This film is based on an eminent architectural practitioner Mrs. Didi Contractor. She studies vernacular traditions, and is still involved in designing practical adaptations for contemporary sustainability, training young artisans and reviving local skills. Her projects include building over 16 homes, a community clinic a center for compassionate living, a craft market, a residential resort and the Sambhavana institute for public policy. She is known for architectural designs in Adobe that embody her evolving ethical, ecological and aesthetic values. She gives lectures about practical adaptations for contemporary sustainability, training young artisans and reviving local skills and tells about her experience in construction of buildings.
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00:00You
00:30One of the best questions that kids ever asked me, what were my favorite buildings?
00:44They expected me to name some great Basilica or Fort or Taj Mahal or Khajuraho or something.
00:53And I thought about it and thought about it and thought about all the buildings that I'd
00:57seen, all the buildings that I've looked at pictures of, all the buildings that I've enjoyed
01:02and respect something in. And I thought that really what I really like best is the humble
01:07dwellings people make for themselves.
01:21When I first came to India, it was so beautiful. The echo of Gandhi's ideas was still very strong
01:30and you had this feeling that you were in a timeless landscape. All the ways of life that
01:37people had had for generations, for centuries, somebody was still living that way of life.
01:44Now, everything's changing very quickly. It's very hard to deal with a whole generation that hasn't
01:51actually seen tradition. When they've gone to a village, they haven't seen a whole mud village.
02:13So, I'm so glad to meet you. Thank you. In fact, I am glad to meet you.
02:43But I want to thank you for taking the effort to come with us. These are all the speakers.
02:52Now, I won't remember any of this. Terrible. Pieces I remember. Names I don't remember.
03:03Our next speaker for the session is the eminent architectural practitioner, Mrs. Didi Contractor.
03:09She studies vernacular traditions and is still involved in designing practical adaptations for
03:14contemporary sustainability, training young artisans, and reviving local skills. Her
03:20projects include building over 16 homes, a community clinic, a center for compassionate living,
03:26a craft market, a residential resort, and the Sambhavana Institute for Public Policy.
03:33She is known for architectural designs in Adobe that embody her evolving ethical,
03:38ecological, and aesthetic values. We welcome you, madam.
03:46I'm shocked to come back to the city of Bombay after about 30 years and see the Bandra I knew
03:53has disappeared. There are a few old bungalows rotting in the corners and there are these huge
03:58monstrous buildings of which I didn't see a really beautiful one yet. 30 years ago,
04:05I used to live in the city and the city was full of people with ideas and things happening,
04:10but they had very little connection with the realities of the world and I decided that I
04:15would rather live in the countryside and learn from it. So I moved to Himachal Pradesh.
04:21One of the things I see is a spot on the mountain that 30 years ago was snow covered year around.
04:29Now there's a thin rim of snow at the beginning of the season and then now it's filled just in
04:35winter for about two months. Now change is beginning to come. They're cementing the
04:41pools, they're cementing the roads. Cattle used to be able to come down to this pool to drink.
04:48Women used to come to the edge of the pool to wash their clothes. Now you cannot reach the
04:52pool without breaking your neck, as you can see. And people are beginning to build like this.
04:59I mean, the aesthetic, if you go back and forth between these two, is appalling.
05:06And the influence comes from the city. The rural used to be something we had roots in
05:13and that we translated into the city buildings when we could. Now the ugliness of the city is
05:22affecting the countryside. So I hope that you people will get out there and build something
05:28beautiful, but also build it in a responsible way. So I'm not an architect, but I love to build.
05:38I love the idea of the enclosing space and the sort of influence that a calm and resonant space
05:47can have on human beings and on their interaction. And I've tried in the area where I live
05:54to create a few examples of what can be done.
05:59I love the way mud walls catch light. I love the sense of spaces enclosing you and nurturing you.
06:07I wanted to see how, if you were building, how you would do it if you had that philosophy,
06:13that you wanted still to relate to the past and try to re-understand it.
06:29There's a way where you go up and you kick the stairs down. You can't go on up. And there's the
06:35movement up when you're building to go forward. And building to go forward is always using the past.
06:42After the monsoon, you always get some plaster cracks. If he cuts it clean and takes the plaster off,
07:05just above the curtain rod, we just cut in across that, across the chamber.
07:12We'll take that bit of plaster out. We'll see what's supporting that.
