Can a revived Urban Arts Commission restore Bengaluru's aesthetic beauty?

Sathyaprakash Varanashi

Trapped in a chaotic ‘development’ maze, has Bengaluru completely lost its link with beauty and aesthetics? Even if subjective, does the city with multiple identities yearn for a visual aesthetic framework, guided through a revival of the long-dead Bangalore Urban Arts Commission (BUAC)?

One look at the purely functional but aesthetically challenged Namma Metro stations, and you know what is wrong: Infrastructure’s clear disconnect with smart design, planning and architectural beauty. Decrepit flyovers, unkempt public spaces, monstrous skywalks, the evidence is stark and imposing.

Not perfect even in the height of its authority, the commission folded up in 2002. Unfettered by questions of aesthetics and beauty, top-down infrastructure planning has had a free run ever since.

But now, as urban historian and writer Aliyeh Rizvi points out, there is a need for an aesthetic framework to articulate the collective voices of the city’s vibrant community of creators, designers and innovators.

This framework is not about defining Bengaluru’s aesthetics. For, as Rizvi notes, that would be seen as compartmentalising and a certain kind of thinking getting boxed in. “Instead, such a commission would ideally work in framing a lens from which to see the city, not so much as how the city needs to be built going forward.”

Simply put, this would mean a body that calls out, for instance, a skyscraper blocking the view of a palace.

“It could be a regulatory body that enables conversations and creates a wider network of communities.”

A city’s aesthetics and beauty manifest through its horticulture, the layout of its streets, parks and suburbs beyond the concrete structures. “A huge aspect of urban planning is to see how cities become inspirational from an aesthetic point of view. In many European cities, the minute you step out of your door, the beautiful city inspires and motivates you to get up and get out,” explains Rizvi.

Aesthetic vision

Beyond the functional vision that dictates a city’s infrastructure development, an Urban Arts Commission can shape an aesthetic vision. Such a body in London, for instance, ensures that a leaf does not move without it fitting into the city’s overall look. “The commission’s role would be to nurture and nourish the city’s character and identity in keeping with an aesthetic vision.”

To avoid a repeat of the BUAC model that had become exclusivist, urban designer and eco architect Sathyaprakash Varanashi advocates an empowered democratic body with periodic change in leadership, and not under the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) as its previous avatar. The commission could be an overall watchdog at the Master Plan level. The Delhi UAC, which was powerful, is a readily available formula. “BUAC is a low-hanging fruit. All it takes is to apply the formula, claim the precedence and restart it, but with certain statutory powers.”

The commission, Varanashi says, should give a critical overview of what the master plan may be suggesting. “But it should step in more to see how the sectoral level plans impact the city. It could be a garden, flyover, buildings or any kind of an amenity infrastructure. What happens at the ward level, too, can have an impact at the city level.”

Urban architecture

The metro stations, the most visible face of a mega project, had offered an opportunity to evolve an architecturally pleasing vision for the city. Many architects had visualised multiple station designs. But they were all rejected, and a functional, standardised design was imposed on all stations.

Urban architect Naresh Narasimhan was among those whose designs did not get the official sanction. “Absolute, basic functionality dictated the design of the stations that were eventually built. There was no sense of spatial design at all. Even the functionality was not very clever,” he recalls.

They just saw the station as a place for people to get in and get out. Structural engineers, he says, should have an imagination that a metro station can become a social hub for that area “instead of a vacuum that sucks people in and spits people out”.