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Twentieth-century architecture in India is a product of diverse
regional practices and historical precedents, the country's colonial legacy, and the policies adopted by the independent state.
Individual aspirations as well as visions of the collective-nation,
class, and religious affiliation- have also left their imprints on
this matrix. The proliferation of stylistic labels in recent discus-
sions of 20th-century architecture in India-Indo-Deco,
Anglo-Indian modern, neovernacular, and Bania-Gothic-some
invoked more humorously than others, indicate not only the
multiple agencies at work but also
problem of description.
More specifically, this is a conceptual problem of situating In-
dian architecture in the matrix of
global culture and the
century-long effort to tease out what is "Indian."
Far from being a monolithic construct, the multifarious no-
tons of Indian identity shifted numerous times during the century. Certain assumptions, however, underlay all discussions of
architecture: that modernity had no originally roots in India and
was of European import, implying char Modern architecture in
India was derivative; that any notion of Indian architecture must
retain connection to the traditional architecture of the country,
in contrast to Euro-American modernism. which claimed a break
with the past; and finally that the task of Indian architects was
to develop a regional vocabulary. The first assumption was based
on
British colonial discourse that viewed Indian culture as
static and maintained that any change muse be due to foreign
influence. Although Indian nationalists argued that change could
be home wrought, most viewed groundedness in pre-British
tradition a necessary condition for modern Indian identity.
Those, such as Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister,
who deviated from this norm, ensured that Le Corbusier's modernist design of Chandigarh would be treated as watershed in
Indian architecture. The changing ideology of state patronage
in independent India from modern international outlook after
independence to a modern valorisation of Indian tradition since
the 1980s has invited narrative of Indian architecture that
constructs the latter as a sign of independence and originally
acts. A small coterie of Indian architects who are central to this
late-20th-century development have ensured through writings
and interviews that their work is understood within frames of
reference set by themselves, most important, that these acts of
tradition are read back as universal gestures (and not simply as
application of universal principles to a local vocabulary creating
variation on a modernist theme). In larger perspective, this
ability to determine the narrative of contemporary architecture
is a significant change from the beginning of the century, when
Indian architects operated with limited power under colonial
rule.
Pre-independence Architecture
At the beginning of the century, the major cities showcased the
work of the reigning Anglo-Indian firms, such as Martin and
Co. in Calcutta, William A. Chambers and Co., Hall and Batley
in Mumbai (then Bombay), and Jackson and Barker in Chennai
(then Madras). The establishment of architectural education
programs
(the J.J. School of Arts in Mumbai augmented its
five-year diploma in 1913) as well as the formation of the Indian
Institute of Architects in 1929 increasingly formalised professional practice. By the 1920s, more and more Indian architects
were securing commissions, and architectural firms, such as Master, Sathe, Bhuta, and Maherwanjee Bana and Co. in Mumbai,
enjoyed the patronage of wealthy Indian industrialists.
In terms of architectural design, some important changes
were taking place. Designers in urban areas were responding to
new technology, such as electrical lighting, elevators, and the
widespread use of indoor plumbing and to changing conceptions
of privacy and gender structure in both European and Indian
residences. The three-bay bungalow plans with a hall in the
center and two rows of rooms on either side and its counterpart,
the urban courtyard house, were being replaced by larger variety of house plans that used bay windows, oblong rooms, and
rounded verandas. Designers clearly intended to distinguish he-
tween the use of rooms and wed corridors for separating functions and people. The practice of aggregating spaces in terms of
use and incorporating an elaborate network of passages had al-
ready transformed the plans of institutions and office buildings.
Now a classical treatment of the exterior, the hallmark of respect-
ability in the early 19th century, and the official neo-Gothic and
Indo- Saracenic were supplemented with 2 number of stylistic
variations inspired by Art Deco and inquiry into Indian architectural vocabulary. The New India Assurance Building (1935) in
Mumbai, a reinforced-concrete structure by Master, Sache,
Bhuta, was a symbol of modern outlook in business adopted by
the Tara Company, leading, Indian industrial house. It was
meant to be distinguished from its contemporaries, such as the
Statesman House (1931) in Calcutta by Sudlow, Ballardic, and
Thomas and the late 1920s projects for the Indian Tobacco
Company on Chowringhee Road by Martin and Co. The latter
had conventional partis and attempted to fit into the colonial
neoclassical surroundings. In contrast, the Assurance Building
had an open plan, then synonymous with business efficiency,
and a forced-air cooling system that was complemented by adequate natural ventilation as a contingency plan.
