Book review: Gautam Bhatia,Stories of Storeys: Art,Architecture and the City

There are many factors which influence urbanism or the nature of life in a city. Some include interactions between people, buildings and the city’s development plans. While urban planners design the long-term development plan for the city, it is architects who determine how a city will actually look like by designing its buildings. Last but not the least, the ways in which a city’s inhabitants use buildings and public spaces so designed, influences the ever changing shapes of a city. There exists considerable work on urban planning and the varying use of space and changing social relations in Indian cities. What one rarely comes across is a detailed account of how the backrooms of the world of architecture operate and its consequent impact on the nature of city life. Gautam Bhatia’s book Stories of Stories: Art, Architecture and the City (Stories hereon) by doing that makes a pioneering contribution in filling an important gap in the available literature.

Bhatia, himself a practising architect, narrates an insider’s critique in a wide-ranging appraisal of the state of the profession of architecture in India. Methodologically an auto-ethnography, Stories discusses the good, the bad, and the ugly of the profession as practiced in India. Spanning across twenty-five chapters the book details architecture’s relations with several aspects like the role of art, luxury, landscape and history. Citing examples of innovative architectural designs from Europe, America and China, Bhatia tries to drive home the point of how far Indian cities are from the ‘ideal city’. Although one may or may not agree with Bhatia’s assessment of ‘ideal cities’, the aspect which one would definitely appreciate about Stories is the candour with which he has spoken about the ills that have come to ail the practice.

In India, the role of an architect is now reduced to that of a suave middleman who must be equipped with all the tricks required for securing approvals from government agencies. The relegation of architects to the background in the designing process has been pointed out before (Menon, 2000). What remains novel about Stories is the vivid description it provides of how this marginalisation occurs. The humorous ethnographical account of negotiations between architects, bureaucrats and clients is particularly insightful for the reader who is neither a part of this profession nor has experienced the process of building a house.

Stories shows how interactions between various actors like the builder, developer, financier, bureaucrat, politician and the client/homeowner have led to the commodification of the profession. The clients’ fascination with western styles of architecture and politicians’ fixation with the garden city have generated a culture of borrowing which has become a characteristic feature of Indian city designing and planning. Bound by archaic zoning and bye-laws, architects tend to stick to formalist geometrical designs avoiding any kind of creativity. A greater emphasis is laid upon creating a spectacle, as selling the image has become more important than the utility of the building. Thus dotting Indian cities with several similar looking glass-mirrored buildings like the malls, office complexes and housing projects which lack any distinctive individuality.

Bhatia points out that this mode of practising architecture is marked by the primacy it gives to private ownership of spaces than public spaces. The aspired goal is of maintaining the insularity of the rich and keeping the poor out of high boundary walls. As a result of which both groups lead parallel lives without sharing any spaces, the only thing common between them is the demand for public services they make upon the state. He finds this to be the main reason for why Indian cities lack a sense of collective identity and are in a state of decline. This is a point which he reiterates throughout the book.

Bhatia feels his book is of particular importance in its attempt at ‘redefining the role of politics in architecture’ p. x). Referring to the state sanctioned transfer of agricultural lands at low prices to business tycoons he points out such practices have made architecture ‘a speculative trade commodity’ (p. x). He elaborates upon this through the example of Mayawati’s land acquisition policies in Uttar Pradesh and the construction of her own statues in the state. Such networks between politicians and business tycoons impacting land policies are not just confined to Uttar Pradesh (Crabtree, 2018, pp. 143–144) but are a well identified phenomenon of India’s rentier economy (Walton, 2010). It remains unclear why Bhatia makes the specific choice of Mayawati as the politician who is responsible for making the biggest dent on the ‘landscape of a state’ (p. x). This chapter of the book feels a bit disappointing, especially because of the exciting possibilities the topic has.

There are a few other drawbacks of the book which need to be mentioned. For instance, though half the book is filled with black and white pictures which add to its readability, the lack of captions under the pictures make it difficult for readers to identify the images. It has lengthy footnotes, some of which could have been included in the main narrative and are at times a distraction. The biggest shortcoming of the book is that it lacks a coherent theoretical framework for thinking about the world of architecture.

Despite these gaps, however, there are certain attributes of Stories which make it an interesting read. Some of the comments Bhatia has made on India’s urban development are indeed thought provoking. His conceptualisation of urban villages of Delhi as sites from which how rules for collective use of public spaces evolve can be learnt is refreshing, as opposed to considering them as ‘problem areas’ which need to be fixed.

The most radical suggestion of this book appears towards its end where the author discusses how cities might come to look like in the future and provides suggestions for making those cities better designed. Bhatia feels that cities of the future will be marked by increased migration and shifting terms of employment and the age-old desire of owning a private house will decline drastically. He argues that a cohesive structure can be given to this migration only if private ownership is done away with and housing is available on a rental basis. This linking of urban sensibilities to private property rights and the possibilities of relying on collaborative living for generating a collective identity towards the city is a provocative suggestion which needs to be taken note of. Giving serious thought to issues of how property rights are organised and experienced in the city have a potential to think about ways by which inequalities can be reduced in the city (Kruckeberg, 1995).

Overall, this book is worth a read for those who are interested in understanding the trials and tribulations that architects face in Indian cities. While one may or may not agree with all the suggestions and arguments it makes regarding the relationship between architecture and urbanism, it cannot be denied that it does offer new ways to think about the city.