An award controversy: Anthropology,architecture,and the robustness of knowledge

Introduction

This article has three main purposes. Firstly, I introduce the background to a disputed architectural award, conferred to a national governmental organization (NGO) in Rajasthan, India, in order to contribute to an emerging body of literature on an anthropology of architecture as process (Marchand, 2003, 2009; Yaneva, 2012). In this conceptualisation, traditional categorical divisions are dispensed with and instead the generative movement of people, materials, concepts and designs takes centre stage. Buildings are transformed from static objects with hidden meanings to hybrid configurations of moving actors: materials, construction techniques, builders, designers, environmental forces and events. Secondly, I situate this case study in relation to recent works on the ‘translation’ of development projects (Mosse, 2005, Mosse and Lewis, 2006). This approach, which builds upon the hybrid networks and agential becomings of Callon (1986) and Latour (1996, 2005), amongst others, aims to trace the machinations and negotiations involved in the translation and stabilisation of large-scale projects, the ways in which common understandings and meanings are established and made robust. Lastly, I aim to resituate a materiality of forms to such an analysis to consider how different ‘things’ shape the transitory nature of knowledge claims. Through these diverse, yet complementary beginnings, I seek to uncover the flows and transmutations of an architecture without walls or borders.

The players

Barefoot College is a community-based development organisation established in 1972 in the small village of Tilonia, Ajmer District, Rajasthan, India. It was initially founded to help develop self-reliance and sustainability in local communities through an integrated and practical approach to development. The principal idea was to combine in a joint venture the knowledge of urban professionals with rural skills and traditions in order to help local people identify and address the issues affecting them. Today, the college helps provide basic services to over 100,000 people in India, and increasingly beyond, in the areas of alternative energy production, healthcare, rainwater harvesting, education and community support.

The Aga Khan award for architecture is a prestigious triennial prize established by the Aga Khan IV in 1977, given for outstanding contributions to architecture in areas of the world with a significant Muslim presence. The selection process explicitly emphasises architecture that not only addresses people’s physical and social needs, but also responds to their environment and culture. Particular attention is given to projects that utilise local resources and appropriate technology in innovative ways. The programme has a triennial prize of $500,000 awarded to multiple projects, making it the world’s most highly endowed architectural prize, and it is unique among architectural awards for its recognition of projects and teams, in addition to buildings and people (Aga Khan Award for Architecture: AKAA, 2007). The Barefoot architects of Tilonia were one of the recipients of the award handed out in 2001 in Aleppo, Syria, for their ‘exceptional contributions in building rainwater harvesting structures, homes for the homeless and the Barefoot College campus’ (Sebastian, 2002). Little did they realise, however, that this historic day would become the first step in a controversy that would eventually lead to the award being handed back in a storm of accusations and counter-accusations. The following summary of events is based on 15 months of fieldwork at Barefoot College. It attempts to trace a balanced path through the controversy with reference to the ways in which the various actors involved represented and mobilised themselves at a particular point in time through different forms of media. It should be noted that, for explanatory purposes, I also utilise primary data to expand upon certain points where necessary in order to retain a balance.

Background to the controversy

The ‘new campus’ of Barefoot College, as it is known, was completed in 1986 on a plot of land 1–2 km outside the village of Tilonia, in the Ajmer District of Rajasthan, India. The campus itself is set within eight acres of fenced-off land comprising residential blocks for staff and their families, a central stage area for music, dance and other performances, guest accommodation area, library, refectory area, communication centre for local radio broadcasting, administration block, traditional communication (social messages using puppets and theatre), solar, medical, and rainwater harvesting blocks, a post office, telephone booth and craft centre. The residential blocks are set around a central courtyard providing light and ventilation. The ‘roofs’ of each building in the campus are designed in such a way as to collect and channel rainwater down through a piped water system and into a central holding area that helps to recharge the surrounding groundwater. This is then pumped up using bore-well hand-pumps.

The ‘old campus’ – the original campus of Barefoot College on which work started in 1972 – is housed in the grounds of an old tuberculosis sanatorium on the edge of Tilonia and was previously leased from the Indian government for the token sum of one rupee per month. It continues to house the blacksmith workshop, a solar cooker workshop, handicrafts section, ‘Barefoot’ primary school, a computer learning section, and solar workshops.

