ARCHITECTURAL IDENTITY

In ancient times, every civilization had their own cultural imprint on their architecture. If you study the traditional architecture of different regions, you will find that each of them had some sense of identity which differentiated one style from another, one civilization from another, but each amazing and incredible in their own right!

But today, that sense of cultural imprint is missing especially in developing countries who only look westward for their influence!They do not imbibe their technical finesse but merely "copy" the design aspects and features! Most of the structures end up as replicas of one another, and do not have anything to say about the local culture or its people..

I would say that the ancient traditional designers worked marvels with their limited resources and technology, but we with our advanced technologies have failed in that aspect! We may be building technical marvels, but we are building structures that do not relate to the local environment! These structures may be strong in foundation, but very poor in their cultural roots.

Architecture in its true sense is 'an image of the society at a particular point of time' ...therefore it may be in any form. Whether you call the form post modern or any other is a secondary issue in this case.For example, if after a hundred years, someone digs down and finds what has happened today...what will he think bout the people who live here today?...He'll probably think 'here lived some people who had the money and just did whatever they liked'. Wherever you look, you will find an image of chaos today. No culture, no IDENTITY.

Mohenjo Daro and Harappa tell us stories of a lost world. The lost civilization along the Indus Valley. Their ruins tell us about their people, their lifestyle,their adaptation to climate, their technological advancement,their life, their Gods, their means of entertainment.

WHAT stories do our buildings of today tell? How India has taken 100 years to master technologies developed in other countries?? How we have forgotten the vast oceans of knowledge buried in our ancient texts waiting to be recognised by some scholars of the "developed " countries?? It is indeed very very sad and highly ironical that today, on the one hand we rejoice the "technological marvel" labelled as RAJIV SETU and on the other, spending endless amounts of time and money on destroying the unexplainable marvel called as the RAM SETU.