Traditional Knowledge Systems and Ways
Traditional Knowledge Systems and Ways
A-06 Knowledge that we already have.
This series to provide the thematic realms of OPA is becoming more complete. This one is based on a very big field. This letter reflects my personal path and is not a comprehensive overview of traditional knowledge in light of architecture. It is about an attitude and to contextualize tradition's significant place in evolving our environmental conditions through and beyond the current crisis. It is a work in progress.
We can be quite sure that our Modernist Machine Ages technology (MMAT) is not holistic. The term is from Reyner Banham's book Theory and Design in the First Machine Age that still seems a slightly contra to architectural history. The appeal of traditional knowledge systems is that there is a more holistic union with the world's life and consciousness. It is ours. We have already experienced that and it remains part of all of us.
The two primary areas of knowledge I am bringing together here are the Indian Traditional Knowledge System (ITKS) and the ways of the people of Turtle Island. Both of these are not of my birth heritage. I am of European background, so my traditions have led to MMAT, the hegemonic force. My spiritual practice is a living part of ITKS and my research engages that system. I am the son of immigrants to Canada, so respecting and knowing the North American Indigenous heritage is in my heart.
The difficulty with traditional knowledge is its form and presentation, that it does not respond to our scientific and technological knowledge (because it came before), and that MMAT is not intended to grok the wider holism of traditional knowledge and its lack of measurability. Traditional knowledge includes life and Nature, and it asks. Asking and thanking Nature is common to most traditional knowledge systems.
The form in which traditional knowledge came up was already anachronistic as MMAT erupted. The ways of the past were felt to be a trap of habits and traditions. Our grandparents and great grandparents fought to escape those. The Bauhaus was a result of a decades long German government funded effort to create a new approach to production and technology against strong traditions. Early in the 20th century German architects and designers felt that its industry was stagnating, not benefitting from scientific and technological advancement, and destined to fail economically. Despite the Bauhaus seeming to be a radical unification of all arts and craft, including that it relied a lot on traditional systems, it ended up catalyzing what became Modernist architecture and planning of the past century. It gave an answer to the Futurist’s call to abandon the past.
This post expresses an approach to a doorway into that realm of ideas and concepts that are not possible in current technological thinking, and so also often absent in our environments and professional practice.
Traditional Knowledge Systems and Indigenous Knowledge
MMAT is European, ITKS is Indian+ and North American Indigenous ways are inflected through our tool-making faculty, our consciousness and through Nature respectively. Only the latter two expressly include life and Nature.
The traditional knowledge system of my heritage emerged out of alchemistry and natural philosophy, which in turn evolved from the religious science and philosophy of the Christian church through the Enlightenment which moved toward secular materialistic knowledge. Knowledge of the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians and later, looped back with the influence of ITKS via Islamic culture. Although the word and text, notes and records of experimentation are part of alchemistry and natural philosophy, there was much that came out of word of mouth and direct experience from earlier. When natural philosophy spawned 'science', most traditions were dropped over a relatively short period. The unknown created by MMAT and its sciences was not always unknown. It does not recognize great areas that cannot be measured, even those of its antecedents.
There is no contradiction between ITKS and the Indigenous knowledge and wisdom of the North American continent. Each tradition includes consciousness in their own way, while the ITKS bears a direct discussion of the evolution of consciousness evolving consciousness consciously and the forms consciousness takes and creates, with multiple simultaneous planes of existence.
Bringing into architecture knowledge and ways of traditional knowledge is not done as cultural appropriation. The need is to understand what it is as a cultural element and to discriminate from that the essential human knowledge. We can learn to understand better ways to live, and the universal aspects that will serve our wellbeing. Acceptance and humility are indigenous to the human aspiration of consciousness.
ITKS
My approach to ITKS is through yoga. Rajayoga is a term coined by Swami Vivekanada and is the title of one of his books, written late in the 19th Century. Rajayoga is a component of Patañjali's ashtanga (eight limbs) of the Yoga Sutra.[1] That text is about 1500 years old. It is part of the Vedic basis of ITKS and combines elements of Buddhist practice, Sāṃkhya and Ṣaṣṭritantra among others. Rajayoga takes up three of the ashtanga; dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation) and samadhi (original or balanced condition). Hatha yoga takes up a different combination of the ashtanga, focusing on asana (posture) and pranayama (regulation of breath). Or, for example, Mahatma Gandhi's Ahmedabad ashram takes up the first two of the ashtanga, yama (good conduct) and niyama (regularity–observation) as its organizational principles. The other limb is pratyahara (inward withdrawal).
ITKS is one with two realms. Distinction is made between gnana and vignana, knowledge of the tangible world and the imperceptible, respectively. The realm of activity in the environment is called vāstu, which is based on the realm called vastu. The distinction in environmental practices is hard to find.[2] The latter is space related to the origins of the universe and consciousness. The former is the practice of asserting consciousness through a built world. It may seem far removed from what we need to do just to build. Research is needed to understand that connectivity.
ITKS also includes ayuraveda (medicine), as well as cosmology and everything through the atomic scale of our universe, all in terms of consciousness.
