ABSTRACT
In discussing hybridity, adaptation, and stylistic disorganizations, the chapter discusses the ways in which Asaf orientated toward existing architecture to forge new forms of familiarity, as a necessary condition for political as well as cultural sustainability. Asaf’s additions to the Machhi Bhavan complex are described for their deviation from puritanical principles of design and for their unconventional aesthetic—combining the austerity of religion with celebratory color and light. It describes the compositional aspects, materials, motifs, and ornamentation to underscore the inseparability of ornament and structure in the nawabi architecture of Lucknow. In discussing disorientations and non-alignments, it challenges the normative and canonical descriptors of architecture that relied on identifiable styles and compositional principles—such as order, symmetry, balance, etc. Drawing upon Sara Ahmed, nawabi architecture is redescribed using orientation, position, proximity, direction, alignment, and non-alignment as terms of social and political, gendered and sexual, and physical motivation. Ad hoc improvisational building practices that acknowledged existing built forms in their locations, orientations, distances, and directionalities are elaborated. It discusses the Qaiserbagh, for its multilayered spatial layout of the harem spaces that disadvantaged the colonial gaze and also actively disoriented the British visitor, recentering the agency and power of the nawabi state through its socio-sexual overlaps.