The bold vertical elements of chis six-story facade competed
with
new building type, the movie theatre, which also used
this Art Deco treatment to emphasise a novel identity, Buildings
such as the Eros Cinema in Mumbai, designed by Sohrabji K.
Bhedwar in the 1930s, also cropped up in Calcutta, Chennai,
Patna, and other cities, Located at prominent street locations
with highly illuminated facades, theatres were designed to con-
vey the fantasy world of movies. The entrance foyer, bar and
lounge, and sweeping staircases were dressed in marble and
adorned with murals, etched glass, and chandeliers. These public
spaces were one of the few places the middle class could celebrate
an elegant life. For a section of the growing middle class, at least,
there was a domestic counterpart to the Modern approach to
design exemplified by the Assurance Building and the cinemas,
The architects of numerous residential projects between the
1930s and 1950s resorted to fluid lines in designing the building
envelope. This aesthetic agreed with the need to provide continvous shade over windows and with the building codes that stipulated uniform sethacks to render coherence to the street view
and yet allowed individual residences to project modern aspirations of the nuclear families for which they were designed. Apartments in the Back Bay in Mumbai and detached residences in
Ballygunge in Calcutta are classic examples of this era.
Although this kind of domesie architecture has become inseparable from Indian dele-class respectability, to contemporary
architects, such as Sris Chandra Chatterjee (1873-1966), their
looks did not denote Indianness. He advocated "an internal arrangement suitable for modern life" but
decorative program
directly derived from ancient Indian architecture. Pattern books,
such as A.V.T. Iver's The Indian Architecture (1926), recommended "a proper national style" by adapting colonial building
types to reflect classical Indian notions of beauty, This was contrary to 19th-century residential designs for the Indian middle
class in which a traditional parti was augmented by a "modern'
neoclassical facade. If in the 19th century the inner space of
domestic life wis considered the repository of Indian values,
that identity was now to be translated in a clearly recognisable
vocabulary on the public face. Of course, Charterjee's ideas were
not restricted to residential design alone; his suggestions for
banks and educational institutions demonstrated the attempt
to
define a "Greater Indian Order" by assimilating, elements from
different regions and eras of India's ancient architecture. Chatterjce's vision documented in the "Draft Manifesto for the Pro-
posed All-India League of Indian Architecture" found a number
of prominent supporters but was not persuasive enough to determine the narrative of Indian architecture.
The desire to define a national language of architecture appropriate for the 20th century came out of the swadeshi movement.
Swadeshi (national), a response to British economic and cultural
domination, meant the rejection of foreign goods and support
for native industries. This suwdeshi quest in the arts was
grounded in a "new Orientalism" that found enduring aesthetic
merit in India's ancient (mainly "Hindu") tradition and believed
in a revival of that tradition as the necessary basis for : modern
Indian art as opposed to its 19th-century British Orientalist view
that belittled this tradition. The nadeshi spirit in architecture.
however, took various forms, from a championing of the local
vernacular to pan-Asianism. The Japanese victory in the
Russian-Japanese War (1905) injected confidence in Asian
power and a desire for a pan-Asian solidarity in the arts. A re-
markable celebration of such a pan-Asian aesthetic was the resident of Nobel laureate poet and novelist Rabindranath Tagore
in Santiniketan, Bengal.
