From Garden Suburb to Olde City Ward, Thomas Rosin

8/9/2019 From Garden Suburb to Olde City Ward, Thomas Rosin

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FROM GARDEN SUBURB TOOLDE C I TY WARDA Longitudinal Study of Social Process and IncrementalArchitecture in Jaipur, India

R. THOMAS ROSIN

Department of Anthropology, Sonoma State Universi ty, Rohnert Park ,

California, USA

Abstract

In post-Independence India, new colonies of garden suburbs served an

educated citizenry to integrate science and nature into their daily life.

However, one such colony of bungalows (kothi) and gardens, begun in

Jaipur in the 1950s, after two generations of incremental construction, has

become in the 1990s similar to an old city ward with towering courtyard

houses (haveli) abutting the property lines. This longitudinal study

compares the middle class occupants initial aspirations with real outcomes

as documented in the materiality of built form. The biography of these

buildings reflects not only a quest for a life style of class, but the adapting

of site and building to make secure ones livelihood and heritage for ones

descendants, and to manage relations with ones neighbors. The built

environment is not simply an outcome of regulation, design, and willful

intent. The levels of agency and the variety of actors are multiple and

complex, demanding an analysis of social interaction and an assessment of

aggregate outcomes.

Key Word s agency bungalow courtyard house haveli

incremental architecture

INTRODUCTION

Objects have a biography. They are produced; they are exchanged andput to use; and the outcome of their use and disposition often has

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Journal of M ateri al Cultur e

Copyright 2001SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)Vol. 6(2): 165192 [1359-1835(200107)6:2; 165192;017689]
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long-term and aggregate consequences. Many studies in material culturehave so observed objects in social and symbolic context through time,although in the study of built form scholars have given precedence to

architecture as newly completed according to design. Stewart Brand(1994) in his brilliant work, How Bui ldings Learn; What H appens afterTheyre Buil tlaments this myopic vision (not near-sighted, but time-restricted), pointing out that even in the West where specialization,design, and codifications rule pre-eminently, buildings continue tochange and readapt after their initial construction.1 Surprisingly, evenscholars of vernacular architecture, who look to locally initiated pro-duction without specialists and formal codes, tend to reify one phase ofa building as typical and representative of its total career.2

The loss of the time dimension in the study of building as artifact is

not trivial.3 As Pierre Bourdieu points out, the removal of temporalityfrom social action encourages constructing social theories without thereality of agency, choice, praxis, and history (Bourdieu, 1977, 1990). Yet,even in Bourdieus own classic work on the Kabyle house4, we find ananalysis that totalizes architecture into the initial stage of construction,a single double-room structure suited to a single couple and their chil-dren (1979, 1990: 27183). The Kabyle, based upon Bourdieus ethno-graphic presentation, seems to favor a dynamic household of manymarried sons living under the patriarchy of an elder, whose housing, in

fact, is in a cluster of rooms surrounding a courtyard.5 For such complexsocial formations of a joint household or joint family, one requires aduration of time for observing and presenting the full cycle from initialconstruction, expansion, and division of inheritance.6 As Goody hasattended to the developmental cycle for the domestic group, dealingwith the marriages, births, and deaths that reconstitute it (Goody, 1958;McNetting et al., 1984), so might we attend to the sequential develop-ment of the building that shall house such transitions in the compositionof the group occupying it as Schwerdtfeger (1982) has accomplished in

his study of three African cities, as Rosin (1991) has presented for supra-family and lineage groupings in a village neighborhood in Rajasthan, andTolbert (1989) has documented for the life cycle of an individual in theSudan. Indeed, variations and stages in social form may be reflected inthe built forms of dwellings and their settlements (See Rosin, 1997:778).

I propose here to study the biography of a building as part of anincremental7 architecture suited to the study of vernacular formsaround the world, where there is not a single stage of so-called finalized

construction, but a sequence of incremental additions, partitions, anddeletions.8 My interest is in the socio-dynamic processes that generatebuilt form. By studying the juncture of decision making in the biogra-phy of a building, one may examine the constituents of folk categories,

Jo u r n a l o f M ATER I AL CU LTU RE 6 ( 2 )

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conceptions, dispositions, expectations, plans, and desired outcomesthat determine the incremental construction of built form, comparingour findings on the dynamics of practice to the habitusof dispositions

articulated in Bourdieus theory of practice (Bourdieu, 1984; Swartz,1997: 95116, 14388). What determines the deep structure of builtform? Is it the concern for class distinctions, life style and tastes or long-term adaptive interests in the security and heritage of ones descen-dants? Because of its observable materiality, built form documentsaccumulative and aggregate outcomes, allowing us to measure actionsand consequences against occupants initial expectations and projec-tions. I am arguing in this paper that initial aspirations of life style andclass proved less significant to the unfolding structure of building andsite than pragmatic and strategic concerns to consolidate family gains

to make secure transmission to ones descendants.The built form I have chosen for a longitudinal study is that of

middle-class homes built in the new colonies of the major cities of India.Such colonies, modeled on the civil lines and cantonments that oncehoused the British colonial elite (King, 1984; Morris, 1983; Oldenburg,1984; Sinha, 1999), after Independence embodied Nehrus vision for amodern India, one in which the educated middle class, would lead thenation in uniting science and technology into the very construction oftheir daily lives. The garden suburbs of bungalows were to replace the

fortress-like courtyard houses (havelis) that dominated in the wards ofthe old walled cities. In tracing 30 years of incremental construction inone such colony, we might be observing the course of modernism andpost-modernisms, and their closure at the end of the 20th century.

