149. Architecture as the Rearrangement of Relationships with Neelkanth Chhaya

Original Drawing by Tori Haynes

To kick off the new year, today we are joined by Neelkanth Chhaya who is a professor in India. Chhaya discusses forms and contingence of south Asian aesthetic theory, he is an open-minded and inquisitor thinker, and examines the ideas and interests and cross-references them.

Timestamp Outline 

3:24 Kishkindha lecture

3:54 CEPT University

4:44 “Architecture is conversation… to think about what it is to be alive and in this world.” VP

5:18    What are you doing in your life now that you’ve retired from CEPT?
Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology

6:59    Conversation about sustainability, livelihood, and heritage.
“Heritage in itself is only a result of what went on in peoples’ lives, and if we are to work with keeping something alive, then we have to work on livelihood, the physical environment, and sustainability… all three are interconnected” NC

8:21    How big is your practice?

9:35    How do you think your practice design philosophy has evolved in the last decade/4-5 years? What has changed, and what changes are you noticing in your thinking?

12:47    “… the building has to be thought of as somewhere where many kinds of creatures are continually working....it has to respond to the world and being open to that” NC

15:14    “We have things like doors and windows and verandas, which allow us to keep on using spaces in different ways so that in the end you stop naming spaces and qualifying them rather than define them” NC

17:44    “Making architecture more of an insertion of an ongoing happening of life” VP
“…We are adding a thread to something that is already there that is continuously changing. What you make will change over time” NC

20:39    How do I swim in a way in which I will be ready for the next phenomenon? NC
“The act of design is the act of nurturing richness which is ever present but changing” NC

22:38    Discussion about nurturing richness and agency
What is nurturing of richness?

30:34    Working in groups; one remark can create a ripple effect of richness that can lead to something else.
Chinese whispers: start a design, pass it to the next person, and when it comes back to the original person there are several potentials that have opened.
Several consciousness

32:53    Discussion about how conversations can be poisoned quickly and can go south. However, there’s something in it that bothers us and paying attention to that is interesting. 

34:26    “Right now, we are all shouting at each other in all kinds of ways. It’s very important for a while that we stop doing that.” NC

37:29    The generational shift – example: the climate crisis

40:18    “All Art is Ecological” – Timothy Morton
“We have to learn to use the word ‘maybe’”

52:19    The question of fear: non-violent resistance and managing fear. How might that transfer?

46:08    “I think architecture is that rearrangement of relationships.” NC

48:13    What is you thinking on what the agency or presence of higher consciousnesses in the rearrangement of relationships?

56:47    How does the second theory write into Indian aesthetic theory?
Work of art having a cessation, and then the feeling of utter serenity

1:01:06    “Being at oneness”; accepting the nature of things, tranquility

1:02:27    “Don’t just do anything, stand there” VP