Embodied Vision: Interpreting The Architecture Of Fatehpur Sikri - Hardcover

Mehta, Jaimini

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9383098481 ISBN 13: 9789383098484

Publisher: Niyogi Books, 2015

Synopsis

Embodied Vision delves into a series of representations Fatehpur Sikri has been subjected to and concludes that its space is revealed more through perception than geometry.

About this title

About the Author

Prof. Jaimini Mehta is a practicing architect and an academician based in Baroda, India. He studied architecture at M.S. University of Baroda, and at Uni. of Pennsylvania in the Louis Kahn Studio. He went on to work in the offices of Louis Kahn and Mitchell / Giurgola Asso. In Philadelphia.
 
Returning back to India in 1975 he setup his own practice and taught at a number of Indian as well as American universities. He was an Adjunct Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, N.Y. and at CEPT University in Ahmedabad, India. He also worked as Head of the Schools of Architecture at Baroda and Goa. At present he is a Hon. Director of the Baroda based "Centre for the Study of Urbanism and Architecture" which he instituted in 2006.
 
He contributes regularly in the ongoing discourse on architecture through articles in Indian as well as international journals. Among his many writings is the book, "Louis I. Kahn, Architect" co-authored with Romaldo Giurgola and published in 1975. His second book, "Rethinking Modernity - Towards Post Rational Architecture" was published in March 2011. 

From the Inside Flap

Departing from the conventional path of describing and explaining the architecture of Fatehpur Sikri, Prof. Jaimini Mehta delves into a series of representations the Mughal city has been subjected to and concludes that there is an inexorable tension at its core embodied in the constantly shifting axes, complex rhythms, raising or lowering of the ground planes, juxtapositions of mythical symbols and the conflicting pulls of traditions and human will. The space of Fatehpur Sikri is revealed to us through perception more than through geometry.
Prof. Mehta's unconventional interpretation of the architecture of Fatehpur Sikri emanates from his exploration of the history of architectural representation and leads him to conclude that the tools of designing, representation and analysis, i.e. various kinds of drawings, which we normally use today, did not exist in sixteenth century India when Fatehpur Sikri was built. These drawings, which assume our "mind's eye" hovering above the city and taking in the whole of reality at once, have failed to represent the existential lived experience of inhabitation of architecture. An interpretation of architecture, based on the embodied vision of the retina, together with all the other perceptual faculties of the entire body of the observer, moving through space on two feet, opens up qualities inherent to the essence of architecture as a thoughtful system of ordering mass and space through a visual continuum; aided by the temporal, experiential engagement of the owner of that vision - the spectator, us, each one of us. This generates a narrative, or, more precisely, a thousand narratives, where each one validates architecture.

Edition details

• Publisher: Niyogi Books
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9383098481
• ISBN 13: 9789383098484
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 160