07:21You live in a mud house. You know, it's like being held. It's very nice.
07:36One of the things that I remember writing to you about the house, I wanted, I said,
07:42something like a sanctuary, a place to be at. I remember how you made me look at those pictures,
07:50those pictures of different kinds of houses to decide what I liked.
07:57And I was trying, I didn't know you. Yes, you didn't know me. And I need,
08:01the trouble with the clients is you have to be able to become them. Because when you're
08:06designing for them, you have to think, you know, I'm Sadhana getting up in the morning,
08:11what would look good to me? So you have to know what's going to look good to her, which is,
08:15might be a little different than what looks good to me. I also thought of it as a gathering space
08:20for fellow minded psychologists, a place for people to come together. I was thinking of
08:26the American Indian rooms that are circular, which are ceremonial, because the circle draws
08:33you in and draws you together. So I was seeing it as a place that would draw a group together.
08:38I remember how you insisted, because I was organizing the puja and making sure we,
08:42we would be able to bring our stuff into the house after the puja. And you insisted
08:48that I go into the garden and pluck the flowers myself. And those were the ones that we used to
08:55garland the house. And then after the puja, and a year later, when the seeds from those flowers,
09:04sort of scattered around the garden, we had huge, lovely plants again, for three years after that.
09:16So for me, it continued to be a blessing. It sort of just made this a more magical space that
09:22I've always wanted it to be. So there's a sort of the investment you're making
09:28in a simple action like that, because mostly city people are cutting out simple actions.
09:34It's a pleasure in doing simple things.
09:50This care with detail is to me a sort of a passion.
09:55There's a verse where it says that, O Devi, you're the force that causes good people to do
10:03things carefully, and thereby win their place in heaven. I was thinking, you know, place in heaven
10:10is to me something forward, place in heaven is here and now. And it's in the doing of small
10:16things carefully, that we learn to do larger things carefully.
10:19We can get the foundation going, and then we can make bricks here. I think once we get the
10:27bottom foundation in, it has to set for about seven days or so, before we put them into the beam.
10:33I'm sitting more or less in the door of my bathroom.
10:37I'm sitting in the bathroom, and I'm sitting in the bathroom, and I'm sitting in the bathroom,
10:43before we put them into the beam. I'm sitting more or less in the door of my bathroom.
10:49There'll be a door from here to a bathroom. My bed will go along there. It's a very small room.
10:55It's a very small room. This, from that corner, it'll come out at an angle,
10:59and this is just about where my chair for sitting and reading will be.
11:04So this is the corner near my bed. There's a, the bed can come this way,
11:09which is not completely auspicious, because it's facing south,
11:13which is the direction of death. But that's what I'm going to do in the room, is face south.
11:21Because if you've lived well, then you're rejoined with the universe.
11:25So it's something to be looked forward to, not something to be avoided.
11:39The snake under the earth is very important. The underlying, reptilian underlying,
11:49it's also the idea of the Kundalini, of the power and the individual,
11:53and the power within the earth. So you make an offering to that, that it should be still.
11:59There you are, that's what you're here for.
12:11In this room, the cat can't come in if I leave the door closed,
12:15so I can let Neetu out to fly around, so he can be free in this room. No place else in the house
12:21that I can close it out. So, but this is going to be one closed space. I'm making the room for the
12:26Neetu.
12:48Before I was born, my parents said if she's a girl, we'll name her Delia and give her the
12:52nickname Didi, and they always used the nickname. So then I came to India and it meant something,
12:57in the West it didn't mean anything. And then my last name then was Kinzinger,
13:03which is a German name, my father's name German. But when I came to India, my father-in-law was a
13:08contractor. And like many people in India, they didn't traditionally in their community have last
13:13names, so he took the name contractor. What inspired you to come to India?
13:19I got married. A very good-looking Indian. I was 21 and I wasn't really totally happy in the West,
13:28because I didn't like the direction things were going. No, I must say I don't like to think
13:32direction things are going here now, because we've lived on this continent, the subcontinent,
13:38for 2,000 years and it's still going. But in the last 20 years, the damage has come.
13:43What does ecology mean to you? Can somebody give me a definition?
13:48Living with everything of your environment. Everything working together. And ecology is when
13:55every part of the environment, how it's working together to sustain another part of the environment.
