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Manuela Schirra
Charles Correa and the Mandala
Another mindset
1. "Tanka", mandalas composition (Nepal, c. 19th century); a series of various configurations, progressive and compresent. Form: Rawson, P. (1978). "The Art of Tantra". London: Ed. Thames & Hudson, 75.
Abstract
Starting from the hyper-local Charles Correa intuit the innovation and leaves his lectio.
"Using the ancient mandala as the freewheeling basis of a contemporary building, made possible a completely new way of structuring spatial sequences, unlike anything else we had done before”.*
It is a device repeated and to reiterate according to a system of ‘worlds of worlds’, developed using the technique of the ‘interlock’ and based on the premise of the ‘void’ as an organizer and generator of the space.
Correa received a degree in architecture from the University of Michigan and a master's degree from the MIT with a thesis entitled "You and your Neighbourhood" in 1955. These were the years of Stirling, of Smithson and Team 10. After that he decided to return to India and to begin his own architectural practice in Mumbai in 1958. He received the first achievements and he realizes that it was all to be done. India and in general the East had to be led in the “modern” world that the West had imposed and architecture was one of the means. It was about understanding the values of its own culture and transpose them into the wave of standardized modernism that had invaded the world.
In 1985 Correa was appointed as the President of the National Commission of Urbanism by Rajiv Gandhi. In 1986 in Bombay he curated an exhibition that was a manifesto of Indian culture, designed to empower public opinion, politics and patronage. The title was "Vistara - the Architecture of India." The mandala is the key to its understanding.
Mandalas are psychocosmograms Indo-Tibetan, geometrical and flat projections that try to synthesize the complexity of the cosmos into a singular diagram (Fig. 1). It is a two-dimensional drawing that progressively dissects and articulates this complexity by reiterating figures within figures, almost like that in a game of Chinese boxes (Fig. 2).
It is extreme rationality, represented by the basic shapes like square or circle, integrated with the free flow of thoughts or chaos. It is intellect and psyche, yin and yang, the two are inseparable in the Indian conception. Because "in India intellect has never prevailed so as to overlap at faculties of the soul and detach them so as to cause a dangerous split between the self and the psyche, which is the disease that afflicts the West", while the West "has coined a new word, unusual in the history of human thought: the word 'intellectual', as if it is possible that a man can be reduced to pure intellect." (1) This is an evident consequence of the Enlightenment.
Watchful of the contemporary architectural scene and starting from the hyper-local Correa intuit the innovation. "Using the ancient mandala as the freewheeling basis of a contemporary building, made possible a completely new way of structuring spatial sequences, unlike anything else we had done before”. (2)
Charles Correa is the first architect who experiments the device of mandala with contemporary language and program. Abstracting the rules from the architecture of Indian history (Fig. 3; Fig. 4) and rereading those handed down in the various art forms, he has defined a unique architecture (Fig. 5). It is a work that has influenced a significant part of oriental contemporary architecture. An architecture founded on the tenet of ambiguity, complementarity and compresence, extracted from the principles of Buddhist and Hindu culture. (3)
Focillon’s words about the geometric combinations of Moslem ornament match perfectly to the idea of mandala: “These combinations are produced by mathematical reasoning. They are based upon cold calculation; they are reducible to patterns of the utmost aridity. But deep within them, a sort of fever seems to goad on and to multiply the shapes; some mysterious genius of complication interlocks, enfolds, disorganizes, and reorganizes the entire labyrinth. Their very immobility sparkles with metamorphoses. Whether they be read as voids or as solids, as vertical axes or as diagonals, each one of them both withholds the secret and exposes the reality of an immense number of possibilities.” (4)
Mandala as spatial device therefore is applicable simultaneously in plan as well as section, warranting the control of complex sequences. Geometric device and mindset, order and disposition, which Correa applies according to three basic themes: the theme of the ‘void’, the theme of the ‘interlock’ and the theme of the ‘worlds of worlds’.
The ‘void’ itself is the fundamental theme of the mandala. Usually it assumes a central position in the composition. It is a common place for sharing and exchange, an effective aggregator space, the fulcrum around which complementary spaces of the building are organized, and therefore the main space. The importance of "The tree of life", to paraphrase Correa, (5) is evident considering the Indian saying whereby each architect has to construct only sixty percent of its building and leave the remaining forty to God. (6)
The ‘interlock’ is the technique through which the mandala assumes definition. It is a method of compulsive complexity, a result of the oriental mindset conditions of coexistence and ambiguity, guaranteeing that everything is in place and everything has a role. “All co-existing in an easy and natural pluralism”. (7) Thus the labyrinthine path in the Jain symbological tradition takes shape in the space and structure of “The tree of life” ruling the interlocking of solids and drawing the places in plan and section.
