AR 6402 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE & CULTURE - IV

LECTURE -01, UNIT V

CROSS CULTURAL INFLUENCES

Cross-Cultural Influence

What is the meaning of cross-cultural? According to the dictionary it

says “relating to or involving two or more different cultures or
countries” if you look out the overall picture cross-cultural means the
two countries or two different regions interact and exchange ideas so
they have the link that forms between the two cultures. That is called
as cross-cultural. How is it relevant in terms of architecture? And, how
did this cross-cultural influence actually takes place? If you look out the
overall world map image, you can see these various lines that pass
through different countries so these were actually trade roots. Trade
was one of the most important reasons for the development of cross-
cultural influences. If you look at this blue line, that is actually the Silk
root which passes through the china and all the way to Europe. If you
see this dotted line that was actually the spice root which went passes
through India and all the way to Europe. There were different trade
links between different parts of the country. They were not just trade
relations along with the trade routes went on exchange of ideas,
cultures and lifestyle. Why it is relevant in architecture? If you look at
when the people start trading and some people went on exploration
and just to visit various part of the world. But major travel was
happening due to trade purposes. When people started trading and
interacting, there was lot of ideas that was being exchange between
two countries. There was extremely contrasting cultural differences
they realized. They were event merchants, who came, for example
from Persia and settled in south India so they were events trade links
between India and Rome. Lot of contracting cultural interacts was
happening. When different people and from different cultural and they
visit the other part of the world and they settle down there. They have
started to bring out the influence the particular cultural. Slowly this had
an impact also in terms of architecture. Exchange of ideas and
exchange of culture and exchange of lifestyle and automatically get
influenced in the architectural style. If you look out India, it is the place
were cross-cultural influences can be found in abundance. If you take
and look out the northern India it had what we saw in this in the
previous chapter.

How we had the Persian and Arabic influences is in Islamic

architecture? It actually originated in Persia and then in slowly started
spreading towards India, majority of buildings that we saw in the
northern India and the north-west India mostly influence by the
middle-east. If you look at the south Indian the temple architecture, we
have seen in the previous chapters, if you look out them they have
totally different concept and totally contracting style of architecture.
During this medieval time period a lot of cross-cultural interaction was
going on and there were rulers from the north wanted to capture the
region of the south and they were rulers from the south started
expanding towards north as well. During those times when a particular
king captures region they try to establish the power by building their
own monuments structures. When they try to enforce their particular
style of architecture in that region the local people and local artisans,
craftsmen are involved in bringing their own ideas to form the new kind
of architecture. This brings about very diversified style of architecture
especially in a country like India was there were too many cultural
differences.

Secular Architecture of Princely States

If you look at the map the regions in the map if you look out the map in
the yellow map princely states and only in the grey are the British
province. What is the meaning of princely states first of all they are all
actually the regions in India which were not under the direct control of
the British but they were continued to be rule by the traditional rulers.
They were actually kings, but they were called as princely states
because, according to the British there original king was only the one in
London. These were called as princely states. Though the kings of India
rule the princely states original control was actually with the British.

