Jay Thakkar’s first book, Naqsh, is reaching out to individuals from varied backgrounds and his second, Matra, was just named ‘Best written work on Architecture 2009’ by India’s ‘Foundation for Architectural and Environmental Awareness’. Jay Thakkar, author, designer and faculty member of the School of Interior Design at CEPT University, Ahmedabad, talks to Designwala about India’s vernacular architecture, documentation, and design policy.

Click below to hear the interview with Jay Thakkar:

by Shuchi Vyas

IN THE OLDEN DAYS, the popular Gujarati dish, Undhiyu (a medley of vegetables eaten during the Kite festival in January) was made underground in an earthen pot with carefully handpicked vegetables from the market and fresh homemade spices – and chatting while it was being cooked was a part of the ritual. Now it’s either made on the stove, or worse, it’s take out. “Crafts were about time, and people don’t have too much of time now. It’s all about getting things ready-made,” says Jay Thakkar. What Jay aimed to do with his first book, ‘Naqsh: The Art of Wood Carving in Traditional Houses of Gujarat’, was to present it all to a larger audience instead of confining it to academic circles.

A majority of drawings for Naqsh were done during Jay’s graduation thesis at the School of Interior Design (SID). “I wanted to do something which was urban, so I looked at old cities and how the urban inserts started to take place. I would sit down in the old city of Ahmedabad and just sketch. This turned into an expression of wood carving which Naqsh was then based on,” he explains. Along with his team, he completed the entire project using one of the earlier versions of Pagemaker, which in hindsight seems almost impossible and primitive considering it lacked the basic ‘undo’ function.

Naqsh has been used extensively by people in the restoration field, historians, textile designers, and pattern makers, among others. A teacher at the Mahatma Gandhi International School in Ahmedabad even conducted a class exercise where the kids made colored versions of the Naqsh designs

While the purpose of publishing ‘Matra: Ways of Measuring Vernacular Built Forms in Himachal Pradesh’, co-authored by Skye Morrison, was to cater to a larger audience and broaden the dialogue on vernacular architecture, it was also a reason to get SID students out of their classrooms and feel architecture and design. About 60 students voluntarily and enthusiastically worked with him, and brought in different perspectives and various design technology to enhance some of the images.

“In India, there are two categories of books on architecture: coffee table books and research books. The idea for publishing Matra was to combine both – it’s more of a research travel book,” says Jay. After Matra was published, the team went back to each home in the Himachal village, gave them copies of the book and asked all those involved in its making – students, drivers, villagers and their children – to sign the first couple of pages of one of the books as a symbol of ownership and involvement.

Click here to see the video of the book signing

“People became a part of the book. We wanted it to be of use to the local people and we made everything three dimensional so that it could be referenced by the masons and carpenters,” explains Jay. He also had architects and builders in mind for if and when they want to reference the structures covered in Matra there to build something similar in the future. “Technicians get to see the seismic side of the region as Himachal has a history of earthquakes and landslides which we’ve managed to cover,” says Jay. This detailed work also caters to historians and anthropologists, even as it is an easy read devoid of jargon for the layman and tourist interested in vernacular architecture.

Some useful insights about vernacular architecture came to the fore during their travels to Himachal Pradesh for Matra. For instance, the team studied a particular house that was made with 40 trees. You’d gasp, “How is that environment friendly?” Jay feels it is: As the lifecycle of a tree is about 25 years, people in the village made it a ritual to plant anywhere between 25 and 40 trees whenever a child was born, so by the time he/she grew up there would have enough raw material to build a house. “While we buy insurance, they invested in nature. If you have a reforestation process in place, wood becomes very economical, but we don’t have that system in India,” Jay explains. The sad story now is that the government is restricting the use of wood and so these people don’t have wood to repair their houses.
“There are a lot of students that want to pursue research after Matra’s success,” Jay says. “Now when we take up a project at school, we think about the possibility of it being published, and we work on it in such a way that it becomes viable,” he adds. CEPT has been documenting since 1962, which means that it has a sizeable amount of work. “But because there has been no real encouragement for research, it all remains on campus,” says Jay. It’s only recently that SID started a research cell and gained the required funding to be able to publish about a dozen books. The Sir Ratan Tata Trust published Matra and some of the other work that is now being published from CEPT.

Another problem he outlines is the lack of funds for academics. There are individuals that are interested in research, but are carrying it out on a small scale. “When we were working on the second book, my whole team gathered around 6:00 pm and work till 3:00 am for two years. You can’t sustain yourself like that, you’ll soon burn out,” says Jay. “If academics are asked to write a grant, do the research, get the publishers and do their own marketing and publicity, isn’t that too much?” he adds. But this is slowly changing. The Indian government is getting more involved and interested. The system for disbursement of funds for such projects is a slow and laborious one, but CEPT has a few proposals in the pipeline.
Jay feels the main issue that plagues interior design today is licensing. As the field is relatively new in India, there are no laws or regulations that certify the practice. Anyone can practice interior design without the required education and training – a carpenter, a housewife and even celebrities call themselves ‘interior designers’. But this is changing with efforts by the Institute of Interior Designers (www.iiid.org) that is formulating rules and plans to certify those from a five year course and encourage those from a two-year course to work a little before meriting them with a license. The Council of Design is being formulated by the Government of India to regulate most design fields in India.

So, what’s next for Jay? He is interested in publishing more research work, for which he is looking for funds and grants from the government, individuals or NGOs. The larger issue is how to enable it to reach more people and not just lie in store rooms. CEPT University is not allowed to sell research books that are worked on by the students, so whatever money comes in for Jay’s books, is mostly in the form of a donation. “I have worked on these books honorary. Normally, you need a grant, publisher, research assistant, production designer and a team,” he outlines.

If all goes as planned, Jay hopes to work on a host of projects: For one, he plans to work closely on wooden architecture in India. “There are five states that have wooden architecture that’s bound to get lost soon. So first, the idea is to document it, which will hopefully open it up to further research,” he explains.  Jay is thinking about a large-scale project on the vernacular architecture of India, for which, he jokes, he will “need a lifetime”. The books available on the subject today are a few and niche. As 2010 is ‘Swarnim Gujarat’, the State’s heritage year as it completes 50 years since establishment, he wants to produce a body of work on the state’s indigenous arts and crafts by creating a platform to bring NGOs, handicraft corporations and the government together to better document these subjects.

Click below to hear Jay’s views on India’s cultural and social issues :