Due to a desire for expansion, and also for a secure base that did not rely on the vagaries of the government’s generosity, the college purchased a new plot of land just outside the village in order to construct a custom-built campus for the growing needs of the centre. For this, they hired a newly qualified young architect from New Delhi named Neehar Raina. Raina was introduced to the director of Barefoot College, Bunker Roy, through a close friend of his who had previously worked in Tilonia. Raina has stated that he treated the project like any other: he met with the clients, discussed with them their needs for the project, visited the field site, researched locally available materials and local architectural styles, drew up blueprints for the project area, and then supervised the masons and craftsmen through to its completion. As one of his first assignments as a newly qualified architect, Raina was proud of the completed project. In the following years, he went on to build up a successful architectural practice while intermittently keeping an eye on the progress of the college.

In 2002, 15 years after the completion of the campus, Raina found out that his previous client, the now world-famous Barefoot College, had been one of the recipients of the Aga Khan award for architecture, winning $50,000 and a citation that carried the names of an illiterate farmer from Tilonia (Bhanwarlal Jat) and 12 other Barefoot architects. The text of the citation read: ‘The success of this approach is exemplified through the construction of the campus by an illiterate farmer from Tilonia along with 12 other Barefoot architects, most of whom have no formal education.’ Aggrieved that his name was not included in the citation for the project that he had designed and supervised, Raina immediately contacted the Aga Khan Foundation and the Council of Architecture to lodge a formal complaint. He also produced photographs and architectural drawings to confirm his role, as it is conventionally understood, as the architect in the project.

The complaint prompted the Foundation and the Delhi-based Council for Architecture to send Romi Khosla, a senior architect, to Tilonia to investigate. In April 2002, Khosla, accompanied by Raina, travelled to the campus in Tilonia where they held an open meeting with Bunker Roy and other members associated with the project. At the meeting, which was recorded on video, Roy offered Raina a place among his Barefoot architects in the award, but Raina declined. After some discussion, a partial truce was eventually reached with an agreement to change the phrasing on the award citation – drawing a distinction between ‘designer’ and ‘architect’. In June, the Foundation changed its citation on its website in accordance with the newly agreed phrasing; they also issued Raina with a certificate testifying to his role in the project. The revised citation now read: ‘A young architect, Neehar Raina, prepared the architectural layout and an illiterate farmer from Tilonia, along with 12 other Barefoot architects, constructed the buildings.’

On 1 July 2002, The Indian Express carried a front-page story on the incident with a picture of Raina holding his new certificate. The story also carried the words of Bunker Roy who stated that: ‘It has been decided that Raina was the designer and not the architect. There’s a difference between the two.’ Raina retorted: ‘I don’t mind being called the designer. Who else designs but an architect?’ (Jain, 2002). Three days later, it was reported by The Hindu that Roy was returning the award (Sebastian, 2002). Later that same day, STAR News aired a report of the controversy in which Roy and other members stated that they felt insulted by the change in citation since, according to them, the change implied that it was not possible for ‘traditional architects’ to complete such a campus without the help of a ‘paper architect’. In a subsequent report in Frontline magazine, Roy stated:

There was no question of accepting Raina as the architect since he was a beginner and was still learning from the elders in the village. When Romi Khosla and Raina came down to Tilonia to discuss the issue with the men and women here in April this year we had agreed to acknowledge Raina as a designer but of course not as an architect. (Sebastian, 2002)

The subsequent return of the prize by Roy was the first time in the Aga Khan Foundation’s history that a recipient had returned an award. Roy is quoted in Frontline as denying that Raina had a role in the construction of the rainwater harvesting structures: ‘His contribution was only in helping prepare an initial layout of the Barefoot College campus. In this, too, he vastly benefited from the knowledge and wisdom of the local people, including women.’ In the same article, Roy further states:

We have not made any false claims or taken credit for work done or contributions made by others. We still believe that the original work was designed and executed by the Barefoot architects and that the professional architect made his contribution only as a member of the total team. It is an established practice in our society to ignore or leave unacknowledged the extraordinary contributions often made by ordinary people. The whole class of people have thus remained invisible throughout history in spite of their brilliant creativity just because they were poor and illiterate. (Sebastian, 2002, emphasis added)