Tagore established a school (later to become Viswa Bharati
University) at Santinikeran with the objective of providing an
education that would be nurtured in an idyllic natural surround-
ing reminiscent of the ancient forests (taparn) where the sages
of the Vedas were aid to have resided. He rejected the unimaginative regimen of the British school system and its urban moorings in Calcutta. Of the many residences that were designed for
Tagore by Surendranath Kar with the aid of Nandalal Bose and
the poet's son Rathindranath Tagore, the largest was named
"Udayan" (lacing the rising sun). The multilevel design of the
building (1919-28) was developed in several phases, and its
unusual qualities resided in the attempt. to break out of the
confines of the room as a unit of habitation. Its staggered terraces
reached out to "connect with nature" from various
vantage
points, and its eclectic decorative program was intended to create
different moods in different spaces and owed much to Japanese
wood interior. The richness of the decoration was also hierarchically layered, with decorative features disappearing at the top-
most level, where the empty form alone would provide repose.
The ideas embedded in the house plan appear to have stepped
out of the gender hierarchies of the 19ch-century Calcutta mansion char he grew up in (with its separation between the inner
apartments for women and outer apartments for men), but the
necessity of a labouring population to serve the master house
had not disappeared. A substantial single-story building, housing
kitchen, storage, and servants quarters, was constructed as a
separate attached structure. Although not conventionally "revivalist," Udayan was as much a symbol of the
as it was of the emergent nations,
poet's personality.
The use of Indian referents in such well-known buildings
was invariably perceived as a political statement in light of the
planning process of New Delhi (1911-31). The neobaroque
plan of New Delhi and the design of the capitol buildings by
Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker were meant to impress British
resolution to rule India despite Indian nationalist agitation. The
new capital, with its insistent differentiation along lines of race,
class, and occupation, was
to enshrine in stone the relation between the rulers and the ruled.
Postindependence Practices
The independent state inherited the impressive monuments of
New Delhi as well as an inadequate physical infrastructure, a
weak economic and industrial base, and a massive housing short-
age. The latter was exacerbated by the influx of refugees from
Pakistan following the bloody partition of the country as the
cost of independence. Primary industries, power generation.
self-sufficiency in food grains, and housing were national priori-
ties, As a socialist democracy, the stare shouldered the responsibility of much of the building activity that took place in the
formal sector. The state's intervention had a profound influence
over architectural expression throughout the rest of the century.
Instead of making Indian motifs secondary to the building
program, as in the case of Lutyens's design, architects after independence, at the behest of politicians, made them central to their
scheme. If the over-scaled entrance to the Vigyan Bhavan (1955)
in New Delhi by RI. Gehlote demonstrated the possibility of
manipulating ancient formal elements while keeping the cord
of historical association intact, the abundant decorations in the
Vidhana Soudha (1952-57) in Bangalore strove to assert the
viability of the traditional building craft in India. The architects
of Mysore's Public Works Department sought out experts in
the decorative arts of the South and constructed a building shunning new materials, such as glass and stcel. The latter stood
opposite the neoclassical High Court (1865) and replicated its
plan and section in spirit. A decorative program paying tribute
to Kannada culture adorned the building's profile and structural
members. The proud originator of this idea. Kengal Hanumanthiah, the chief minister of Mysore (present-day Karnataka),
is memorialised in front of the building, standing with a model
of the building in the palm of his hand. The building program,
the siting, and the sculpture were telling of identity and power
at stake in the newly formed nation-state. Viewed from one
angle, Hanumanthiah's conception of the building offered less
resistance to the British colonial legacy than it did to the modern-
is architectural vision that was unfolding contemporaneously
in Chandigarh. From another perspective, it demonstrated that
the formal conception was often not the most important plat-
form for expressing independence, rather, it was the question of
who had the power to make decisions regarding major financial
and cultural investments.
The most celebrated example of state-sponsored construction
Was the planning of Chandigarh (1951-57), the capital of the
new states of Punjab and Haryana. At the invitation of Jawaharlal
Nehru, the Department of Public Works appointed Le Corbusier and team of consultants--Pierre Jeanneret, Jane Drew,
and Maxwell Fry-tO design the city and several important
buildings. The largest commission of Le Corbusier's life became
an opportunity to explore his notions of a modern city and
modern monuments. The spacious 1200-by-800-meter city grid
with its low-density built form was designed with ant affluent
car-owning citizen in mind and ignored lessons from contemporary Indian urbanism. Taken together, the Assembly Building,
the Secretariat, and the High Court presented an array of formal
possibilities of reinforced concrete in a context that offered brilliant sunshine and manual labor. Considered individually, their
objectlike presence, the pragmatic concerns of users, and the
weatherworn concrete expose the lapses in design consideration.
