Fig 1. Focus of foreground over background Fig 2. Focus of background over foreground
“In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction…It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” — Audre Lorde
Harvard has a rich history of about 390 years with multi-lying layers of social, cultural and political contexts subdued in its image. Originally Harvard College, around which Harvard University eventually grew was founded 1636 and since its inception a lot has changed in its demographic landscape. From being dominated primarily by Christian clergy to the current day diverse socio-cultural and ethnic student, professor and staff population. Observing this shift in body politic this project titled Paradoxical co-existence juxtaposes Harvard’s physical built environment with other institutional complexes in diverse heterogeneous contexts. In a series of illustrations on plexi glass angled and framed at the ‘power structures’ of the Yard namely the church, the Library, Hostel and classrooms the project overlays the existing framework through the medium of the sketch and compares it or rather collocates it in a different setting. The church superimposed with the analogous global identities as the temple/mosque and the library to the Gurukul/Madrasa symbolizes a strategic point of view, giving the observer an option to switch between the foreground and the background tying back to create an ephemeral 4th dimension in the mind of the viewer thus enabling the participant to potentially escape the innate background of distinctive western pedagogy and archetypes. The project aims to visit the landscape of the yard from the point of view of Harvard’s newly endorsed ethnocultural population side by side studying the dichotomy of institutional architecture in varied contexts.
Work produced as a part of the Interdisciplinary art and design practices course at Harvard Graduate school of design(2016).
Photo of church overlaid with a temple
Diversity—racial, ethnic, or geographic—was often not a word used to describe Harvard College during its first few centuries. In 1922, former Harvard President Abbott Lawrence Lowell ’77 proposed a quota capping Jewish students’ enrollment at 15 percent of the class. The incoming freshman class in 1950 had just four black students, and it wasn’t until 1970 that administrators undertook “the great experiment” to eventually make the Harvard housing system co-ed. Tracing further back in the pages of history the following law of the Dunster code presents a vivid picture whereby the use of a student’s mother tongue was probably prohibited and perhaps so much might be effected by law. As per a latest survey by Harvard colleges admissions and financial aid department the school boasts of 47.6% dominantly white population but the majority of the rest is an agglomeration of various other ethnicity’s. In the wake of this shift in demographics of the university it becomes important to question the predominantly western built typology and pedagogy of the university. Does the Church hold the same meaning to an outsider? Is it necessary to recognize other symbolism's corresponding to the image of religion or education? One of the ways to epitomize religion and teaching is architecture. The corresponding built form supports and demonstrates the underlying principles of the metaphysical religion. The relationship between the two create an intangible language creating a meeting point of the natural with the supernatural. Therefore, it can be assumed that if there is an amendment or radical shift in the practice of a certain religion or education it also effects the architecture of the space.
This highlights 3 main concerns:
•Built forms tangible expression of intangible features of culture.
•They play a communicative role conveying meanings between groups, or individuals between groups.
•Built forms act to reaffirm systems of meaning and the values of a group whether these meanings be cosmological, political, social etc
Photo of Birch tree overlaid with Monestry
Photo of University hall overlaid with chinese temple
The true nature of this exercise is to create a seemingly absurd juxtaposition of power structures in the same frame one ephemeral to view and the other concretized. The work involves the viewer to stand at specific locations in the yard to experience the combined effect of the tangible with the intangible. The manifestation results in a curated walk starting from the steps of the Widener library viewing the church continuing to the middle of the yard viewing Widener and University hall and eventually ending at where a Birch tree was planted by his holiness Dalai Lama at the northern end of the Yard adjacent to Thayer hall. The sketches on clear plexi-glass use the fervent image of the University buildings as a transient canvas almost creating a sense of Phantasmagoria. These handheld vignettes act
almost as a cultural filter of the eye contrasting to the photographic filters we use in our phones to capture memory. This method can also be envisioned as a physical installation on parts of the yard framed for view from a particular angle propagating the viewers to stop and adjust their vision to find symmetry in the landscape in order to overlap the image on the sketch to the buildings in the backdrop. It is advised to close one eye and view the pieces as that enhances the focus of the eye making it easier to clearly see the result of the overlay.
almost as a cultural filter of the eye contrasting to the photographic filters we use in our phones to capture memory. This method can also be envisioned as a physical installation on parts of the yard framed for view from a particular angle propagating the viewers to stop and adjust their vision to find symmetry in the landscape in order to overlap the image on the sketch to the buildings in the backdrop. It is advised to close one eye and view the pieces as that enhances the focus of the eye making it easier to clearly see the result of the overlay.
Viewer holds up the sketch to align to her vision.