Raina, who it was reported, never made any claim for the cash award, only for recognition, stated: ‘Not that I don’t recognise Tilonia’s work. But they should have recognised mine as well.’ In one of his letters to the Aga Khan Foundation’s office, Raina further stated:

By calling SWRC New Campus designed by me a ‘Barefoot College’ and attributing designs, ideas, concepts, implementation and supervision to supervisors and masons who merely executed the design, Roy has made a mockery of not only the architectural profession but of the prestigious Aga Khan award for Architecture. (Jain, 2002, emphasis added)

The Aga Khan Foundation’s website makes no mention of the controversy, and Barefoot College does not currently feature as a one-time recipient of the award. The whole embarrassing incident, it would appear, has been airbrushed from history. The Barefoot College website (2012) maintained that the campus was ‘designed by a team of rural Barefoot architects’, and further: ‘As no one had any formal training, no architectural drawings were referred to for building, all plans of the campus were drawn and re-drawn on the ground, as the design evolved and changed.’

Anthropology and architecture

Anthropology and architecture, on the face of it, are unusual allies. Their relationship in the past has customarily been confined to the margins of more established fields, with the built environment relegated to a secondary role, supporting the trials and tribulations of their more prominent human masters. While previously it might rightly have been claimed that architecture as a serious subject of academic enquiry had been somewhat overlooked by the discipline at large (Humphrey, 1988), at least in comparison to other equally pervasive social forms, such as kinship or religion (Vellinga, 2011: 173), its stature has in recent years grown to occupy a viable sub-field in its own right.

In the past, the anthropology of architecture, as Vellinga (2011: 173) notes, has typically focused on descriptions and typologies of indigenous building types and techniques, often from a comparative perspective (e.g. Horowitz, 1967; Mauss, 1979[1950]). In the latter part of the 20th century, symbolic analyses of architecture came to prominence (e.g. Bourdieu, 1973; Forth, 1981; Kis-Jovak et al., 1988). Similarly, more recent studies have drawn upon analyses of the underlying meaning of the built environment to structure social interactions (e.g. ‘house societies’, see Carsten and Hugh-Jones, 1995; Joyce and Gillespie, 2000). Issues relating to space and place have further added to the canon of works connected to the built environment (e.g. Bender and Winer, 2001; Feld and Basso, 1996; Hirsch and O’Hanlon, 1995; Ingold, 2000).

Trevor Marchand (2001, 2003, 2009, 2010), a trained architect turned anthropologist, has perhaps contributed more than most to an anthropology of architecture. Having written extensively on building-craft knowledge and apprenticeship among minaret builders and masons in Yemen, Mali and Nigeria, he advances an understanding of the built environment ‘away from static symbolic/semiotic analyses toward one of “process”, and studies architecture and urban space in its making’ (Marchand, 2001: x).

Recent works that have attempted to reappraise how the architectural process is conceived include Till (2009), who argues for the uncertainty and contingency of architecture to be taken into account, and Yaneva (2012) who focuses on the mapping of ‘controversies in architecture’. Yaneva in particular takes up the theme of the rather limited literature on architecture, noting that in the past, architecture has traditionally fallen either side of a society/material culture bifurcation, with the architectural community typically focusing on the materiality and technologies of forms, while the humanities focused on perceptions and symbolic interpretations of forms (p. 1). Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS) and the heterogeneous networked becomings of actor-network theory (ANT) (see Callon, 1986; Latour, 1987, 1996), Yaneva proposes instead that following these actors in their fluid states as they criss-cross multiple ontological boundaries helps grasp the simultaneously social and technical aspects of architecture (planning, designing, building, dwelling) as process.

Despite commencing from a rather different subject field, Mosse (2005) also employs insights derived from ANT, this time, however, utilising Latour’s (1996) application of a sociology of translation (see also Callon, 1986) to analyse how ‘success’ is generated in a large-scale development project. Translation is a term coined by Michel Callon (1986) in his study of the attempt by marine biologists to restock the St-Brieuc Bay for the scallop industry. In short, it involves a set of negotiations during which certain primary actors act to construct and define a situation or problem, impose and lock down the roles of other actors in the network, and then establish themselves as spokespersons for the collective effort of other actors. Through the employment of the concept of translation, Mosse (2005) charts local processes of patterning, from project design to the implementation of a project, through to field practices and evaluative outcomes. In this way, that is by ‘following the actors’, he is able to map how a particular narrative is mobilised, stabilised and held together via the enrolment and continued support of an ‘interpretive community’.

