Modern Indian Architecture Is Evolving With A Wide Variety of Sources' - Buildings - Architectural Review

1/1/2018 ‘Modern Indian architecture is evolving with a wide variety of sources’ | Buildings | Architectural Review
‘Modern Indian architecture is evolving with a wide

variety of sources’
28 April, 2016
Dan Cruickshank discusses the work of some architects whose work is
representative of the current search for an Indian architecture and assesses the
different ways in which they utilize indigenous building and design traditions
Originally published in the AR in 1987
‘India lives in the past and the future - we live 2500 years of history together’ explains
Delhi -based Cambridge and AA- educated Romi Khosla, as he describes the peculiar
circumstances of the architect working in India. It is this continuity evident in all levels
and aspects of Indian life from the living traditions of Sari design to the continuing rituals
of Hindu worship-that suggests a mature and sophisticated approach to the use of
history in the search for an architecture that is in tune with Indian traditions but
responsive to the multiple demands of modern Indian society.
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Yet it would be simplistic to imagine that a relaxed relationship between past and present
would lead automatically to an architecture that is a convincing fusion between tradition
and the demands of a society that is deeply conservative while at the same time
committed to industrial, materialistic progress.
As A. G. Krishna Menon-another Westerntrained Delhi-based architect-puts it: ‘Because
of our education-most Indian architects feel like strangers in their own land, they have
lost touch with the values of traditional -especially rural-society.’
‘A contemporary architecture can only emerge from the countryside’
But this is only part of the problem facing an architect seeking to give his work a national
identity. The other major issue is to do with the nature of the country with its enormous
regional, climatic, geographical, cultural and religious differences; there are, in
consequence, fundamental differences in building materials used, as well as methods of
construction and design approaches. Added to this there is now also a tremendous
range in types of building needed, from extremely economically built rural housing to the
most sophisticated of modern industrial plant. Clearly it is not feasible to attempt to
discover, or invent, an architecture that is applicable to India as a whole. It is not, as
architect and theorist K. T. Ravindran points out, even desirable, ‘the problem with
seeking a national or regional identity is that such efforts are basically reactionary in
spirit. Historically, they have been an important cultural manifestation of fascism’.
But, notwithstanding this structure against ‘regional identity’ it is obvious that any search
must end ultimately in a form of regionally-based design that is capable of expressing
local traditions of building and construction in a rational and logical manner (not
pastiche) while also being able to accommodate the demand for a wide spectrum of
building types. And in India, a country in which 82 per cent of the 750 million population
is rural with a strong self-build tradition, regionalism must inevitably mean reference to
rural traditions. M. N. Ashish Ganju goes so far as to insist that ‘a contemporary
architecture can only emerge from the countryside’ and cites, as a model, the way in
which the Arts and Crafts movement revolutionized English architectural thinking in the
late nineteenth century. Laurie Baker explains the relevance of rural practice in more
detail. ’In Kerala nice curled-up roofs, or Jaali [pierced windows/screens] patterns were a
slow evolution, an empirical development to meet [local] needs with limited means to
also suit the climate and the cultural patterns, to cope with wild beasts or wild
neighbours. What we see in indigenous architecture is this response … I learn my
architecture by watching what ordinary people do; in any case it’s always the cheapest
and simplest.
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This approach, which Baker has followed for nearly 40 years, is now being investigated,
by both the immediate post-Chandigarh generation of Indian architects (Charles Correa,
Raj Rewal, B. V. Doshi) and by the succeeding generation.
But, to many architects, indigenous architecture seems to offer merely a style of design
and construction that can be used as an alternative to Western Moderism when the
conditions and brief permit. For example, in 1958 Charles Correa pioneered sensitive
tradition-based design with his museum in the Mahatma Gandhi Ashram, Sabarmati,
Ahmedabad, an approach which he has continued with his architecturally and
sociallysensitive housing at Belapur, New Bombay. But, in the early 1970s, Correa felt
able to design the LIC office tower in New Delhi which reflects the fashions that then
dominated Western commercial design. Clearly Correa felt that it was more appropriate
to refer to Western prototypes when designing a building of a type for which there is no
relevant precedent in Indian traditional architecture. But, although this approach avoids
the absurdity of, for example, attempting to design a large office complex as a palace or
a fort, it does not avoid the problem of context. The real problem with the LIC tower is
not its design but its site which forms part of the huge Connaught Place circus. This
early twentieth-century Classical composition has a strong architectural character and
urban quality which are both ignored and eroded by the Correa tower.