The ‘worlds of worlds’ instead enlightens us about the mindset that conceives the subtle but infinite balance of compresences. Boxes of boxes, folds of folds. In the mandala even the void is not a unique volume, but subject to different degrees: void, super-void, great void and the absolute void. The ‘worlds of worlds’ leads us in a continuous and sprawling series of leaps in scale. Each change in scale is a plunge into a new world. Then the single detail is a world and is, in turn, the container of other worlds. Thus the architectural work is just one of the pieces of a larger world. It is a work on a human scale, and at the same time, at the scale of the entire community. It is a system through which different, and progressive, degrees of intimacy are defined and articulated, where the various rooms communicate with each other by means of a continuity, regulated by a careful openings on bounding surfaces, effective diaphragms that are regulators of light, air and privacy.
Four significant steps can be identified in the work of the author to understand the theory of the mandala and its possible applications.
Using this device, and taking inspiration from the pols of Ahmedabad, so similar to the idea of the chorizo house, Correa draws his proposal for the contest Previ Lima Housing (1968). It is a system of low-rise, high-density and compact housing where the void, the community way, is the main element of the composition and is the space composer around which the dwellings aggregate. And each dwelling is organized in turn around the empty space of the courtyard according to the progressive degrees of intimacy. A void whose shape is inspired by the section of Villa Shodan (1951-56, LC, Ahmedabad). And a void compliments its spatial form that is given by a succession of different sections of the air, is also starring in the bioclimatic sustainability, causing a natural ventilation, thus keeping against winter humidity or the summer mugginess. (Figg. 6-9)
Still using the same device Correa realizes the project of Kanchanjunga Apartments (1970-83) – a tower of stacked villas, a vertical island in the “maximum city” (Figg. 10-13). Further, he applies the mandala's theories at the urban scale in the Belapur Housing plan (1983-86) (Fig. 14). And then in the monumental architecture and highly symbolic architecture of the Vidhan Bhavan (1980-96) and the JKK (1986-91), where the composition of the single cell is a visible reference to the Texas House (1954-63) of Hejduk, although the degree of variation and compositional complexity that Correa attains remains surprising and unique (Fig. 15).
The lectio for a possible application in current processes of urban development of this theory is suggested by Correa himself, and it remains our task to interpret it.
The issue is in the conceptual difference of "transfer and transformation" already indicated by Wright, and even earlier by Sullivan. “Such architecture does not merely transfer images (whether of local or foreign origin) but transforms them – by reinventing them”, (8) also because "exaggerated attention to the past does architecture as an passive art. And the passive turns into parody, a mess, as postmodernism." (9)
And then "transfer weakens the society, while the transformation renews and strengthens", although in reality both methods work, and to be honest the people accept the transfer more easily. (10)
However Charles Correa has reiterated over again that in the architecture is fundamental the reflection.
He claims that the form of an architectural work conveys a message and we have to reflect on the message we want to pass on. At a lunch, having called his staff and me around the meeting table and after ordering for all sandwiches and Coca-Cola from Subway, Charles wanted to tell about the Indian tradition, its culture and values, noting that basically there is no problem in drinking Coca-Cola, the important thing is not to want or believe so to be American.
* Correa, C. (2009). A place in the Shade. The New Landscape and other essays. New Dehli: Ed. Penguin, 79.
1. Tucci, G. (1969). Teoria e pratica del mandala. Roma: Astrolabio - Ubaldini Editore, 15.
2. Correa, C. (2009). A place in the Shade. The New Landscape and other essays. New Dehli: Ed. Penguin, 79.
3. An example is Japanese contemporary architecture. Atelier Bow-How, CAt, SANAA or Sou Fujimoto apply the device of mandala to their space research, although more easily and with an aesthetic much drier, in line with the characteristics of their local culture.
4. Focillon, H. (1948). The Life of Forms in Art. New York: Wittenborn, Schultz, 6. [tit. or. (1943). Vie des Formes. Paris: Librairie ernest Leroux e presses Universitaires de France.]
5.Evident the assonance with Candilis, and in fact Correa argues that its residential urban plans inspired by the natural tree development are among the most fascinating and successful examples in the history of collective housing.
6. Cfr. Zabalbeascoa, A. “La arquitectura de ‘lo que no está hecho’” in AAVV, (2009). Charles Correa – Volumen Cero. Barcelona: Fundaciòn Caja de Arquitectos, 18.