What was the unique thing about princely states in terms of

architecture? When the British came to India they were the rulers who
succeeded the Mughal emperors? Before the British came to India
Mughal came into India, the Mughal emperor was the last powerful
dynasty that existed. Obviously in terms of architecture it was the
Mughal style of architecture that was more pre-dominant. When the
British started coming in and these princely states were form the British
influences slowly started and coming into the picture. A new kind of
mixture started happening with the Mughal elements being in place
and also influences of European style into architecture. What happened
to the princely state? What the British did was they took the princesses
who were ruling these states and they started educating them along
the British lines? They took them on tours to Europe then introduced to
western manners and norms. This automatically resulted in the change
of lifestyles these kings and it began to reflect in the architecture. Later
on when they started building the palaces, the old receptions rooms
gave way to durbar halls and rooms for European guests were being
built and ways to entertain guests were provided. Dining and drawing
rooms were introduced; which was the new thing for Indians. This
concept was not there before fireplaces, marble foundations and
statues, oil paintings and stuffed animals began to be displayed in the
halls and drawing rooms. It was very confusing state for the prince, he
was expected for both to be traditional and to be moderns and begin
the phase of constructing new India. This was the kind of transition
phase when they princely states were trying to adapt between the
traditional architecture and also the new ideologies that British were
trying to impose. As the result of this many new towns were formed in
the princely states, as we mentioned the early British influences were
not only found in palaces in terms of spacial arrangements, in terms of
new rooms, fireplaces etc. It also reflected larger scales in terms of city
planning because now the towns were modeled along the British
examples. Since these kings were taken on tour to Europe they were
made to look out European cities. How they were planned and build?
Similarly when they came back to India, they wanted to create cities on
India based on European pattern. what they was created new towns
similar to new European patterns with clock towers, railway stations,
pubic offices, assembly halls, water systems, public hospitals were built
and those buildings were constructed railways stations etc., they were
all very European classical and during the later period. Indo-saracenic
architecture came in to existing which will be seeing in the later
chapters. Some important princely towns were Jaipur, Bikaner and
Mysore. They were very successful in negotiating this divide between
the traditional architecture and the new European style. This was one
region called it out or it is also called as Avadh, after the decline of the
Mughal Empire and before the strong establishment of the British
Empire in-between this transmission time period there were smaller
ruler who ruled different parts of the India they were called the Nizams
or nawabs. These Nizams or nawabs they try to follow the Mughal
architecture in certain time period, but slowly they also started evolving
their own characteristics futures. After the time of point after various
building constructions activities they evolved their own Nawaz style of
architecture, one such example is seen in Avadh. This is the tomb called
as the safdar Jung’s tomb. If you notice deeply rooted in this Mughal
tradition on the out sided look very similar to a typical Mughal building
but at the same time these tomb are also revealed some original
characteristics such as it had multiple entrances on the facade was not
there in the Mughal style and elaborate parapets on the root. You can
see here which can unique of this future of this Avadh architecture. This
became known as the Avadhi style of architecture. This what was
happening in the beginning they were slowly trying to shred away from
the Mughal impact they are trying to create their own identity. This was
how it began? But slowly in the middle of the 19th century the British
influences became inevitable. In the middle of the 19th century major
general Claude Martin, he built a large building in Lucknow in Avadh
called as “Constantia”. This image that you see here if you see it is the
typical European style building. This was the first large building of the
European style built in the north India. It had very several Palladian
elements and this mark the emergences of new hybrids style of
architecture in Lucknow depicting the combination of both Mughal and
Gothic style of architecture. Another building is what you see below is
the chattar Manzils it has a underground rooms and a beautiful dome
with an umbrella like structure and they were other various pavilions
like the Roshanwalla koti and the Begum koti even in these buildings
you can see how would the traditional Mughal architecture with the
domes, catteries, the arch ways and also it is combining with the
European elements to form a new style. Another style of architecture
which existed was the Rajput’s style, this was the mostly around the
region of Rajasthan. These Rajput kings were well known for their very
good taste in architecture in art. They build very lavish palaces and
forts. Some forts were Chittargarh, Gwalior, Jodhpur, Jaisaimer, Amber
and Ranthambar etc., are examples fort architecture. The image you
that see here is one of the excellences specimens is called the Jaya
Sthamba or Victory tower in Chittoor. It is a 9 storied structure and it is
richly carved with Hindu deities. It is squares in plan and all four sizes it
has balcony and mouldings. They not only build forts, but they
elaborate architecture impressive mosaic works, carved balconies,
jharokhas, inlaid mirror works, miniature paintings, these are some of
the unique futures Rajput’s architecture. It was used by them to build
palaces in Rajasthan. These royal abodes were often built by the lake
side or gardens so that they can have a good view of it. The image
shows one such palace in Jaipur, Rajasthan are the richly decorated in
the carvings, jailis screens and the marble work.