Nehru had supposedly intended Chandigarh as shock therapy
for the nation- an expensive way for exorcising the ghost of
colonialism that continued to haunt the policies and politics in
the region for years to come. Formal experiments in modernism,
however, were not new in India. The Dining Hall (1947) of
the Institute of Science in Bangalore by Otto Koenigsberger, the
New Secretariar (1944-47) in Calcutta by Habib Rahman. the
Shodhan House (1939, now demolished) in Ahmedabad by
Armaram Gajjar, and the Golconda (1936 -48) in the Aurobindo
Ashram in Pondicherry by Antonin Raymond predated Chandigarh, as did many others. Chandigarh differed from these examples in the objectives and the scale of undertaking and in the
charisma of the architect himself but most of all in the explicit
ideology that accompanied ic. Nehru had supported ocher approaches to architecture as well, many of which were conspicuous in their "traditional" referents. However, it was not traditional forms but the social premise and cultural baggage that
accompanied the forms that he found problematic. He was contemporaneously fighting legislative battles to keep in place his
vision of a secular democracy that did nor discriminate on the
basis of case, class, gender, or religion with the excuse of tradition. Although he did not determine (nor did any one individual) all the aspects of city plan or building design. Nehru envixioned Chandigarh as his political legacy the daring to
experiment with new ideas and his belief that a new democracy
deserved a novel architectural form.
The architectural imaging of Nehru's vision of a modern,
industrial nation found several subscribers and continued well
into the 1970%. Achyut P. Kanvinde's design for the Milk Processing, Plant (1974) at Mehsana relied on a heroic gesture of
turning the ordinary and mechanical functions of a factory into
a theatrical interplay of form and light. Few examples, however,
were more telling of national architectural aspirations and limitations than the commission for he Permanent Exhibition Complex for the 1972 Trades Fair in New Delhi. The building de-
signs by Mahendra Raj, an architect turned structural engineer,
and Raj Rewal were contemplated as steel space frames to span
78- and 44-meter modules unencumbered by supports, but ultimately it was constructed of reinforced concrete when the cost
of steel construction proved prohibitive.
The more mundane cult of the concrete.--a brick-filled
reinforced-concrete frame with a concrete flar-slab roof and concrete ledges and shades- used en masse in government housing
projects and institutions became the most common language
of architecture across the country. Invariably distinguished into
income groups- -higher, middle, and lower income-hundreds
of housing projects for government employees and for sale at
subsidised rates were laid down on gridded plans. Some of the
privately sponsored residential projects, such as the Tara Group
Housing (1978) in New Delhi, deviated from the previously
mentioned mechanistic schemes. Designed by Charles Correa,
Jasbir Sawhney, and Ravindra Bhan, the project consisted of
160 double-story row house units (varying from 84 to 130 square
meters) built on 3-by-15-meter modules. The residential units
were staggered in both plan and section along an internal landscaped " street." 'The street acted as a "humidifying zone" convivial for social interaction. High-density low-rise housing and the
vocabulary of courtyards, chows (streets), and mohallas (pedestrian alleys) became the mainstays of housing design in the
1980s. Raj Rewal's design for the Asiad Village (1982) in New
Delhi took this vocabulary to its extreme. The Village, built for
the 1982 Asian Games, consisted of 700 units that later became
apartments for high-income tenants. The units were clustered
in groups of 12 to 36 units around a common space, with terraces
for outdoor living and sleeping, and gateways were formed by
overhanging residential units that attempted to render variety
to the repetitive pattern.