The criteria
This concern for site is, naturally enough, one of the cornerstones on which this Indian
search for an architectural identity is being built. The other concerns - mirroring those in
all societies where architects are now looking for a culturally and environmentally
appropriate architecture - are a determination to utilise, rather than fight against, the
limitations of available building materials and building skills; to realise the potential of
time-tested local details and forms of construction rather than to impose techniques from
elsewhere; to respond to and reflect local traditions of decorative design, motifs and
composition without descending to pastiche; to echo the spiritual and cultural values of
the locality and, last and perhaps most important, to regard the demands of the client
and the user (if they are different) as of paramount importance. This last point was put in
memorable form by Antonin Raymond whose Golconde residential building of 1936-48
has been called ‘the finest example of modern functional architecture built in India in the
pre independence period’. 3 As Raymond said: ’We should base our designs directly on
the needs and requirements of the clients and deal directly with conditions growing out
of the work itself and the location. There should be no empty imagination or abstract
speculation involved; our work should be structurally clean and pure (and the solution)
the simplest, most direct and most economical.
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Thus we see a key principle of the Modern Movement coinciding with the principles of
those currently engaged in the search for an architecture relevant to contemporary India.
AsK. T. Ravindran puts it: ‘an architect must avoid dogma and the temptation to impress
the stamp of his own personality. He must look to the client for inspiration.’
Putting the argument in more practical terms, Laurie Baker says ’I think it’s foolish to
impose your own ideas when you’re dealing with people who know what their problems
are, and you can’t know these till you’ve actually lived in the place.
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Although most of the architects currently involved in this search would concede that
these criteria provide the basis of an approach, few would be so foolish as to claim that
the mere application of these criteria as a formula would automatically produce
architecture of quality. The observer of these rules may produce buildings that are
inoffensive but an artist’s creative spirit is necessary to transform the principles into a
means of achieving memorable architecture. This is not to say that it is necessary to be
self consciously inventive, wilful or witty-quite the contrary. What is needed is sensitivity
and an ability to create within the limitations imposed by the criteria. The process is
described well by the artist/architect Satish Gujral who designed the Belgian Embassy,
New Delhi, completed in 1983, ‘I did not want to create anything Indian or Western; I just
sat down to design-as I paint. An architect must work as an artist, with no false pride. He
must work with the mason and make his contribution-his poetic vision. Architecture must
become an art form again.’ A purple passage perhaps, and elsewhere in this issue (p36)
the Belgian Embassy is called ‘close to cultural caricature’ but it has architectural
qualities-achieved through the intuitively correct use of traditional forms to meet the
client’s demands-that have been matched by few contemporary Indian buildings.
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Uttam Jain
A visit to a building by Uttam Kain makes a fine complement to a visit to a Gujral
building: both reveal the way in which the criteria can be applied to create and
architecture that is rooted in tradition yet demonstrably contemporary.
Uttam Jain, based in Bombay, is well known for his Rajasthan buildings in which
determined use is made of local buildings materials and skills. The Indira Gandhi
Institute of Development Research, just now completing at Goregao, Bombay, not only
continues this practice but also reflects Jain’s ability to bring into play the full gamut of
criteria to achieve a well-tempered regional architecture. This dexterity is particularly
impressive in this job since Jain also resolved to create a building that is not only locally
apposite, with regard to materials and design, but also of ‘national significance’ with an
‘image that reflects’ all India. This, felt Jain, was incumbent upon him because of the
status and national importance of the institute.
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This determination to create a building of national significance while also relying on, and
responding to, local building practices and traditions, permitted Jain a great freedom in
choice of imagery. Thus, arriving at the main entrance is ‘like arriving at a city gate in a
city wall or like arriving at the temple door’. These likenesses are, admits Jain, perhaps
‘not obvious but are relevant to India’. Pursuing the temple metaphor, entering the
building one goes from light to darkness, a primary sensation felt on entering a cave like
Hindu temple or, as Jain says,.. from known to unknown’. The nearby ancient cave
temples at Jageshwari and Elephanta are cited by Jain as inspirations. The route
through the building is also, in a way, a temple-like experience: one’s progress, towards
the inner sanctum of director’s office orientated toward ‘the higher part’ of the site and
towards the source of light at the open ends of the barrel-vaulted and colonnaded
corridors invokes, says Jain, the vaulted roof at the cave temples. This serpentine route
– the ‘snakewalk’ as Jain terms it – is utilised by Jain to ‘filter out’ users of the building as
they progress from the entrance court. As Jain puts it ‘the plan is like a hand – the palm
is the common area, the court, with the fingers branching to different uses’. This analogy
is, of course, inspired by the mandala that ancient Tantric symbol used for ordering both
sacred and profane space to create a series of, usually circular, concentric courts with
only initiates, or those in power, having access to the inner space or sanctum - in this
case the director’s office.