METHODOLOGY

The sense of problem and research design for this project emerged overa 32-year period of recurrent field research in Rajasthan, India, from

1962 to 1994. At the outset of field research, I could not anticipate thelongevity of my personal relations that would permit three decades ofobservations, the reconceptualization as field station of a suburban sitethat served to provide comfort and refuge, nor an architectural trans-formation of a neighborhood forward in time to a more traditional past.

It was not until the mid-1980s, that I began documenting the alter-ations in built form, recovering initial house drawings drafted in the1950s, obtaining official blueprints for remodeling in 1984, witnessingdiscussions, plans, and active remodeling in 1994, and taking photo-

graphs with Gail Wread of successive alterations.In the combined and shifting roles as renter, guest, colleague, andfamily member, I, with first wife, later with second wife, occasionallywith daughters, came to live in this home for days or weeks on end,

Rosin:FROM GARDEN SUBURB TO OLDE C I TY WARD

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between longer periods of village residence 100 miles to the west in theMarwar region of Rajasthan.

Over three decades I came to occupy and sleep in six different

rooms in this home on two different levels, utilized five different toilets,bathing under ever-changing plumbing in three different locales. Afterthe beginning of the first period of field research (196264) when therooms we rented were closed to the interior by a moveable cross-bar, Iwas henceforth linked directly into the dynamic life of the home, joiningthe family daily for dining and tea, and entering and leaving by theentrances shared by family members. As interactant I was privy tofamily discussions, arguments, and revelries; my affairs were as muchtopics for discussion and solution as those of the family with whom Ishared a life during our suburban sojourns. I even had midnight, clan-

destine discussions with a Marwari lad working as servant in this house-hold, sharing in rural dialect and perspective our sense of solidarity asfellow villagers.

I was often present in the anticipation, planning, and actual redesignand construction of the home. I observed the final enclosure of the innercourtyard, the addition of rooms, the shifting of kitchens, and recon-struction of the roof and second floor. I heard of plans, and saw sketches.Upon my return from a long period in my village home, or return fromUSA for another period of research, I would be confronted by new addi-

tions or changes in use of old features. The frontage of the home thatonce provided lawn and flowerbeds might be occupied by a waterbuffalo ensconced to assure quality milk for the daughters of the family.Doors once closed for tenants might be unbarred and opened to extendfamily living space.

In hindsight, those occasions which I shared with the family andfrom which observations accrued for this research were of two sorts: (1)direct observations and discussion about imminent, in process, or justcompleted building additions and alterations, and (2) engagements in

family occasions of display and class play, in which one enacted the rep-resentations of self and place that pleased one. We shared morning teaon the roof terrace, warming ourselves in the first rays of winter sun,our laughter, chatter, and silhouetted images providing distraction tothose passing below on the street. We greeted guests in the parlor, study,or front verandah. I remember the ambience of afternoon tea served onthe front lawn by the flowerbeds, feeling in a reflexive sense how wewould be viewed over the hedge and through the iron lattice of the frontgate. These were the occasions to create a setting and an ambience to

display accomplishments, connections, and leisure within ones class.This case example illustrates how it is not so much the quest forestablishing and expressing a class identity, but the political ecology the management of site and niche through which one may reproduce


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and sustain ones heritage and livelihood through descendants and heirs that determine the biography of these buildings.

Methodologically, I have proceeded to match built form to the social

formations, interactional processes, and discussions that generate it. Ihave observed and recorded the initial constructions on one plot, andobserved its incremental additions and deletions over a 30-year period,seeking to relate such changes to their origins in the social interactionalcontext.

The study of material culture, in its incremental construction overtime gives us junctures of decision making. Each incremental additionis an occasion for inquiry. Who planned and conceived it? On what oc-casions? Why? How were such plans executed into action, with whatphysical results? How did the physical effects thereby set up the settings,

which were taken as givens in future interactions and decisions? In myobservations over a 30-year span, I have been attentive to those antici-pations of long-term function that have prompted construction, as wellas to the more immediate responses to the actions of neighbors. Finally,having reviewed the sequence of incremental changes, I project their tra-jectory through time to imagine their ultimate outcomes as patternwithin the built environment.

In my study of this family and its neighbors and their dwellings overseveral decades, it readily became apparent that changes in built form

anticipated or subsequently succeeded structural changes in the com-position of the groups dwelling there. Providing for such crucial eventsas marriages, births, and deaths, as well as space for household servants,foreign guests, and rental units for tenants, directly impacted the builtenvironment. Hence, my analyses of social process were built upon asocial anthropological understanding of organizational principles in theformation and reproduction of the household, family, and lineage.

JAIPUR: A NEW COLONY OF BUNGALOWS (KOT H I)

BECOMING AS A CITY WARD OF COURTYARD

HOUSES (H AV EL I)

Outside the city of Jaipur in the state of Rajasthan, India, there is a resi-dential suburb called Shivlalpuri, known at the time of its founding inthe late 1950s as one of the new colonies. Such colonies around provin-cial cities of administration and major towns of commerce were favoredby the middle class of professionals, government servants, and entre-preneurs whose families found success in the decades after the Inde-

pendence of India.The colonies herald a new era of postcolonial development. Here theeducated citizens of the Republic of India could join Prime Minister Nehruin ushering in an age of scientific and technological modernization that


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would directly impact the quality of their daily life, achieved under ademocratic government that would implement public policy throughrational bureaucratic planning. In a colony of planned streets, surveyed

rectilinear plots, with electric, phone, and water connections delivered bythe municipality, the middle class could leave the congestion of the narrowlanes and multi-tier construction of the traditional walled city. When Ibicycled through such communities in the early 1960s, I felt the immedi-ate contrast between such garden suburbs, with their spacious groundssurrounding a single-storied bungalow, and the old city wards, with theirenclosedhavelior courtyard multi-storied houses, clustered side-to-side astowering fortresses. Here in the garden suburb, led by its entrepreneurs,scientists, professionals, and government servants, pride of place wascombined with the promise of participating in constructing a new India.