14:01So culture is also an ecology, in which every part of human relations sustains other possibilities
14:09of human relations. And a good designer improves the ecology. But just as you're looking when you're
14:14designing fabrics, you're looking at the property of each fabric. But you also look not just at the
14:20property, but look at how it's manufactured, where it's manufactured, what sort of damage that does,
14:25what sort of culture produces it. So always look at the ethical cost of whatever you do. Always do
14:32another sort of costing. Money is there, money is spent, money comes, money goes. But it's not what
14:37things are the value. All the things that are the best are like light and air and sunshine,
14:43belong to everybody and don't have a price tag attached.
14:55There's this concept that one person changes society. I don't think I'm going to change it.
15:01But there is a tipping point. And that point is like the straw that breaks the camel's back.
15:09I'm not important that I lay on the final straw, but my straws may be the one that just adds
15:15the weight of the tipping point.
15:23The architect creates the environment in which things take place. And you have an architecture
15:30that speaks of fascism. Rome, Nazi Germany, it looked alike, it's a fascistic. But the
15:38architecture of the peasant all over the world has spoken of the earth and the thing around it.
15:45And now one can begin to take that idea and work with nature rather than dominating nature.
15:52Because it is the home that people have created. And it's when we see our planet as home,
16:00when we see our country as home, that we can create within that.
16:12I can't tell you this morning's breakfast. Smoked salmon with capers and sour cream.
16:19An uttapam with coconut chutney. You had all of that? Yeah, I had everything. You know, like
16:25isn't it? Funny looking building, looks like coffee cups held out at the end.
16:34All these buildings are new, no? Pretty awful, they are too. Pretty awful.
16:43And block a block, I mean, you know, I would rather die than have to live in one of those.
16:48One really had to be living with somebody one loved a lot to be able to survive.
16:55Otherwise, you know, it's to me a face worse than death to have to be in one of these worlds.
17:12So I don't know where in Trinidad we are. We'll come up to the beach in a little while, won't we?
17:17Yeah, yeah. Good God, good God. Look, that's the biggest set of billboards I've seen yet.
17:25All right, hello.
17:33We'll go straight. Oh, you know, when I lived here, even on Sunday morning, there were not so
17:38many people ever. Kids had some happy days there. So it was very nice for them growing up on the
17:45beach. How long did you live there? About 12, 13 years.
17:58God, thank God we left you. I don't know if I recognize the turn into Junkie Boutier even.
18:06No, just follow this side, not that side of it.
18:09So somewhere, Theosophical Colony, we just passed it. Right. Here, this is it, Junkie Boutier.
18:28You were within a joint family, I believe. So dealing with those forces, you know, within that.
18:34Well, I didn't much. I kind of escaped. I went downstairs, closed the door. I had a cigarette
18:38and read The New Yorker. And then I would go out again like an anthropologist and see what was
18:43happening and try to understand their lives and their motivations. And if you're observing others,
18:49you should be in camouflage. So I wore my Gujarati sari in front. I put tindoor in my hair.
18:55I put ankle bracelets and I tried my best to look and behave publicly like an Indian wife and to
19:02understand. But the observer was outside of the culture and also outside of Western culture.
19:08I've always been an outsider.
19:22So I'm going on this road after ages.
19:25We're not taking the old highway. This is a new expressway.
19:29Right, that's great. So we're in Navya Bombay now?
19:50There's no reason why a building can't be a high-rise and also be beautiful. There's no
19:56reason why a sense of nature cannot enter in. These are design problems. And these are the
20:01problems that young architects could take up in the future and reconnect us. I mean, look at that.
20:08These are government architects. When groups of people visit me, I won't ask this audience and
20:15embarrass them. But when groups of people come to visit, I often ask them, how many of you appeared
20:20for engineering, failed, and then went into architecture? And usually it's a large number.
20:25And I hate to tell you the country looks like it's built by failed engineers. And if they're
20:31building things like this, it's not creating community. It's not creating beauty. It's just
20:37littering the landscape. Everywhere in Himachal Pradesh, buildings like this are coming up.
20:44They show disrespect and call attention to their dominance.
20:50They distract from the natural beauty of the surroundings. Very few buildings add to their
20:57surroundings. They block out something that's more beautiful than what they were there.
21:01At least one can do buildings that don't insult the surrounding, that don't stick out as ugly.
