Jabili Sirineni M.Sc. COOP Design Research Permanence, Perfection and Projection - a short reflective summary on ‘On Building a House’ by Tim Ingold (Published by Routledge in 2013 in the book titled, ‘Making’) Tim Ingold, in his comprehensive paper ‘On Building a House’ questions the totality or the completeness of any given building or object. Is the act of building ever truly completed? Can a building ever be determined as total? He argues from different historic, contemporary and philosophical stand-points whether this completeness can be judged by just the realisation of a pre-existing design on paper. If a building is like a puzzle, can no piece be altered without affecting all the pieces? With similar analogies, Ingold questions the very idea of the word ‘permanence’ in the world of Architecture and Design. The essay brings forth some very intriguing phrases, like ‘the idea is crystalline but the fact fluid’, whereas designers tend to believe that they are contextualizing facts and formulating ideas that are complexly layered and ever-changing. On closer deliberation, the aforementioned phrase renders true by the example of a simply existing plan on paper being so unmoving, and the building in fact, continually transforming. With unanticipated problems and improvisations as solutions, what is designed to be ‘perfect’ is seldom, if ever, realized as envisioned. Ingold also mentions through words and works of different researchers and architects how, in some cases, physical aspects of climate or soil are overlooked in the quest to achieve a ‘perfect geometry’. Through this outlook, the way architects ‘think’ about the process of building and about buildings is challenged. The very act of designing, its solidity and removal from the act of building is deliberated upon extensively. Even through historical examples, where the architect, the carpenter and the mason were not completely distinct in their functions, the current distance between the process and the product is reflected. Must architecture as a profession be completely devoted to the act of designing and drawing, and execution be a completely separate mechanical process? Will this help in the ‘perfecting’ of the ‘building’? Or is it inevitable that a building remain unchanged from its plan? An ethnographic case study that I conducted as a researcher led me to what is known as an ‘informal settlement’ or ‘notified slum’ in my city. The term that was used extensively in our work then was ‘autoconstruction’. In a marginalized fringe of the city, where no basic infrastructure exists and inhabitants are forced to ‘auto-construct’ or self-construct their homes according to episodical availability of resources and finance, the idea of a ‘perfect’ plan is rendered irrelevant. It was also observed that improvisational and gradually incremental modes of building were put to use according to very specific shifting constraints and needs of the inhabitants. However, it must be argued that an architect’s participation would facilitate efficacy to this process. A part of the paper that highlights Aristotle’s hylomorphic thinking is almost reflective of this example. The ‘product of thought and nature’, of ‘reason and selection’ is necessary according to Ingold’s analysis of different processes of thought and ideation. According to Ingold, Euclidean Geometry was understood completely differently in different temporal contexts. The passing of knowledge in architecture seems to have been a progressive learning curve — from a seemingly ‘trial and error’ method to carving plans in stone foundations and using master-templates. Present-day architects however don’t ‘extemporize’ unless it becomes an impossibilty to execute a certain aspect on site, and even then it is a deliberate drawing led perfectionist exercise. If the ‘rules of art’ are really just ‘maxims’, there must be more freedom in the act of architecture and more coherance between the architect and the executer, the designer and the maker. Can the maker not design? Can the designer not make? The architect of the old didn’t essentially value ‘projections’ over the process. Following this, Ingold argues that current methods of building are too defining for creativity to come forth through ‘messy practices’ and ‘real buildings’.