Little did I anticipate that the garden suburb might recreate some day, 30years hence, many of the same characteristics found in the old city ward.

At its inception, the new colony was perceived to stand in sharp con-trast to the wards of Jaipur city. While Jaipur is known for its wellplanned9 grid of boulevards and for its spacious set-back of second-storyconstruction (Davar, 1977: 50), the majority of residents live on sidestreets and alleys, noteworthy for the overhanging three- and four-storystructures towering above the lanes. These structures called havelisweretraditionally the fortified home of the trading, moneylending, and busi-

ness community of the surrounding desert, whose construction wasemulated by other successful families. Their exterior walls served toenclose the domestic living space centered around an inner courtyard(see also Pramar, 1987, 1989; Prasad, 1997; Sinha, 1994). Balconiesturned inward to view the courtyard, while views of the street werethrough latticed windows to protect the women of the house from thegaze of others. Access to the street was usually through a single mainentrance, often elaborated as a grand gate. Often the buildings reveal asymmetry and replication of form, with internal units divided into quad-

rants mirroring one another.The popular view among the middle class was that the new colonies

of bungalows and gardens would replace the traditional courtyardhouses or havelisof the old city wards. Anthony King traces the bunga-low to its origins, as an English readaptation of the Bengali banggolo,and its reintroduction as a colonial artifact to the emerging of a middleclass around the world (1984).

Accordingly, as K.K. Sehgal, who compiled the Rajasthan DistrictGazetteers: Nagaur, states These havelisare being replaced by modern

houses, called kothior bungalows (1975: 60). In the recently releasedEncyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture(Oliver, 1997) among the richentries on India is the section by Sunand Prasad on 2.I.5.h Haveli: urban(India, N):


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Havelis are no longer built, having ceded their place in the culture to

suburban housetypes derived from the villa i.e. a house whose associatedexternal space is outside its walls. (1997: 9289)

In a major work (Bhatt and Scriver, 1990) celebrating a broad range ofcontemporary Indian-designed architecture, the pride of concludingpages is saved for the bungalow style house.10

This view that the suburban villa or bungalow shall replace thecourtyard house echoes throughout the literature on vernacular archi-tecture in India. But such authors, I would argue, prove to be lookingonly at the early stage of initial construction, rather than to the maturebuilding that continues to emerge, but only after several generations ofuse, incremental building, and long-term occupancy.

CASE STUDY OF A HOME AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD

The new colony or suburb of Shivlalpuri11 was conceived as a residentialsubdivision cut from the lands of the Nihan Jagirdar, a lineage of titleholders of an estate granted by the Jodhpur Maharaja. The Nihan estateitself was 10 miles from the city of Jaipur, but the lands to become Shiv-lalpuri were held as barrens suitable for the housing and grazing ofhorses, elephants, and camels, whenever the Nihan family attended

functions of the royal court. There remains today a well enclosed guesthouse and courtyard, which the last ruling descendant of the Nihanfamily has retained for his personal residence.

The land was sold to a developer prior to the extensive land reformlegislation implemented between 1949 and 1955, perhaps to avoidresumption of the land by the new democratic polity of Rajasthan State.Since the land was not considered agricultural, its conversion to resi-dential use did not require municipal permission. In 1958 streets, waterand electricity were supplied for some 70 plots, measuring 85 ft by 50 ft

or 4250 ft2

. At that time, the lots were valued at Rs.4 per square yard,selling for Rs.20003000 ($250$375 at the prevailing exchange rate of 8rupees to the dollar). Thirty years later, the lots were valued at Rs.800per sq. yd, for a total value over Rs.375,000 (over $23,600 at the pre-vailing rate of 16 rupees per dollar). In 1999, the exchange has doubledin favor of the dollar, so that present values would be approximately$47,200. The inflation in home prices would further increase thisamount.

By 1962 four buyers had quickly built homes to establish residential

claims, to ward off requisition of the lands by a neighboring hospital andmedical college as prime space on which to build faculty housing fordoctors who worked at these institutions. In fact, a significant numberof the lots later to be sold were purchased privately by doctors.


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FIGURE 1 Ground floor and first floor plans 1962: house A


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The first dwellings were single storied, set back 1520 ft from thestreet with a front verandah, the two gatekeepers of which remain todayrelatively unchanged at the entrance way into the colony. Shivlalpuri was

soon to consist of single-storied, family-owned homes, centered on theirrespective lots, and set back along the colonys regular grid of streets.Spacious wrought-iron front gates were set into high frontage walls,through which one viewed front lawns, flowers, trees, and verandah.Each dwelling was separated from its neighbors by at least a 10 ft spaceat the boundary line, with some neighbors setting aside yard space at theback boundary. The inhabitants were pleased with the open, airy qualityand new colony atmosphere, and used the Bengali term bangla, or theRajasthani word kothi or garden house, to refer to their homes.

My host entertained plans for such a single storied, open, garden-

oriented bungalow. The first 20 ft of their 85 ft deep lot was reserved fora front lawn surrounded by beds for flowers and hedges. A chowk, oratrium, initially with bare earth, was placed near the center of the houseoccupying one half the 40 ft width of the house. Adding to this outdoorzone were elevated verandahs that controlled access to the front gardenand to the chowk. The front verandah provides access to the mastersstudy and the formal parlor. The interior verandahs, 10 ft wide, linkedthe bedrooms and parlor to the chowk. The verandahs and chowkweresufficiently spacious to constitute almost a third of the area enclosed

within the houses outer walls. As initially constructed the chowkwasopen on its side, but because of construction on the neighboring lot soonwas bricked in with a large gateway covered by a corrugated iron gate,so that it took the enclosed form of a courtyard (see Figure 1).

