Critically discuss current architectural trends and architectural styles of 'personalized houses' built by the social middle class

of Sri Lanka.
Your answer should address/ include the following sub-questions;
1. Discuss Jacques Tati's film, 'Mon Oncle' as a critique of middle-class aspirations as they are reflected in the built environment.
2. Discuss 'upward social mobility' and the evolution of styles adopted by the social middle class in Sri Lanka since the post-independence era .
middle class aspiration of post war eqourp

• How those aspiration reflected through modernism architecture

• Negative impact of built environment sense of place and cultural identity
due to international architectural style
• How does Mona uncle film critized above with examples

• What is soico – cultural situation - France parallel to period repeating

• Middle class aspiration of post war societies
 The sociocultural aspiration of the middle class in France during the post-World War II period was characterized by several factors:

1. **Modernization and Consumerism**: The middle class aspired to modern household appliances, vacation homes, and other luxuries that were becoming more accessible during this time.
This desire for modernization and consumerism was influenced by the growth of the French economy and the increasing influence of American culture and consumerism[2][3].

2. **Social Mobility and Education**: The middle class sought to improve their social and economic status through education and hard work. This aspiration was fueled by the expansion of the
social security system, which provided better protection against illness, unemployment, and old age[2].

3. **Cultural Identity and National Pride**: The middle class was concerned with preserving their cultural identity and national pride in the face of rapid social and cultural changes. They sought
to maintain their social status and cultural heritage, often engaging in debates on the influence of other cultures on French society[5].

4. **Individualism and Social Circle**: French society during this period was characterized by individualism, with interactions depending on whether a person was within one's social circle or
not. This social structure may have influenced the dynamics between the characters in the film "Mona Uncle" and their relationships with one another[5].

In summary, the sociocultural aspirations of the middle class in France during the post-World War II period were characterized by a desire for modernization, consumerism, and social mobility,
as well as a concern for cultural identity and national pride, and a focus on individualism and social circles. These factors reflect the evolving social and cultural landscape of France during this
transformative period.

https://projectivecities.aaschool.ac.uk/portfolio/the-critical-
mass-of-french-mass-housing-and-mass-culture/
MENTAL CLEANING
“The speed with which French society was transformed after the War from a rural, empire-oriented, Catholic country into a fully industrialized, decolonized and urban one meant that the things that
modernization needed – educated middle managers, for instance, or affordable automobiles and other ‘mature’ consumer durables, or a set of social sciences that followed scientific, functionalist
models, or a work force of ex- colonial labourers – burst onto a society that still cherished pre-war outlooks with all the force, excitement, disruption, and horror of the genuinely new.” Ross
Kristin, Decolonization and the reordering of French culture, MIT Press, 1996

In the decades prior to 1945 the French State had a very limited engagement in the construction industry, it is only from that moment that it took chargeof national reconstruction through both
“National economic plans” and “Reconstruction plans”. The accommodation, together with all aspects of daily life, becomes (especially with the Second Economic Plan by Minister Monnet and the
financial help of the Marshall Plan)5 a key element of the process of economic development, of which the national political powers will handle all aspects of production: economic, social and
technical. France then shifted to a total “planning state” in which “the user — whether as an abstract universal, a statistical entity identified with the nuclear family, a normative figure subject to
modernization, an active participant of neighbourhood life, a free consumer, or a protesting militant — was at once a policy and design category of policy and an agent of the built environment”.6

Comfort is definitely the keyword of this social and urban renewal because it was absolutely absent in the tradition of previous French dwellings. A large part of Parisian homes had not and still do
not have a private bathroom, most often shared. Many French apartments in the post-war period had no hot water or even running water and electricity or gas; the aim of public powers was therefore
to ensure – in an initial condition of urgency – minimum standards of comfort. So in 1953, only 9% of the population had running water and central heating, the 8.5% of the population had a washing
machine and, although it had been imported from the United States since 1910 with the brand “Frigidaire”, only 7.5% of housing had a refrigerator, due also to its high cost. It later became a goal of
the public authorities to ensure living standards more suitable to modern lifestyles ( g.5,6).

