Architexturez South Asia
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The politics of sacred place-making: a two-window container Hindu temple in Malaysia
No full textThis article argues that the notion and functions of a Hindu temple, regardless of its shape and size, often reflect the context and engagement of the diasporic Hindus with their political and social realities. By adopting the notion that a sacred place is a designation and, an argument to be made, I present a case of a temporary two-window container Hindu temple that has been managed for two generations by a family in Penang, Malaysia. The authorities initially demolished the temple, and the family subsequently used a two-window container as a temporary place of worship. This case study demonstrates how the family argued and maintained its viability, relevance and religious significance as a sacred place through hosting a Deepavali open house celebration as a political event and organising the Navratri festival as a religious emplacement. Ethnographic data in this article were derived from in-depth interviews, informal conversations and field observations.</p
Revisiting Settlement Contemporaneity and Exploring Stability and Instability: Case Studies from the Indus Civilization
No full text“Map overestimation,” or “the contemporaneity problem,” derives from the assumption that settlements identified during surface surveys were occupied throughout individual periods. Inductive and simulation analysis have been used to ascertain the degree of contemporaneity in surface survey data sets, as variation in settlement location is critical for understanding population density and demography, which inform social, economic and political interpretations. This paper revisits the inductive approach to interrogating survey data developed by W. M. Sumner and the simulation model approach developed by R. E. Dewar to explore the survey data from two regions within South Asia’s Indus civilization. This analysis demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches. It also highlights the variability in settlement systems in different areas within the Indus civilization and shows that consideration of stability and instability within settlement systems is an important factor when considering dynamics of resilience and sustainability.</p
The Sasanian Fire Temple of Gach Dawar in Western Iran: New Evidence
No full textIn 1978 a Canadian archaeological mission conducted one season of excavation at the fire temple of Gach Dawar with the main focus of the operation on four ancillary rooms added to the exterior of the main Chahar Taq. The programme was terminated in 1979 by the onset of the Iranian revolution. The new excavation in 2007 re-examined the rooms originally exposed by the Canadian mission, as well as working in the heart of the Chahar Taq and other adjacent rooms. The discovery of a number of cult installations within the Chahar Taq explicitly indicates that the building was designed as a fire temple. The structural layout and the pottery recovered from the building imply an original construction dating to Sasanian times, four building phases identified. The presence of the Islamic material excavated can be explained as reuse of the building in subsequent periods.</p
Reproducing the Original Plan of the Abbasid Friday Mosque at Esfahan and its First Enlargement
No full textFollowing an in-depth study and comparison of the archaeological data collected by the Italian Archaeological Mission at the Friday Mosque of Esfahan in 1970s and Islamic historical sources dealing with Esfahan, this paper aims to suggest a reconstruction of the layout of the first Abbasid mosque at Esfahan – attributed by the author to 767 – and of its first enlargement carried out a few years later. In particular, though two different models can be hypothesised for the 767 mosque, i.e. the so-called “Syrian plan” and the so-called “Arab-Iraqi plan”, some observations can be made that seem to pin down the latter as the actual prototype for the first Abbasid phase, thus revealing an influence of the Arab-Iraqi model in early Islamic Iranian architecture that was maintained in the enlarged plan of the mosque.</p
Migration, translation, and transformation of western urban planning models
No full textPeople, ideas, lifestyles, cultures, architecture and urban planning models have invariably traversed the world as a consequence of military compulsions, political goals, commercial motivations, or aspirational values. Western models in particular have spread widely, first through colonization and, recently, as a consequence of globalization. It is well-known that many cities around the world have been impacted by western urban planning models but, curiously no comprehensive comparative study of these influences has so far been attempted. This essay stems from 5 years of teaching and research in the field of urban history and presents a series of examples from non-western contexts such as India, China, Africa, South America, and elsewhere to showcase the direct or indirect impact of several western urban planning models. The aim is to analyse how differently these models, such as the English garden city, Le Corbusier’s plan voisin concept, and Haussmann’s plan for Paris have been adopted by a number of non-western cities and the degree to which they have been transformed by local contexts. Indeed, frequently, the original concept of the exported model has been completely modified. The essay also identifies those western urban models which have spread most widely. There are, indeed, a series of western models which have proved more popular than others and it is worth attempting to understand why they have proved to be so.</p