Over the next decades a number of sinks and toilets were con-structed in a variety of alcoves, a corner of the lot shedded over as anoutdoor cooking and sleeping spot for a servant, and continual inno-vations introduced for bathing, showering, heating water, with the shift-ing about of the sites for bathing and cooking. The interior chowkwas

screened to keep flies from the dining area on the L-shaped interiorverandah.

These additions were consolidated and expanded with a majorremodeling and construction taking place in 1988, for which blueprintswere drawn up, providing projections on how the house would appearfrom the sides (see Figure 2). The construction was carried out largelyas planned, with the addition of another isolated toilet, enclosed by wallswithout roofing, on the highest elevation of the new back rooms, laying,as it were, the unfinished remnants to encourage the next stage of con-

struction.

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Basic construction consisted of cemented brick for walls, lintels offormed concrete to support window openings or doorways, columnsfrom quarried marble or sandstone for verandahs. Ceilings are solid slabs


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FIGURE 2 Blueprint projections, side elevation from the south (top) and rear

view from the east (below)


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of thick sandstone quarried from around Jodhpur. These materials andtechniques of construction have remained traditional, with the exceptionof a steel I-beam to double the span of a roof, or the addition of pipes

and electric wire added to the surface of the walls.The most recent plans for construction include a new exterior stair-case on the left or north side of the property to permit direct access toa new large dance and aerobics studio. This second story studio abutsthe room at the back north-east corner and closes off its interior access,but leaves free, on its other side to the west, the front of the roof as aterrace. The south side of the studio is a hallway, meeting the two south-east corner rooms with their separate baths, the front roof terrace,studio, and the interior staircase climbing from the central courtyardbelow.

When I first visited, the home housed the lineally extended familyof my host: his widowed mother, host with wife, with a loyal elderlyretainer who cooked for the family. Back rooms, separated from the inte-rior with external entrances, housed two foreign couples beginningresearch in Rajasthan.

The birth of two daughters extended the family to a third generation,until the widowed mother returned to the original home and family ofher deceased husbands elder brother in another district. From thiselders line a grandson was later to join the hosts family as great

nephew, marry and bring his own wife to join them, and raise his infantson there during the period when the host family suffered the difficultbirth and tragic loss of an infant third daughter.

The long courtship and marriage of the first daughter to a youngman whose home was up the road, the death of this truly beloved son-in-law just before the birth of his first child, and the return of the firstdaughter to her maternal home for the birth and raising of their femaleinfant marked a period of matrilineal extension of the family. Thesecond daughter pursued a career in womens health and cosmetology

opening a business and studio in the home, while a number of renterscontinued as short-term tenants and a number of foreigners occasion-ally visited as paying guests, often absorbed into the familys dining andsocial activities.

Hence, I have observed this family, its various tenants and guests,expand and shift from a patrilineally to a matrilineally extended core,during which time their house has expanded and changed. Once abungalow, centered around both a front study, parlor, and verandahopening to a garden, with an interior verandah opening to a side yard;

it has become a two-storied structure centered around an enclosed, andprogressively contracting interior courtyard. On the back corners, thestructure has grown out toward the property lines.


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THE PROCESSES TRANSFORMING THE GARDEN SUBURB

Pivotal among the processes involved in this transformation are thedecisions made at the level of the domestic unit, as dwelling space is

reshaped in response to a variety of demands, including: (1) economicsecurity, (2) the procurement of domestic services, and (3) family expan-sion, segmentation, and inheritance.

A . Securi ng li veli hood. A significant proportion of the individuals whopurchased property in Shivlalpuri are in the professions, either asdoctors, lawyers, accountants, or university professors, or in business.Each has his or her official place of work outside the colony, in thehospital, medical college, university, government bureaucracy, factory, or

shop. However, there are strong expectations that these individuals alsoprovide a non-official setting outside of official work hours for privateconsultation with clients, students, or coprofessionals, and it is ad-vantageous for them to do so.

For doctors in government practice, there are patients who havereceived home referrals so that special care and attention may bedevoted to their cases. For the professors, there are relatives of studentswho wish to petition for special dispensations on behalf of a son ornephew, so as to assure their success in college or on examinations. For

accountants, there are the clients who wish to launder or conceal moniesso that they are not officially declared as a part of their business. Foranyone with a secure position in a bureaucracy, there are those seekingplacement for a younger family member, or aid in overcoming a govern-mental obstacle. During the hours between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m.,before departure for ones official place of work at 10:00 a.m., the gatesto the front gardens and verandahs squeak open as petitioners and sup-plicants take tea, or at least attention, from the master (or mistress) ofeach house who is called out from the front study. Private practice inter-

weaves with public service. Among professionals, businessmen, andgovernment officials, favors may be requested now on behalf of familymembers, with the expectation that they may be reciprocated in thefuture. (In India, these deferred exchanges of services among eliteprovide an ultimate form of security to their families, sustaining anetwork of influential and diversified connections that may be calledupon whenever needed.) From supplicants of lesser stature, bribes mightbe tendered as gifts, to be accepted or brushed aside and refused.

The dwelling accommodates such transactions. A petitioner may be

received at the gate and dispatched by a servant; he may be invited intothe front garden, or onto the verandah, or into the study, where confi-dentiality can be assured, moving from more public settings to thoseincreasingly private.


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service this family. Many such service providers would require that

space for their work or for their family needs be offered by some house-hold, if they were to remain to serve the neighborhood. The man whoirons clothing, for example, has constructed a portable two-room shackon piers next to a patrons house and utilizes space at the side of anotherhouse to keep his table on which he irons each day. Homeowners maygive a single room, or a hut behind their property, or put in a latrineavailable only to servants. With these immediate objectives in mind, averandah might be walled-in, a corner alley covered with corrugatedmetal sheet, or a latrine built under a staircase.

