Accounting the unaccountable

I've started reading The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb. Not that I'm adequately impressed by him, but a lot of his points make partial sense, and support / clarify some of my earlier musings on our field. Earlier I had read The Organic Farming Reader (which I believe, is a must read for landscape professionals), and one essay / narrative focussed on 19th century traditional farming systems in the Mahanadi delta. There were no dams / checkdams on the Mahanadi then, and the farmers couldn't be sure when it would flood or be deficit. So, they resorted to multiple cropping, and multiple options - in the sense that they did sow the regular seeds during monsoon, but if their fields flooded, they quickly changed the seeds to account for the accumulated silt & flooding. They were not banking on a particular crop and thus, could be sure of obtaining optimal yield inspite of natural aberrations. Nassim Taleb talks of such Black Swan events (most swans are white, a black swan is an oddity / rarity) that more or less govern society / life on earth, and have a much larger impact than the normal & accountable / predictable events. No one can anticipate these events, but can create optimal options for each pattern. As some wisecrack said: "Uncertainty is the greatest certainty of life."

Coming back to our field, and applying this hypothesis, we are highly dependent on natural factors for planting, site development, etc. However, we provide precision planting strategies, site development options. One of the most intriguing exercises we had done (if you guys remember) was a farmhouse in Baroda, where the lower portion could be flooded in one or the other monsoon. We had to deal with multiple uncertainties, and while we didn't have enough time to devout to the exercise, it brought out better strategies than other exercises - for eg. MSU project. However, the point being that even in MSU project, we cannot predict an exceptionally harsh summer with a high water deficit, leading to large scale failure of our planting / site development strategies.

Again, the above paragraph is just one type of example... How about applying it to other facets of field: management, construction, contractors, etc etc.... Maybe established firms have those systems in place - conscious or unconscious, but embedding these in all our exercises would probably provide more sustainable and liveable solutions....

I look forward to a lot of criticism :D

kadiyomali

Kadiyomali…..I don’t know whether one knows about the story behind this blog name… well let me share this. Since it would help us to lead to a discussion which I think is good to initiate or start of this blog….

Kadiyomali = ‘kadiyo’ + ‘mali’

‘Kadiyo’is gujarati word meaning mason

‘Mali’ meaning gardener

My parents always wanted me to a doctor (I still wonder why), which I never wanted to be. But somehow after all dhishum dhism with them I could mange to land into architecture…. My mom was quite upset and with disappointed heart told me ‘to tu kadiyo banvani che?!!!’ meaning ‘so you gonno be a mason??!!!!’

Ah!! I felt too bad about it… but after years I still remember this comment of hers. As I gradually learned and understand that masonry or work of mason is most basic thing for application of all thoughts of work of architecture….

Rather I would say if we can build wall ourselves then we can build anything.

After 6 years story repeats as I landed in to landscape architecture which my parents were completely unaware or rather I must say till now they don’t know exactly what job does a landscape architects do??? And this time it was me who explain in simply manner that is work of ‘mali’ that we are suppose to do. :)

So this story was trying to put across that how we can be simplify or generate basic common sense into architecture as well as landscape to communicate to general mass.

If we talk about Landscape what job we are suppose to play…

Well I know these discussions have always been heard many many times... … Also during our academic days it would how we tend to take this role of landscape architect in future. But unfortunately that exercise lead to ‘EVOLUTION OF LANDSCAPE THEORY’ but I still feel that most primary question of our role as landscape architect is still unanswered.......

Today after a year of ongoing experience with various kinds of project I still question myself what role do I play as landscape architect or landscape designer?

P.S.: Please don’t blame me or ask me that what the hell have you learned from Prof .Bhagwat in two years huh???!!!! Well I did learn many things from him and I feel very lucky enough that I have studied under him….