On technological solutions for repair and rehabilitation of heritage sites: a review
No full textThis paper reviews the problems faced by historical structures, different methods adopted to detect the damages in the archaeological sites and technical solutions suggested by researchers around the world to uplift the beauty and life of cultural heritage sites. A cluster of different repair approaches has been presented for different heritage sites. Based upon reported different approaches, a methodology based upon additive manufacturing (AM) with smart materials has been proposed as a novel method. The customised thermoplastic materials-based 3D-printed fillers of smart material (to be used at heritage site) has been explored for restoration of heritage sites (as a replacement of conventional restoration techniques) in coming years.</p
Rhodes, Mugabe and the Politics of Commemorative Toponyms in Zimbabwe
No full textThis paper is based on former Zimbabwean President Robert Gabriel Mugabe’s ninety-third birthday celebrations. It uses and goes beyond the said ceremony to interrogate the politics of commemorative toponyms in post-independence Zimbabwe. The event took place on 25 February 2017 at a school whose name Rhodes Estate Preparatory School (REPS) was changed to Matopos Junior School prior to the celebrations. The methodological framing of this discussion consists of a critical reading of the media’s representation of the name change and the debates that followed. Reference is specifically made to two Zimbabwean newspapers, The Patriot, which featured the story on 2 March 2017 under the heading “Rhodes ‘legacy’ finally put to rest” and the ZimEye’s story of 26 February 2017 headlined “Mugabe removes Rhodes.” Theoretically, the paper is framed within the critical approach to toponymy that interprets commemorative place-nomenclature as political arenas which could be used to think through issues of history and memory. In particular, it is argued in this paper that in post-independence Zimbabwe, place names, especially commemorative toponyms, are political spaces par excellence which we can use to study not only the country’s colonial history but also its postcolonial realities.</p
<em>Mandi</em> Acts and Market Lore: Regulatory Life in India’s Agricultural Markets
No full textThe “APMC Act” remains among the most widely commented upon and most deeply misunderstood laws governing Indian economic life. APMCs - Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees, more commonly known as mandis - are notified, physical primary markets designated as the main and, in some cases, the only state-sanctioned sites for the regulation of the critical “first transaction” between the primary producer and the buyer of his or her agricultural produce. The APMC is not the regulated market itself, but the local body constituted to oversee its regulation, and this is only one of many conceptual and practical confusions generated under the diverse state-specific agricultural marketing acts, which have been implemented with even greater diversity across varied agro-ecological, political-economic, and administrative contexts. Drawing on long-term archival and ethnographic research in a mandi and market town in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, this chapter sketches out the regulatory biography of an agricultural market, the diverse narratives and experiences of legislative amendment and yard-level market “reform,” and illustrates the empirical and analytical purchase of embedded exchange and contested jurisdiction of markets on the ground.</p
Subterranean infrastructures in a sinking city: the politics of visibility in Jakarta
No full textIndonesia’s capital city of Jakarta is one of the world’s fastest sinking cities. Land subsidence, primarily caused by excessive groundwater extraction, damages infrastructure and buildings, and contributes to worsened flood events and tidal inundation. Land subsidence was first identified as an issue in 1989, yet groundwater extraction has only recently been regulated. Meanwhile, city authorities have focused on implementing large-scale infrastructural interventions to reduce the impacts of flooding. This article analyzes why land subsidence remained unaddressed for so long. To do so, it explores the politics of infrastructure in Jakarta through the lens of in/visibility. Scholarship in infrastructure studies has tended to categorize infrastructure as either hyper-visible by design, or invisible until breakdown. This study extends theoretical engagements with infrastructure by examining how visibility, aesthetics, and materiality converge to shape urban and water governance in Jakarta in fundamental ways. Spectacular, visible infrastructures generate public and political attention, while below ground, hidden and invisible infrastructures are overlooked and politically unpopular to address. This “politics of visibility” articulates with a mode of aesthetic governmentality with uneven consequences for Jakarta’s residents.</p