Out of this work in the late 1970s and early
‘80s emerged CDSA’s unique micro-watershed
development approach, pioneered as a
counterblast to the huge Green Revolution
watersheds being promoted by the World
Bank to increase cash crop production on flat,
irrigated basins. Cash crops needed massive
irrigation, hybrid seeds, fertilisers and pesticides.
Ours was an environmental sustainability
approach, employing re-afforestation, nala
bunding, contour bunding, percolation tanks,
and small lift irrigation in micro-water
sheds, enhanced by local NGOs called Pani
Panchayats, who managed their own water
accounting systems.
From the early 1970s, until now we have
employed architecture as a social tool, building
orphanages, and a network of social facilities
for the Dalits of Maharashtra, centered at the
Nagaloka campus in Nagpur. Empathy and
compassion are catalysts of imagination and
friendship. They are creators of self-knowledge
and inner awareness.
Story Three: The Story of Imagination
Without our awareness, digital media, art
critics, architectural historians and professors
collectively promote a knowledge system
inculcated within our meaning systems.
These messengers are the high priests of our
thoughts, and we believe what they say is good
and correct, and like all gharanas, we promote
this belief system, passing on ‘truths’ into the
future. Thinking within knowledge systems and
designing our ‘creative works’ within their
meanings are the unique feats of the human brain,
driving our strongest emotional compulsions,
through conformity, gifting us meaning.
If we are successful, our creations will be
exhibited in the temples of our culture: within
museums and exhibition halls. Yet, this meaning
system leads one to something I call the human
conclusion, wherein almost all architects and
urban designers revert to a common formula
in an interesting closure of their minds. To
make this short, we all get trapped into the
same belief system, and the same predictable
way of finding solutions within its knowledge
system. Imagination is thrown to the winds
and we are not conceptualising things that we
cannot see or touch, but rather copying images
from the media. We are seeking the approval of
the ‘high priests’, most of whom have never
designed anything! In other words: life is a trap.
As a child, I lived in a suburban house, next to
similar houses, all laid out on well drained,
paved roads, each almost as ugly as the next,
confirming the equality and homogeneous
social status of the neighbourhood. What was
called variety and freedom of choice came
down to Ranch style, Spanish Colonial style or
Classical styles; take your pick! This urban
fabric was mind numbing and mundane.
Everyone shared the same bad taste! But our
knowledge system spoke to us, telling us this
was ‘good’. I saw analogies between our
popular taste, common wisdom, and mass
ignorance; all fed by stereotypes, forms of
racial, gender, class and regional biases.
One Christmas morning I opened a magic gift
that was the talisman of my future; a book,
titled The Natural House, by Frank Lloyd
Wright, which changed my life forever. The book
unraveled my thoughts and gave me a sense of
vision for my future; a new knowledge system
gave me a sense of meaning, as it told me of
a path I could follow to self-discovery. It was
not the images of dwellings integrated within
the natural landscapes, but the credo, espousing
nature, human scale, honesty of expression and
functionality. This knowledge system fit well
into my love for the great wilderness, rivers,
lakes and the ocean. This sparked my thoughts,
kindled my spirits and catalysed my
imagination! For the first time I could dream of
alternative worlds, concepts and of objects that
were not visible through my immediate senses.
One day I saw a large newspaper spread with
photo-images of Le Corbusier’s forms and
sculptural buildings in Chandigarh. It was
love at first sight, carrying me on to romances
with Ronchamp, La Tourette and the Marseille
Block! But this was a ‘turning’, from one
knowledge system to another, from a meaning
system based in the organic language of
nature to an abstract language of ideologies in
the brain. Falling Water grew out of nature
organically, while the Villa Savoy floated
above, and away from nature, with all the trees
around it cut down, creating an intellectual
setting or abstract landscape within which
this abstract object could sit! The American
and the European knowledge systems grew
out of different contexts and meanings.
Americans worship earth goddesses, and
Europeans sky gods; Americans idealise log
cabins in the forest and the Europeans idealise
white marble temples on hillocks.
I resolved this conflict, dissecting the true
meaning of architecture. First, I came to know
that the truth of architecture is ‘place’. Each