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The mandala is primarily a Hindu and Buddhist image but Jain does not hesitate to
invoke forms from other religions. There is, in the Institute, a reference to Mughal toplit
spaces and to geometric garden (combined with terracing as in Hindu wells like
Modhera) but, as with the Mandala-these references are not too literal or laboured.
‘Indian-ness comes not from dress but from feeling and sense of thinking’ says Jain.
Respect for the hot climate and the nature of the site (on the very edge of the municipal
area of Bombay and bordered by a permanent and sizeable shanty town) are major
forces in the evolution of the design. Hence the shady spacious verandahs attached to
all the buildings which are linked by the meandering barrel-vaulted corridors. The
buildings themselves are, as Jain puts it ‘porous’ to allow generous horizontal and
vertical cross ventilation. The squatter colony is acknowledged by a certain blankness in
the elevations that look directly towards its sprawling mass. But the most intriguing and
unusual piece of passive solar control is Jain’s two-skinned facades. This device-‘like’,
as Jain says using another physical analogy, ‘eyelids’- allows the plan and the facade to
be organized independently so that the placing of windows in rooms follows one logic
while, externally, the wall is pierced by windows in places ‘where they look right’. This
creation of what is effectively a decorative screen over a random array of functionally
disposed openings does not do much for the view from some of the rooms but, says
Jain, ‘works superbly climatically’, and is an improvement on the traditional Chhaja or
Jaali (overhanging cornice) as it not only shades the window openings but also channels
breezes into the rooms.
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Local building materials are not used by Jain just for reasons of visual continuity with
existing structures but also because transportation is very expensive in India. And even
if materials were brought in they would not be greatly different in quality to those found
or made locally. The large scale use of steel is generally just not an option because of its
prohibitive price, and even wood is increasingly scarce and so too becoming expensive.
The usual materials, as at this building, are concrete, local stone and brick (often made
on site). This limited choice can lead to feats of remarkable ingenuity on the part of
Indian designers, architects and engineers. As the renowned engineer Mahendra Raj
puts it, ‘In India most elements are made on site-anything is possible structurally but is
often achieved by extraordinary means.’
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At Jain’s Institute, two types of local stone (one quarried as part of the site excavations)
have been used for both structural and facing work. The facing stone (not that quarried
on site) has been applied to a composite structure of reinforced concrete frame with
brick panel infill.
The labour force, as is common in India, is made up primarily of villagers who have
either been forced by crop failure to leave the land or who have got work on the building
site during a nonproductive agricultural season. The consequence of employing this
labour force is that the entire family lives on site with children being roped in and women
labouring at least as hard as the men.
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Construction in India is very labour intensive and it is these people who provide the
labour with even basic machinery rarely used. Here, it seems, a simple financial
equation comes into play: the moment wages rise to a level that makes it cheaper to use
a machine than a gang of labourers, then a machine will be bought. If this happens not
only will many people be relieved of back-breaking labour, they will also be relieved of a
job. The resolution, of this riddle-mechanisation leads to the release of human beings
from excessive physical toil leads to unemployment-is one of the many problems of
nineteenth-century Europe that India will have to face and solve for itself as it moves
remorselessly towards greater industrialisation.
The more skilled workers on the site, such as plasterers, are usually full-time members
of the building industry although bricklayers and masons are usually practised if not
highly-skilled seasonal workers. Finishing trades-electricians, joiners-move in a separate
world and are invariably full time.
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This system, which is used to build even the towers of Bombay and Delhi (and, until
recently, generally without even cranes with the occasional heavy precast concrete
members being passed up by a vertical human chain) has advantages as well as the
obvious disadvantages of slowness construction takes three times longer than in the
West, says Romi Khosla. As Raj Rewal says ’We can do things here that you cannot do
on the West because of resources of human labour which is cheap and available
therefore variety and complexity of plan and so on is not more expensive because
each object has to be made individually so they might as well be different as the same.’
Concomitant with this is the fact that, since the economic principles of mass production
do not apply, there is no money saved by specifying a repetitive detail. This is not
necessarily a problem. But a real difficulty in this hand-crafted system is that work is
often more hand than craft. As Romi Khosla says ‘All things can, and are, made by hand
but few carefully.’ For numerous reasons the work force feel alienated from the process.