At the other end of the socioeconomic scale, housing solutions met with glaring limitations. To meet the demand for
housing the poor, government development agencies promoted
user-initiative programs in "sites-and-services" projects. The cost
of infrastructure- roads, water supply, wastewater drainage, and
a small toilet -were borne by the agency, and the construction
of the individual dwelling was left to the individual owner. The
Integrated Urban Development project (1975) in Ahmedabad
by Kinee Shah, designed for flood refugees, attempted to provide
dwelling units as well as opportunities for education and supplementary employment. The design, developed on the basis of
architect-owner participation, consisted of two-room units made
of exposed brick and roofed with asbestos cement sheets. The
veranda and a shared courtyard worked as outdoor living/work
space. The viability of these projects was circumvented by their
location away from cities and employment opportunities, and
two-thirds of the targeted economically disadvantaged population could not even afford these subsidised projects. Consequendy, migrants to the cities continued to swell the population
of squatter settlements and slums.
Most architects recognised that the housing shortage was not
design problem that required a drastic reconsideration of basic
issues of resource, employment, and social equity. Nonetheless,
the problem of low cost housing continued to be addressed by
most architects as a design challenge--discovering low-cost
forms and low-cost technology that necessitated an inquiry into
vernacular building practices. In the ashrams at Sabarmati
(1918) in Ahmedabad and at Sevagram (1930s) in Maharashtra,
Mahatma Gandhi had used traditional construction to demonstrate its viability, and these became touchstones for : generation
of postindependence architects. The simple rectangular build-
ins at Sevagram were mud-on-timber-frame constructions on
stone foundation. Pitched timber roofs with riles. a few bamboo
columns, spacious verandah, and small fenestration covered with
slatted bamboo screens completed the ensemble.
Laurie Baker, an English emigrant to India, inspired by Gandhi's vision, built a large repertoire of buildings that eschewed
contemporary design fads and were rooted in an appreciation
of the resourceful vernacular architecture of Kerala, His design
for the Center for Development Studies (1975) in Thiruvanatha
param, Kerala, was developed to demonstrate responsible build-
ing practices. A vocabulary of exposed local bricks for walls and
screens, wood and concrete for structural members, and ceramic
tiles for roofs was rendered in simple bur elegant details. Concrete was used economically, substituted with reject clay tiles in
the lower tension portion of slabs. The most lavishly detailed
building was the guesthouse, where the brick jali (lattice) screens
were accompanied by carefully crafted woodwork.
Considerations of climate and local building practices led
Uttam Jain to explore a completely different vocabulary in Rajas-
than that was shaped in large measure by an allegiance to modemist principles. In the buildings of the Jodhpur University
campus (1971). Jain used dressed yellow sandstone in lime mortar to give the buildings a rugged feel. In the Faculty of Arts
and Sciences, stair-towers and voids for cross lighting punctuated
the double-loaded corridors of a conventional U-shaped plan.
The load-bearing, glazed inner wall was shaded by an outer wall
to reduce heat load and render the building sculptural quality.
Jain's Indira Gandhi Institute for Development in Mumbai
(1987) asserts a similar relationship between building and site;
this research complex with residences for staff and scholars coalesces around open courtyards and green space.
It was the space-structure relationship of vernacular traditions
that most architects found useful for their modern buildings.
Charles Correa's design for the Gandhi Smarak Sangrahalaya
(1957) in Ahmedabad exploited the versatility of the courtyard
typology and included a concern for climate, human scale, and
history. By the 1980s the critical acclaim of Correa's designs,
the design of the Indian Institute of Management (1972) at
Ahmedabad by Louis Kahn, and the campus designs that followed (such as the Indian Statistical Institute, 1981, in New
Delhi by Anant Raje and the Indian Institute of Management,
1983, at Bangalore by Balkrishna Doshi) ensured not only a
significant change in the design of the institutional campus
(compared to the Institute of Technology campuses in Kharagpur, Kanpur, and New Delhi and scores of that ilk) but also
the establishment of an Indian modern vocabulary. Academic
facilities around a spacious courtyard or amphitheater, shaded
networks of "streets," diagonal axes of movement, broken symmerries, and the bold geometry of locally quarried stones or
bricks on a reinforced-concrete structural system were the leitmorifs of these institutional designs. The austere aesthetics and
the monumentality of these projects were softened in the experiments with typology in smaller academic complexes. The preference for a more intimate scale in designing institutional projects
was related to the establishment in the 1980% of a number of
agencies to study and conserve physical and cultural resources.