In the following account, I draw upon an anthropology of architecture as process and the attempted ‘translation’ of rival narratives to describe one particular architectural controversy as it unfolded between rival network builders: Barefoot College and the architectural community. Tracing the different actors involved in a controversy, however, allows not only a consideration of the agency of things and their effects on relational outcomes, but also how different material orders contribute to the witnessing of knowledge production. Thus, I also explore how different elements contribute to the establishment of matters of fact.

The translation of an architectural project

The controversy raised more than just issues of recognition for the work done; it also brought into focus the differing knowledge claims of each group associated with the project and demonstrated how each group, or network, marshalled their resources as they fought for the authority to speak on their own behalf. Namely, each network associated with the saga – the architect, the client, and the architectural profession – brought a different perspective to bear on proceedings. Let me begin with the architectural profession.

Immediately after the media coverage of the event, a group of Delhi-based architects met at the School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi to issue a joint statement in response to remarks made by Bunker Roy, with a view to opening up a dialogue about the issue in professional forums. Their statement comprises six points, which principally relate to claims to authorship and the status of architecture as a demarcated and professionalised body of knowledge. In brief, the six points cover: the definition of an architect as ‘defined by the Architect’s Act which specifies the education–training–certification–registration process for becoming an architect’; the professional role of the architect as governed by agreements between the client and the architect that spell out the scope of architectural services: ‘it is not for anyone to dismiss these as mere “paper architecture” or anything else’; the professional basis of architecture and its opposition to ‘folk wisdom’, apprenticeship, etc.: ‘it is not for anyone to dismiss a duly qualified architect commissioned to work on a project as one just “learning from wise village men”, etc.’; the role of the client or institutional client (such as an NGO) to act justly and honestly; an acknowledgement that inputs from ‘co-producers in design, construction, fabrication, crafting, finishing, etc.’ are involved in the architectural product, but that claims to authorship cannot be granted arbitrarily by anyone; and finally, the role of the Council of Architecture (2002) as a statutory body that provides a platform for redress of any grievance relating to the architectural profession: ‘To bypass the Council and dramatically air ill-informed and unfounded grievances about the architectural profession publicly on national media is hardly civil behaviour’ (Architexturez, 2002).

The points raised by the group deal with a number of interrelated issues connected to the responsibilities of the architect, the client and the architectural profession as a whole. They also reveal the processes by which one group mobilises its forces against the other by drawing upon established and hence durable practices and procedures, such as professional education, architect–client agreements, contracts, statutory bodies, and certification. The Council of Architecture (2002) contrasts these reputable and time-honoured traditions against the transitory ‘folk wisdom’ and apprenticeship, the uncivil and unprofessional, and hence unreliable behaviour of Barefoot College. Thus, through the definition of the situation, the attempt to lock down the roles of others and, finally, to act as spokesperson for their collective efforts, the architects acted to translate the situation in their favour. However, despite such strong exhortations, words carry little weight. More durable are the material enactments of these words in bricks, mortar, paper and drawings, as I will explore next.

Architecture: From design to building

Neehar Raina has his offices in north Delhi, in a gated compound off one of the busy highways that ring the city. He came to the project as a newly qualified young architect, having been introduced to Roy by a mutual friend. The project, he stated, was like any other he had worked on and proceeded in a typical architectural fashion. As Willis et al. (1974: 7) describe, in the early days of an architectural project, the design sequence is much like the preparation of a cake – the ingredients are collected, weighed and mixed together, and only after a period of time will the finished product emerge. In the architectural case, the elements to be considered include the location of the site, the nature of the proposed building, the schedule of accommodation and, most importantly, the cost. Each component has to be carefully weighed and analysed before it is incorporated into the whole, the test of the architect’s mettle being how successfully he or she can assimilate these many disparate elements into a unified design. Once a design has been approved by the client, tenders will be invited for the work. In the Tilonia case, however, owing to the rural location and ideological underpinnings of the college, only local masons and labourers were approached for the building work. Working drawings were then prepared for the head mason, whose role was to interpret the drawings and assign jobs to the masons and labourers for their execution. Throughout, the architect supervises the work in progress, but is not expected to give constant supervision, only enough to ensure that the work is in accordance with the drawings and contract.