Either they do not understand the architect’s aim, are not informed, or feel no sympathy
toward the building they are helping to create because it is just too far removed from the
reality of their own physical environment. Whatever the cause, this curious workforce
ensures the persistence of flaws in the Indian building industry: lack of finish, poor
resolution of detail and inaccuracy of construction. This latter can be accommodated, or
at least mitigated, by a thoughtful designer. Jain talks about his ‘pneumatic connections’
at the Gandhi institute between galleries and main building ‘which are able to
accommodate unavoidable inaccuracies of construction given skills of workforce’. To
compensate for fluctuations in horizontal and vertical distances between galleries and
floor levels Jain designed the junction as a flight of steps, a device inspired perhaps by
the carefully designed and placed steps that connect the different levels at Fatehpur
Sikri-‘some connections are made by four steps, others by six’. Another consequence of
the workforce’s lack of conventional construction skills is the-to Western eyesdistressing
amount of unbuilding on site. Freshly plastered brick walls are hacked by the electricians
and plumbers installing conduits and pipes. ‘There is’ says Jain ‘lots of overlap in our
thinking and so in our working but making good is cheap, certainly cheaper than trying to
organise because drawings are not used for detailed work.’ Odd practice, but no
irreparable damage need be done to the building. But the lack of finish and poor
detailing can, and does, cause grave loss of quality. This is caused not just by unskilled
and unmotivated workers or by the crippling economics of construction or poor building
materials: these all play their part but there are other problemsincluding corruption at all
levels (though, no doubt, not all concerned are corrupt) and the determination to
introduce the machine aesthetic into Indian architecture in the absence of machines.
What is certain is that immaculate detailing has been achieved by Indian craftsmen this
century-be it the stonework detailing in Lutyens’ New Delhi buildings (see p30), the
brickwork of Arthur Shoosmith’s Delhi churches (see p31), or Louis Kahn’s Indian
Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (see p35), or the concrete detailing of J. A. Stein’s
India International Centre, New Delhi (see p34). Equally certain is that this is a problem
that the Indian architectural profession must solve as quickly as possible.
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Raj Rewal
These points and approaches can be expanded by reference to the work of a number of
other contemporary Indian architects.
A group of buldings by Raj Rewal in Delhi reveals an ingenious fusion of Western and
Eastern traditions; but it also reveals some of the pifalls in attempting to apply vernacular
forms – that have evolved organically and in response to particular social and climatic
conditions – to a modern brief and building programme.
The Asian Games village in South Delhi (see p32) was built between 1981-82 to the
designs of Rewal with the detailed design of one portion being undertaken by Sachdev &
Eggleston. Initially the village housed athletes attending the 9th Asian games. The layout
of the ‘village’ is complex though geometrically repetitive. The units of housing (200
houses, 500 apartments) are arranged to form a pattern of courts inspired by the
traditional courtyard housing and village forms of Rajasthan. There is also a sprinkling of
traditional detail-such as pierced parapets which allow draughts to waft into shaded
exterior spaces.
This courtyard pattern, which traditionally reflected complex patterns of habitation, is
here used merely as a device to make an interesting urban grain, to allow for the
integration of different housing types and to facilitate a certain amount of cross
ventilation and to create shade for interior and exterior spaces.
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The scheme was generally held as a triumph when completed-and indeed it was, in so
far as Rewal had to battle against the unimaginative and entrenched attitudes of the
authorities which saw, in the deliberate complexity and casbah-like quality of the
designs, only confusion reminiscent of the squalid and overcrowded old city centre. This
official dullness is particularly hard to understand since the idea of lower-income housing
being arranged around courts and of complex balconied form had been pioneered as
early as 1973 by the Design Group with their excellent Yumana apartments which stand
near the Asian village in South Delhi. Achieving this complexity of form also demanded a
good deal of dedication from the architects for the amount of time spent on drawing
details and supervising construction was far greater than that needed for the usual
barracklike form of housing that has too often been run up by the Public Works
Department. Though far superior in concept and construction to the usual PWD -
designed housing schemes the Asian Games ‘village’ is, of course, not a village at all.
There is no significant mix of uses and the complexity of form is - despite the sensible
hierarchy of spaces ranging from courts serving clusters of a dozen dwellings to the
single main square ultimately without any real meaning. The complexity is, after all, only
ingenious urban pattern-making and reflects neither the structure of occupancy or
complex social organisations that led to the evolution of the traditional courtyard house.
