Narrating Architecture as a Process: Two Histories of “Self-building” Golconde

Abstract

This article shifts emphasis in the term “building” from its noun to verb sense, as exemplified by the Golconde dormitory conceived and built between 1935 and c.1948 in a French colony on India’s south-eastern coast, Pondicherry. It contributes to a discourse on how cultures of architectural modernity are inevitably rendered plural when viewed through processes of their enactment. Arguably India’s earliest exposed reinforced concrete architectural structure with a dynamic ventilation system, Golconde has been overarchingly co-opted into metanarratives on modern(ist) and tropical architecture. Yet why it took over a decade to build or what the experiences of this process were, remained to be asked. Believing such questions to be central to Golconde’s history, this research argues that the project’s ‘agency’, contingent on the philosophy of the spiritual community (Ashram) that was its patron, critically held sway over the ideologies of its professional architect(s). Contemporary accounts of construction also reveal the embodied and felt experiences of Golconde’s builders—mostly comprising members of the Ashram itself. Examining such aspects closely offers new insights into the project’s material and social processes. Two interconnected histories of Golconde then emerge: how the self-build architectural project of Golconde was, equally, the self-building of those who participated in its making.