21:09And now the emphasis is on earning and quantity. And that is that there's a whole idea that the
21:16idea that our economies are driven by growth. And in nature, if you have growth beyond a certain
21:24point, that's cancer. And I think that in our societies, we've come to a point where growth is
21:30cancerous. It is killing us. So there's a question of finding the proper cycles. And I think it's a
21:38question of ethics. If I'm building the hills, I can think, who's going to earn the money from my
21:44doing it? If I'm building with mud brick, the local farmer who doesn't have employment can,
21:48in off-season, come and build with me. If I'm getting the material from elsewhere, bringing
21:55it in is polluting the roads. I mean, you look at where your money goes, who it's going to,
22:00and most of it's flying up into multinational hands. I really meant to talk about architecture,
22:06not preach revolution. But it is a revolution that architects can be very strong
22:14advocates in, if you choose to go that direction.
22:18Everything has become so materialistic now. The medical profession is very materialistic.
22:41So it's good to do something different. So I started to make a project. I started to raise
22:48funds. And then we had enough money to build a clinic. And at this time, I consulted different
22:56architects. And I discussed it with Didi. And Didi said, oh, that's awful. There's some
23:01monstrosities. Would you like to, you should build in mud. Because if a patient comes to
23:09the environment he is used to, then he will also feel comfortable.
23:20It took us two years to build the clinic. It was actually her very first big building.
23:27Everything was done by hand. And I really feel the clinic is the best clinic you can imagine.
23:36Good work in atmosphere.
24:06You look at Indian culture, and it has within it the cures for what's wrong in the future. Because
24:13in India, people have always taken what they needed. And it was the ideal
24:17was the sanyasi who needed nothing, who only took what came to him.
24:27There's nothing against enjoying what you have. It's not that you should disdain it.
24:33But you only take what you need. You enjoy what you have. You don't hanker after more.
24:38And that was the ethic. That was a Gandhian ethic. And I would so like to point the
24:45attention of a younger generation toward this possibility before the past is gone.
24:58We need to protect our desi plants. So put some sticks around it. Weed it.
25:05Give it some of that good earth that's lying there next to the tree over here.
25:19I want to put some cement here.
25:28I've harvested all the stone, everything I need,
25:37to build the small room right from the site of the small room. I'm happy.
25:59The mason's called cement masala. And so I say, well, you won't make your sabji of masala.
26:13You will put a little masala in the sabji to make it edible. So you can use a judicious amount,
26:21but your sabji is from the soil. Your masala can come from out.
26:28We say, the house is made of soil. It's not raw, it's very solid. But it's made of soil.
26:38Old people think it's raw. The technical word that's used in the beginning goes a long way.
26:46If you go to a bank, they won't sanction money for a house that's raw.
26:50Even if a poor person gets money from IRDP or Indira Abbas, they'll say,
26:58you have to build a house. It's not money for a house that's raw.
27:02So when I renovated this house, there were a lot of locals who said,
27:08we want to make a stove like this, we want to make a slate.
27:12But most of them had already built slat houses.
27:16Those who have built slat houses, they know that it's not fun.
27:22But those who have slat houses, they don't understand.
27:26My mother used to walk a lot in the village.
27:30The road was raw, my mother used to come on a horse.
27:33She used to live in Nishta, and she used to come on a horse at 10.30.
27:36And she used to say, 65, 66.
27:47This is the place where I'm going to make the bricks.
27:51So I'm using this to insulate the brick from the ground,
27:55so that the ground is damp, that dampness doesn't come up into the brick.
27:59So the outer part of the brick, it'll be easier to lift,
28:02because it won't be earthed underneath, it'll be this between it.
28:05And that also helps hold the two bricks together,
28:08because this will hold the mortar.
28:11So much detail.
28:13Well, God's in the details.
28:17The devil's also in the details.
28:20The devil's in forgetting the details.
28:23The gods are in remembering the details.
28:29So having these three shapes of brick makes a huge difference
28:33in the sort of shapes that we can make.
28:36And normally, they take it and break a brick.
28:39But that takes the person time,
28:42and it often breaks the whole brick, and the whole brick is spoiled.
28:45So I've tried just to increase the vocabulary a little bit.
28:50These were my ideas.
28:53After watching them work with the traditional brick.
28:56So have your interns picked up all these ideas from you?
28:59Well, hopefully.
