IT’S an addiction. And he just can’t get rid of it. ‘‘Always, always buzzin’ in my head — how to create architecture with limited resources,’’ New Zealand-based architect Gerald Melling puffs spirals of smoke, his passion to make architecture work at the base level where it expresses the culture and multitude of people. ‘‘I hate it when it’s treated as a bonus or some status symbol,’’ spells Melling, here to catch up with old student-friend Arun Jyoti of CCA and also en route home from Sri Lanka where he has been designing low-cost dwellings for the Tsunami victims.

‘‘About 50 houses, an hour’s drive from Colombo,’’ he tells us, making himself more useful. So, first time this side, we ask the usual. ‘‘Nope, actually I’ve been to Leh, Ladakh and fell in love with the vernacular buildings there, the mud bricks, and how it merges with the landscape. It’s like walking on the moon there. And Chandigarh, well it’s already world famous. Every architect knows about this city,’’ he surprises, and at the same time, intrigues us with his insight. ‘‘Although it’s a famous city, Chandigarh’s also despised by some architects. It has no Indianism to it. They feel there is too much of European imposition on its design.’’

A house is a machine for living in, Corbusier had said and Melling’s pretty kicked with how Chandigarhians have weaved in imperfections to Corbusier’s perfect plan. ‘‘Look at the hawkers in the backlanes, the handcrafted buildings...the tyranny of Corbusier has been subverted by the local culture. India is growing over the European idea like moss,’’ he grins, totally for an architecture that builds with nature rather than against it.

‘‘Buildings sub-consciously affect people, and it’s quite sad that we are in an age of anti-architecture with no environmental determinism. It’s just suiting an international, western concept rather than a human one,’’ feels the writer Gerald who’s written books on architecture and penned poetry too. ‘‘As a boy, I used to go through these magazines back in Liverpool, UK, with houses that were palatial and amazing, and I used to wonder why can’t small houses be as good as big ones? Architecture has its place at the bottom too.’’ To new foundations.

jaskirankaur@expressindia.com