Delhi Houses by Anica Mann| Delhi is a city of ruins; a city that conquered its violent past but goes on to gracefully bear her scars. An unmatched resilience, a gracious heart, and a plethora of stories make Delhi not just a city, but an emotion.
Being an outsider, like all others in the city of migrants, it didn't take long for me to accept the city as my own. The city comes with an enigmatic quality of making everyone its own.
But like most things in life, change is the only constant in Delhi (barring the traffic, of course!) Starting from the rise and fall of the Mughal empire to the Partition, Delhi's architecture tells the tales of the bygone era.
Capturing this change in Delhi’s modern architecture before the contemporary completely takes over, is archeologist and curator Anica Mann who also runs an Instagram page with the name of Delhi Houses.
In an exclusive conversation with Outlook Traveller, she shared the journey of the project, the conviction behind it, and how the personality of the city’s homes and its landscape are constantly changing.
“It was when I took a daily metro from my home in North Delhi to the Lady Shri Ram College in South that I began noticing the rapidly changing urban landscape of the city,” recalled Mann. She conceived the idea of Delhi Houses more than 10 years before she finally brought it to life.
“One fine day when I was in Defence Colony on a house hunt for my mother, I stumbled upon this beautiful modern home owned by a Sikh family. They wanted to sell it and I knew a builder would come and demolish the home to make apartments,” narrated Mann.
She described the house to be futuristic and global from the outset while very traditional from the inside. “It had the coolest architecture paired with a divine energy. I felt a strong urge to preserve the house as it was,” added Mann.
That house became the first post on the Delhi Houses page. Ever since, Mann has captured innumerable houses to spark discussions among people about the architectural loss of their city. Her focus is directed towards capturing the modernist and pre-modern architecture starting from the early 1900s to 2011.
2011 was a turning point in the way Delhi’s homes were constructed and transformed forever. A notification was passed by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) that ordered houses in the city to be built on stilts leading to Delhi becoming a city of apartment-style buildings. “The lavish lawns and airy verandahs soon began to disappear,” said Mann.
Mann aims to capture the vernacular architecture of the city; something that was commissioned by the people of Delhi. “While elevated and privileged houses of the rich and famous are documented by many, homes of common people are often missed in that process,” she added.
With Delhi Houses, she was also interested in understanding the distinct design language of people who had arrived and settled in Delhi after Partition. These were people who had built their homes after once losing almost everything.
“A look at the kind of houses people built not just informs you about them or their architectural choices, but their lifestyle and surroundings,” said Mann. Whether it was the large wrap-around verandahs that allowed people to have an outdoor semi-sunlit space, the indoor-outdoor kitchen to deal with the smelly Indian spices or the roshandans (small windows on top of tall ceilings for ventilation), all these features were reflective of people’s ways of life.
“It was important for someone to take the onus of documenting and archiving these patterns of human intelligence and adaptation not only to preserve its beauty but also to inform the future generations. They should be able to make sense of their exquisitely-designed homes,” she added.
Delhi was at the heart of Partition. It witnessed an inflow of a large number of people who crossed borders to start their lives from scratch. After 1947, the city had to be replanned, reconstructed, and rearranged to accommodate this large migrant population. City planners decided to allocate areas according to professions and emigrating regions.
This step not only gave more clarity but also allowed people to navigate an alien city. “Migrants could easily find people like themselves and feel at home. This nature of planning was an acknowledgement to their professional, economic, and regional stature,” said Mann.
Mann also explained how subcultures of the city developed over time and architecture fashioned itself around it. The furniture market in Delhi’s Amar Colony goes back to a Sikh carpenter community from Pakistan who were allotted plots in the area. The INA market, which is popular for its imported products, came up because the old Safdarjung International airport is close by. The area saw many foreign settlers and was frequented by many diplomats.
These cultural and social markers also reflect in the kind of houses that people from different communities constructed across areas in Delhi. “Just like in NRI houses, where there are elements that standout as Indian, these homes also became a way for people to nurture their social and regional identities,” explained Mann.
“A Marwari's house will be very different from that of a Punjabi’s or a Sindhi’s; a house in the Journalist colony (Gulmohar Park) will be very different from a bungalow in Defence Colony,” added Mann.
She also mentioned that each Indian has a sense of design and aesthetic that are culturally embedded and influenced by the way we have been brought up. The one place where these aesthetics most visibly come to the fore is in their houses. “We are a deeply cultural country. You can choose to be religious agnostic but never culturally agnostic,” Mann concluded.