29:03I teach them, and I also try to teach them why I've done it.
29:06Because the great day will be when an intern comes up with another addition.
29:33She might change the orientation of the building,
29:36which is going to cost a little more excavation.
29:41But let's see.
29:46Let's see what she sends back, then I'll know.
30:02Mahavirji came, and Pramodji came, but Jeetpalji didn't.
30:07And we have a new mason here,
30:10who was brought in by the laborers who come from Rishikesh.
30:13So now we'll try to train him up,
30:16whatever we did with Jeetpalji.
30:19Anyway, that's the usual thing that we always anticipate working with these guys.
30:25So it's okay.
30:27Yes, yes, yes, I will.
30:29Okay, nice talking to you. Bye.
30:38Somehow I always knew that I have to learn to work with a material
30:43to be able to design with it.
30:45And that was one thought that was laughed at by most architects.
30:51That you have to choose whether you want to be a mason or you want to be an architect.
30:55Didi was probably the first person who told me that you have to be a mason,
30:59you have to be a carpenter, you have to be a laborer,
31:02and you have to be the user also to be able to be an architect.
31:06So that reconfirmation that I always got from Didi about everything I thought was correct
31:12was something new.
31:14That's when you realize that you've found the right place,
31:17the right kind of work, and the right person to guide you.
31:22A lot of things I've learned from Didi's design.
31:25Some of the things are direct design vocabulary,
31:28some of the things are thoughts behind it.
31:30Some of the things are more related with the philosophy behind building in mud.
31:35I think the way she designs her brick sizes
31:38and the way she puts the masonry together is very unique.
31:43Her walls are 18 inches, one and a half feet wide,
31:46and the brick size is one foot by six inches.
31:49And the brick size is one foot by six inches.
31:51So that is the exact module in which you can measure all your spaces, all your walls,
31:56design all your windows with the same measure.
31:59A multiplication unit for the entire design.
32:03Give me a little.
32:16The purpose of the room is to have a place that I can retire to
32:20when it's really hot and when it's really cold,
32:23and also for privacy, so it should be a little more soundproof
32:26and a little better insulated than a normal room.
32:29And this rice paddy husk, this is the best insulation material.
32:34They shell the rice, particularly for basmati and things,
32:38there are mounds of it, so this is a by-product.
32:41It's always the most interesting to me, a by-product or garbage,
32:45if it can be taken into one more cycle.
32:49So now in the room in Sambhavana, where I've just used the ordinary mud brick,
32:54it's 13 degrees difference between outside, mid-winter.
32:57You have to remember that 1 degree is the difference between freezing and not freezing.
33:0313 degrees is between livable and non-livable.
33:06And so in this I'm hoping to have even more.
33:09I'm aiming at maybe 20 degrees.
33:12And since this room is for me, I can do the experiment.
33:15When it's for a client, don't do experiments.
33:18Because if it doesn't work, we can take it up.
33:21For oneself, when you build something for yourself or for me,
33:25we can always try at least once.
33:28Actually already there's 10 degrees with an ordinary mud house.
33:32Everybody who gets a cement house starts complaining,
33:36they have to buy a heater and they have to buy a fan.
33:39No fan and no heater would save at least 100 rupees a month, say?
33:44More than 100.
33:46So in a year you'd save how much?
33:492000 a year.
33:53So people are interested in what they save now.
33:56Everybody these days wants it now.
33:59They don't want to think of the future.
34:01People will have to change.
34:03Otherwise there'd be no people on the planet.
34:06The planet will not support us at the rate we're going, at the rate we're using.
34:10The support isn't there.
34:12So in order to gain that, when people come to realize that,
34:16then they want to see an example.
34:18So I wasn't really able to convince anybody till they saw my house.
34:42It's how you live.
34:44So trying to live by my ideals.
34:47In that I'm embedded.
34:49In daily life and the practice of daily life.
34:52So that creates around me the habits that you see in the objects around me.
35:18We do a lot of different things on the roof.
35:22Like going to the air.
35:25What's your name?
35:27Sonu Kumar.
35:39If I followed my own beliefs, I actually wouldn't be here today.
35:43Because I really don't believe in flying.
35:46However, at 85 I can no longer come without flying.
35:50So I feel that I have to do something really useful when I get here
35:53to justify having used up that much carbon cost.
