平行观察 [壹]

张利/ZHANG Li

作者单位：清华大学建筑学院/《世界建筑》

本期《世界建筑》是我们对热带（包括部分亚热带）亚洲当代建筑观察的第一部分，聚焦于斯里兰卡和印度。

如果把斯里兰卡和印度当代建筑的发展路径与我国当代建筑的发展路径进行比较，不难发现一些平行的典型特征。这与20世纪中期以来除日本外的整个亚洲所经历的民族独立与发展历程是密切相关的。

在斯里兰卡和印度，从其独立的民族国家建立开始，我们可以看到大致清晰的三个建筑发展时期。首先是殖民时代刚刚结束的“后殖民化”或“去殖民化”时期，强调民族独立的存在，以出身于精英阶层的民族建筑巨匠的地域风格作品为代表——虽然这些巨匠的教育背景甚至成长背景都与殖民时期的宗主国家脱不开干系——典型的如杰弗里·巴瓦和查尔斯·柯里亚。其次是城市化与经济增长早期的“英雄主义”时期，重要建筑携带纪念性与识别性的光环，成为集体文化标识的象征。最近的、也是最令人感兴趣的是21世纪以来的社区营造时期，是城市化与经济发展的挑战达到一定程度——换句话说，是社会的现代化到达一定程度后，建筑必须重新回到几千年来连接人与生存环境的本色，从特定的视角支持特定的社区与人群。在这一时期，出身于普通中产阶级家庭、拥有国际教育背景的新一代建筑师成为行动的主力。

让我们明确地承认一个立场：把斯里兰卡和印度建筑“异域情怀化”的作法是过时的和令人反感的；仅仅出于追逐西方明星的疲倦，而想在亚洲发展中国家找到一种替代偶像的思路是狭隘的。事实上，我们在当代斯里兰卡和印度建筑中所看到的最鼓舞人心的元素，恰恰不是远离生活现实的文化奇葩和抽象理念，而是设计对居住于城市或乡村的普通人生命历程的真实参与。从某种程度上讲，这种真实参与必然意味着面向现实的折衷，从而使完成作品的视觉纯粹性受到一定损耗。但不得不指出的是，恰恰是这种不回避现实的态度，使得斯里兰卡和印度当代建筑所承载的设计策略可以穿越“实验性”的壁垒，动态地融入具体的社区，被具体的人群在日常生活中使用，而不是成为静态的建筑旅游目标。这也许是斯里兰卡与印度当代建筑可以提供给我们的最大借鉴。

本期专辑中收录的建筑涵盖了五种类型。其一是公益建筑，这类建筑中以教育和社区营建（含宗教）为主。有意思的是，与我国的常见情况略有不同，在斯里兰卡与印度的这类建筑中，探索性的设计策略和实际的日常功用往往可以进行无缝的衔接——这一方面出于热带地区建筑系统的灵活性，另一方面也使我们不得不对在这两个国家所执行的相应建筑规范体系颇感兴趣。其二是旅游建筑，这与斯里兰卡和印度的度假产业经济有密切关系。比较这两个国家度假酒店（包括精品酒店）的气候适应主导与我国度假酒店的视觉主导是一件有意思的事情。其三是居住建筑，遗憾的是我们仍然没有看到令人信服的社会公有住宅案例，也许我们在这方面可以期待后面对新加坡等国家的关注。其四是文化建筑，基于地域化语汇的谦逊与内敛依然是斯里兰卡和印度在这类建筑中的强项。其五是办公建筑，其所关注的气候与智能化策略是当前国际社会关于办公建筑的默认话题。不得不承认，得益于我国的经济与技术环境，中国一线城市的更新为这一方面的技术革新提供了相当宽广的舞台。

感谢建筑师希兰特·韦兰达维女士，她的努力使本期专辑成为可能。□

This WA issue is the Part I of our investigation into the contemporary architecture of tropical (and some sub-tropical) Asia. Here we focus on Sri Lanka and India.

Comparing the paths of Sri Lankan and Indian architecture with that of China, we might see curves in parallel with quite some similarities. These similarities have good reasons in the background.Actually, almost all countries in Asia (perhaps with the only exception of Japan) has covered a similar road of national independence and economic development since the 1940s.

In Sri Lanka and India, starting from their respective independence, we may see three distinct periods in architecture. The first is the period right after independence, be it "post-colonial" or "decolonising", depending on how you name it. This is a period of claiming national independence and clearly represented by the works of their architecture maestros featuring refreshing regional languages, albeit even the maestros themselves were mostly educated (or even raised) in the countries of their colonisers. The second is the period of early urbanisation and economic growth, a usually "heroic" period for architecture in developing countries. In this period architecture is taken as the haloed collective cultural symbol, the carrier of national identity, and the monumentality in architecture is explored in full. The third, and the most recent period, is the period of community making. After the turn of the 21st century, with the challenges in economy and urbanisation reaching an unprecedented level, architecture has to retake its fundamental role in human civilisation, which is to bridge living communities and their surroundings. In this period we see more and more local architects of the new generation, mostly from a normal middle class family root and educated with international vision,designing for the normal lives of normal people.

Allow us to make our position clear here: we find the traditional "exoticisation" of Sri Lankan and Indian architecture inappropriate and ofiensive.Those who look at these countries only for the sake of having some exotic alternatives of western stars are extremely narrow-minded people. In fact, what we find most thrilling in Sri Lankan and Indian contemporary architecture is exactly the power of design bringing positive changes to normal community lives, be it in the city or in the countryside.It is by no means quaint objects or abstruse concepts,but sheer lively involvement in normal people's lives. To some degree, this lively involvement may necessarily lead to some compromises to reality, and some tolls on the visual purity of thefinished work.Yet it is rightly this attitude that makes Sri Lankan and Indian architecture able to break the boundary of "experimentation", injecting bold design ideas into the dynamics of communities and daily lives.Chinese architects be alert: you don't see Sri Lankan or Indian architecture only being the destinations of architecture tourism. This is truly something to learn from.

There are five types of projects selected in this number. The first type is social buildings, mostly with an educational or community programme. Again, what interests us most is that different from the situation in China, in Sri Lanka and India, such buildings with true design experiments usually gets seamlessly embedded in day-to-day use. The flexibility of tropical configuration might be a cause. The tolerance of regulations and codes might also be helpful. The second type is tourism buildings. Given the vast tourism industry in these two countries, buildings for such purposes are bound to be good. Comparing the wonderful examples in this edition with boutique tourism hotels in China reveals different priorities: in Sri Lanka and India it is the maximising of user comfort in a given climate,in China it is the maximising of visual attractiveness for media communication. The third type is housing.Unfortunately we are still not seeing convincing public housing projects. We may need to wait for the Part II of this investigation for that. The fourth type is cultural buildings. Call it cliché if you will, the humble yet powerful local architectural language is still an element of strength in Sri Lankan and Indian architecture.The fifth type is office buildings. Not surprisingly the default international subjects, such as energy and automation, are also addressed in the selected cases. We need to state here that benefiting from the economic and technological environment in China now, the richest Chinese cities are also offering some of the best platforms for building tech innovations in this field.

Our sincere thanks to Ms. Hirante Welandawe,who makes this issue possible.□