The transition from a situation of urgency and necessity (for essential biological needs and hygiene) and the identification of the dwelling asthe main domain of consumption (i.e. “domestic consumption”) is very
short. Alongside the search for highest standards of comfort they lay all the vicissitudes related to the French dwelling unit, so “in the consumer societyis no longer sufficient to have hot water and modern equipment
to be happy. It is no longer sufficient to have light and air in order to have a beautifullife … but the comfort was other things…“. 7 The France of wellness saw its unlimited growth through consumption, referring to
the American capitalist model. The French citizen, entranced by the new modern way of life, bought consumer goods for the home: washing machines, cookers, refrigerators ( g.4). The woman, wife, mother and
worker reads in magazines like Marie- Claire how to use these machines and every year, in the Salon des arts ménagers in Paris8 it is taught to average citizens how and what to consume ( g.3). In this regard, the big
advertising campaign in favour of personal hygiene care is highly illustrative because it is linked to the presence of a bathroom with running water in all new housing units of cités modernes ( g.2). A massive
production of soap for personal hygiene is related, inter alia, tothe use of soap for the new domestic machines. The “civilizing mission” of the state, which in the strength of his powers recalls the colonial heritage,is
to clean: clean the past (consisting of filthy and pestilent ilots insalubres) and cleaning the bodies of new French citizens. This new, clean and civilized society is increasingly distant from the dirt and the incivility of
the colonial populations.9

The increase of wealth and the passage into mass culture and consumption led to the acceptance of an uneven development and therefore the inevitable differences of class, which are woefully behind todays
problems with the Parisian banlieue. During the same period, as a matter of fact, France is fighting against the Algerian nationalist revolutionary movements (the culmination of the war is in 1956), phenomena of
torture and exhausting struggles are censored by the French press. The attitude of “erasure ofthe colonial past” has, thus, historical roots and is the basis of today’s misunderstandings and resentments against the
immigrant population.10 The first migratory waves of citizens from the colonies (but also from Portugal, Italy etc.) dates back to the period of production of Grands Ensembles, in which the construction industry had
an enormous need for labour. The immigrant workers were therefore accepted in large numbers on French soil and began crowding near the new, modern neighbourhoods, populating bidonvilles like that of
Nanterre, famous for having contributed to the birth of May 1968 revolts.
This process demonstrates, once again, the French “bipolarity” which fostered through modernist architecture the peaceful coexistence of different social classes, to
accommodate a man indiscriminately in need of some comfort related to his state of nature (the concept of “mixité” is often recalled in French housing projects) and
then, a sad setback in accepting class differences, reminiscent of 19th-century housing interventions.11 The problem is that with immigrations, the social differences
would identify with ethnic differences and – subsequent to the abandonment of the middle class of the Grands Ensembles – will create a clear spatial division within the
most exemplary French city, that of Paris: the Boulevard Péripherique will be the blurred borderline between the endless progress (and fascination of technology, which
is related to a first phase of Grands Ensembles), the acceptance of the policies of everyday life (related to the subsequent social revolts, second phase), the mental
cleaning of the past and the distinction from the stranger (which are both the premise of Grands Ensembles and the third final phase, which establish their end and
failure).