As in any building project, the link that enables the architect to communicate his or her ideas to the mason is crucial to ensuring a transparent transition from design to construction. In an architectural project, a package of documents are presented to the foreman to guide the work in progress, which include, but are not limited to: a schedule of materials to be used and, if applicable, the manner in which they are to be used (for example, if construction techniques that are not standard practice are to be employed); statutory consents for the work to be undertaken; contract documents; specific building code regulations; in some cases, a schedule of works, detailing the timeline of how the site should proceed; and finally, and perhaps most importantly, a series of working drawings, which act to convey to the foreman all the information required for the erection of the building, including a full set of plans incorporating larger-scale details of complex sections that the architect may wish to have constructed in a particular way, schedules of windows, doors, staircases and other internal finishings (Willis et al., 1974: 7). Working drawings or architectural drawings act as the main conduits by which the ideas and designs of the architect are transmitted to the foreman or ‘site manager’, who then administers jobs to the work force accordingly.

Once we had had our tea and preliminary chat, Raina talked me through the story of the affair from the beginning. He brought out his original correspondence with the Aga Khan Foundation and also, more importantly, his original drawings of the campus. Having spent a considerable period of time at the campus, I could see that the drawings quite clearly matched the existing buildings of the current new campus in Tilonia, down to design motifs and the disputed rainwater harvesting structures. If we were operating from a causative form of knowledge reporting in this saga, then the obvious conclusion to be drawn would perhaps be a claim as to who was right and who was wrong. By following a descriptive framework, however, in effect, ‘tracing the actors’, the more interesting route of trying to account for how one group of actors overcame another in their claims to knowledge opens up. In another sense, how each spokesperson for the respective groups associated with the project – Raina, for the architectural community, and Roy, for Barefoot College – marshals and translates their respective knowledge claims. As I have previously described, the design of the campus was eventually – after some protracted discussions – attributed to Raina and the role of the Barefoot architects was downgraded to that of builders, but the question remains: how was this achieved, what actors were mobilised, and how?

Roy’s objections to the role of architect being attributed to Raina centre primarily on three points: firstly, that Raina was only the ‘designer’ of the project and not the architect, since the architects were the local people, labourers and masons who constructed the campus; secondly, Raina came to the village as a ‘beginner’ and only subsequently learned traditional techniques and local building styles from the village elders; lastly, that the efforts and contributions of local people, the labourers and unseen multitudes are rarely acknowledged in such awards, and Barefoot College thus attempted to reverse this practice.

On his first point – the distinction between ‘designer’ and ‘architect’ – Roy is quoted as saying: ‘His contribution was only in helping prepare an initial layout of the Barefoot College campus’ (Sebastian, 2002). Roy is further quoted as referring to Raina as merely a ‘paper architect’ far removed from ‘traditional’ architectural practices (Architexturez, 2002). The distinction that Roy makes between ‘design’ on the one hand and ‘architecture’ on the other alludes to a rich heritage of vernacular building techniques, characterised by generational knowledge, trial-and-error-based work and an absence of professional drawings that was, and in many parts still is, predominant across much of the sub-continent (see Thapar et al., 2005 for an introduction to vernacular building techniques in India). Roy’s statement also, of course, chimes rather well with the college’s populist ideology of anti-intellectualism, of demonstrating that uneducated people are as capable as educated ones. In the current discussion, the veracity of these claims is not my concern; rather, I am interested in how certain knowledge claims affect particular outcomes – in this instance, the investigating committee’s remaining unswayed by Roy’s claims. Instead, confronted with the blueprints of the campus drawn up by the architect, they were forced to conclude that Raina had carried out the role of ‘architect’ as it is conventionally understood by the Council of Architecture. The architectural drawings prepared by Raina acted as an inscription device (Latour and Woolgar, 1986) that mobilised and made robust a particular point in time.

The blueprint makes mobile, knowledge about the world, while simultaneously excluding certain others from access to that knowledge. The blueprint, in a sense, could be described as a ‘metonym of modernism’ (Ray, 2002) inasmuch as it orders, classifies and defines reality while simultaneously denying and hiding from view the ‘messy’ inputs that contributed to its creation.

