Architecture as a community

Bijoy Jain, co-founder of Studio Mumbai, the Indian architectural practice founded in 2005 that won the third BSI Swiss Architectural Award announced in July, comes from a small village outside Mumbai. Here he became familiar with the emotions stemming from construction, something that is collectively shared across cultures. He came to regard it as even more important than the object being built. "Architecture is an idea of a community: architecture constructs these emotions, and the construction is in the place of overlap, something that joins us."

Jain's position resonated with Common Ground, the theme of this year's 13th International Architecture Exhibition — Venice Biennale, of which BSI was a part as a collateral exhibition at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia from 22 September through 7 October. Chairman of the jury Mario Botta couldn't agree more with Jain: "you can't construct singularity", he said at a roundtable he moderated at the Fondazione on 22 September in which Jain, who was born in 1965, and previous BSI Award winners Solano Benitez and Diébédo Francis Kéré, took part.

But the presence of the Award in Venice also transcended the Biennale's scope this year in its specifically slanted commitment to the maintenance of environmental equilibrium and quality of life in the face of globalisation through architectural agency, and in its deep focus this year on India, Africa and South America. Studio Mumbai was selected for the biannual Award from a hugely impressive array of 26 candidates from 12 countries (showcased in a new book by Mendrisio Academy Press and Silvana Editoriale, 2012, edited by Nicola Navone) for both the originality of the process from which their projects were created as well as their quality, one "based on a refined craftsmanlike knowledge that is reinterpreted and enhanced through the constant interaction of design and construction."

Studio Mumbai more than fit the bill, being under 50 and with at least three highly significant works, Palmyra House (which brought the practice instant fame) and Copper House in Maharashtra, and Leti 360 Resort in Uttarachai. But the Award of 100,000 Swiss francs recognises the practice's commitment to a collective working method, through which a search for a relationship with history and the memory of place is conducted, added Botta. Crucially, this evolves into "a contemporary language constructed on embedded layers of knowledge, rather than sinking into nostalgia", a tenet the Award organisers strongly abide by.

Jain describes Studio Mumbai's identity as "a human infrastructure of skilled craftsmen and architects who design and build the work directly", an iterative process exploring ideas through large scale mock-ups, models, material studies, sketches and drawings. The BSI Award retains remarkable consistency in its choices, the first of which was in 2007 for Benitez, for his architectural research carried out in the difficult political economic context of Paraguay, "a long way from the processes dictated by globalisation". Kéré's award in 2010 was for "his essential, intelligent architecture that makes no concession to any superstructural components", said the judges.

Based 40 minutes outside Mumbai, Jain is now setting up a second studio in the city, but remains determined to claim back an inherent but suppressed ability to meet the demands of time and quality in a way that is sustainable and has longevity. He spoke at the roundtable of the condition of India: "it works because of the chaos", which "prevents the system from completely taking over". In a country with 120 different languages, a myriad of food cultures, clothes and even bone structures, "how do we retain this richness?" As Roberto Rossellini described it, India is a "stomach" in which everything is digested, and the trick is embracing globalisation in a way that melts local culture but retains "our own identity".

Talking about Kéré, who he has known for four years, he regards his resources as sophisticated and "both of us are need-based", while Benitez, who only uses waste materials — favouring the raw — is a true inspiration. "I'm interested how we transfer experiments to other places", he adds. This is a key issue. Jain used plaster for his 1:1 model of a Mumbai slum house in the V&A's Cast Courts gallery a few years ago. Kéré, one of this year's judges, started to build when he was still a student, told a story about the first architectural school he made in his home country of Burkino Faso. Without the resources to make it in the typically imported French model, and favouring clay, he found women who were specialists in making clay floors, and his resulting three metre high clay walls survived torrential rain, even to his surprise.

He is these days widely revered as an expert in the adaptation but also teaching of cement-stabilized reinforced clay casting techniques that are now applied in his home country. However in Geneva, tasked this year with designing a thematic installation on reconstructing the family link (Brazilian architect Gringo Cardia is designing a space on the defense of human dignity, and Shigeru Ban on refusing fatality) for the International Red Cross, he explained that the Museum requested that he think of another material apart from clay, which was very expensive to use there. This should hardly be a problem for the versatile Kéré, who this year won the Gold Holcim Award for Gando, his secondary school in Burkina Faso, with its passive ventilation system, completed in 2011.

Both from outside "old" Europe, Jain and Kéré are vital community pedagogic leaders. Navone feels that the wealth of propositions from Jain's collective process may "become a sort of 'patrimony' of ideas to be drawn on in the future". They "have very different poetics", feels Botta, "which cannot be reduced to a common denominator, except, perhaps, for a particular concern with the craft component of the construction process and its consequent enhancement", and "very strong statements of territory, a moral tension and a joy of living".

In Jain's home city, a fast spinning symbol of India's new economic, cultural and social geographies, his collective ethos and critical awareness of its flux should serve him well. "Building, like a body, can extend itself: that's the core value of what we can do, to transform". "The culture of modernity is very fragile, there is lots of waste", said Botta, "it's our responsibility to risk". He was struck by "the wide range of positions documented" by all the potential winners, which can only help "to foster discussion about the current state of our discipline" — and its extensive reach in the future. Lucy Bullivant