D . Segmentation for future divi sion of inher it ance. For an Indian house-holder, ones conception of dwelling is bound up with family familyextended genealogically and through time. Genealogically the family isoften extended patrilineally in kinship membership to include severalgenerations the elders, their sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren.Temporally the family anticipates and prepares for the inevitable births,marriages, and deaths of its members.

Anticipating the future segmentation of the family and division of

its property has the most far reaching effects upon the unfolding struc-ture of the dwelling. The residential buildings of Gangawal Park show astriking symmetry of form. A house is often bilaterally symmetrical, oneside a mirror image of the other (see Figure 3). There may be a further


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FIGURE 3 Symmetry In Built Form: House B


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replication of form, as an upper floor must build upon the supportivestructure of the floor below. It may have a second axis of symmetry,wherein the back sector is nearly a mirror image (or replication) of thefront, in effect dividing each corner quadrant of the building into similarmodules. Each has its separate entrance, separate facilities for cooking,bathing, and disposal. Staircases added on at the boundary space mayprovide separate access to each set of storied quadrants above.

Such symmetry and replication of floors anticipate the division ofthe property among the various sons. For example, consider the kinshiprelations among the present inhabitants of the neighboring residenceshown in Figure 4. There are grandparents living in a common buildingwith their three sons and their separate families, in each of which anelder among the newest generation of sons has been married. The eldergrandparents live in the south side of the lower floor, with their eldestson and family living opposite on the north side. Their second son andfamily live just above on the north half of the second floor; the third son,

on the north half of the third floor. Since the elderly couple are still alive,they rent out for their own income the south side of the floor above them,the front and back of which has been divided into two separate apart-ments. Upon their death, their sons will probably each inherit a full floor


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FIGURE 4 Kinship Chart of Inhabitants: House B


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FIGURE 5 Floor plans 1988: House A


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in final division of their parents property, each renting out the south halfuntil they require it to house their own expanding family.

E. Extending to the boundaries; fill ing up the corners.How these varioussocial processes considered here interrelate to construct the biographyof a house may best be grasped by an account of the events in time andspace impinging upon the back boundary and corners of the lot. In sorelating these events, we introduce the interaction among neighbors.

For the dwelling and family under study, and their adjacent neigh-bors, all homes had been set back at least 5 ft from the property line inaccordance with the building code (see Figure 1, the floor plan 1962:House A). The first infraction involved the southerly neighbors using thesouth-east corner of their lot to support stairs for their second-story

addition (see Figure 5). Since the outer wall of this L-shaped staircasewas built upon the previously existing 5 ft brick wall shared on the prop-erty line, the family under study lodged a protest. But while apologieswere tendered, construction was continued. Where else, the neighborsqueried, could we put up a staircase, now that the second floor additionis already completed?

The eventual response to this violation of building code was toviolate another party in turn. On the opposite north-eastern corner tothe lot, the family covered over the entire passageway to protect an

outdoor kitchen area. They used that area to cook cereals over an openfire, so that the fragrance of burning wood and cow dung patties wouldflavor the food. Next to this outdoor kitchen, a servant slept on a cot atnight. To this passageway, just around the corner, another room wascreated by utilizing the 5 ft high joint property line wall to support cor-rugated iron roofing. This neighbor, in turn, built a two-story apartmentunit right onto the property-dividing wall.

A decade later the focal family of this study was to build a secondstory over the back of their home. They built right up from the property

line on this corner, since the first story structure was already there. Theyconstructed three sets of rooms each with bath and latrine, one to houseforeign guests, the others for each of their daughters. All were open tothe roof terrace and the inner staircase by the courtyard. But in planningfor the future use of two of these rooms as possible apartments, theyopened into their back wall a door with an outside ledge, overhanging aone-story drop-off. Someday these doors might open to two sets of stair-cases that would eventually fill the back alley of the lot, in order toprovide separate entrances for rental units. Such staircases, however,

would further darken the back alleyway (see 1988 Blueprints, projectedview from the back).Of these three rooms, the highest one at a split level above the others

has a larger bathroom constructed for use by their youngest daughter.


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Space was found for this bathroom by building the room half extendedover the alleyway, some 20 ft above the ground. The outer wall for thisroom sits on a single stack of mortared bricks, rising 8 ft from its anchor

on the property line wall with a four inch encroachment right onto theneighbors servant quarters. (The nurses quarters now remain in per-manent shadow below.) From this neighbor whose back garden now fallsinto shadow in late afternoon, one may expect, in turn, future con-struction to block off the imposing view of his neighbors second storyaddition now overhanging his property.

SUMMARY OF CASE STUDY

In this article I have related changes in built form to the management of

the site and buildings to enhance and secure ones livelihood and heri-tage for an expanding family. In summary:

(i) The building up of a bungalow into a multi-storied dwelling; theengineering of symmetries into the structure; the quartering of suchbuildings, by partitioning the back sector from the front I relate tothe anticipation of family segmentation and division of inheritance.

(ii) Rooms with an extra outside door and ledge, inner double-doorsbarred for closure on either side; extra faucets and toilets added in

alcoves and in open spaces I relate to the dual function of provid-ing either(a) extra quarters to house the future family of a soon-to-be-married

son or daughter, or(b) an extra apartment separable through the barred door, exterior

entrance, and staircase to rent to a tenant.(iii) The extension of the building onto the property boundary wall; the

contraction of inner courtyard and verandah I relate to the develop-ment of potential rental units, conjugal family units, or the pro-

visioning of space for a cadre of servants who will tend to the needsof a growing middle-class extended family.