During the course of our meeting, Raina made extensive use of the blueprints to demonstrate the central part that he played in the project. Despite the episode having occurred more than 25 years ago, the textual device of the blueprint ensured that his place in the network remained robust. Roy’s claims to the negligible contribution of Raina, however, remained rooted to the local (Law, 1986). He was limited to words and gestures. His power to shape the network, to speak on its behalf and to convince and enrol other actors was limited without the use of material objects that could traverse the network both temporally and spatially. In contrast, the blueprints allowed Raina a measure of long distance, as well as immediate, social control, which led to the subsequent acceptance and mobilisation of his version of events.

Roy’s second claim, that Raina was merely a novice when he came to the village and subsequently learned everything he knew from village elders, is a persuasive and not wholly inaccurate point. As many authors have suggested (e.g. Ingold, 2000; Lave and Wenger, 1991; Marchand 2009, 2010), learning – the acquisition, modification and adaptation of knowledge, behaviour, skills and values – is a process that, as social actors, we engage in every day of our lives. It is an active and situated process conducted through bodies, people, materials and concepts. In some respects, then, we are all differentially engaged novices. As Raina makes clear in the passages below, he likewise learned from a variety of sources, including people, materials and experience. Architecture is similarly an active process involving research of the local area and building styles, investigation of the proposed site, listening to the client, accommodating his or her desires within the projected cost, designing blueprints of the site, and supervising and handling the infrastructure of the project. The architect, then, like Latour’s characterisation of Pasteur (Latour, 1988), is a spokesperson and strategist for a network of heterogeneous elements, which he pulls together into a coherent and stable whole and makes them durable.

On the issue of Raina’s ‘novice status’, in defence of the college’s position, Roy claimed that Raina ‘made his contribution only as a member of the total team’, and, further, that ‘In this too, he vastly benefited from the knowledge and wisdom of the local people, including women.’ In my discussions with Raina, he never denied the external inputs that went into the Tilonia project, or any architectural project for that matter; rather, he emphasised the diverse inputs that contribute to any architectural project:

I learned a lot from Tilonia, I learned a lot from masons there, I learned a lot from … I don’t deny that at all … I had input from everywhere, an architect has input, in fact, a designer of a hangar or an aircraft company or whatever, and when I’d meet the engineers, I’d say how much does the whole way function [sic] … what is the weight ratio, how does it go, let me sit in an aircraft, that is the only hint that I have. ¹

In reference to the disputed rainwater harvesting structures:

The thing is, I did design it as an architect. I don’t remember how it happened, maybe someone else gave it to me, then finally, the designer, the architect, takes it and copies it, ok, and so let’s do it … rainwater harvesting, good idea, it’s not a new idea, rainwater harvesting used to be done in the villages, into these stepped wells, okay, so we said fine, good idea, let’s do it, but nobody owns this idea. ²

These passages demonstrate the many elements that contribute to an architectural project. The architect, far from denying the mediating roles of others, fully embraces them. Intermediaries, however, come in many shapes and forms, not just human; they are the ‘missing masses’ (Latour, 1992) of the architectural project. The look and feel of a piece of stone, the weight-bearing load of a timber beam, the strength of the midday sun in summer, the availability of local resources, both human and non-human, and of course the ideas and wisdom of others – all contribute to the network and subsequent durability of a construction project.

When village elders therefore give the architect the benefit of their local knowledge and wisdom, they do so only as contributing elements of a wider network made up of many other causal actors, including, of course, the architect. Roy’s claim, then, that Raina acted only ‘as a member of the total team’ is accurate, to a point; yet the architect as primary actor and spokesperson for the network also assumes responsibility for the success or failure of the network. If a project fails, the architect takes responsibility, not village elders or masons, nor can the failure be blamed on inadequate cement or the midday sun. Likewise, if it is a success, architects also claim responsibility. This is the price that must be paid when an ‘obligatory passage point’ (Callon, 1986) is appointed to a project. It is an act of black-boxing (Latour, 1992) the network, of concealing its inner workings and positioning a single actor as its author. It is a political act, an act of power conciliation, for the same reason that ‘heads must roll’ during a political crisis: anything less may expose the inner workings of the network and bring to light the precarious and fragile nature of the structures underwriting our existence. Therefore, when questions were raised at the inquiry stage about what went on during the project, the lid to the box was prised off. Raina may indeed have acted ‘only’ as a member of the ‘total team’, but ‘his’ network ultimately proved more enduring, not because it was more ‘true’ than Roy’s, but because it was a more vital part of the project.

