Madurai, India: the Architectuir of a Citi Professor Donlyn Lyrfoi, *sie Supervisor

MADURAI, INDIA: THE ARCHITECTURE OF A CITY Julian S. Smith Submitted to the Department of Architecture on January 21, 1976 in partial fulfillment.of the requirements for the degree of Master of Architecture. The ancient South Indian city of Madurai is undergoing a gradual shift away from a relatively cohesive, medieval ordering towards a new and unpredictable flux of social and physical forces. This study is an attempt to explore the nature and impact of that earlier ordering. The point of reference is the city as a spatial environment, a built landscape. Within the complexities of the dense three-dimensional fabric exists a significant, imageable pattern most importantly, an expanding series of concentric streets about a central temple complex. Nowhere visible as a whole, the organization is experienced only gradually over time. What is striking is the use of a fairly simple underlying geometry to express important attitudes toward collective dwelling. In its generic sense, such a pattern is a 'vistu-mandala', a diagram (mandala) of ordered existence (vFstu). The relationship between the vistu-mardala and the building process is explored in the gilpa-sIstras, traditional Indian treatises on architecture and town planning. Their prescriptive rituals suggest that the sacred geometry of the mandala is essential to establishing a secure claim within an active landscape. The process is more a relaxation than an intensification of religious energy, a cautious secularization, in fact, of the sacred environment. In terms of town layout, the careful geometry of the imbedded mandala does not necessarily translate into a literal ground plan. As a diagram, it explains rather than represents. Madurai is not a city of straight lines and right angles; a basic pattern is here distorted and enlivened by local events and sources of energy. But topologically a significant interrelationship of parts remains intact. The fluid quality is best expressed in the festival processions, which dolineate the mandalA over the course of the year. As the important mode of celebrating corporate identity, they reconfirm the underlying form and its use as a principle reference for the community's sense of itself in space and time. Thesis Supervisor: Donlyn Lyndon Title: Professor of Architecture The city of Madurai is as a lotus flower that springs from the navel of Lord Vishnu. The streets of the city are the petals. The ktjl ' at the centre is the thalamus within the petals.