A1. The film starts with the background scenery of all city area with traditional architecture in contracts with new city area with
international modern architecture. The puppies in 1st seen, might have been symbolised in people in low class with basic
needs.Therefore this scene represents the inclusiveness of traditional life & Architecture. One puppy with proper suite might
symbolise the aspiration and attitude of the middle class who struggle to adapt to the structured lifestyle in order to showup their
status.
2. Modern Architecture doesn't have the sense of identity and inclusivity presented in a traditional environment.
CONTRADICTIONS IN THE AVERAGE FRENCH DWELLING
“WHEN THE FUTURE IS MORE PRESENT THAN THE PRESENT”12
The intricate framework within which politics, economics and society intersect from the 1950s to the 1970s was lucidly documented by French intellectuals and filmmakers. Some cinema
masterpieces summarise effectively the complex dynamic between state policies, families and architecture and the changes that occurred in French middle-class-social housing.
Villa Arpel, for instance, is the creative product of director Jacques Tatiand artistic director Jacques Lagrange ( g.7). It is the pretext for the taleof the silent revolution of French society of the
1950s. The Villa of the lm Mon Oncle (1958), was born as a representation of the new era in whichthe comfort appeared as a new bonheur (happiness). The lm recounts the moment of
transition from traditional to modern society, and how men were still unprepared to accept the disruptive technological progress. In the movie, the Villa becomes the subject of ridicule of
contemporary fever of household machineries, automobiles and television.
Arpel family (wife, husband and son) live a life punctuated by the noise of machinery, the movements are channelled into pre-established spaces (g.10) and technology becomes the showcase
of social success. Enclosed within its walls, the Villa is inside a Grands Ensembles, whose slabs are visible behind a wall in ruins of the old historical city core to which the ville nouvelle binds
(g.9). Uncle (Oncle) apartment’s access in the historical town is tortuous, he must go through several corridors, and this movement encourages sociability that characterizes the existing
households (g.8). On the other hand, the access to Villa Arpel follows a path in an entirely designed garden and the automatic gate separates it from any form of past, cutting out the old world
and incorporating the new one.

The role of objects in the lm is as ridiculous as that of the characters whotry to “tame” them, there are a series of gags which revolve around thecult of the object, whose mother and wife becomes “vestal”.
The modern woman is the one who manages to maneuver the new appliances, boundto the world of the kitchen, but she also starts to be a worker ( g.10). Infact the introduction of machinery in the
domestic realm allowed women to spend less time in home chores and thus have the opportunity to work and become consumers. The role of medias and magazines in the retention of the role of women was
of central importance. Switching from a traditional definition of the role of the mother13 to a much more modern definition: “The home that the magazine (Marie-Claire) imagined for its readers was bright
and clean. The Marie-Claire woman was a domestic engineer, and Marie- Claire was her manual… it had no monopoly on this matter, and advice for mounting comforts in cramped apartments was standard
fare in the period’s magazines”.14 The modernization of the role of women within the family unit is one aspect of the “politics of everyday life” that were enacted in the 1950s-1960s. The culture of
“technocrats” or “experts” (the one that allowed the state-led policies of modernization of the country through, rst and foremost, urban planning) had the objective to perfect life, labour and leisure through
the optimal organization of the familial and social environment. Sociologists and French critics (including Henri Lefebvre, in his text Critique of everyday life)15 begin to speak for the administration of the
existence (of human domain of inhabiting spaces) of both collective and individual in a “technology of spaces and relations.”16 Citizens or usagers (users) become calculable (let us say, for instance, the
Marxist definition of “labour”) in order to be administered by the democratic capitalist societies, the “engineers of the human soul”.17

This techne of the soul is joined by a fascination towards technology, a runaway optimism and faith in progress. This positivist momentum leadsto fantastic imaginaries such as Villa Arpel or those of famous
utopians architects of the Groupe International d’Architecture Prospective (GIAP) like Yona Friedman. In 1960s the GIAP (fascinated by the international trend of megastructures) designed the “Space cities”
(theirs was called “spatial urbanism”), redefining the relationships between city, technology and nature to both contemporary and future city. The French utopians although included in a broader international
context are simply a symptom of the widespread crisis of Modern interventions of that time, linked to the state-led urban planning policies (Grands Ensembles). In 1965 they designed the “Paris sur Paris”
(g.11), a response of Gaullist Schéma Directeur d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région de Paris (Director scheme of the developmentand urbanism of Paris Region). The new technological city was no
longer bound to the outskirts of Paris but was right above it, respectful of the principle of population growth, the need for mobility of society, for housing and at the same time respectful of the historic fabric
of the French capital. “Rejecting both American capitalism and Soviet socialism, spatial urbanists in France sought a convergence of art and industry and championed the mass consumption of large-scale art
rather than the commodification of art objects. In their critique of a widespread culture of consumption and their interest in the possibilities of ambient space, spatial urbanists shared limited common ground
with other intellectual and cultural movements in France, including the Situationists. Ultimately, however, their embrace of technology and administrative rationality rendered their politics reformist, even
conservative, rather than revolutionary.”18 The group was thus accused to be composed by mere “neo-avant-garde technocrats.”19