35:56You look at the carbon cost of what you're doing,
35:59and then how are you going to compensate?
36:02This is the solar cooker that I began my building with about in 1985,
36:08however long ago that is.
36:10With this you have to think in the morning what you're going to eat in the afternoon.
36:13And you put it out and it cooks.
36:15The idea of using a natural thing like sunlight coming down
36:19without changing the balance at all,
36:22and having your meal, is to me miraculous.
36:24You can put up an alternative.
36:27And you can demonstrate that alternative,
36:29and then maybe it will take hold.
36:32That's all you can do.
36:34Now this is something I've built.
36:36I haven't copied the villages or any specific details,
36:42but I've copied the way in which they were built.
36:45I use some of the new materials.
36:48I like to bring in light because that's fair.
36:50I use a little carbon cost in the material
36:53that's going to reduce carbon cost in the life of the building.
36:56I use the local slate for floors.
36:59This is adobe with adobe plaster.
37:01And I like to be able to visualize the building completely.
37:05I like to think about how it will be at different times of day.
37:09And I think the greatest reward is when you walk into a finished building
37:13and the room has that appearance that you've created in your imagination
37:17and it's real.
37:19I've almost burst into tears at times
37:21walking into a building and suddenly seeing people using it
37:24the way I'd envisioned them using it.
37:27I still believe that the individual can make a difference
37:29even against the mass of the movement.
37:33But actually the wind is blowing the other direction,
37:36and it's going to blow us over the cliff into extinction.
37:47I think you need to have some good meetings and talk about it.
37:50And there will be not just one alternative, there'll be many.
37:53I can give you directions, ways of thinking
37:56that might lead you to find solutions.
37:59It's up to you. You're the future.
38:01I mean, this is maybe the last year that I can talk in public
38:06but my whole experience has been
38:09that the solutions I've found have been out of analyzing.
38:12They haven't been gathered.
38:14They've been gathered from respecting the wisdom of the past,
38:16examining it, and using it.
38:24Oh! Personal question.
38:26My parents were both painters.
38:28My father was an intellectual descendant in Europe
38:32and thought the Nazis were bad, and we left, luckily.
38:35And we came to America,
38:37and there were many other people like this who had left.
38:39So we used to meet those people,
38:41and there was a whole group of people
38:43that had been his friends that founded the Bauhaus.
38:45And I would sit in the background
38:47and listen to what the grown-ups were saying.
38:49So I looked and learned,
38:51and then my parents would visit museums very often,
38:54so I absorbed the past.
38:56Then I lived in Bombay,
38:58and I didn't get to build for various reasons,
39:01but I did get to build my own house
39:03and a couple of other houses,
39:05and they were not like other people were building.
39:07And I've had a senior architect say,
39:10to my kids,
39:12Your mother was ahead in those times.
39:14She was ahead of her times,
39:16and I was ahead of my times.
39:18Yeah. Is that enough answer?
39:20I brought up four children.
39:22That takes some effort.
39:32Is that enough?
39:34No, okay.
39:40I am.
39:42But I'm also stimulated.
39:44Huh?
39:50They're wonderful.
39:52Do more.
39:54Many people working in mud,
39:56because it's easy,
39:58don't take the extra money
40:00and don't take the extra mile
40:02to make it really well-finished,
40:04and I would like them to be viable so they last.
40:07If I'm building in cement concrete
40:10and there's a slight crack on the wall,
40:12nobody's going to say,
40:14Cement concrete, you're bad.
40:16Oh, my God, there's a crack on the wall.
40:18It's going to fall down.
40:20They trust the material,
40:22but if you're building a mud house
40:24and there's any flaw,
40:26people are going to say it's because of the mud.
40:28It's a matter of craftsmanship
40:30if you're using alternative materials.
40:52I mean, I don't go anywhere near walking my talk.
40:56I try in every detail,
40:58but it's very, very difficult
41:00because it's set up against you.
41:02But now I feel that I have the right to speak out
41:06because I've done enough work.
41:08I can show enough of one minor solution.
41:21Many solutions are required.
41:24My use also of waste material in building,
41:27I feel it's one outlook,
41:29and that may trigger
41:31some entirely different avalanche of thought.
41:42There were like three, four of us,
41:44and we were talking to Didi,
41:46and Didi was sketching up.
41:48She was drawing out a plan, I think,
41:50and then she was talking about living roofs.
