'Smart City is a branding exercise sold to our PM'

To define the upcoming State of Architecture exhibition its curators start with what it isnrsquot Itrsquos not the ldquosexy kind of exhibitionrdquo where you will find the ldquostarchitectsrdquo Itrsquos not sponsored by realty developers or the one that happens in exotic destinations Taking a sweeping shot at contemporary architectural practices in the country and helmed by architecture theorist Kaiwan Mehta cultural theorist and poet Ranjit Hoskote and acclaimed architect Rahul Mehrotra it will have an oldschool rootedness the Charles Correa variety that pays attention to whatrsquos around youCultural theorist Ranjit Hoskote architect Rahul Mehrotra and architecture theorist Kaiwan Mehta PicSuresh KKStarting on January 6 and stretching up to March 20 the exhibition presented jointly by the National Gallery of Modern Art NGMA Mumbai and the Urban Design and Research Institute UDRI will see satellite exhibitions as well as a South AsialevelconferenceRahul Mehrotra ArchitectIn the past week the exhibition team which includes Kamalika Bose Riddhi Shah Sohil Soni Zenia Vandrewala and Jemma Antia has been settling upon the colour of the walls and the typography for the exhibition But these are secondary to what the team discusses on a daily basis mdash the meaning of lsquoarchitecturersquo ldquoWe wanted to bring the focus on architecture without losing it in the conversation about conservation monuments cities infrastructure and so onrdquo says Mehta The city he adds is not the only way to talk about architecture As we settle down around a table surrounded by miniature architectural models in Mehrotrarsquos Kala Ghoda office the architect asks ldquoSo can we dive straight inrdquoRanjit Hoskote Cultural theorist and poetQ A favourite frequent grouse of most Mumbaikars mdash that civic buildings are an eyesore and public structures unaestheticRahul Mehrotra When India got Independence the nationstate used architecture to define its image and identity which is why Le Corbusier came for Chandigarh That has gone out completely As they say now itrsquos an architecture of GDP a statistical architecture It has nothing to do with form because the identity of nations is now in accordance with growth rates The state has absolved itself of identifying itself through art and architecture and doesnrsquot commission architects any longer you have to then rely on Mr Ambani for the iconicity So in the exhibition we are not talking about farmhouses or weekend houses That is the architectrsquos role in one per cent of the population The question we are raising is lsquoDoes architecture matter to society in terms of public buildings and public infrastructurersquoKaiwan Mehta We forget that architecture is primarily an economic activity Whether itrsquos a building for a call centre or a range of different people working a certain economics governs the question of design Architecture is stuck between the idea of design and the practicalities of economicsRanjit Hoskote We are also presenting the exhibition as an argument against what seem to be panaceas In recent times we have heard a great deal about the lsquosmart cityrsquo as a solution The smart city is not an answer to where 850 million people will be housed in Indian cities in 2050 Itrsquos an answer to an unspecified questionKaiwan Mehta Art theoristQ You Mr Mehrotra had in an interview earlier this year debated smart citiesRM The interviewrsquos headline said I have no idea what a smart city is It was part of a longer sentence that was clipped quite cleverlyQ What you meant was perhaps there are other ways of looking at ithellipRM Yes The one big advantage of the smart city was that it brought attention to cities Having done that how we approach the problem needs more deliberation Smart cities were invented by tech companies like IBM and CISCO at the height of the American recession because they had to sell their wares And some dictatorships like Singapore picked them up Itrsquos a branding exercise which has been sold to our Prime Minister Indian cities are much more complex and plural and the danger that stares you in the face is that they will become gated communities Mehrotra fishes out a YouTube video uploaded by Narendra Modi in January 2013 called the GIFT City Film The vision to transform Gandhi Nagar into a futuristic city is supplemented with a masculine Sirilike voice and a disciplined urbanscape Among its promises are drinking water from every tap and an underground system in place of service lanes The smart city is like an office park with absolutely no talk of housing observes Mehrotra Both Hoskote and Mehta concur that the video evokes Fritz Langrsquos 1927 film on a doomed city called Metropolis ldquoWhere is the Batmobilerdquo Hoskote asks RH Oldfashioned as it seems there are some Utopian ideas of what this countryrsquos future can beKM Most newspapers have a city page and weekly columns say on books films or food but there is none on architecture There is writing about heritage but not architectureRH What has happened in due course is that heritage has become an adjective in itself Looks at Mehrotra You remember that joke when you were on the heritage panel RM A developer said he had made this building and had put some arches in it and argued with me ldquoMaine toh usme heritage dal diya na I have put heritage in it havenrsquot Irdquo Heritage was something you could buy and put in a building It was an aspirinKM Back then the heritage committee would hold a public meeting every third or fourth yearQ The current heritage committee doesnrsquot have any heritage experts on itRM Thatrsquos the case with everything here The value on professionalism has diminished in our society So a simple way of saying it is that there is political interference in everything Like someone said the fact that we have bad air and bad water is actually because of corruption We donrsquot implement pollution laws since people are corruptQ But local politics and the city have changed quite a bit Bombay is now Mumbai Are we holding on too dearlyto the myth of BombayRH It wasnrsquot a myth it was an ideal There is a difference For all of us the June 1965 issue of Marg magazine isof importance where Charles Correa Pravina Mehta and Shirish Patel proposed the pragmatic idea of a new Bombay At this point Mehrotra sneaks in a wooden wedge bearing the words lsquoPlease be briefrsquo Some brief chuckles later Hoskote is warned not to take cues from thisRH All of these people felt they were stakeholders in a debate that concerned the public at large Today there is a kind of technocracy that believes it has all the right ideas A large number of people including the intelligentsia feel excluded from this process nowKM As a student I remember I could ask someone on the heritage committee a question about architecture or the cityQ What according to each of you are the cityrsquos most pressing issuesRM For me it would be housing And related to housing is sanitationKM The relationship between education policymaking and intellectual interaction is what the social fabric of the city needsRH Housing again You cannot have a great city built on a foundation of inequity You canrsquot have a great city where more than 50 per cent of the population lives in shantytowns informal housing and what I particularly object to is this romantic fetishisation of slums mdash the Dharavi Syndrome It may sound oldfashioned but I think there is a place for a plan that provides social housing You canrsquot have these kinds of outrageous land prices that doesnrsquot allow people to have what should be the structure of a meaningful life