‘As the engineer Mahendra Raj says, everything can be achieved by the
use of ‘extraordinary means’ - even the similitude of concrete panels’
The method of construction is also revealing. The houses are of reinforced-concrete

frame with brick infill and then finished with aggregate render. The render is divided into
panels with horizontal strips ‘expressing’ the floor slabs and vertical panels looking, to
the architect’s delight, like precast concrete panels. As the engineer Mahendra Raj says,
everything can be achieved by the use of ‘extraordinary means’ - even the similitude of
concrete panels. The division of the render in panels also has the more useful, if
mundane, function, of providing expansion joints and dividing the facade into areas that
can be easily rendered in one go so avoiding cracks and colour change.
Much of the thinking is continued in Rewal’s current chef d’oeuvre-the National Institute
of Immunology (Nil) which forms part of the Delhi University campus (see p39). Here
complexity is achieved by the use of diagonal axes that cut with geometrical precision
through, and link, the different elements of the Institute. Courts are again used-but larger
and, in the case of the court-cumamphitheatre in the research scholars’ hostel, with
really striking effect. Also the craggy site-of extraordinary grandeur considering its
location in the suburbs of south Delhi-has clearly inspired the architect and allowed him
to deploy his axes with maximum effect. Thus the image from a distance is, in form and
profile-though not in detail-of a Rajasthan citadel. Within the Institute, Rewal displays a
sensitivity tb the potential of vistas and constrasts types, levels and forms of external
spaces in a manner reminiscent of Fatehpur Sikri and Jaipur. This is a romantic building-
a romance intensified by the rusty glow of the wall surfaces. The construction method at
the Institute is similar to the Asian Games ‘village’ except that chips of local red stone
have been mixed in with the render used in the horizontal bands marking floor slabs
while stone from the site, was also used for walling. It is an object building, sitting on an
acropolis that, its critics may say, holds no lessons for those concerned with the pressing
problem of how to design in the Indian city. But perhaps the building’s aloof isolation only
reflects the relation an academic institution has with Indian urban society generally. Two
other buildings by Rewal must be mentioned for the light they throw on two fundamental
issues: the potential offered by the use of local buildings material and the problems of
reconciling an overtly contemporary design with a traditional setting.
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The National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (see p42) stands on a site that,
though adjacent to the Nil, enjoys none of its dramatic distinction. It is flat, on a main
road, and hemmed in by other Institutes and commercial buildings. The client required
library, offices, auditorium, classrooms and residential quarters, and the budget was
strictly controlled. Only the first phase is completed (in 1980) and in this uses (excluding
residential) are arranged around a central court. The form of this space is derived from a
rather more Western approach to the use of history. The court has three galleries-two
octagonal over a square which, says Rewal, are ‘geometrical shapes that were very
important to Indian architecture in the past’.
More interesting is the cladding of the building. Local stone, suitable for facing, costs a
mere two rupees (10p) a square foot, but metal suitable for cramps was too expensive.
The solution devised by Rewal was to fix the stone sheets by the use of concrete ‘coach
bolts’. These have broad flat heads that restrain the stone sheets and long shafts that
are bedded in concrete in the brick wall to which the stone sheets act as facing. These
‘studs’ are-coincidentally-reminiscent of Otto Wagner’s Postsparkasse, Vienna, but,
more to the point, are most effective in the strong Indian sunlight by casting ever-
moving shadows along the facade.
‘The budget for the building was higher than usual in India so that more
expensive materials have been used to achieve a higher standard of
finish’
The French school and cultural centre (completed 1986), attached to the French
Embassy building on Aurangzeb Road, New Delhi, is a very different building (see p44).
Here Rewal was wrestling with the . problem of designing a building that fits both with
the 1920s’ Classical bungalow that it adjoins, with the geometric and brick aesthetic of
an adjacent residential building that Rewal himself designed in 1968 and which is not
subservient to either. The solution that Rewal finally decided upon was to ‘design the
building around the trees on the site’. This deference to the existing trees, rather than to
the surrounding buildings, presumably inspired the thin double-height columns that
embellish and articulate the facade. These are striking but perhaps create more
problems than they solve, for the architect seems, at times, defeated by the puzzle of
how to relate visually the columns to the floors which project over them. The budget for
the building was higher than usual in India so that more expensive materials have been
used to achieve a higher standard of finish. For example, the open galleries have stone
skirtings and stone copings to gallery walls.
