In the discussions surrounding building materials during the non-European modern age of architecture in the 1950s, there were different manners in which bricks and bamboo, clay and mud were negotiated. For one, as romantic remnants of a time best left in the past, in an almost melancholic nostalgia, these building materials are re-integrated as genuinely natural and vital materials.
In the 1950s, the development of the debates around architecture and city planning within the CIAM discourse (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne) diverged from the functionalist notion of the home as a machine for living towards a naturalized notion of habitat; “a living atmosphere that provides favorable conditions for ‘prospering’ ought to be created.” (Giedion 1953)
In the process, the reference to so-called “natural materials” seems to link up to the naturalization of modes of building and living. The notion that a European modernity would distance itself from non-industrialized building forms and materials is countered with ‘primitivizing’ romanticizing. “A hut in Cameroon has more aesthetic integrity than most pre-fabricated houses. (…) It [primitive architecture] plainly reflects forms of living that have persisted over time and that are deeply rooted in human and cosmic conditions.” (Giedion 1953)
Unlike concrete and cement—in South Asia, for instance—even today brick production is still cheaper and more suited to the climatic conditions. Already in the 1950s, during the construction of Chandigarh, the notion of a modern architectural universalism is set in contrast to the use of regional and local materials. With their practices and methods, artisans and construction workers were an integral component of an architectonic modernity evident in Chandigarh; these practices and materials become modern, that is to say, components of modernity, so that any attempt to relegate these practices to a realm of anachronistic and outdated tradition, which is seen as precisely the opposite of modernity, is bound to fail.
Vikram and Aditya Prakash describe the emergence of a new structural form with the construction of Chandigarh, which they view in relation to the dualistic concept of modernity-tradition. In this phase, bricks, which had thus far been deemed “unworthy material,” became “real and noble” material.(1)This is analogous to Ranajit Guha’s analysis of the peasant insurgency in colonial India. Guha insists that the “peasant” was neither an anachronism nor a relic from a traditional past within a modernizing colonial world, but instead a true contemporary of colonialism and a fundamental component of the modernity that occurred during colonial rule in India. Unlike elitist and Marxist history-writing, Guha places “the rebellious peasant” in the field of the genuinely political, who – at least ideally – “appropriated and/or destroyed the insignia of his enemy’s power and hoped thus to abolish the marks of his own subalternity.” (Guha, 1983, p. 74; cf. Chakrabarty 2010). The peasant who had been exploited by colonial capitalism and defied it was only traditional insofar as that his roots could be traced back to pre-colonial times; he was by no means archaic in the sense of anachronistic or pre-modern. (cf. Guha 1988a:4)
In their project to produce a genealogy of the peasant as citizen in contemporary political modernity, “subaltern studies” simultaneously undermine any teleological theories that are based on stages and rest upon simple (chrono- and spatial-political) dualisms, e.g. tradition-modernity, archaic-contemporary, regional-universal.
The construction praxis in communist China during the 1950s must also be viewed against the background of this matrix. Here, too, despite the intensive building activities related to the industrial construction of the country, the millennia-old tradition of building with bricks was by no means questioned or abandoned in favor of pre-fabricated modes of production. As Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky reported after her visit in 1956, China had at its disposal a sufficient workforce and shifting to industrial standardization would, by comparison, be too costly. (cf.Schütte-Lihotzky 2003: 59)
In general, the discourse on architecture and city planning in China at the time were primarily shaped by questions of economic viability. Beginning with the anti-waste campaign (1953), which, among other things, resulted in the abandonment of the traditional Chinese overhanging roof forms, the economic measures of the “Great Leap Forward” became the dominant parameter for construction and planning activities. The limited resources, which were also always running short, led to policies that propagated a turn towards traditional, easy and cheaply available local materials and modes of production. Brick formats were rationalized and mixed with grass or ground-up cane, and brick bonding was adapted to the point that a third less bricks were necessary for masonry of the same proportion. Finally, residential buildings with walls made out of tamped earth were built here and there. (c.f. Rowe/Zhang/Lue)
During this time, bamboo was rediscovered as a building material. In spring 1958, a conference was held on local design techniques, which then toured the country as a national exhibition and presented several examples of experimental practices using bamboo. In this sense, bamboo was given a more prominent role, whereas before it had mainly been used for furniture and scaffolding—the latter played a central role in the construction of Chandigarh—and was used by Xia Changshi and his environmentally-friendly architecture in Southern China, as his concrete structures were reinforced with bamboo.