41:53Living roofs is basically,
41:55you grow things on the roof.
41:57And then she said that,
41:59okay, I haven't been able to do this yet,
42:02but I would like to do it
42:04and sometime in the future, I'll do that.
42:07So an 85-year-old person talking about,
42:11okay, I want to do this,
42:13I want to do this in the future,
42:15was like, all of us were bowled over.
42:19And then the concern,
42:21even at this age,
42:23concern for the world,
42:25concern for the future,
42:28concern but also a hope.
42:46I had a chance to do a set for a film.
42:49It was for Ismael Merchant and James Ivory.
42:52I did a set for a movie of theirs called The Guru.
42:55You must have seen The Guru.
42:57There's a great moment, you should notice,
42:59where it says, Art Director, Didi Contractor.
43:02I mean, I wasn't the only art director,
43:04but I loved that moment.
43:06It's a great, and may you all see your names up there.
43:09Makes you feel great.
43:11Anyhow, at that time, I had become sort of by default
43:14from being a serious painter.
43:16I had designed the Lake Palace
43:18which was turned from a ruin into a hotel.
43:21I was in love with Indian art and with Indian craft,
43:24and so I was the first, I think, major tourist-type place
43:29that used Indian arts and crafts.
43:31At that time, Kamala Devi Chattopadhyay
43:33was the head of the All India Handicraft Board,
43:36and she threw it open to me,
43:38and I gathered materials from all over India.
43:40Now if I had done it, I would have done it differently.
43:43At that time, I used from everywhere,
43:47and I thought just that it's Indian is enough.
43:50Now I would have done only local.
43:52So when I did that, suddenly I became the star decorator.
43:56So everybody wanted me to decorate
43:58their managing director's office, their this, that,
44:01and so I started doing that
44:03because people pay you money, so you do things.
44:06And you know, it took me about 5 years of doing it
44:09to realize I don't care how these people live.
44:12They have no taste.
44:14I have to fight with them to make something look nice.
44:18They want more.
44:20They want more than would look nice.
44:22They don't want to pay the carpenter properly.
44:25This mentality, and it put me off completely,
44:29and I think this is also even in set directing,
44:33if you think it's a lousy film, don't associate.
44:37And so as yesterday I was speaking to architectural students,
44:41and then Bombay I was talking to architectural students,
44:44I feel this is a closer fellowship in a way
44:47because your awareness is of the effect,
44:50not that the subliminal effect that the set is going to have
44:54on people living in it day-to-day life,
44:56but it's going to create in your audience to know about them.
45:00So it's one of the ways in which you describe the character
45:05and set the mood,
45:07and I think it's one of the most important things
45:09because it's the visual that sits behind all the visuals.
45:12In reality, this is what I'm trying to get the architectural students
45:16to create a setting in which a more equitable
45:20and just India could unfold.
46:10For me as an individual and us as an organization
46:13to collaborate and work together with somebody
46:16with her kind of experience, knowledge, vision, ideology,
46:20it was huge.
46:21The whole process of local mistris,
46:25local women making the bricks,
46:27learning from Anu a new technique,
46:29is social sustainability
46:30because this is truly our station.
46:32People feel that, you know,
46:34I've lost my job to make this,
46:36so it's my station.
46:39Jyoti ji, how are you?
46:43Yes, and how is the program going?
46:47Community radio is all about that, you know,
46:49bringing communities together to be informed,
46:53to be entertained,
46:54to entertain and inform each other.
46:56When you talk, therefore, about a community radio station
46:58to be built with this kind of ideology
47:01just multiplies the value of its presence here.
47:10There is no tradition of earth building or timber building
47:15that is alive in Garhwal now.
47:17There are people who say that
47:19their grandparents have done that work,
47:21but nobody after that has ever touched stone and timber
47:25to build a house for themselves.
47:27In a way, they are also documenting their folk literature,
47:30folk music, folk songs and, you know,
47:33everything that has been part of their culture
47:36in terms of performed arts.
47:39At the same time, this radio station
47:41is a kind of documentation of their style of masonry.
47:45It was like, what you can say,
47:47reviving a tradition that was already dead.
47:58I had such a good phone call this morning
48:00from the radio station.
48:02Now it's causing so much attention
48:04that they're getting proud of it.