Techne, which can be both “technocracy” or “technology”, thus characterizes the enthusiasm and the definition of average-exact dwelling for the average family of the 1950s. The delicate transition from the
old to the new world is accompanied by a caricature of the world that itself represents that can be both an hi-tech dwelling where it is necessary to learn how to furnish and to live in, or a peripheral suburb
suspended on Paris’ birth of contradictions.
The malaise of Grands Ensembles – which was essentially a profound sense of boredom – affected mainly women who rarely worked and were then forced to spend their
days in the indistinct architectures that surrounded them
Accoding LB Pabree Each society creates its own space” which
can be also related to sri Lankan context .this candies specially
notice in middle class personal hoses in sri lank

According MH middle class needs up to

esteem levels (other self actulizaqtion )

Therefore middle class identified their

house an opportunity to express their
identity
(Base on esteem needs)

Sri lanka middle class image as a relsulte of socio cultural changes happen due to
colonization and westernization
 Sri lank middle class image late colonial period just before independences 1948
The emerging middle class in Sri Lanka, known as bogeys, now categorically reject any association with the participle of British colonialism or the
nationalism movement based on the hierarchical social structure of pre-colonial Sri Lanka.

There was no question of being nationalistic in those days.

Most people were for the ways of the West and some secretly wished they were from it… “ BewisBawa(1985: 62-4)
Retrieved from ‘The Trouser under the Cloth’ by AnomaPieris (2013) “The more opulent and top bracket low –
country Sinhalese gentry, whose forbears had been lured by honorsand emoluments to serve as sentinels and
guardians of their interests by the Dutch… […] They clothed themselves in Dutch broadcloth, they filled their large
houses with Dutch furniture, they drank the Hollanders’ firewatersand became wedded to Dutch epicureanism in
the culinary art and became more Dutch than the Dutch themselves…” The Changing Face of Colombo, R.L.
Brohier, 1984

The Bungalow
•Solidification of Britain’s power in the region, (British Raj) – Use of the Classical Order
•Dividends of the Plantation Economy – Consumerism/ Capitalism) - The bungalow: The
production of a global culture, Anton D. King, 1984 “Within this walled segment of Colombo
there came to be sown the seeds of British Colonialism. In its social form this proved in the
long run even more obnoxious than its political variety during the Western rule of the two
earlier European powers.”
“An old adage holds that wherever two Englishmen met away form home, they founded a
“Club” –in reality a nostalgic corner in a foreign field that was forever England!” (Brohier, 1984)
1920s onwards…
•Fall of the feudal system and urbanization
•Caste and class… rise of the bourgeoisie (culturally determinant vs/ economically
determinant)
•Upward social mobility (The rise of a Karava elite in Sri Lanka 1500-1931, Kalinga Tudor Silva
and Michael Roberts)
•Eclectic or Hybrid styles (E.g., influence from British manor houses)
•Use of artificial raw materials and imported materials
•PWD Style based on rationalism and cost-effectiveness (Use of ‘art deco’ and local crafts)
• International Style
“In colonial Ceylon, official government construction activity was monopolized by a particular
group of government departments, leadby the Public Works Department, which I shall refer to
as the PWD. The PWD also institutionalized the distinct ways in which official built culture was
to be produced. This colonial project was not only responsible for a whole range of "new"
spaces that were completely alien to the colonized --such as a road network, new institutional
buildings like barracks, courts, prisons, and hospitals, as well as tennis courts and cricket
grounds--but also aimed at producing new subjects within these, such as prison guards and
prisoners, tennis and cricket players. For the Ceylonese, therefore, space was at once both
defamiliarized and dehistoricized; yet at the same time, it was also historicized and familiarized
for the colonizers, and subsequently, also for the Ceylonese elite and technocrats who were
also produced within this structure.” 83rdACSA Annual Meeting, History, Theory, Criticism,
Nihal Perera, (1995)