7. Correa, C. “Introduction”, in AAVV, (1986). Vistara –The architecture of India / Catalogue of exhibition. Bombay: Tata press Limited, 11.
8. Correa, C. (2009). A place in the Shade. The New Landscape and other essays. New Dehli: Ed. Penguin, 69.
9. Cfr. Zabalbeascoa, A. “Entrevista a Charles Correa” in AAVV, (2009). Charles Correa – Volumen Cero. Barcelona: Fundaciòn Caja de Arquitectos, 46.
10. Op. cit., 42.
Revision of English translation by Anuj Daga.
Bibliography
AAVV, (1970). Previ/Lima. Low-cost housing project. Architectural Design, aprile, 187-205.
AAVV, (1986). Vistara –The architecture of India / Catalogue of exhibition. Bombay: Tata press Limited.
AAVV, (2009). Charles Correa – Volumen Cero. Barcelona: Fundaciòn Caja de Arquitectos.
Correa, C. (2000). Housing and urbanization. London: Thames and Hudson.
Correa, C. (2009). A place in the Shade. The New Landscape and other essays. New Dehli: Ed. Penguin.
Focillon, H. (1948). The life of forms in Art. New York: Wittenborn, Schultz.
Khan, H. (1987). Charles Correa. Architect in India, Singapore: A Mimar Book.
Rawson, P. (1978). The Art of Tantra. London: Ed. Thames & Hudson.
Tucci, G. (1969). Teoria e pratica del mandala. Roma: Astrolabio - Ubaldini Editore.
Manuela Schirra – PhD architect at IUAV - University of Venice in Architectural Composition. Doctoral degree with a thesis on the design of dwelling for the contemporary society. She conducted her research in the megalopolis of Tokyo and Mumbai. Today she continues her studies on issues of fusion-, smart- and micro-housing, and on systems of urban settlement for new forms of living. In 2013 for the IUAV - University of Venice she was the curator of the international conference “City Portrait: Mumbai” and the exhibition “Kanchanjunga: learn from the Made in India. In Mumbai a housing project signed Charles Correa. In 2012 she was the curator of the reports on the cities of Delhi and Mumbai for the exhibition “The world architecture. Infrastructure, mobility and new landscapes” at the Triennale di Milano.
Starting from the hyper-local Charles Correa intuit the innovation and leaves his lectio.
"Using the ancient mandala as the freewheeling basis of a contemporary building, made possible a completely new way of structuring spatial sequences, unlike anything else we had done before”.*
It is a device repeated and to reiterate according to a system of ‘worlds of worlds’, developed using the technique of the ‘interlock’ and based on the premise of the ‘void’ as an organizer and generator of the space.
Correa received a degree in architecture from the University of Michigan and a master's degree from the MIT with a thesis entitled "You and your Neighbourhood" in 1955. These were the years of Stirling, of Smithson and Team 10. After that he decided to return to India and to begin his own architectural practice in Mumbai in 1958. He received the first achievements and he realizes that it was all to be done. India and in general the East had to be led in the “modern” world that the West had imposed and architecture was one of the means. It was about understanding the values of its own culture and transpose them into the wave of standardized modernism that had invaded the world.
In 1985 Correa was appointed as the President of the National Commission of Urbanism by Rajiv Gandhi. In 1986 in Bombay he curated an exhibition that was a manifesto of Indian culture, designed to empower public opinion, politics and patronage. The title was "Vistara - the Architecture of India." The mandala is the key to its understanding.
Mandalas are psychocosmograms Indo-Tibetan, geometrical and flat projections that try to synthesize the complexity of the cosmos into a singular diagram (Fig. 1). It is a two-dimensional drawing that progressively dissects and articulates this complexity by reiterating figures within figures, almost like that in a game of Chinese boxes (Fig. 2).
It is extreme rationality, represented by the basic shapes like square or circle, integrated with the free flow of thoughts or chaos. It is intellect and psyche, yin and yang, the two are inseparable in the Indian conception. Because "in India intellect has never prevailed so as to overlap at faculties of the soul and detach them so as to cause a dangerous split between the self and the psyche, which is the disease that afflicts the West", while the West "has coined a new word, unusual in the history of human thought: the word 'intellectual', as if it is possible that a man can be reduced to pure intellect." (1) This is an evident consequence of the Enlightenment.