In describing the trend towards abutment of neighboring dwellingsin our case example, I have shown the complexity of social processesinvolved in altering but a single major feature of built form. The resul-tant closing of access to sunlight for some tenants, the rechanneling ofair ventilation, the restriction of views, and the removal of trees andshrubs on the boundary are actions that violate local expectations of a

garden suburb. The reduction of the spacing between buildings proceedsin a series of recriminations and counter-actions. Those offended seeknot retribution, but rather claim entitlement now to proceed to fulfilltheir own familys interests, often thereby violating the interest of a


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neighbor other than those who initially offended them, in multilaterallydispersed recriminations and reactions, that tend to alienate all property-owning neighbors one from the other. Each family sits sovereign within

their own lot focusing their interests on their own micro-society ofextended family, relatives, tenants, servants, and retainers just as theextended family or lineage of families in a traditional haveli shieldedtheir complex social world from their neighbors.

As a side effect to the sovereignty and isolation of each property-owning family, there is no effective community-wide action to solve suchshared problems as clogged street drains and disposal of householdtrash. The public sector of the streets and lanes reveals a colony in-capable of action in the common public interest.

In form, and perhaps in function, the garden houses of the new

colony of Shivlalpura are increasingly approaching the nature of the tra-ditional multi-storied haveli. What emerges from my presentation is anargument that the garden suburbs and the wards of the old city containnot different types of buildings, but rather reveal different stages in thedevelopmental sequence of a traditional form of architecture.

PROJECTING INTO THE FUTURE

What does remain of the initial bungalow and garden conception ofShivlalpura, as viewed today from the streets, are the ornate wrought-iron gates, the patches of lawn and verandah, visible just beyond the 5 fthigh front walls. Here preserved for the modern career or profession ofthe master or mistress of the home is the garden frontage as the inter-section between public and private worlds, between official and non-official roles, between public service and private aggrandizement.

Yet, the garden frontage, while similar in many functions, remainsdistinctly different from the massive thresholds and gates of the haveli.A haveli abuts the street, with walls at least a story high confounding the

passer-by. Such differences challenge our assertion that there is adevelopmental sequence from the kothi to the modern haveli. Such differ-ences, however, provide an opportunity to test the adequacy of an ideainferred from observations of the previous 25 years. One may test thecorrectness of that inference by hypothesizing the changes that mightoccur in the next decades.

I take my clue from the study by Wacziarg and Nath of havelis in theShekhawati region just north of Jaipur. They observe that,

. . . the typical haveli in Shekhawati consists of two courtyards an outerand an inner . . . The outer courtyard serves as an extended threshold, sincethe main gate is seldom shut . . . The inner one is the domain of women.(Wacziarg and Nath, 1982: 22)


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FIGURE 6 Floor plan of the Sagarmal Gulab Rai Ladia haveli. (Drawings from Wacziarg a


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The dwellings of Shivlalpuri differ from such haveli not only in theirgardened front yards but also in the absence of a second, outer court-yard (see Figures 6 and 7, item 7).

Projecting into the future, one may image the following scenario: Asthe streets become more congested with traffic, with rain sewers cloggedwith trash; as young men become more rebellious, and punk and heavymetal lyrics replace the love songs of Hindi cinema; as the streetsbecome less secure, with peoples of other neighborhoods passingthrough; then, indeed, one may expect families to construct a barrier

from the street more effective than the thin wall of brick and shrubberythere today. Imagine the advantage of a line of frontage shops, eachopening only onto the street, and each shallow enough in depth to leaveyet a part of the garden and the lawn behind them. The homes, thereby,gain valuable commercial property and a protection from the street. Orimagine building-up and thickening the frontage wall. In this manner thefront garden, lawn, and verandah become fully enclosed and are trans-formed into the second outer courtyard as found described for the tra-ditional haveli of Shekhawati. So might one hypothesize the nextsequence in incremental construction to test the ideas expressed hereagainst future observations.

The values that would have directed this course of action would notbe dissimilar to those of the past: family protection, securing young


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FIGURE 7 Axonometric view of the Sagarmal Gulab Rai Ladia haveliin

Mandawa. (Drawings from Wacziarg and Nath, 1982: 23)


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women from the public sector (which is today increasingly unruly), andmaintaining the front of the home as a threshold effecting the transitionbetween public and private worlds.

From this intensive long-term study of one domestic unit and itsenvirons, one may extract a message perhaps relevant to India as awhole: irrespective of community-wide planning, attractive design, andfine rhetoric articulating principles of public interest and shared aspir-ations for the community-at-large, the primacy of the family, and itssovereignty in relationship to its neighbors, remains. The garden suburbis becoming reshaped into an old city ward, for the processes of familydecision-making, evaluation, constructive action, and social interactionthat generate such an architecture remain largely unchanged.

CONCLUSION

We see in the initial configuration of this home and surroundings themodernizing ideal of Nehru that a class of professionals, government ser-vants, and entrepreneurs would lead their nation to integrate technologyand nature into their daily life, while protected and served by state insti-tutions that would provide quality service and leadership in health,education, and economic development. Yet, such centralized policy,bureaucratic administration, and participatory municipal government, in

fact, prove less significant in the planning and actual development of thismiddle-class suburb.

Electric power, telephone, and municipal water lines, indeed, are inplace, yet inadequate flow of water has encouraged many to add pumpsand tube wells to their front yards to assure a full supply during peakhours or during the summer months. Yet not municipal sewer lines, butexcavated septic tanks are under the garden frontage developmentsthat suggest future contamination of the groundwater such householdswould individually tap.