48:06The best thing, she says, that the local collector
48:10has a mandate to make a community room
48:13somewhere in the village nearby,
48:16and he wants to make a mudroom.
48:18Cool!
48:19Cool, see?
48:21So it spreads.
48:23My agenda is to see how it's spreading.
48:35Good morning.
48:37Do you have a good seat?
48:39So how can you teach architecture
48:41in such bad buildings?
48:43I think it's awful.
48:46You don't mind my saying so in front of the students?
48:49Come, come, come.
48:50We'll show you what the building is like.
48:52What you're doing, OK, OK.
48:54The building is in a different format.
49:05This is my office.
49:14It's so badly proportioned.
49:16There's a lot of wasted space,
49:18and there's nothing, it doesn't relate.
49:20If you see the human body next to it,
49:22it isn't proportioned.
49:24The proportion, I mean,
49:27I'm just distressingly ugly, frankly.
49:30I mean, I'm being honest, I might as well.
49:34Might as well be.
49:39I hope that you attain your freedom from here,
49:43and go and look at the countryside,
49:46and keep blinders on,
49:49and eventually you may become architects.
49:52But I feel that five years
49:55in what I find to be a heavy,
49:59concrete environment
50:01stressing in on me from every side
50:03is not going to liberate the mind.
50:05So you have to work very hard
50:07to liberate your minds.
50:09So what you learn outside of school,
50:12don't listen to what they teach you,
50:14listen to yourselves.
50:16Now, questions?
50:23Hey!
50:27I'm really, actually really disappointed in you all
50:30because you ask a lot of questions.
50:32If you don't have questions, there's something wrong.
50:35Because you should be always at this age
50:37full of questions.
50:39You ask the walls questions,
50:41you ask the sky questions,
50:43you ask what moves questions,
50:45you ask everything around you questions,
50:47and also about space, and light,
50:49and the things that architecture is about.
50:51You go on asking questions,
50:53it's the only way you'll advance.
50:55So create surroundings.
50:57That's what architecture is about,
50:59creating the ambience in which life can be graceful.
51:10You can use anger to drive yourself.
51:13So I use my anger at what's going wrong
51:16to drive my effort
51:18to see if I can find ways
51:20that might show another path.
51:22This isn't the way everybody can do it everywhere,
51:25but this is the sort of questions you need to ask,
51:28whichever part of the human endeavor you're involved in,
51:32you need to question it in a way
51:35that you're finding ways out,
51:37ways to carry it into the future
51:39that would not be destructive.
51:59¶¶ ¶¶
52:11If the physical body would say,
52:13okay, I give up,
52:15tomorrow it will be okay,
52:17as far as I'm concerned.
52:19So I presume that I'll be,
52:21whatever I'm supposed to do,
52:23I should write,
52:25I have more memories than I have recorded.
52:28How things were in the 50s and 60s is gone,
52:31that feeling that was around.
52:33And so I would like to recapture that and record it
52:37because I was very unbelievably fortunate
52:40as an audience of the 20th and 21st century.
52:44I've seen the world from the cosmopolitan point of view,
52:48which is a privilege.
52:50It's a privilege to be in a place
52:53where people still scythe the wheat
52:55to watch the rhythms of nature.
52:57But other places, they're just machines
52:59that go in and do these things.
53:01And so it's a privilege to have been alive
53:04in the way, in the places that I've been.
53:12I like the fact that when a mud house breaks down,
53:15it doesn't leave useless rubble.
53:17So at least my house will make nice vegetable gardens
53:20when somebody's through living in them.
53:51Hi, Didi!
53:53Hi, Shabnam.
53:55Here's my new room.
53:57Yeah, let's see your room.
53:59This is for my desk, if I look that way.
54:03Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
54:06And there's Mitchell over there in the corner.
54:09Oh, yeah.
54:11And this is my bedroom.
54:13And this is my kitchen.
54:15And this is my bedroom.
54:17And there's Mitchell over there in the corner.
54:20Oh, yes, there he is.
54:22It was really worth all the effort you took
54:25to build that room.
54:27So it's perfect. It's very worth it.
54:29It's fair to be loosed in here.
54:31It's lovely. It's just lovely.
54:35Hi, Mitchell.
54:37Hi, Shabnam.
54:39Hi, sweetie.
54:41Hi, sweetie.
54:43Mitchell.
54:47Hi, Shabnam.