These were small semiautonomous academic and research institutes that desired an architectural image in harmony with chang
in concerns about sustainability. The Center for Development
Studies (1987) in Pune by Christopher Beninger; the Inter-
University Center of Astronomy and Astrophysics Center (1998)
by Charles Correa; the Entrepreneurship Development Institute
(1987) by Bimal Parel and the Center for Environmental Education (1990) by Neelkanth Chhaya and Kallol Joshi, both projects
located in Ahmedabad; and the Visitors Hostel (1990) at the
Nehru Science Center in Bangalore by Chandravarkar and
Thacker adapted a domestic scale chat was integrated with the
landscape.
Repositioning Indian Identity
One of the most innovative precedents that integrated landscape
and architecture was Balkrishna Doshi's studio and architectural
foundation Sangath (1980). The building consisted of two sets
of parallel barrel-vaulted structures, partly subterranean and the
totality integrated with a carefully designed landscape. The vaults
were made of cylindrical terra-cotta tiles sandwiched between
thin ferro-cement shells. The external surface of the vaults was
animated by a heat-reflecting waterproof covering of china mosic. Water channels between vaults carried rainwater to reflecting pools and the garden. Although the cooling effect of the
form and materials was limited in the Ahmedabad summers, the
design and ideas presented through lyrical drawings and thumb
sketches singled a departure from the modernist vocabulary of
Indian architects: here a concern for typology, material, climate,
and form was squarely located in the realm of India's architectural tradition.
The centrality of "tradition" in a newly emerging narrative
was evident in two architectural exhibitions in 1986. The first,
titled "Vistara" (vistas/openings), was exhibited in Mumbai and
was designed for the Festival of India tour abroad; the second.
titled "Kham" (space/pause), was organised by the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Ants (IGNCA) in New Delhi.
Whereas the first attempted to locate contemporary architecture
in the continuum of India's architectural history, the second
suggested multisensorial "acts" of space and commonalties be-
tween India's preindustrial architecture with those around the
world. Both emphasised the role of myths in architecture and
everyday life (including myths of modernity and industrialisation) and claimed an aesthetic universality that was simultaneously grounded in regional practices and tradition. These were
professional designers' attempts to designate acceptable sources
and practices and to craft an Indian Modern style that claimed
to have come to terms with the
past.
The political climate that supported these ideas wrestled with
the reemergence of tradition as political problem. Although
tradition in the revival of Indian crafts and advertising tourist
destinations was profitable and found an eager audience among
international tourists and the Indian bourgeoisie, the logic of
tradition in the religious nationalisms that were attempting to
tear apart the secular democracy needed to be confronted. In
demonstrating, links between the great architecture of different
eras and emphasising their metaphysical dimensions, one could
pass over the political difficulties facing the architect when dealing with troubled historical legacies (e.g. the recent ones of Brit-
ish colonialism) and overlook sociopolitical fractures in the con-
temporary fabric of the country, Not surprisingly, in the brief
of the international design competition for the IGNCA complex
(1986) in New Delhi, the overwhelming theme was one of assimilation. The Center, a cultural complex of museums, performance, and education facilities, was intended to be a memorial
to Indira Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1984 by Sikh militants
demanding a separate homeland. The Center was to articulate
a unique all-encompassing, "Indian worldview (which in the
brief passed as "Hindu* worldview) to launch Gandhi as one
of the canonical figures of Indian nationalism equated with some
of the mainstays of the nationalist movement in British India.
Situated in the heart of Lutyens's New Delhi, this complex was
to harmonise with the colonial surroundings. Ralph Lerner's
winning entry, a Lutyenesque response to the brief. was commended for maintaining "a necessary connection with history."
Here historical connections necessarily resided on the surface.