Another kind of architecture that was evolving during this late medieval
period was the Sikh architecture. Why it is important to understand the
different style of architecture. India is a very multi-cultural country
based on the cultural and religion of this various region different styles
of architecture started evolving. Though it was very unique its own
style, at one point the war borrowing elements from different styles
but still they manage to who create a uniform and hole sum package of
architecture. One such example is Sikh architecture. It was based on the
principles of the religion Sikhism, it is mostly distinguish by the styles of
curves and straight lines, they not only built the buildings of religious
order they also have the secular buildings type such as forts, palaces,
bungas the residential places, colleges, etc., The religious buildings of
the Sikh architecture were called as Guruthwara. The Sikh religion itself
was kind of similar to Islam in terms of focusing on one God. In contrast
to the Hinduism were it was concentrating on different god, so it
borrowed that future of either focusing one or God from Islam, but in
terms of playfulness of architecture and decorative elements it
borrowed from styles in Hindu architecture. You can see actually a
beautiful mix in terms of architecture, from the Islam and the Hindu
religion. Islam focuses on one particular element richness and the
decorative elements from the Hindu architecture. Though the
ideologies were combined but they manage to create their own
identity. Sikh architecture is the beautiful blend of Mughal and Rajput
styles. You can see in the image how various elements of Rajput
architecture and Mughal architecture can be seen. Like the onion shape
domes, multi-foil archives, paired plasters, in-lay work frescoes, etc.,
Windows, bracket-supported eaves at the string-course, chhattris,
richly ornamented frizzes, these can be seen in many palace in Jaipur,
jodhpur etc., Again the Rajput architecture influence can be seen in this
aspects and another important future of Sikh architecture was no two
shrines or Guruthwara look exactly alike, some of the Guruthwara look
more like impact gateways. This actually tells us they had kind of the
creative freedom in the expressing they did not have a very strange set
of codes that a Gurudthwara particularly look like this. It shows that
they had creative freedoms in terms of expressing their design
ideologies. Another style of architecture which was again culture and
region based was the Vijayanagara style of architecture. The
Vijayanagara Empire was one of the most dominant empire in the
south. In fact they started conquering various parts of the country and
reach almost the northern part. They borrowed rich traditions art and
architecture from the south Indian kings like Cholas, Pandias and the
Hoysalas. There was once the western traveler who visited the
Vijayanagara Empire and he described that this city was as large as
Rome and it was compared to various cities in the western world at
that time. The city was actually a huge fortified city with seven
fortifications. The space in between was used for various purposes like
gardens, growing vegetables etc., most of it is currently in a ruing state.
Now there were beautiful lake, open gardens, well laid roads and
buildings. They even had proper irrigation systems, the river had a
dame and there was an even a huge aqueduct that was present. There
was also a palace with hall for public and private audiences and halls
were beautifully decorated with painted pictures.

Another region which had again a unique style of architecture was

Mysore which was also a princely state and one of the finest examples
of this architecture was the palace that was build. So it again borrowed
various elements from the Mughal Empire and the art and culture of
the Muslims with the touch of south Indian pigment. So actually three-
storied structures domes, turrets, arches and colonnades; and initially it
was built-in wood which got burned down and again it was rebuilt.
Then it was designed by Henry Irwin, a British architect. You can see the
old image of the palace of the interior, with richly decorated archway
columns. In order to understand the various styles that are culminated
in this particular building we can just take a look this one tallest tower
of the palace. If you look out this it is actually five storage structures
measuring of 145 feet at the center of the palace. This is very similar to
the Gothic cathedral in which the one tower stands out very tall
structure. However on top of the tall tower is the dome, very similar to
the Islamic or to the Persian structure which is metal gilded. This is
again the Persian influences, you have the Gothic kind of the tall
structure with the Persian kind of dome. In top of the dome you have a
domed chhatri which is the Rajasthani influence of Rajput style. With
this one structure itself again you can see how various styles being the
amalgated into beautifully unified structure. Hence we saw about a
different region and their styles of architecture.