Confrontation

On my recent trip to Pondicherry I visited Le Dupleix - a heritage hotel at the corner of Rue Suffren and Rue C....

Beautifully designed starting from the name plate of the hotel where the name is cut into steel and discreetly addresses the corner, beautiful entrance experience with pools of flowers floating in water and meditative interiors, white walls, glass and steel. A subtle experience combining the old and the new.

The food is very good. I ordered a mascarpone Risotto - delicious, subtle flavours. I would recommend it for sure - On Saturday evenings they  have a  French violinist playing live music (I did not know of it till the next day - so I do not know how it feels).

After absorbing all the subtlety and the beauty around - very suddenly an anomaly jumps out at you. The yellow plastic along the neighbouring construction site along with the loud Tamil music playing on not so well designed speakers that help to provide entertainment to the labourers there.

The yellow does a lot to camouflage the brutal crudeness (so maybe it was thought of or maybe it was the material that is available in Pondicherry) of the surroundings compared to the created calm, which I am sure that the typical blue plastic seen across Indian construction sites would not have been able to do - but it is also a spiritual moment in the design - the obvious failure in absolute control and the rise of the space of confrontation.

Pondicherry is a collection of these moments for me some designed (I cannot say if it was planned confrontation but they are designed spaces) and some self organised - The name 'bakers street' (with the legendary silhouette of Sherlock Holmes as mascot) for a french cafe on Lal Bahadur Shastry Street (formerly called Rue de Bussy), the heaviness of the interiors of the same cafe meeting the minimalism of the served french pastries; the jail like grill on the windows of Villa Shanti that form the threshold of designed space and undesigned space, the hybridity of the street between the gridded French quarters and the 'organic' (a polite word for unplanned) Tamil quarters;  .... The list is endless.

Pondicherry is a fragmented piece of land sited across  three states in South India governed directly by Delhi with some basic legislative local governance. The largest territory mediates between its role in Tamil Nadu and its role as a gateway to Auroville, a large intentional commune.

Confrontations have a unique role in life - they provide for a chance to move beyond the insularity of control and belief (about architecture, and object or even oneself). They shake the status quo, create chaos and drama and they inspire... Many designers and people shy away from this rather destructive, uncontrollable force - It would be impossible to know for sure the result of it, but I think that there is a place for confrontation in architecture, design and life.

So do we design the space of confrontation or do we allow it slowly curl up at the edges of openings and permeate a space ? Can a space of confrontation be designed like they attempt to design space for dissent in Singapore or place Graffiti walls in western cities? Is confrontation a space or a moment?

Are museums and galleries spaces of confrontation? Is the role of a curator to enhance these moments?

I am not an expert in this area of thought - (I am not an expert in anything really!) so this is a simple recording of a recent experience and interest.