Embodied Vision
Interpreting the Architecture of Fatehpur Sikri
Paper Type: Art Paper (Matt) | Size: 254 x 229mm
71 colour and 36 black and white photographs; 160 pages; Hardback
ISBN-10: 9383098481 | ISBN-13: 978-93-83098-48-4
1995 | 60 | 35
Departing from the conventional path of
describing and explaining the architecture of Fatehpur Sikri, Professor Jaimini
Mehta delves into a series of representations the Mughal city has been
subjected to and concludes that there is an inexorable tension at its core
embodied in the constantly shifting axes, complex rhythms, raising or lowering
of the ground planes, juxtapositions of mythical symbols and the conflicting
pulls of traditions and human will. The space of Fatehpur Sikri is revealed to
us through perception more than through geometry. Professor Mehta’s
unconventional interpretation of the architecture of Fatehpur Sikri emanates
from his exploration of the history of architectural representation and leads
him to conclude that the tools of designing, representation and analysis, i.e.
various kinds of drawings, which we normally use today, did not exist in
sixteenth-century India when Fatehpur Sikri was built. These drawings, which
assume our “mind’s eye” hovering above the city and taking in the whole of
reality at once, have failed to represent the existential lived experience of
inhabitation of architecture.
Jaimini Mehta
Author
Jaimini
Mehta is a practising architect
and an independent academic based in Baroda, India. He studied architecture at
M.S. University of Baroda and at University of Pennsylvania in the Louis Kahn
Studio,and went on to work in the offices of Louis Kahn and Mitchell/Giurgola
Associatesin Philadelphia. At present he is a Hon. Director of the Baroda-based
Centre for the Study of Urbanism and Architecture, which he instituted in 2006.
He was an Adjunct Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, NY and
at CEPT University in Ahmedabad, India. He has also worked as Head of the
Schools of Architecture at Baroda and Goa. His previous books are Louis I. Kahn, Architect co-authored
with Romaldo Giurgola and published in 1975, and Rethinking Modernity: Towards Post Rational Architecture (published
by Niyogi Books, 2011).