The extant Manasara is one of the authoritative treatises of vastusastra, traditional Indian architectural theory. The dissertation addresses the question of the nature of vastusastra, traditional architectural theory, as enunciated in the Manasara, and the relationship of theory to traditional practice. Vastusastra claims itself to be a priori with respect to practice. Two aspects of theory, theology and nomology, constitute the ontological and epistemological foundation and structure for this claim. From this sastraic perspective, practice is understood as mere application of rules. However, a closer hermeneutical reading of the text reveals the dialectical nature of theory itself, in both its theological and nomological aspects. This dialectic obtains in the relationship between theory and practice as a certain reciprocity between them, and in the parallelism between making the temple (the paradigmatic architectural object) and writing the treatise. Thus, a more precise understanding of the nature of traditional theory and its relationship to traditional practice is arrived at through this exercise. Such a calibrated understanding of vastusastra is indispensable in addressing the issue of the proper role that it may play in contemporary Indian architectural practice which is constituted in the modern scientific and technological mode.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Illustrations not reproduced. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 694-708).

Note:

Access to abstract permanently restricted to Ball State community only / Housing crisis in India -- What is vernacular? -- Vernacular as timeless -- Vernacular aesthetics : the legacy of craft -- Disengagement of vernacular from architectural practice in India -- Revisiting architectural academics -- Conclusion : applicability of vernacular studies -- Vernacular studies at Auroville Earth Institute, Auroville, India -- Low cost building technologies at Auroville Earth Institute, India -- Vernacular architecture : exemplary projects -- The joy of building. / Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community only / Accompanying CD-ROM contains additional copy of chapters 8-10. / Department of Architecture

Thesis. 1976. M.Arch.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. / Microfiche copy available in Archives and Rotch. / Bibliography: leaves 95-97. / by Julian S. Smith. / M.Arch.

An unprecedented production of discourses on contemporary Indian architects and architecture occurred in the 1980s. Published in a period of political transition and conspicuous new cultural production and debate in many fields, four decades after India’s independence from colonial rule in 1947, these architectural discourses have become privileged references that have shaped but also limited perception of late-twentieth century architectural production in India. While subsequent writers have addressed some of these limitations, the small but growing critical literature in this field still exhibits many of the same problems of representation. Despite problematising the construction of ‘Indian architecture’ in colonial and postcolonial discourse, these critiques have nevertheless taken for granted (as in the more popular and professionally oriented discourses of the 1980s) the existence of a pan-Indian community of architects, united in their search for a collective identity. Such monolithic perceptions of contemporary ‘Indian architecture’ have yet to be interpreted with regard to the conspicuous contexts in which they were produced — that is, from an ‘Indian’ point of view. Through a selective focus on a particularly productive site of discourse in 1980s India, I investigate complexities that have not yet been examined in the formation and reproduction of a dominant consensus on the identity of contemporary Indian architecture. The argument draws attention not only to the agency of particular contemporary Indian architects in the construction of this identity, but also the relativity of region in the architectural production of India during the 1980s. Specifically, I focus on an influential architectural magazine, Architecture + Design (A+D) that began publishing in 1984 from a dominant region of architectural production, Delhi. I provide an account of the manner in which history, context, agency and agents, came together at a point in time, within this architectural magazine, as a complex set of historically constituted social relations, to authorise and sustain particular viewpoints about contemporary Indian architecture. Using the French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the field of cultural production, I relate issues of dominance and marginalisation observable in the production of this particular discourse on contemporary Indian architecture to the space of the positions held by its producers. Despite its avowed agenda of viewing contemporary Indian architecture differently in the 1980s, I argue, the selection and judgement of exemplary contemporary work deemed worthy of discussion in A+D as ‘Indian Architecture’ functioned (and continues to function) through established categories of perception and appreciation. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1331621 / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, School of Architecture, 2008

An unprecedented production of discourses on contemporary Indian architects and architecture occurred in the 1980s. Published in a period of political transition and conspicuous new cultural production and debate in many fields, four decades after India’s independence from colonial rule in 1947, these architectural discourses have become privileged references that have shaped but also limited perception of late-twentieth century architectural production in India. While subsequent writers have addressed some of these limitations, the small but growing critical literature in this field still exhibits many of the same problems of representation. Despite problematising the construction of ‘Indian architecture’ in colonial and postcolonial discourse, these critiques have nevertheless taken for granted (as in the more popular and professionally oriented discourses of the 1980s) the existence of a pan-Indian community of architects, united in their search for a collective identity. Such monolithic perceptions of contemporary ‘Indian architecture’ have yet to be interpreted with regard to the conspicuous contexts in which they were produced — that is, from an ‘Indian’ point of view. Through a selective focus on a particularly productive site of discourse in 1980s India, I investigate complexities that have not yet been examined in the formation and reproduction of a dominant consensus on the identity of contemporary Indian architecture. The argument draws attention not only to the agency of particular contemporary Indian architects in the construction of this identity, but also the relativity of region in the architectural production of India during the 1980s. Specifically, I focus on an influential architectural magazine, Architecture + Design (A+D) that began publishing in 1984 from a dominant region of architectural production, Delhi. I provide an account of the manner in which history, context, agency and agents, came together at a point in time, within this architectural magazine, as a complex set of historically constituted social relations, to authorise and sustain particular viewpoints about contemporary Indian architecture. Using the French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the field of cultural production, I relate issues of dominance and marginalisation observable in the production of this particular discourse on contemporary Indian architecture to the space of the positions held by its producers. Despite its avowed agenda of viewing contemporary Indian architecture differently in the 1980s, I argue, the selection and judgement of exemplary contemporary work deemed worthy of discussion in A+D as ‘Indian Architecture’ functioned (and continues to function) through established categories of perception and appreciation. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1331621 / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, School of Architecture, 2008

This thesis is an attempt to interrogate the relationship between everyday walking and the contemporary Indian city, specifically the contemporary cultural and geographical space of Delhi--—a postcolonial city that functions simultaneously as a “global” city and a “walled city” (King, Spaces). While walking as performance art is of increasing relevance in the contemporary Indian city, the scope of this project restricts itself to examining the nature of everyday walking and its ties to everyday life, heritage and urban memory. Engaging with walking as a form of performance ethnography, this thesis considers a range of walks—heritage walks, commemorative memory walks and a form of the Situationist dérive—in the contemporary city of Delhi to ask: What can walking as an activity of performance ethnography tell us about how architecture, violence and the urban imagination dictate our lives that urban form and histories alone cannot? What is the relationship between forms of urban memory, everyday life, and heritage in an Indian city—Delhi, in this case—and how do the various kinds of walks inform this relationship? What are the various kinds of walks that emerge in response to and dialogue with site, and how do New and Old Delhi serve as models for this? This thesis is primarily about everyday walking practices in urban India, but in becoming so, it also attempts to crucially interrogate walking as ethnography as well as the practice of ethnography itself, specifically performance ethnography. It argues that some of the productive ways to engage with these practices are by re/considering walking as a practice of performance ethnography of the city, through the selective lenses of everyday life, heritage and urban memory.

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