geoffrey bawa: the future works

I bet you heard about the plan to demolish the Ena De Silva house to make way for a Car park for the Durdens Hospital. It's quite hard to get the logic behind such a move but when it comes to private property and what their owners intend to do, it's not for others to pass judgments. Still it's sad to see an iconic piece of architecture disappear from Colombo.

There are talks of trying to re-erect this house in University of Moratuwa premises with the help of people who are willing to part with some of their cash for the purpose. The university intends to turn it into a museum and it sounds like the best option compared to seeing it vanish from the face of the planet forever.

Yesterday (26th), the house was opened to the public for the last time before the contractors moved in. It is quite disturbing when such things happen and we can see it happening with other rare gems in the future. So what can we do?

I believe it will be useful to decide what to do with a building when it’s no longer 'fit-for-purpose'. It might be useful to consider this at the inception and imbibe ideas of 'after-life' into the design itself. We can see this happening in other parts of the world where they talk about a 'life-span' of a building, then design and construct in such a way something useful can arise at the demise of the building.

It might also be interesting to see how the architect, in this instance the late great Bawa would've reacted to see one of his first masterpieces (I have no doubt that this is one of the Best pieces of Modern houses in the world) perish in the face of rapid urbanisation to make way for a car park for a private hospital next door?

If these acts are allowed to happen without any resistance, others too will follow.

What rights can the public exercise to preserve something of great value to its history, culture and heritage when the legal ownership is held by a private entity?

Marriage and Economics

Marriage and Economics

Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) blogs,
http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/marriage_and_economies/

Single people are free to take more economic risks than married people. It makes me wonder if there is a correlation between the average age of marriage in a particular area and its economy.

My hypothesis is that places where marriage happens early, by custom or religion, will also be the places with the slowest rate of development. In such places there might be fewer entrepreneurs and everyone would take fewer risks.

Exceptions would abound since economies are influenced by many factors, so if there is a correlation it would be on average and not apply to every region. And obviously the causation could work the other way too; a good economy provides the option of staying single longer.

On a similar theme, easy access to divorce, and a high divorce rate, might also contribute to entrepreneurial energy. And again this could work both ways because a risk-taking spouse is probably more likely to get a divorce.  

His argument is supported by UN data and it looks like there’s something to learn here. May be this is something that we should consider (well, it’s too late for some of us) but we can encourage others who are not married as yet to stay single a little longer thus positively contributing to economic development of the country. It is a bit hypocritical to suggest others follow this pattern while we aren’t doing so but that doesn’t mean that we have no choice at all. Yes, as painful as it seems in a society like ours, the simple option available is ‘divorce’ and if done in the ‘right spirit’ (huh, ‘entrepreneurial commitment for sake of economic prosperity’) this may not be so bad after all.

But, I fear the ‘opportunity social cost’ of such an effort as marriage in our part of the world is expected to be followed by production of children. We can however get over this fact simply by following the western example of copulation without the pre-requisite of legal marriage. This also seems to be in tune with physiological development and with sexual development of the human animal where reproduction cycle peak around the age of 30-35 years for the female animal (I’m guessing here).

Anyway, I believe such a suggestion might generate much resistance from religious quarters and god related enterprise as their fundamental survival seem to depend on more and more people subscribing to their doctrines and the on fact that it is easier to get people brainwashed at a younger age than later. Also, most of these enterprises seem to feed on the suffering of the human animal as it is most likely the weak and the desperate will yearn for some spiritual salvation where economic forces have failed.

The choice is ours!

Architect 2009