Watchful of the contemporary architectural scene and starting from the hyper-local Correa intuit the innovation. "Using the ancient mandala as the freewheeling basis of a contemporary building, made possible a completely new way of structuring spatial sequences, unlike anything else we had done before”. (2)
Charles Correa is the first architect who experiments the device of mandala with contemporary language and program. Abstracting the rules from the architecture of Indian history (Fig. 3; Fig. 4) and rereading those handed down in the various art forms, he has defined a unique architecture (Fig. 5). It is a work that has influenced a significant part of oriental contemporary architecture. An architecture founded on the tenet of ambiguity, complementarity and compresence, extracted from the principles of Buddhist and Hindu culture. (3)
Focillon’s words about the geometric combinations of Moslem ornament match perfectly to the idea of mandala: “These combinations are produced by mathematical reasoning. They are based upon cold calculation; they are reducible to patterns of the utmost aridity. But deep within them, a sort of fever seems to goad on and to multiply the shapes; some mysterious genius of complication interlocks, enfolds, disorganizes, and reorganizes the entire labyrinth. Their very immobility sparkles with metamorphoses. Whether they be read as voids or as solids, as vertical axes or as diagonals, each one of them both withholds the secret and exposes the reality of an immense number of possibilities.” (4)
Mandala as spatial device therefore is applicable simultaneously in plan as well as section, warranting the control of complex sequences. Geometric device and mindset, order and disposition, which Correa applies according to three basic themes: the theme of the ‘void’, the theme of the ‘interlock’ and the theme of the ‘worlds of worlds’.
The ‘void’ itself is the fundamental theme of the mandala. Usually it assumes a central position in the composition. It is a common place for sharing and exchange, an effective aggregator space, the fulcrum around which complementary spaces of the building are organized, and therefore the main space. The importance of "The tree of life", to paraphrase Correa, (5) is evident considering the Indian saying whereby each architect has to construct only sixty percent of its building and leave the remaining forty to God. (6)
The ‘interlock’ is the technique through which the mandala assumes definition. It is a method of compulsive complexity, a result of the oriental mindset conditions of coexistence and ambiguity, guaranteeing that everything is in place and everything has a role. “All co-existing in an easy and natural pluralism”. (7) Thus the labyrinthine path in the Jain symbological tradition takes shape in the space and structure of “The tree of life” ruling the interlocking of solids and drawing the places in plan and section.
The ‘worlds of worlds’ instead enlightens us about the mindset that conceives the subtle but infinite balance of compresences. Boxes of boxes, folds of folds. In the mandala even the void is not a unique volume, but subject to different degrees: void, super-void, great void and the absolute void. The ‘worlds of worlds’ leads us in a continuous and sprawling series of leaps in scale. Each change in scale is a plunge into a new world. Then the single detail is a world and is, in turn, the container of other worlds. Thus the architectural work is just one of the pieces of a larger world. It is a work on a human scale, and at the same time, at the scale of the entire community. It is a system through which different, and progressive, degrees of intimacy are defined and articulated, where the various rooms communicate with each other by means of a continuity, regulated by a careful openings on bounding surfaces, effective diaphragms that are regulators of light, air and privacy.
Four significant steps can be identified in the work of the author to understand the theory of the mandala and its possible applications.
Using this device, and taking inspiration from the pols of Ahmedabad, so similar to the idea of the chorizo house, Correa draws his proposal for the contest Previ Lima Housing (1968). It is a system of low-rise, high-density and compact housing where the void, the community way, is the main element of the composition and is the space composer around which the dwellings aggregate. And each dwelling is organized in turn around the empty space of the courtyard according to the progressive degrees of intimacy. A void whose shape is inspired by the section of Villa Shodan (1951-56, LC, Ahmedabad). And a void compliments its spatial form that is given by a succession of different sections of the air, is also starring in the bioclimatic sustainability, causing a natural ventilation, thus keeping against winter humidity or the summer mugginess. (Figg. 6-9)
Still using the same device Correa realizes the project of Kanchanjunga Apartments (1970-83) – a tower of stacked villas, a vertical island in the “maximum city” (Figg. 10-13). Further, he applies the mandala's theories at the urban scale in the Belapur Housing plan (1983-86) (Fig. 14). And then in the monumental architecture and highly symbolic architecture of the Vidhan Bhavan (1980-96) and the JKK (1986-91), where the composition of the single cell is a visible reference to the Texas House (1954-63) of Hejduk, although the degree of variation and compositional complexity that Correa attains remains surprising and unique (Fig. 15).
The lectio for a possible application in current processes of urban development of this theory is suggested by Correa himself, and it remains our task to interpret it.
