"This book explores brick architecture of the nineteenth century in South India, through the lens of tectonics and materiality. The book is a diachronically elaborated history of brick architecture, especially analysing the hybridity due to the indigenous and colonial intersections of 19th century India. It offers a decolonial reading of architecture through meticulous measured drawings as a tool, and presents an argument for reading buildings as archives. South-India has thousands of dilapidated buildings, which may be erased due to neglect, laxed laws and ignorance. The book exposes the tectonics, fixing, material choices, socio-political circumstances and more. This method of analysing the dilapidated buildings as an archive of construction, forefronts the 'makers' and the agency of the local craftspeople rather than an Anglo centric gaze. Brick buildings such as the extravagantly ornamental and structurally rich Chatrams of Thanjavur, Rosary Church, Hassan and Fort School, Bengaluru are some of the many cases elaborated in the book. The book connects the history of brick to its many contemporary challenges and manifestations. The book is intended for students and scholars of architecture, history, material-culture, colonial studies and the Global South as well as anyone interested in brick as material for architecture"--
This book explores brick architecture of the nineteenth century in South India, through the lens of tectonics and materiality.
This book explores brick architecture of the nineteenth century in South India, through the lens of tectonics and materiality. The book is a diachronically elaborated history of brick architecture, especially analysing the hybridity due to the indigenous and colonial intersections of nineteenth-century India. It offers a decolonial reading of architecture through meticulous measured drawings as a tool and presents an argument for reading buildings as archives.
South India has thousands of dilapidated buildings, which may be erased due to neglect, laxed laws and ignorance. The book exposes the tectonics, fixing, material choices, socio-political circumstances of this architecture in brick. This method of analysing the dilapidated buildings as an archive of construction, forefronts the ‘makers’ and the agency of the local craftspeople rather than an Anglo-centric gaze. Brick buildings such as the extravagantly ornamental and structurally rich Chatrams of Thanjavur, Rosary Church, Hassan and Fort School, Bengaluru, are some of the many cases elaborated in the book. The book connects the history of brick to its many contemporary challenges and manifestations.
The book is intended for students and scholars of architecture, history, material-culture, colonial studies and the Global South as well as anyone interested in brick as material for architecture.
List of figures
List of abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Glossary
Part 1: Reading the Archive
Chapter 1: The Humble Brick: Material for a Billion
Brick: Construction Material for a Billion
The Decolonial Lens
Hybridity
Standardisation, Mechanisation, Automation
Brick: Contemporary Challenges
Structure and Themes of the Book
Chapter 2: Precolonial to Colonial: History of Brick in the Indian
Subcontinent
Bricks: Indus to the Nineteenth-century Colonial India
Regional Variations
Missionaries and Factories
Terracotta/Fired Earth: Colonisers Trailing the Missionaries
Terracotta Brick and Tile Industry in Mangalore
The Basel Mission Printing Press
Other Terracotta Tiles
Chapter 3: Nineteenth-Century Conversations between the Indigenous and the
Colonial
Introduction
Methods and Manuals
The Anthropology of Bricks: Brick-makers of Burma
Coloured Bricks
Well Sinkers: Manual to Mechanised
Brick, Mortar and Plasters of the Nineteenth-century India
Colonial Coercion
The Old and the New Archives
Part 2: Drawing the Archives
Chapter 4: Why Read and Draw Buildings as Archives?
Traditional Taxonomy in Architectural History
What is an Archive?
Technique and Material as an Anchor of Architectural Analysis
Brick in Focus
The Hidden Historical Archives in the Tectonic Making of Architecture
Tracing the Intersections
A Case Study Method
Manual Measured Drawings Versus Advanced Digital Techniques
Handmade versus Machine-made
The Decolonial Shift
Chapter 5: Hybridity: Materiality and Tectonic of the Chatrams of Thanjavur
Introduction
Cases in Brick
Chatrams of Thanjavur
- Why are the Chatrams of Thanjavur Important?
Sculptural and Assembled Derivation in Architecture
Muktambal (1801) and Yamunambal Chatrams, Thanjavur (1761)
- Typology
- Details in Brick
Vennar (1779), Kalyana Mahal (1832) and Shreyas Chatrams (1837)
- Details in Brick
- Column, Openings and Walls in Brick
Hybridity
Chapter 6: Brick Tectonics of a Church, a School and a Market
Rosary Church of Shettihalli, 18101880
- Brick Ruins and the Story of Technology
- Typology and Drawings
- Elements of Architecture
Tracing Hybridity Through Drawing
The Red Kirk at Bengaluru, 1864
Fort School, Bengaluru, 1907
- Typology and Drawings
- Elements of Architecture
- Material Technique and Columns
New Material and Traditional Skills
Devaraja Market, Mysore, Karnataka, 1900
- Typology and Drawings
- Elements of Architecture
Roofs with Steel
Chapter 7: Future: Contemporary Architecture with Bricks and Adobe
Standardisation: A Consequence of Nineteenth-century Mass Production
Twentieth-century Experiments in Brick
Contemporary Brick Architecture in South Asia
Brick in the Forefront
Conclusion
Index
Priya Joseph teaches at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, MAHE, Bengaluru, India, and is an architect by training. Her work transects architectural history, urban ecologies, art and design in the urban, and material culture. She has published widely on architecture, and materiality, including Terracotta People (2024) and Rupturing Terracotta: Entangled Exchanges of the Hand and the Machine in South India (2022).
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