Charles Correa
Two recent works by Charles Correa deal with some of the ideas present in Rewal’s
work and develop them to extraordinary length. Rewal’s Asian village and the Nil use
traditional urban forms (courtyards) or spaces shaped in accordance with ancient
geometric principles (the court at the Finance building). Correa, at his Vidhan Bhavan
(State Assembly) for the government of Madhya Pradesh at Bhopal, has used the
rnandala in the most literal of ways. The building, which was designed in 1980 and is still
under construction, is a perfect circle in plan and, within this circle it is divided into nine
compartments. The five main compartments, linking to form, roughly, a cross within the
circle, consist of halls around central courtyard: all provide generous shade, have
running water, and are intended to possess tranquillity. In fact, each ‘box’ also fulfils the
humdrum role as quarters for civil servants. Specialised functionsupper and lower
houses, assembly hall and library, occupy the four ‘quadrants’ of the circle that are left
by the cruciform plan of the main courts. These ‘specialised’ buildings include a space
covered by a shallow dome inspired by second-century BC Buddhist stupa at Sanchi
which stands only 50 km from Bhopal. Also inspired by Sanchi-where circumambulatory
paths surround the stupa allowing for forms of worship-is a system of paths, ramps and
bridges winding around the main halls. These will allow the public to experience the
building-worship the bureaucrats?-while being excluded from the main spaces for
security reasons. Explaining this building, Correa talks of the generating idea of a central
formal tranquil courtyard, an ordered space behind whose walls are provided those
facilities that are needed, where they are needed, in the form they are needed. This
central space following the analogy of the mandala, is the Shunya (the absolute void)
and bindu (the source of all energy}, the nothing is everything. ‘A truly mind-blowing
concept’, says Correa, ‘similar to the black holes of contemporary physics’ The central
court in a mandala-inspired plan is a recurring feature in Indian architecture-both Hindu
and Muslim, for example Bir Singh Deo’s Palace, Datia, of c1540.
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At the Vidhan Bhavan, the formal ‘disorder’ that surrounds the central space is ultimately
given external order by the all encircling external round wall. A compelling idea that, in
an intelligent way, attempts to discover the essential qualities that characterize traditional
Indian spaces and plans. But the imagery used to realise the idea is hard to reconcile
with the vitality of the idea. The catalogue accompanying the Correa organised
exhibition, ‘Vistara: the Architecture of India’, which opened in Bombay in late 1996
carried an unsigned article that criticised Lutyens’ use of Indian imagery at New Delhi.
Having observed that Lutyens: ‘easy facility (and) extraordinary visual talent unanchored
in any specific credo … rendered him incapable of conceptualising the kind of
transformation’ represented by the Diwan-i-khas at Fatehpur Sikri and Jaipur, the author
goes on to criticise the Viceroy’s house in particular. ‘Lutyens surmounted [it] with a
dome reminiscent of Sanchi-from where he also took the design of the stone wall
marking the entrance to the capital complex. But of the great Buddhist mythical values
and images the sacred mountain, the axis mundi - he took nothing. The result: an
architectural pastiche involving only the superficial transfer of some indigenous idioms.’
If this can be said of Lutyens’ masterpiece then it can also be said of Correa’s work at
Bhopal.
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A similar approach to historic precedent is displayed by Correa’s Jawahar Kala Kendra

(cultural centre) project for the State Government of Rajasthan at Jaipur. Maharaja Jai
Singh, who founded Jaipur in 1727, was, among many things, an astronomer and
mathematician (he built the five Jantar Man tars or observatories, with giant instruments
for observing planetary movement) and so applied astronomical principles to the layout
of his city. The basic plan is a Vedic ninesquare mandala corresponding to the
Navagraha, or nine planets. The void central square-the Shunyawas dedicated to the
sun and contained the palace garden and was linked to the square above it which
contained the palace and its related buildings. The other modification to the mandala
was brought about by the nature of the site: a hill caused one of the corner squares to be
shift d diagonally across the plan. This ‘model of the cosmos’ has been used direct by
Correa for his cultural centre, ‘Each square relates to a planet and each square contains
functions relating to that planet’. For example, the library is located in the square of the
planet Mercury which traditionally represents knowledge. The wall defining each square
is decorated with an opening in the form of its planetary symbol. ‘Each box is a complete
world’ explains Correa, who uses this scheme as an example of his theory that we have
to ‘Reinvent myth each time. This is what transformation is about producing something
that is contemporary but with roots going back. We must use past traditions as directly,
unselfconsciously, as the French make wine or the Indians wear saris-they do not feel
compelled to reinvent each time.’ ‘It is’ says Correa ‘necessary to have a resonance with
the past-as Corb, Aalto and Frank Lloyd Wright had with theirs. They were artists, with
no direct one-to-one relationship with the past. The images worked like depth charges -
they sank to the bottom of the consciousness, exploded, and re emerged in a different
form. This approach - ’absorb, internalise, transform’ - is perhaps better represented by
Correa’s housing scheme at Belapur, New Bombay (AR October 1985). Here Correa has