“Bawa'swork implied a sharp break with the then modes of the "international style" which
were reaching a high point in neo-colonial fluency around the 1950s and 60s, best displayed
perhaps in the arrogant extravagance of Brasilia and Chandigarh.” Shanthi Jayawardane, "Bawa:
A contribution to cultural regeneration," Mimar19 (Jan-Mar l986) “Architecturally speaking, the
country suffered from post-colonial self-denigration ... Some people enthusiastically believed in
things like "American Style" and vinyl floors ... Most of the new buildings were a reflection of
Western ways, climatically unsuitable, and visually indifferent ... On my part, it was a process of
first clearing away the shabby asbestos roofing, the bare bulb lighting, the disastrous flat roofs,
the imported rubbish, the slimy black moldywalls without drip ledges, the admiration for the
second rate from Europe.” UlrikPlesner, "UlrikPlesner," Living Architecture 5 (1986):
“For De Silva, Le Corbusier would always be a mentor and, arguably, her foil, throughout her career. Her
architectural vision was a reaction to Corbusianmodernism. A modernist at heart, De Silva nevertheless saw its
limitations in the Eastern context. Rather than break entirely with tradition to import a new grammar into her
building, she saw an opportunity to both revive a waning arts and crafts industry, while modernising traditional
aspects of Sri Lankan architecture. Her work was a kind of hybrid —what she called Modern Regionalism.” (The
Tribune, Corbusier and Minnettede Silva, Chronicles of an affair untold, 2020)

Karunaratne House with Dumbaramats, especially fired

clay tiles made by local artisans, and a floor-toceiling mural
by celebrated local artist, George Keyt.

“One unchanging element of all buildings is the roof -protective, emphatic and all
important governing the aesthetic, whatever period, whatever place. Often a
building is only a roof, columns and floors -the roof, dominant, shielding, giving
the contentment of shelter ... the roof, its shape, texture and proportion is the
strongest visual fact” Geoffrey Bawa, "Statement by the Architect," in Geoffrey
Bawa, (Singapore: Mimar, 1986)
An “Anti-Hero” of Sri Lanka
Modern Expressionist -Fusion of rigid and geometric, with
curvilinear and nebulous. Spatial container approach.
Pani Tennekoon
Reshaping Sri Lanka’s state sector building form identity… Pani is an architect to
be reckoned with, educated at the Melbourne School of Architecture (University
of Melbourne), and trained under Shirley de Alwis in the ‘University of Peradeniya
project’. Assit. Architect, later Chief Architect, Public Works Department
Additional Director, Buildings Department Chief Architect, UDA Consultant
Architect, CECB

“The rise of critical vernacular architecture here has been more in response to cultural and historic rather than
economic and stylistic transformations. Here I would contrast critical vernaculars which emerged within
postcolonial states as responses to cultural problems generated by colonialism and modern architecture, with
postmodern architecture which developed in "post-industrial" cities largely as a response to declining
economic fortunes. […] this architecture does not claim any direct continuity with the past nor any
authenticity. Instead, it uses indigenous spatial elements, architectural details, and construction methods to
spatially construct contemporary institutions and functions. […] this is in no way a "vemacular architecture"
nor an architectural style constructed by borrowing elements from a historic architectural vocabulary to
provide visual signs. What this phenomenon represents is the conscious or unconscious construction of a
historic continuity in societies where the trajectory of history has been ruptured by colonialism, or European
cultural hegemony.” Nihal Perera, 1995