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Cosmic Dance in Stone

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Specifications

	Publisher: Niyogi Books
	Author Ramu Katakam
	Language: English
	Pages: 227 (Throughout Color Illustrations)
	Cover: HARDCOVER
	12x12 inch
	Weight 1.71 kg
	Edition: 2017
	ISBN: 9789385285547
	HBW061

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Book Description

About the Book The intention of this book is to explore, through photographs and illustrations, the architectural spaces that were conceived to transcend space and time. Historians have traced their origins as also the rulers who helped build them while photographers have presented them in beautiful imagery. It was necessary, however, to understand the architectural nuances of these fine monuments, and the quality of light and space the designers were trying to achieve. It was also the discovery of James Fergusson's original version of Illustrations of the Rock-cut Temples of India, published in 1845 when he and his team had to travel around the subcontinent without the railways, proper places to stay, or even medical help. He captured in his lithographs the essence of such architecture and maintains that there is an expression of grandeur, and of quasi eternity, in a temple cut in the rock, which is far greater than can be produced by any structural building of the same dimensions. In Cosmic Dance in Stone, there is an attempt to rediscover the quest for eternity and the relationship with the cosmos through the creation of stone structures that give a glimpse of a world beyond this one. The designers, artists, and craftsmen of a bygone age manifested qualities in a building that are rarely seen today.

About the Author Ramu Katakam has been a practising architect for the last 40 years. Starting with a private practice, he subsequently turned to research on the traditional buildings of India, culminating in his first book Glimpses of Architecture in Kerala: Temples and Palaces. Ramu was influenced by classical Indian buildings that had a sense of lightness and being. As an architect he has pursued this exploration in the buildings he designed. One of his houses was shortlisted for the Aga Khan award for architecture in 2007 and two others (the Dilli Haat and the Syrian Orthodox church in Delhi) have been described in the latest edition of Sir Banister Fletcher's encyclopaedia of world architecture. After travelling around India studying rock-cut architecture, he found that little has been written about the way these structures were envisaged and the manner in which they express their quest for the divine. He felt the need to convey the designers' approach towards creating spaces that would primarily be used for prayer and meditation. Ramu continues to work as a designer and is now engaged with a complex for stone craftsmen and sculptors near Bengaluru.

Foreword For Ramu Katakanı, architecture has not been just a profession. Rather, it has been an enabling discipline by which he has engaged with the world around him for over 40 years, first through the building of commissioned works and later as a vehicle for understanding the miracle that is this world we live in. It is timely that as the landscape of India in many areas is being irrevocably transformed by the material demands of a burgeoning population, he should give us this book that records, exquisitely, qualities that are so ephemeral yet so principally important through the medium of the 'cave temple'. Clearly, the forms of architecture that the cave temples of India manifest are all based on earlier constructed models that existed at the time of their excavation. As architects, we are schooled in the discipline and order of the construction process: that which enables our buildings to stand up, function, and give pleasure to paraphrase Vitruvius badly.

Introduction Stone is a material that takes many million years to form and offers a sense of permanence, Craftsmen and designers of an earlier era were able to use it most effectively to produce masterpieces of art and architecture. This volume is largely a collection of photographs and illustrations that shows how wonderful landscapes of stone have been devised to transcend space and time. It is an attempt to discover how the designers of the past envisaged structures that could link us to the stars and help us apprehend the nature of our existence. The primordial aspect of stone is perhaps why we feel so full of energy when wandering in areas with an abundance of this material. Stone offers magnificent compositions and becomes art in the vast expanses of the countryside, but man's intervention in order to find a higher level of being alleviates them to a level of beauty. The builders of Mahabalipuram, Ellora, Elephanta, Angkor War, Badami, and Hampi were concerned not only with creating shelter in harmony with the natural landscape, but also allow us to experience a sense of elation when confronted with the architecture of these places. The places I have chosen in this book, I believe, are structures that immerse the visitor in the universe. They are built in harmony with the landscape, but both the order and disorder of Hampi and Mahabalipuram are part of this extraordinary design. Mahabalipuram is said to have been a port where the Romans sent their ships to trade. The stone found here is among the hardest in India, and, consequently, the sculptures have not eroded or decayed.

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