Fifty Plus and Minus

One could hardly imagine a time more exciting for an Indian architect to start a career than at the close of the 1940s, when India had just gained freedom from colonial rule. In many places around the world this was the time when enormous funds were invested in new and often very novel urban developments that were to provide, for better or worse, the model of metropolitan life for the generations to come. By that time, it was generally believed that architecture and urban planning have the power to shape human habits and inspire worldviews. This was also true for India, and at this particular moment it was crucial for decision makers and for the designers to decide on what style and what planning philosophy should they stake. What should the background image of the new Republic of India be, what values should be put through, what goals should be proclaimed? In my presentation, I am going to focus on these decisive years of modern architecture in India and on its major figures.

2021

In this paper we address the role of architectural criticism in the conception and practice of modernism in India – since post-independence till the present. India has witnessed a vast difference in the culture of the built environment. And as Modern Style of architecture arose from enormous transformations in the west during the late 19th, and flourished to India, Architectural Criticism says, it’s about time, that a new style of architecture, a style that describes the ‘Indianness’, originates, takes over, describes, and flourishes to bring a new face to the context of Architecture in India.

ABE Journal - Architecture Beyond Europe, 2019

The large-scale appropriation of modernist architectural features in everyday housing projects in postcolonial India is remarkable. This article examines how regional architects adapted their engagement with architectural modernism to the evolving circumstances of architectural production within the context of the developing world. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s “field theory”, it presents a detailed case study of two decades of residential work by Architects United, a medium-scale architectural practice founded in the Indian city of Pune in 1961. While the architects’ earliest projects demonstrated an opportunity and desire for architectural innovation, this approach became increasingly restricted as new patterns for housing provision emerged, resulting in a more subdued and hybrid form of modernist architecture. The paper makes use of the architects’ previously undisclosed archive and oral history to demonstrate that these architectural adaptations were the indirect result of governance practices and societal change, particularly the government’s stimulation of co-operative housing initiatives and the emergence of a postcolonial middle class with distinct housing expectations. As such, this “peripheral” case exposes some of the processes that have been overlooked in the rhetoric of Architectural Modernism as a Western import in India, which is primarily centered around the discussion of exceptional public building commissions by “global experts” or their Indian disciples. The paper further highlights the need to investigate the processes of architectural production, in addition to the built product itself, so that a pluralistic rather than romanticized understanding of architectural practice may emerge.

Indian architecture isone of the most famous in the world. Its architecture was based on the concept of religious plurality. One might notice that the architecture of Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic and colonial or Indo-saracenic were distinct. Based on these styles four historical eraswere classified i.e., the ancient Indian, pre-Islamic, and colonial periods. This article seeks to reassess the general perception of Indian Architecture and its relation to the formation of Indian identities. It focusses in particular on the interpretation of the concept of plurality n the academic world by western art-historians. The socioeconomic factorsplays determining role in defining the architectural styles of south Asia.

National Conference: Cultural Identities - Manifestation through Architecture (CIMA) 2020, 2020

Modern architectural heritage has various tangible & intangible values associated with them. It is the cultural significance of and the association of these values, which makes it heritage. Like ancient architectural heritage, the post-independence architecture of India has a potential association of values of cultural transformation, social & technological development, innovation, tradition & lifestyle. This paper attempts to explore the various values of the post-independence architecture of India, which makes it an integral part of the nation's cultural heritage. The period under consideration is five decades after independence (1947 to 2000)for this research. Cultural significance of the architecture of this period has been explored through the history of modern architecture of India and the significant modern architecture in the broader setting. For a comprehensive understanding of the cultural significance from a global perspective, there is a brief discussion of the values considered by major organisations involved in the recognition & protection of 20th-century heritage. In light of the broader spectrum of values associated with the architecture of this period and the cultural significance of the post-independence architecture of India, the values associated with the significant modern public buildings of this period have been identified.

2019

Book review of "India: Modern Architecture in History" and author interview with Peter Scriver and Amit Srivastava

IDC international journal, 2024

2019

Oxford Bibliographies in Architecture, Planning and Preservation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 2021

Between the mid-1980s and late-1990s, an unprecedented tide of new publications on contem-porary architects and architecture in India appeared in print. These included several mono-graphs as well as more comprehensive surveys, exhibition catalogues, and a new “journal” of In-dian architecture, Architecture + Design (A+D) launched in 1984. Using Bourdieuean tools of analysis, this paper examines these architectural discourses about Indian architecture as a “field of restricted production” to better understand the context and dynamics of the conspicuous ur-gency to publish Indian architects and their work at that particular time. In so doing, the paper highlights inherent problems with the representation and historiography of ‘postcolonial’ archi-tecture in the context of the hegemonic discourses of modernity and its ‘postmodern’ critiques.