Nevertheless, the ideal of uniting technology and nature in the homesetting are preserved in garden and verandah frontage, the grand gateopening wide to bring a car into the driveway and garage, and the sub-sequent technological innovations in bath, shower, and kitchen. Earlymorning and late afternoon sunlight are preserved on the roof terrace;air circulation, by the inner courtyard. Yet while roof terrace, garden,and courtyard are prized, each is now contracting in allotted space. Theinterior chowk, already enclosed as an inner courtyard with verandahs,shrunk, as it became further enclosed by a shower room and a kitchen

with elevated counters and cupboards emulating the West.Yet, I would argue, such modernization associated with the life styleideals of a middle class are less significant structurally, than the majorinnovations closing up the corner, the adding of units to support


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additional couples or tenants, and the doubling of upstairs rooms with aspecial outside staircase in 1995 to accommodate future division andlivelihood for a daughter building her own professional business. There

is a tension between the home as expression of class, through styles ofconsumption and leisure, and the home as site for productive activityproviding for the security and longevity of the family, its heritage anddescendants.

Indeed, in India consumption was not separated from production;home was not divorced from work; but the tradition of combining homeand work on a single site continued, although the professionals of thenew colonies had offices set up for them in public hospitals, universities,and government buildings. The political ecology of ones career madethe home an extension of ones productive, earning potential. And ulti-

mately the home provides an estate to mark and construct the site as theplace of memory, accumulation, and commemoration of ancestors anddescendants.

As a study of built form, the focus of this article has been not on themovable objects, furnishings, ornamentation, and surface style, the latterof which are often selected for research in studies of life style and class(for example, see Bourdieu, 1984: 50318, for his selection of data in Dis-tinction.) Indeed, while matters of class are trendy based on movable andreplaceable artifacts, matters of long-term adaptation create a legacy not

easily changed. The incremental construction witnessed in this casestudy, selects and builds upon prior features, intensifying the dependencyof future stages upon an increasingly embedded and layered supportivefoundation. A core structure emerges that no longer can be furtherchanged without threatening the subsequent features built upon it.

In its full materiality, in its actual manifestation as object withinshared experience, built form communicates about those whose livesand actions directly or indirectly have shaped it. This study before youmeasures real outcomes in built form against their occupants initial

expectations and projections. For the built environment is not simply anoutcome of willful intent. The levels of agency and the variety of actorsin the social fields that generate the material environment, with both itsartifice and residues, are multiple and complex.

Hence, we may argue with the postmodernists that their attentionto a peoples own self representations in speech and in writing is inad-equate in a review of practice if one does not include means to repre-sent and assess the generated and accumulated outcomes of theirthoughts, speech, and actions. We may witness how plans, projections,

and designs from earlier periods of conception do not alone account forthe built environment. In particular, although the dwellers of the newcolony Shivlalpuri in Jaipur saw themselves creating a new gardensuburb, two generations of construction and living on the sites have


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created a neighborhood not dissimilar to the courtyard houses (haveliya)of the oldest wards of the walled city. Their means of daily living, theirlong-term economic, social, and political interests, and their interactions

with neighbors, all of which have prompted construction, has producedan end distinct from many of their earlier expectations as new citizensof the state of India.

I find that the class ideology, life style and tastes that promptedmiddle-class emulation of the colonial style bungalow proved in thecourse of things less important to the unfolding, constitutive structureof the build environment than the deep-seated dispositions and antici-pations about family, descendants, and transmission of heritage thatprompted incremental renovation and reconstruction. Such resurgenceof traditional forms of knowledge and practice are enacted by agents

whose proclivities and dispositions, as Bourdieu would have it in hisarticulation of habitus, include not only matters of taste but deeplyembedded expectations and anticipations over long-term interests (seeSwartz, 1997: 10914; Brubaker, 1993). Agency and implementationprove local, interactive, with consequences aggregated rather than cen-trally planned and administered.

Yet agency is not simply a matter of socialized tastes, but as onewould expect in a middle-class suburb, rational, strategic and interactiveamong neighboring units. In pursuing a theory of practice, we should

acknowledge that consciousness, rationality, and pragmatic reflectionmight play an important role (Calhoun, 1993: 7782), even in the unin-tended re-establishment of traditional forms of architecture.

Acknowledgements

Francis Wacziarg and Aman Nath have generously permitted the reproductionof two excellent drawings of the Gulab Rai Ladia haveliin Mandawa from theirclassic presentation of Rajasthan; The Painted Wall s of Shekhavati, published byVikas Publishing House Pvt Ltd, 1982. The family whose home was recorded in

this study provided floor plans and blueprints from two different periods of con-struction, which the pen of Gail Wread gracefully rendered as figures. Thisarticle was first conceived for presentation at the Third Conference on Built Formand Culture Research, 912 November 1989, Arizona State University. The com-pleted article was presented for the Panel Social Landscapes in South Asia atthe 28th Annual Conference on South Asia, 1417 October 1999, University ofWisconsin, Madison, USA. Amita Sinha provided useful comments, while KathyCharmaz, provided valuable advice in editing.

Notes

1.Yet, note that the very title of his work assumes that there is a temporalpoint at which a building is considered built. Further note that Brand alsooften chooses to write as though the building is causal agent, rather thanthose humans who readapt it.


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2. Structuralism, as introduced by H. Glassie (1975) to vernacular architecture,presents the timeless permutations of components, rather than a linear ordendritic trajectory through time of biographic and historic moments ofstrategic importance in which plans, decisions, and actions construct upon

the accumulations and residues of past actions.3. Despite the broad definition of material culture introduced in the editorial

of the first issue of the Journal of M ateri al Cultur e, this paper is an investi-gation of the relationship between people and things not irrespective of(Miller and Tilley, 1996: 5), but rather most respectful of time and space.

4. In an earlier volume of this journal Vom Bruck (1997) also addresses thisclassic work by Bourdieu.

5. Bourdieu writes House building, which always takes place when a son ismarried and which symbolizes the birth of a new family . . . (1990: 317).Such a sentence suggests notions of a nuclear household, not consistent withother references to the preferred jointness of the lineage and its patrimony,

to the relations among brothers (1990: 192), to the authority of the patriarch(1990: 192), the jointness of housework among women (1990: 194), and tothe unity of a great house akham amograne (1990: 192).