Even if—as outlined above—the production and use of traditional, regional building materials is primarily economically motivated, the question remains if, in the specific case of Chandigarh, the uprisings of the so-called rural population during the early stages of construction in 1949 can be connected to the later use of certain practices and materials?(2) Can the use of bricks not be attributed to environmentally-friendly construction, cheap production and a regionalist discourse, but instead be seen as an outcome of the struggles in and around Chandigarh? Is it a question of appropriation through craft or is resistant craft being appropriated?(3)
(MH+JK+CL)


(1) “In Chandigarh, the innate expression of every building material was studied. As a consequence, brick, which was considered to be an unworthy material, was expressed ‘truthfully’ and became noble. Boulder stone masonry in its rough form functioned as a foil to the brickwork.” In: Prakash, Aditya/ Vikramaditya. Photo by Navneet Saxena. „Chandigarh. The City Beautiful“ Abi Prints & Publishing Co., New Delhi. 1999. P. 23.
(2) “Chandigarh Lifescape. Brief Social History of a Planned City” by Kavita Sharma, Chitleen K Sethi, Meeta and Rajivlochan. Chandigarh Goverment Press, 1999. P. 26: “The people’s resistance to displacement was formalised in the anti-Rajdhani (note: Rajdhani: lit. capital) committee that was formed in 1948. The anti-Rajdhani committee had promised the government to launch a satyagraha involving over 30,000 people all over the state to stop the construction of Chandigarh. It does not seem as if this massive agitation ever took off the ground. What did was a series of protest actions at the village level involving the local people. (...) Yet the agitation was fairly influential. Not much work could be done between 1948 and 1951 (...) because of the agitation by the local villagers. People would not allow the survey of ground water or the construction of sheds from where the engineers might function.”
(3) ibid. P .23: “That precisely is the point: a negligible number of the original villagers have integrated well with the middle class ethos of Chandigarh. Those of them who were not thrown out of the Chandigarh region altogether still live in the villages on the periphery, providing services of being involved in small time business activity.”


Sources:
Chowdhury, U.E. (1961): "Living: High Cost Housing and Interiors." In: Marg-Pathway, Issue 15/01/1961. 26-31.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2010): Europa als Provinz. Perspektiven postkolonialer Geschichtsschreibung. Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag.
Giedion, Sigfried (1953): “Habitat” zum 9. CIAM Kongress” GTA Zürich: 43-T-15-1953-9.
Guha, Ranajit (1983): Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency on Colonial India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Guha, Ranajit (1988): "On some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India." In: Guha, Ranajit/Spivak, /Gayatri Chakravorty (Eds.): Selected Subaltern Studies. New York: Oxford University Press. 37-43.
Junhua, Lue/ Rowe, Peter G/ Jie, Zhang (Eds.) (2001): Modern Urban Housing in China. New York: Prestel München New York.
Prakash, Aditya / Prakash, Vikramaditya (2007): Chandigarh, the city beautiful. Chandigarh: Abhishek Publications.
Sharma, Kavita / Sethi, Chitleen K / Meeta / Rajivlochan (1999): Chandigarh Lifescape. Brief Social History of a Planned City. Chandigarh: Goverment Press.
Zogmayer, Karin (Ed.)/ Schütte Lihotzky, Maragarete (2007): Milionenstädte Chinas, Bilder und Reisetagebuch einer Architektin (1958). Wien, New York: Springer.