Roy’s last point concerning the unsung contributions of labourers and local people in architectural awards is tied up with the second claim of unacknowledged inputs and also of failed network building. The website for the college states:

Since rural people have been building their own houses for generations, without consulting any urban architects, the college utilized the knowledge and skills that the locals already possessed to conceptualise and design a campus that was comfortable and acceptable to its rural staff. As no one had any formal training, no architectural drawings were referred to for building, all plans of the campus were drawn and re-drawn on the ground, as the design evolved and changed. (Barefoot College website, accessed 17 February 2013)

Roy’s network is made up of rural men and women with no formal training. Their knowledge of architecture is derived from generational knowledge and practical know-how based on their situated experience of living in rural environments. This network does not consist of urban educated professionals, nor does it consist of blueprints, hierarchies or formal plans. In this network, the ‘author’ was deemed to be not an architect or an individual, but to represent a way of life, an ideology, an idea. When the architect or ‘designer’ of the project was overlooked in the original application to the Aga Khan award, a new network was created. This network, however, was fragile and could be easily broken. When the inquiry was staged, local women and labourers who worked on the site of the campus testified vociferously to having never seen the other network builder (Raina). Bhanwarlal Jat, the local man cited in the original award as having constructed the campus along with 12 other Barefoot architects, stated:

So he said that he claimed that he was the designer. This man only came once or twice a month, it’s not like he stayed here and was part of the whole building process. ³

Other people, the masons, the people who constructed it, they helped a lot, everybody helped, it was not a one-man job. Everyone helps, the engineer only comes and tells you what you have to do and then the mason carries it out. ⁴

In an answer to the question of whether the finished buildings were faithful to the original design:

There were about fifty per cent changes. The boy (Raina) considered me like a teacher. He said I will learn from you. We used to be on good terms. ⁵

Such statements, however, carry little weight. As Law (1992: 6) notes: ‘Thoughts are cheap but they don’t last long, and speech lasts very little longer.’ The durability of the Barefoot network was shown to be lacking precisely because it was embedded in speech, gesture and in thought. It lacked the resilience of its rival formal network, which was inscribed in inanimate materials, such as blueprints and buildings.

However, this was not the end of the saga. I was in contact in 2010 with Raina to check a few facts and fill in some gaps when I happened to mention the new website that the college had recently put online. Perhaps a little mischievously, I pointed him in the direction of the ‘campus’ section and its description of the campus design and construction (as highlighted above) by unlettered Barefoot architects, with no mention of his own contribution. Raina, understandably, was somewhat perturbed, signing off with a promise of getting justice and due acknowledgement:

After I intervened, Tilonia was asked to change its website and include my name as ‘designer’. Aga Khan took the award back from Tilonia. I got the citation. Aga Khan then erases the award from its website. Now Tilonia follows suit and does a complete turn around and even lies to the whole world. I do not exist any more as an architect or a designer. I am left stranded with only a citation now. A strange irony, won’t you agree? (Raina, personal communication, 7 May 2010)

This passage demonstrates the transitory nature of knowledge claims and their tendency to break down if not routinely attended to. As a performative act, knowledge is constrained by the affordances of the materials through which it is enacted. Raina, despite originally being accorded a citation by the Aga Khan Foundation acknowledging him as the designer of the campus, and despite his pre-eminent role as the primary network builder safeguarded, now finds himself relegated to an intermediary role, at best. His work has been airbrushed from the Aga Khan website – the Foundation is keen, one must assume, to forget about the whole embarrassing affair. In addition, his contribution has been erased from the new website of Barefoot College, his involvement substituted by a team of uneducated villagers and age-old wisdom.