The issue is in the conceptual difference of "transfer and transformation" already indicated by Wright, and even earlier by Sullivan. “Such architecture does not merely transfer images (whether of local or foreign origin) but transforms them – by reinventing them”, (8) also because "exaggerated attention to the past does architecture as an passive art. And the passive turns into parody, a mess, as postmodernism." (9)
And then "transfer weakens the society, while the transformation renews and strengthens", although in reality both methods work, and to be honest the people accept the transfer more easily. (10)
However Charles Correa has reiterated over again that in the architecture is fundamental the reflection.
He claims that the form of an architectural work conveys a message and we have to reflect on the message we want to pass on. At a lunch, having called his staff and me around the meeting table and after ordering for all sandwiches and Coca-Cola from Subway, Charles wanted to tell about the Indian tradition, its culture and values, noting that basically there is no problem in drinking Coca-Cola, the important thing is not to want or believe so to be American.
* Correa, C. (2009). A place in the Shade. The New Landscape and other essays. New Dehli: Ed. Penguin, 79.
1. Tucci, G. (1969). Teoria e pratica del mandala. Roma: Astrolabio - Ubaldini Editore, 15.
2. Correa, C. (2009). A place in the Shade. The New Landscape and other essays. New Dehli: Ed. Penguin, 79.
3. An example is Japanese contemporary architecture. Atelier Bow-How, CAt, SANAA or Sou Fujimoto apply the device of mandala to their space research, although more easily and with an aesthetic much drier, in line with the characteristics of their local culture.
4. Focillon, H. (1948). The Life of Forms in Art. New York: Wittenborn, Schultz, 6. [tit. or. (1943). Vie des Formes. Paris: Librairie ernest Leroux e presses Universitaires de France.]
5.Evident the assonance with Candilis, and in fact Correa argues that its residential urban plans inspired by the natural tree development are among the most fascinating and successful examples in the history of collective housing.
6. Cfr. Zabalbeascoa, A. “La arquitectura de ‘lo que no está hecho’” in AAVV, (2009). Charles Correa – Volumen Cero. Barcelona: Fundaciòn Caja de Arquitectos, 18.
7. Correa, C. “Introduction”, in AAVV, (1986). Vistara –The architecture of India / Catalogue of exhibition. Bombay: Tata press Limited, 11.
8. Correa, C. (2009). A place in the Shade. The New Landscape and other essays. New Dehli: Ed. Penguin, 69.
9. Cfr. Zabalbeascoa, A. “Entrevista a Charles Correa” in AAVV, (2009). Charles Correa – Volumen Cero. Barcelona: Fundaciòn Caja de Arquitectos, 46.
10. Op. cit., 42.
Revision of English translation by Anuj Daga.
Bibliography
AAVV, (1970). Previ/Lima. Low-cost housing project. Architectural Design, aprile, 187-205.
AAVV, (1986). Vistara –The architecture of India / Catalogue of exhibition. Bombay: Tata press Limited.
AAVV, (2009). Charles Correa – Volumen Cero. Barcelona: Fundaciòn Caja de Arquitectos.
Correa, C. (2000). Housing and urbanization. London: Thames and Hudson.
Correa, C. (2009). A place in the Shade. The New Landscape and other essays. New Dehli: Ed. Penguin.
Focillon, H. (1948). The life of forms in Art. New York: Wittenborn, Schultz.
Khan, H. (1987). Charles Correa. Architect in India, Singapore: A Mimar Book.
Rawson, P. (1978). The Art of Tantra. London: Ed. Thames & Hudson.
Tucci, G. (1969). Teoria e pratica del mandala. Roma: Astrolabio - Ubaldini Editore.
Manuela Schirra – PhD architect at IUAV - University of Venice in Architectural Composition. Doctoral degree with a thesis on the design of dwelling for the contemporary society. She conducted her research in the megalopolis of Tokyo and Mumbai. Today she continues her studies on issues of fusion-, smart- and micro-housing, and on systems of urban settlement for new forms of living. In 2013 for the IUAV - University of Venice she was the curator of the international conference “City Portrait: Mumbai” and the exhibition “Kanchanjunga: learn from the Made in India. In Mumbai a housing project signed Charles Correa. In 2012 she was the curator of the reports on the cities of Delhi and Mumbai for the exhibition “The world architecture. Infrastructure, mobility and new landscapes” at the Triennale di Milano.
2. Sketch of Charles Correa interpreting the complexity of the mandala. Courtesy: Charles Correa Archive
