Tag: Paulo Varela Gomes

Popular Essays

Era Uma Vez, Or What Could Have Been

By DALE LUIS MENEZES

 

Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves.

Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

The late Paulo Varela Gomes, former delegate of the Fundação Oriente in Goa and an architectural historian, always emphasized Goa’s difference, and thus uniqueness. In his crucial intervention in the debates on Goan church architecture, Whitewash, Red Stone (2011), he emphasizes that rather than interpreting church architecture in Goa as Portuguese-European or Indian, Goan architecture is simply Goan. A few years before his untimely demise from cancer, Gomes turned to write fiction and memoirs. In one of these works, a novel titled Era uma vez em Goa (2015, Once Upon a Time in Goa), Gomes returns to his obsession of Goa as different, as unique. (more…)

Popular Essays

The Goan Temple: A Unique Architecture on Its Way Out

By AMITA KANEKAR

 

The architecture of Goa is a heterogeneous one, the result of its long and cosmopolitan history as an Indian Ocean port, a part of the Islamicate Deccan, and then of the Portuguese empire. And one of its most distinctive and heterogeneous developments is in the realm of temple architecture. The Brahmanical temples that were built in Goa from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries were creatively inspired by Renaissance Europe (via the churches of Goa), the Bijapur Sultanate, the Mughals (via the Marathas), and the Ikkeri Nayakas, along with the local architecture. These varied vocabularies came together to produce a recognisable architectural ensemble by the end of the 19th century which spread across the region of Goa and beyond.  This is why the Goan temple should be seen as an architectural type in its own right.

 

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Popular Essays

Local Identity, Global Architecture

By VISHVESH KANDOLKAR

 

A thorny question faces a number of parishes in Goa where the congregation has outgrown the existing churches. Some are more than willing to tear down, or drastically modify, their old churches to build bigger ones. Others are horrified at such proposals and argue that these churches, like the one in Nuvem, are part of the unique architectural heritage of Goa.

 

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Popular Essays

The Ruins that are Not

By VISHVESH KANDOLKAR

 

A large crowd had gathered for the Western classical music concert at the remains of St. Augustine’s in Old Goa on 7th January, 2016. Was the gathering purely one whose purpose it was to witness a musical performance, or was the fact that it occurred at a historical location itself symbolic of something more? Or is it that the congregation in great numbers was a performance in itself, a gathering to assert Goan identity, which the place and the music is emblematic of.

 

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Popular Essays

Local Identity, Global Architecture

By VISHVESH KANDOLKAR

 

A thorny question faces a number of parishes in Goa where the congregation has outgrown the existing churches. Some are more than willing to tear down, or drastically modify, their old churches to build bigger ones. Others are horrified at such proposals and argue that these churches, like the one in Nuvem, are part of the unique architectural heritage of Goa.

 

(more…)