It is indeed an irony, as Raina notes, because one of the main reasons that he was given the original citation as designer was due to his robust and mobile blueprints, held aloft proudly as evidence of his role as primary actor during the inquiry stage. Bhanwarlal, meanwhile, the illiterate village ‘coordinator’ who maintained that all his plans were drafted in the sand and discarded when their use came to an end, could not produce anything as tangible to prove his own and others’ role in the construction. Of course, in the current information age, even paper copies are no match for the durability and ultra-mobility of electronic copies that, at the press of a key, can be downloaded, copied, shared and circulated around the world. Through a combination of erasure, selective emphasis and information technology, once again a new network builder prevails – an irony, yes, but perhaps not so strange, after all.

As Shapin and Schaffer (1985) suggest in their seminal text on the production of scientific knowledge, matters of fact are established not only epistemologically, but also socially, that is, through the witnessing of knowledge production by viewing audiences. Matters of fact are therefore established and made more robust through the collective beliefs of individuals, their relative robustness being contingent on the number of individuals witnessing them. Different material devices thus have different effects on the diffusion of knowledge. Raina cemented his role and contribution in the project through his access to blueprints and drawings, which, through their mobility and durability, could be circulated and witnessed by the investigative committee. Barefoot College, however, which relied on verbal and gestural claims, could not provide anything nearly as tangible. Yet with the conclusion of the investigation, the investigative committee’s role in the witnessing of knowledge production was temporal, limited to a point in time. What mattered subsequently was how the controversy was witnessed by donors and supporters whose contributions hinged on the college’s reputation, that is, its mobilisation of events. Thus, some time later, these claims were surpassed by the circulatory power of website statements, which again omitted Raina’s role in the project, instead substituting his input with the efforts of uneducated rural individuals. Raina’s inscription proof, which served its purpose in its day, remains presumably locked away in an office drawer, its powers of circulation surpassed by modern technology. As noted earlier, this is augmented by the omission of the entire episode from the Aga Khan website. In addition, many of the original website stories on the episode have long since expired, and those that are still available are not readily apparent. Barefoot College, meanwhile, goes from strength to strength, increasing its web traffic day by day as its reputation grows, expanding the numbers of individuals who witness its claims, and in the process strengthening its position.

The Barefoot network, then, like the Raina network, was selectively highlighted. Each chose to conceal certain working parts of their network, but for different network-building reasons: Barefoot College because its network is underwritten by a philosophy of inclusivity – that uneducated, rural people deserve recognition and respect for work done; Raina and the architectural profession because their network is predicated on exclusivity – that individuals create buildings in a solitary act of innovation. Both networks, however, as has been seen, are selectively ‘authored’; in the end, it matters less which network reflects ‘reality’ more accurately, but rather which one stands the test of time.

Conclusion

In this article, I have explored the ways and means by which two key actors in an architectural controversy fought for the right to speak for and define a situation through different ideological frameworks. Through the employment of a development discourse that positioned Barefoot College as spokesperson for the poor and oppressed against the might of the architectural profession, Barefoot College reproduced certain discursive tropes that it has relied upon since its inception. As we saw, however, such interpretations were called into doubt when key actors in the drama challenged the narrative put forth by the college and thus threw into doubt its authority.

Within this analysis, I also advocated a study of architecture as process, as a means of uncovering the different kinds of knowledge claims associated with the built environment and the material practices through which they are enacted. An understanding of architecture as process helps allay the antagonistic divisions inherent in common accounts of architecture as either overly material in their conceptualisations or as unduly social without recourse to their substantive foundations. By tracing the different claims advanced by each side, following the dispute as it criss-crossed multiple ontological domains, I demonstrated how such knowledge claims were applied and managed as each party wrestled for dominance.

A processual view, in which the various actors are followed and accounted for as they cross multiple ontological boundaries, brings to light the many diverse and interwoven elements that shape architectural projects. Furthermore, such an approach shifts the way in which wider society is conceived in relation to the built environment: from an external backdrop of abstract influences to one of mutually constituting tensions and relations performed through the material spaces of life itself. A building in this instance is not a receptacle of social processes (Yaneva, 2012: 107), neither is it an echo of wider cultural discourses. A building is rather a complex meshwork, to borrow Tim Ingold’s (2007) phrase, of a world in the process of becoming in which its ‘thingness’ is merely one component of a fluid and processual entanglement of multiple pluralities. However, such thingness also acts to make some entanglements more durable and thus more resilient than others. Only by paying attention to a materiality of forms can we better appreciate the narrative complexities of how some constructions endure and others fail.