Furthermore, Bourdieu writes about When the two cousins belong to thesame strongly united house living under the authority of one elder andholding all its property in common (1990: 166). Clearly, such a house, witha single authority, several conjugal pairs, and property held in common, fitsthe definition of a joint household.

In addition, we find out that there are important variations in the form ofthe extended family, as in the practice of adopting sons, as in residenthusbands of daughters: . . . there is no family that does not include at least

oneawrith, but an awrithdisguised under the official image of the associateor the adopted son (1990: 179).The complexity of the ethnographic situation might be revealed by

Bourdieus reference to secondary houses: secondary houses are set at rightangles around the courtyard, they are often simply lodging rooms, withoutkitchen or cowshed, and the courtyard is often closed off, on the sideopposite the front of the main house, by the back of the neighboringhouse . . . Yet Bourdieu does not clarify whether such clusters of main andsecondary houses are not part of a resident cluster housing the joint family.Hence, we have ample evidence that the Kabyle house selected for analysisas type, covers but one phase of the developmental cycle of the domestic

group, simplifying the house complex through time to its nuclear familystage alone.6. In Bourdieus seminal chapter The Work of Time (1990: 98111), we find

discussion of the reproduction of institutions, but no reference to the phases,duration, or sequence in processes through which an institution may renewitself. To speak of the reproduction of social formation requires someconception of the time durations involved, so the investigator may eitherstudy case examples longitudinally through time, or adequately select andplace case examples to observe and represent a range of phases, strategies,and outcomes during a period of observation. Of particular note is absenceof reference to the developmental cycle of the domestic group, either at thetheoretical level, or in his classic analysis of the Kabyle house.

7. Paul Oliver introduces this term, not in his text, but in a caption to a photo-graph (1987: 291).

8. Based upon a sampling of cross-cultural differences in built form, SusanKent (1990) has suggested how built form relates to the complexities of social


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organization. Such a neo-evolutionary construction, however, does not tendto the direct observation and biography of building and site, as is the focusof our study.

9. For the influence of the sacred textVaastu Shastrasupon the design of Jaipur

City, see Sinha, 1998: 39.10. The authors Bhatt and Scriver conclude their work on government buildings,

museums, housing projects, and tourist bangalows, with a sahibs cottage centered on its lot, with full garden spaces on three sides: the dining room. . . is the nucleus of both the house and garden, and is directly linked toboth through recessed verandas on both the east and west exposures . . .Window apertures [are] arranged . . . [to] fram[e] magic glimpses of gardengreenery (1990: 2201). The authors refer to the neo-colonial reveries thatstill pervade the lifestyle and ideals of middle-class India (1990: 216).

11. I have changed the name, caste, and colony location of the family and neigh-borhood to protect as best I can their anonymity. While the details of family

developmental cycle would enhance my description of the interrelationshipsamong kinship and built form, I find that the matters of marriage, birth, anddeath involve not only joys, but the sorrows of profound loss that shouldnot be treated lightly here.

12. Where incremental architecture is the recognized norm, one often seesreinforced steel cables, jagged mansory at the corners, and extensions of thefoundation all exposed to permit linking on for the next anticipatedaddition.

ReferencesBourdieu, Pierre (1977) Out li ne of a Theory of Practice(trans. Richard Nice).

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Bourdieu, Pierre (1979) A lgeri a 1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Bourdieu, Pierre (1984) D istinction: A Social Cr it ique of the Judgement of Taste

(trans. Richard Nice). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Bourdieu, Pierre (1990)The Logic of Practice (trans. Richard Nice). Palo Alto, CA:

Stanford University Press.Bhatt, Vikram and Scriver, Peter (1990) After The M asters; Contemporary Indian

Architecture. Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing.Brand, Stewart (1994) How Bui ldings Learn; What Happens A fter Theyre Built.

New York: Penguin Books.Brubaker, Rogers (1993) Social Theory as Habitus, in Craig Calhoun, Edward

LiPuma and Moishe Postone (eds)Bourdieu: Cr it ical Perspectives. Chicago, IL:University of Chicago Press.

Calhoun, Craig (1993) Habitus, Field, and Capital: The Question of HistoricalSpecificity, in Craig Calhoun, Edward LiPuma and Moishe Postone (eds)Bourdieu: Cr it ical Perspectives, pp. 6188. Chicago, IL: University of ChicagoPress.

Davar, Satish (1977) A Filigree City Spun out of Nothingness,Marg30(4): 3558.Glassie, Henry H. (1975) Folk Housing in M iddle Vi rginia: A Structural A nalysis of

H istoric Ar tifacts. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.

Goody, Jack (1958) The Developmental Cycle in Domesti c Groups. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Kent, Susan (ed.) (1990) Domesti c Ar chitecture and Use of Space: An Interdi sci-pli nary, Cross-Cult ural Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


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implementation of land reform in a feudal province transformed by the demo-

cratic institutions of the newly independent India. Subsequently, he studied theconjunctive use of rain run-off and groundwater in the indigenous system of irri-

gation in the Aravallis Hills bordering the Thar desert, with publications inHuman Ecology, Cultural Survival, and various collections on Rajasthan. Hispresent interests are cross-cultural differences in folk conception about howhuman products, residues, and wastes are recycled back into nature. A paper on

traffic and trash is forthcoming in Contr ibut ion to Indian Sociology34(3), SeptDec2000. Address: Professor of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, SonomaState University, Rohnert Park, CA 94928. [email: [email protected]]


From Garden Suburb to Olde City Ward, Thomas Rosin

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