Similarly, an investigation of folk architecture central to the
new interest in tradition could only include questions of form
and beauty. In such a view, the "typical" Indian village and the
historical architecture of the country were seen as the repository
of a universal good, notwithstanding the caste, class, and gender
dynamics that inhabit(ed) and influenced) these forms. Revathi
and Vasanth Kamath's design for the Tourist Village at Mandawa (1986) in Rajasthan was conceived as sun-dried mud-brick- and -thatch structures replicating the anthropomorphic village forms of the Shekhawati region. The client, the rajah of
Mandawa, was hard to convince- he wanted a pucca (masonry)
construction for his investment, preferably one that looked like
Canadian resort. The architects convinced him to adopt
regional vocabulary of mud architecture-"not only cheap bur
also the most appropriate way, both climatically and aesthetically." It was a place for the international tourist looking for the
Indian village experience without the squalor and inconvenience
and one in which folk artisans and performers could market
their traditional skills. The architect here is not only the arbiter
of taste, but also is responsible for decoding and interpreting
cultural memories and reviving traditional building practices forgotten by the Dubai-returned local masons. The client's and the
architect's aspirations were not that different -both borrowing
distant images to produce an object, an experience for consumption, each in their own way crafting a contemporary Indian
identity with their imaginings of a good life.
Creating an architecture rooted in tradition when images
from across the world are easily accessible through television and
the Internet is a difficult proposition at best. In a country in
which most buildings are not designed by design professionals,
many Indian architects have resorted to myths to distinguish
their work from that of the contractor-builder and the truane
middle class consumers who apply architectural forms to residences and commercial complexes as objects of desire culled
from : global economy. For example, in narrating the meaning
literally underlying, the design concept for the Bharat Diamond
Bourse (1998) in Mumbai, Balkrishna Doshi spoke of spiritual
rather than corporate revelations. The three-million-square-foot
megacomplex consists of nine towers clad in mirrored glass located on
landscaped base of granite outcrop. The tightly secured walled in complex was constructed with the aspiration to
compete in the lucrative global diamond market. Doshi, however, imagined the rocky site as having mythical origins and
claimed that the complex is now the "most sacred sire in India"
and "true sanctuary." This son of myth-making romanticises
what was otherwise a blatancy commercial project and might
well forebode a very different landscape in the 21st century.
SWAT CHATTOPADHYAY
Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.2. Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005. |
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INTERNAL LINKS
FURTHER READING
Ashraf, Kari Khaleed, and James Belluardo (editors), An Architecture
of Independence. The Making of Modern South Ari, New Yock:
Architectural League of New York, 1998
Bhatia, Gautam, Panjabi Baroque and Other Memories of
Architecture, New Delhi and New York: Penguin, 1994
Bhatt, Vikram, and Peter Scriver, After the Masters, Ahmedabad,
India: Mapin, 1990
Chatterjee. Malay, "The Evolution of Contemporary Indian
Architecture," in Architectures m Inde, edited by Jean-Louis
Véret, Paris: Electa Moniteur, 1985
Evenson, Norma, Chandigarh, Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1966
Evenson, Norma, The Indian Metropolis: A View towards the West,
New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1989
Grover, Sarish, Building beyond Borders Story of Contemporary Indian
Architecture, New Delhis National Book Trust India. 1995
Guha-Thakurta, Tapati, The Making ofa New "Indian" Are: Artists,
Aesthetics, and Nationalism in Rengal, c. 1850-1920, Cambridge
and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992
King Anthony, "India's Past in India's Present: Cultural Policy and
Cultural Practice in Architecture and Urban Design, 1960-
1990,' in Perceprions of South Asia's Venual Past. edited by
Catherine Ella Blanshard Asher and Thomas R. Mercalf. New
Delhi: American Institute of Indian Studies, 1994
Lang. Jon 1., Madhavi Desai, and Miki Desai. Architecture and
Independence. The Search for Identity India. 1880 to 1980. Delhi
and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997
Tillorson, Giles Henry Rupert. The Tradition of Indian Architecture:
Continuit, Controversy, and Change since 1850. New Haven,
Connecticur: Yale University Press, 1989
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