Should Healthcare Architecture Move 'Towards Ananda'?

Hussain Varawalla

Omigod, I hear you say, has my favorite healthcare author lost his marbles completely? No such luck. I'm reading another great book, and I'd like to share it with you. It's titled (predictably) 'Towards Ananda: Rethinking Indian Art and Aesthetics' and it's written by an artist, named Shakti Maira. Welcome to the club, Shakti, we have both wandered into writing from a visual field, and we're both giving the professionals a run for their money!

From The Inside Back Cover Blurb

"Shakti Maira is an artist and a sculptor. He has had twenty-four one-person shows in India, the US and in Europe. His work can be found at the National Gallery of Modern Art, India, in collections belonging to leading corporate houses and in private collections around the world. Maira also writes on art, aesthetics, culture and travel for newspapers and magazines in India and abroad. He is interested in children's education and development through art, and has conducted numerous workshops in schools in the US and India. In 2005, he helped organise the 'Learning through the Arts in Asia' symposium in New Delhi, and was subsequently invited by UNESCO to prepare the Asian vision statement for 'Arts in Education: Learning through the Arts'.

Shakti Maira lives in New Delhi.

Way to go, Shakti! I wish the ever-increasing strength in your learning through the arts initiative. India has provided the world with enough software engineers and hard-working MBA's; we need to send them chilled-out artists (and architects) for a change.

I quote again, this time from the back cover. We have Anjali Ela Menon, artist, saying: "Maira sees the central purpose of art as a precious means of transcendence. This prophetic view will probably outlast the iconoclasm and faddism that defines art and aesthetics in contemporary India."

At this point, I must admit I pulled out my trusty Webster's Collegiate and I am informed that an iconoclast is 1. a person who attacks cherished beliefs or traditional institutions as being based on error and superstition. 2. a breaker or destroyer of images.

Iconoclasm Then Is: The action, beliefs or spirit of iconoclasts. Wow. Strong words from Menon. Art (or for that matter, architectural design) as a means of transcendence means (I think) that you go on a trip while you're doing it. At times, in my bedroom/design studio, with the rock 'n roll playing not so softly, when I'm totally focussed on the layout of an inpatient floor, I stop hearing the music. Maybe that's what Maira means. The world becomes what you're doing.

Maira talks about the contemporary predicament of Indian artists, and says they are "…pulled in opposing directions by the traditional view of art as a means of communication and the modern paradigm of 'art for art's sake'…" He talks about the "…fracturing of the family of arts (which) has made each art form a little kingdom of specialised products to be consumed by an elite and ruled by a new class of feudal lords - the art experts." He says it is sad when he is introduced to someone as an artist and is immediately told "I don't understand contemporary art at all." I know the feeling. When I am introduced to someone as an architect, I too am saddened when the response is "My upstairs' neighbours' toilet is leaking, what can I do about it" or even worse "I want to enclose my balcony, can you regularise it for me." The best I can do is a lame "I'm not that kind of architect", which only earns me a sideways glance, as if to say, "What other kind is there?" On the other hand, I stand guilty of being a specialised architect, the work I do is little understood other than by an informed group (doctors, they would have probably preferred me to use Maira's term…), not even well understood by other architects.

To get to the meaning of the title of this article (and Shakti's book), he says: "There are two key ideas in Indian aesthetics and art-making: chhandomaya and ananda. Chhandomaya is the rhythm, balance, proportion and harmony that is the essence of all nature and life. Getting in touch with, or being in rhythm, balance, harmony and proportion is what the artist and viewer attempt through art. Ananda is transformative joy and bliss. In Indian philosophy, the ultimate aim of consciousness is to enable the experience of ananda. Experiencing this inner joy was thought to be at the heart of the aesthetic experience."

Should healthcare architecture then move towards the expression of transformative joy (and bliss)? Surely all architecture should. Easier said than done, it takes Buddhist monks 20 years of meditative practice and there's no guarantee attached to that.

The Buddha Says: When a person finds fulfillment in kindness, compassion, and selfless service…sorrow cannot touch him at all. When sorrow is absent, what remains is our native state: intense abiding joy.

In the end, it wasn't about Indian art or healthcare architecture at all.

The Writer is Director - Design Services, Hosmac India Pvt Ltd