CHAMBRE ARCHITECTURE: Despite and Still
Antilia, private residence of Mukesh Ambani
Buildings and structures live en mass, on-street and in the city, they punctuate
townscapes and echo the built environment; they are global and they dream of climbing,
of remaining still, despite the messy business of daily use. But what is the relevance of
architectural design to our daily lives?
Each building and street pattern, or fragment of space can be a mixture of complexity
and irrationality — a painstaking labour of concept and pinstripe regulation. Beyond
concrete, steel, and granite rainbows, buildings offer up a host of micro-narratives:
unbridled beauty, politics, expressions of hope and desire, practicality or limitation.
In The Body in Pain: The making and unmaking of the world, author Elaine Scarry, offers a
scarily penetrating view on the ramifications of cultural forces and how they shape our
lives. She writes of architecture and the room, in its simplest form, as ‘the most benign
potential of human life’. The room of one’s own, but according to Scarry, puts ‘boundaries
around the self preventing undifferentiated contact with the world’. Whereby its windows
and doors and ‘crude versions of the senses,’ eases the ‘self to move out into the world
and allows that world to enter’. The idea of objects that are independent and free of the
body, in Starry’s view, help to ‘free the body and realise the human impulse of projecting
himself into spaces, either physical or verbal’. This is what Starry likens to civilisation: the
projected experience of objects, that are ‘multiplied, collected and shared’.
In Wolfgang Tillman’s Book for Architects, the German photographer explores and
documents the relationship between architecture and image; in particular, his relationship
to land and building. Tillman’s fascination stems from the infinite number of formal and
structural possibilities a space can offer. The project is not a typological study, but a
sequence that mirrors what ‘examples of the built environment look like and feel like to
me, in the words of the photographer.
Book for Architects, Wolfgang Tillmans
Two channel video installation in Elements of Architecture Central Pavillion, 14th Architecture Biennale Venice, curated by Rem Koolhaas, www.tillmans.co.uk
The project featured a collaboration with Rem Koolhaas, the Dutch architect, professor
and urbanist. Koolhaas helped curate the project and bring it to life, helping the artist
assemble 450 photographs, from 37 different countries. Tillman’s photographed the
project over 10 years, in steadfast attraction to his personal architectural experience of
built environments.
Arguably at the head of the international culture industry, architecture can be viewed as
place-making and identity marking; and its relevance to Tillman’s project offers a view of
the built environment through the eyes of the popular imagination — Book for Architects
offers the experience of how architectural structures exist in the world, not as it is
conceived by its practitioners, but in terms of the everyday experience.
Presented at firing speeds, each of the 450 photographs whirl on screen to the sound of
the projector’s flash. The initial outlook of the exhibition is a feeling of bleak, everyday
ordinariness, with a sense of chaos and the shape-shifting nature of cityscapes. Some of
the works feature iconic buildings, built by storied architects. Tillmans nods at the
mythology of iconic structure, juxtaposed with the daily experience of stalking past
complex structures of concrete, glass and steel. The pertinent idea that shrouds each
revolving photograph, is the relationship between individual and corporate authorship.
Buildings assert control, whether via the trickling down of fragments from iconic
structures, or via sheer grandiosity and belligerent luxury. In the case of Tillman’s
photographs in Book for Architects, his scrutinising eye captures the most expensive
private residence in the world, drawing out a new viewpoint of architectural experience,
for both inhabitant and passer-by.
Antilia, private residence of Mukesh Ambani
Indian business tycoon, Mukesh Ambani is a household name in India, and through the
vision of Perkins&Will, his private residence, named Antilia, is estimated to have cost
between 1–2 billion USD. The name was inspired by Antillia, a mythical island, and its
cantilevered heights are shrouded in near-mythological mystery, with Mr. Ambani himself
refusing to comment on the project, even coaxing the designers, decorators and other
contractors to sign confidentiality agreements. Situated in Mumbai, formerly called
Bombay, it is known to Mumbaikars as ‘The City of Dreams’ and is India’s most
cosmopolitan city.
Mr Mumbai’s 27-floor structure towers above the affluent southern neighbourhood, with
beauty preserved in the form of buildings dating back to the Victorian Era, blending a
Gothic Revival style with more traditional Indian features associated with the climate, like
balconies and verandas. And yet, Mumbai has some of the highest real estate prices in
the world, pushing many people into slums. Antilia is located on Altamount Road, one of