagine.

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