Frugality : considering an intimate modern

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to examine one of the strands of Indian modernity that does not subscribe to the industrial presupposition as the basis of its discourse. Rather this is a modernity situated in a paradigm that is “agricultural” with far reaching implications both culturally and environmentally. The Paper is comparative, building up contrasts between concepts that underlie a modernity that is “Industrial” and one that is “agricultural”. It explores their respective attitudes and modes of “reduction”. The first, “Minimizing” and its aesthetic equivalent, Minimalism is located in the industrial and particularly in the processes of mass production. The second, “frugality” is its equivalent in an agricultural paradigm, and is rooted in relationships and concepts whose aesthetic and therefore architectural potentials have not been adequately elaborated. This paper aims to study the architectural implications of “Frugality” with its emphasis on the rural-agricultural rather than the urban- industrial, bodily relationship to space rather than visual and mental constructions of space, and an intimacy with the material, the tactile, and a world that is “Full” Historically speaking this paper explores the aesthetic and architectural implications of a “Gandhian” Modernity as being distinct from the ubiquitous modernity that is our “Nehruvian” legacy. Architecturally the paper develops, in contrast to the idea of “transparency”, that ubiquitous spatial need of all modern and minimal architecture, the idea of “Porosity”, an attitude of material continuity that does not distinguish between differing forms of matter. Where as the first requires a spatial continuity, the latter is based on a continuity of material. Through the description and analysis of Gandhiji’s residence, Hruday Kunj at his Ashram on the Sabarmati in Ahmedabad, this paper elaborates on the experiences of such architecture.