applied a series of sound principles. The houses, in form, relate to the Gujarati visual
tradition; they have pitched roofs, yards and raised terraces. In this they are
spectacularly different from the monotonous flat-roofed boxes that characterise New
Bombay. The houses are arranged in clusters that aim at creating a sense of place and
community: seven houses cluster around a small court (about 8 m square) with three of
these clusters combining to form a bigger 21-house unit. Three of these larger clusters
interlock to form the next size of community space. This complexity of plan is not just
unlike the regimented housing blocks of the rest of New Bombay but is also unlike
Rewal’s contemporary Asian village in Delhi, for at Balapur all the accommodation is
formed by 16 types of structural independent one- and two-storey houses on individual
sites-there are no flats. This structural independence means that the occupier of each
house is able to increase the covered floor area of his house as he desires, so that the
court can be built over, terrace roofed and so on, but the planning authorityCIDCO -
would not allow such major additions that might threaten the character of the village. The
houses are constructed of loadbearing brick walls rendered but additions have, in many
cases, been constructed with poured concrete. In an attempt to give the various courts
more of an individual character a palette of ‘traditional’ earth colours has been
introduced into the estate. The idea is to give each court its own ‘house style colouring’
for various details such as doors, window frames and so on. Tradition has also been
invoked in another way: Correa has used the mandala module - approximately 1 metre
square module - for proportioning both house plans and details.
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Balkrishna V.Doshi
Of the same generation and international eminence as Rewal and Correa is B. V. Doshi
whose work has developed from post - Corbusier Béton Brut of the 1960s to include the
most sensitive and thoughtful of contemporary Indian architecture. But characteristically
Doshi claims Cor busier’s influence is behind even Sangath-a building which Doshi
designed in Ahmedabad in 1979 as his studio and which encapsulates the essence of
much traditional thinking about passive climatic control and the introduction of soft
natural light: concerns which, at Sangath, create the building’s form (see p47). As Doshi
put it ‘Sangath is truly representative of Le Corbusier … the quality of light, for instance,
would not have been possible without him’.
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This Corbusian concern with the more abstract qualities of architecture has been
combined with the consideration of more practical problems such as the possibility
offered by local materials and workforce, and the use and development of low
technology. The Gandhi Labour Institute, Ahmedabad, completed in 1984, continues
ideas found at Sangath. Barrel vaults are used over the corridor and office
accommodation and are pierced, as well as provided with glazed and ventilated end
elevations, to allow cross ventilation and a particular quality of soft lighting. The roofs of
the vaults are, as at Sangath, covered with gleaming white mosaic to reflect sunlight and
help keep the interiors cool.
In recent years Doshi has applied his approach-an approach fuelled by the fusion of
Western and Eastern influences-to the solution of urban poverty. The most impressive
result to date is the ‘demonstration project’ for Aranyanagar, Indore, which deals with the
creation of a new township comprising 7000 housing units on a 220-acre site for a
population of 40 000.
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Sixty-five per cent of the flats are allocated to ‘the economically weaker section of
society’ (EWS) with other flats to be developed and sold to higher-income groups. The
profits from these must be used to cross-subsidise the EWS flats which can only be
developed with a large amount of self-build. Doshi’s approach to this self-build is to
supply basic facilities-wcs and water-and to provide simple guidelines for the self-
builders, showing how the standard plot can be developed in stages as money becomes
available. The master plan of the town is also organised to reflect and accommodate the
social, cultural, economic and religious demands of the population.
A development of, and in many ways in contrast to, the work of Rewal, Correa and Doshi
is the work and writing of the younger generation - the, generation which the architect
and critic Malay Chatterjee observes has ‘a sharply-defined ideological perspective on
tradition’ and looks ‘to the vernacular architecture created by the common men and
women of India over the ages as a source of socially and economically relevant design
ideas’: a position which has ‘amounted to a direct critique of the International Style and
its sponsors and practitioners’.
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K.T. Ravindran
Two houses by K. T. Ravindran show the architectural result of a concern for local
building traditions and materials, and a sensitivity to cultural and site conditions.
Ravindran is determined to resist the temptation to impose his personality on the design.
These principles are tough but then, to Ravindran, the task of excavating an architectural
future out of the confused and conflicting present is a serious business demanding both
sound analytical thinking and sensitive reflection. As Ravindran says: ‘India is just
learning to deal with the outside world; it has been an enclosed culture in which ideas
were not challenged by outside attitudes and individuals. vile have now discovered
complexity and have to cope with contradictionand that is where design comes in.’