ITKS is still deeply integrated in culture, but western values and techniques are deeply valued for attaining personal wealth and status. Half the population (which is about 1/15th of world population, i.e. almost twice the population of the USA) is deeply tied to the land, with a range of values that extends through agrarian to tribes living in the forest, practically unconnected with modern life. The power lies mainly with those who take up a university education, work with capital, and engage the western values more fully, such as the parliamentary system. Unlike most colonized lands, where the Indigenous population are generally in the single digit percentages today, India's population is 99% indigenous. Despite that, wrestling with western values and power is not easy.
Essentially every building process includes puja at the foundation and other stages of construction. Puja is essentially the same as it has 'always' been. It would simply be foolish to take the risk of not doing it. The place of family, the grihastha life, and innumerable other factors maintain an essential tie with traditional knowledge. These values, often buried within modernist life, give the culture a capacity that may very well be unmatched anywhere else.
Critical Regionalism, Regionalism
I have brought the following concept to my students a few times. A problem comes up with Critical Regionalism. It is intended to understand how to contextualize built projects locally. Critical Regionalism does not resist the colonizing implied by the Modernist technology it is historically part of. It promotes the idea of regionalism if one agrees to maintain the primacy of MMAT.
Two visions of creating contemporary architecture Indigenous to India are compared below. On the right is a critical regionalist set of MMAT values coming inward, giving form fitted to a context. The image on the right is a proposal by a great traditional Indian architect, Dr. Ganapathy Sthapthi. The proportions look kind of Queen Anne. It is a box that is ornamented with features that sign an Indian provenance. That image is essentially western ideology formed to fit to a cultural context. Although it is an image by a great architect, as a box, this does not differ from most western architects' work. It is a sign concealing the architecture, although they are also calibrated for wellbeing according to traditional systems. The statement in the image is from Kenneth Frampton. Critical regionalism was not created by Frampton, but through his writing he somehow became a spokesman.
The image on the left uses forms that we would typically find to be Indian, perhaps related to temples. It is vague in terms of where an enclosure would be and its volume, like a tropical building should be. This is not Critical Regionalist. It is traditional in essence and 'ready' to have the necessary means applied to realize expanding its values outward.
Two visions of architecture in the Indian cultural space. Critical Regionalism is resistant, but India is resilient. Source. Left: PK Acharya, The Architecture of Mānasāra. Volume 5. Right: Dr Ganapathi Sthapati, Building Architecture of Sthapatya Veda II.
For each tradition place and time, in light of the people, choices like this are essential to understand and decide in how an environment responds to the whole. It implies more than 'design'.
Asking and Thanking
Traditional cultures ask and thank nature. This is true for ITKS and the cultures of Turtle Island. It is lost in MMAT and its direct antecedents. The Enlightenment and the movement away from religiosity, shifted focus to measurable material facts within objective scientific method, took Nature's life out of view. Compassion and love are separated from the facts. This invites many brutal and inhumane paths. Taking up values of asking and thanking the land, the biosphere, the life and the spirit of all things that we need to live harmoniously is far off. Nevertheless, it is what we ought to do.
An example is from vāstu's traditional approach to practice. The Architecture of Mānasāra starts out with an origin story for architects, defines the measurement system. Then comes the 'classification of architecture', which is fourfold; the ground, the edifice and other buildings, the conveyance and furnishings. Contents of 'Selection of the Site' and 'The Examination of Soil' are titled in a narrow way that does not seem fitting. The translation to English is flawed, which I have outlined in an article. But it is serviceable.
This may not seem to be an evaluative process to us, it reads in part as instructions for rites and process, where the course of action is not dependent on the quality of site or soil. Nevertheless, this description includes 'asking'.
Chapter V : Examination of Soil
4-9. 'Let all creatures, demons and gods as well, leave this place; let them go elsewhere and make their abode there.' This incantation should be repeatedly uttered at a low voice.
It is easy to simply read past this. But work on the site begins with this intent. The work continues with grass seeds planted in cow manure, and cows, calves and oxen brought to the land. They should live here and occupy the land until it looks and smells of agrarian life. As this process ripens a new stage comes. At a time defined through astrological consultation, the architect is to ask again …
28-29. May the great earth prosper in corn and riches. I bow to Thee, the fount of blessings and pray thee (prithee) keep thyself dry and good.
For other non-agrarian life-styles, other processes are necessary. Asking and thanking is to recognize and acknowledge the being that we are part of. Doing that recognizes the being that we are. We do that as individuals, each taking in hand our capacity. We also do it as making contexts for life and the consciousness that aspires it. Asking and thanking the Nature that we are part of is essentially the same as recognizing and taking in hand the being that we are, each of us. Asking and thanking alone will change us a lot, if seriously adopted and developed. There is a long way to understanding this in light of where we are now. This the stoop at the doorway for the path toward what we ought to be.
There are many more aspects within traditional knowledge that can point us to ways to fill up our limited technological process with purpose and life, and allow us to create a transcendent architectural profession in the process. This will generate real growth, health and wellbeing. This Office intends to work on this and Indigenous cultures have a lot to offer.