DATE: 30-10-2024

TOPIC: THE WALLS WE MOUNT- ESSAY - FOLIO 3

Walls are an essential part of our lives in the built environment, and in the living environment. A wall of elephants will protect its young ones from danger, a wall of players will position themselves in front of a goal post to thwart a potential goal from its opponents, a wall of soldiers will protect Nations and communities, heavily fortified walls have protected Kingdoms, the Great Wall of China has demarcated its boundary. We make walls all the time, throughout history, as a physical barrier to protect or demarcate spaces and boundaries, keeping people within and outside. All walls are authoritarian in nature.

Today we build smart walls. In forests, we have electric fences to keep animals out of human zones, walls for border security have sensors, radars, security cameras and other surveillance technologies, and does not necessarily have a physical barrier.

As humans, we share innumerable feelings. And every day we negotiate our lives through them. We build walls in our minds made up of different emotions to protect us or to hide behind. It is almost as though these walls are what it means to be human.

In the context of architectural and interior walls, it converts to a visual expression that has the capacity to invoke memories, moods, power, humility, warmth, and so forth.

Traditional architectural systems built walls that were structural and decorative at the same time, with the most glorious carvings and sculptures built into the inseparable system of wall as an expression of art culture, and spirituality. These decorative elements that were indivisible with the body of the structure served as a way tell stories, preserve culture, and communicate ideas with its users and onlookers. Till today it remains a great source of historical value beyond just being walls, by virtue of what has been mounted on them by way of embellishments, its material and its form. Apart from culture and religious beliefs, it showcases engineering and artistic skills, influences of other external cultures. The Taj Mahal, a wonder of the world, is an architecture of the wall with its perfect proportions, material, art, volume, space and engineering.

Walls can also be seen as a warehouse of building materials. Mud walls, stone walls, brick walls, concrete walls, metal walls, walls made of wood, especially if not decorated by toxic materials ingrained into the fabric of the wall, can be repurposed and re-used in many forms. With sustainability being a very important aspect of today’s built environment, walls form a great depository of building material.

We build great walls and fortifications as a symbol of power and strength. The fort walls of yesteryear had been designed for warfare and protection with look- out towers, cannon positions and heavily guarded entrances ways. A marvel to behold by its sheer size and formidable scale, designed and built for the protection of its citizens. The Great Wall of China remains till today a wonder of the world.

Palaces of the past and Parliament houses of today are adorned to represent force and might and designed to intimidate. The proportion, the scale, the material, the trimmings and enrichments on the wall surfaces are a purposeful attempt to startle. In complete contrast are the homes of the common man, intended to welcome the visitor as places of joy and warmth, as expressed by its wall enclosed spaces.

Myriad emotions are communicated by the element of the wall and what it is mounted with. Fenestration design, as punctures in a wall, can convey culture, date, place, art, wealth, customs, relationship with sunlight and so on. The design of windows and openings defines the style and period of the building. It is a component of the building that can lend to the structure its character and disposition. Since walls today have become a non-structural element, fenestrations have transformed into large openings allowing in light, sunshine, and heat, and with it a new architectural language.

The idea of the wall has undergone a lot of variation. From being impervious and opaque, it has become translucent and transparent. Structural systems have advanced and walls have become lighter and replaceable. The concept of permanence is giving way to temporary and adaptability. Now being non- structural, the wall has become an element that can be brought down with ease and rebuilt with speed. More than being decorative, they have become elements of form and amusement. Technology and advancement of materials have modified its very aesthetics to becoming components that can be twisted, curved, punctured and changed. Alvin Toffler’s book, “Future Shock”, written in 1970, has become a reality today of “too much change in too short a period of time”. The idea of non-permanence, of the built form changing its appearance and demeanor in such short intervals, has led to some levels of anxiety and confusion in society, as predicted by the author Alvin Toffler. Streets and familiar spots are rapidly changing and the sense of belonging and familiarity is being challenged.

Wall designs and high-rise buildings have given birth to a new set of professionals, the façade engineers. From art, walls have transformed to technology.

The interior spaces of these large impersonal structures have become walls of personality. Interior spaces along with its walls have taken on the role of conveying the beliefs, customs, lifestyle, of the individual, family or community, as the case may be, who occupy the area. Decoration, by way of art in its various forms, from paintings, prints, textiles, murals, sculptures that are mounted on walls and are interchangeable, communicate the identity of the occupiers. As we spend more and more time indoors, interiors along with its elements have taken on an important role in the built environment. It remains the only space whose outcome can be controlled by its resident. The larger and outer area being community owned.

The notion of walls, on which we mount diverse elements, has been in a motion of constant change, as life itself, depicting its society and time. The house of power, however, remains static as a place of permanence, strength, and stability. But that too must change.