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The house for K. T. Raghunath (the architect’s brother) in Kerala has a central courtyard-
a formal space surrounded by an organic plan-which, like the Shunya!Bindu in the
mandala, represents the ‘intangible’ void that is the source of energy, or the stillness and
tranquillity that is sought through meditation. The orientation of the house is governed by
local ritual based on astronomy and in accord with beliefs as to what is, and is not,
auspicious. The construction details and materials are local but ‘transformed’ by
adaption.
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In the house for Rathi and Balan at Cochin, completed in 1986, the accommodation is
also arranged around a central court and the construction is loadbearing brick with wood
used only for the detailing of the facade. In form it is ‘a traditional karnataka house,
porous, with lots of through draught’. The external detailing, enough to create shade
within, is also a permutation upon local tradition. But what is not traditional, nor local, is
the use of loadbearing brick. But this deviation just highlights one of the problems of
attempting to revive or sustain local tradition. Wood is now scarce and expensive, and,
though used traditionally for structures, an architect ‘cannot promote the use of wood
because of the massive deforestation now going on in India’.
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M. N. Ashish Ganju
A house in Delhi (see p48) designed by M. N. Ashish Ganju acts as a summary of the
issues and attitudes raised by Ravindran’s projects. The forms, construction
(loadbearing brick with reinforcedconcrete columns to achieve internal open spaces),
and the details, make it clear that this house lives in the rhodern world. Yet the thinking
behind it reflects the practical concerns that characterise traditional building. Like the
Ravindran designs, the house is organised around an open central court and is very
carefully orientated. But here the orientation is not in any way esoteric but is determined
solely by the site, by the demands of the climate and by the ‘all important aspect of
living’.
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Ashok Lall
Two projects by Ashok Lall reveal how this younger generation of architects applies its
principles to the design of large and complex projects. The commission to design the
Indian Institute of Health and Management research complex was won by Lall in
competition and work begins on site near Jaipur next month.
The starting point for the design was a response to climate and, as the architect
explains, ‘the traditional architecture of Rajasthan provides the basis.’ Putting compact
buildings around the courtyard is a time-proven method for effective protection against a
hostile summer. The materials and construction methods are also inspired by local
practice, ‘Jaipur possesses the finest tradition of the crafts of building. The use of locally
available skills and materials, while being inherently economical, also realises an
important objective; that of preserving and strengthening a fine building tradition’.
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The resultant loadbearing masonry construction is used in an inventive manner. The
offices are formed of three parallel rows of loadbearing walls, with cross walls freed from
a structural role and thus allowing a flexible system of partitioning.
Another competition-winning design is for the S. P. Jain Advanced Management
Research Centre on a site in the south campus of Delhi University. This design makes
excellent use of the rocky sloping site-the ‘study court’ rests on a plateau, is enclosed
and reflective; the ‘interaction court’ is on the slope and encloses a natural amphitheatre
created by the fall of the ground and the stepping down of the building form.
The shell vaulted roofs provide both ‘a traditional skyline’ and create softly-lit, and well
ventilated, upper spaces. Further cool shade is also provided by the use of Jaalis.
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The way forward

As Romi Khosla says ‘India has many parallel realities – as many realities as there are
Hindu aspects of God’ and that whatever happens, the ‘future of architecture will be
incredibly pluralistic’. From the rich mix of Western concern for new materials and
techniques and traditional building knowledge a vocabulary of design is being forged that
will be relevant to architects internationally for it will relate to problems that face
architects throughout the world. How to use history without lapsing into pastiche, how to
reconcile the demands of industralisation with the more subtle demands of context and
culture, and how to apply the lesson that can be learnt form traditional practices are
topics of international concern and topics that are being faced and solved in different
manners, in India today. As Malay Chatterjee says, since 1974 Indian architects have
moved from slavish dependence on the west and have felt the confidence to ‘be on their
own’ – the evidence so far suggest that they have every right to feel so.

Modern Indian Architecture Is Evolving With A Wide Variety of Sources' - Buildings - Architectural Review

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1/1/2018 ‘Modern Indian architecture is evolving with a wide variety of sources’ | Buildings | Architectural Review

‘Modern Indian architecture is evolving with a wide

‘A contemporary architecture can only emerge from the countryside’

The method of construction is also revealing. The houses are of reinforced-concrete

A similar approach to historic precedent is displayed by Correa’s Jawahar Kala Kendra

The way forward

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