#bv doshi

[suchananewsblog]

A pillar of modern Indian architecture

Much has been written about B.V. Doshi during the last week after his demise – the most celebrated architect from India, recipient of all major national civilian honors, beside all national and international awards for architecture. Of course, awards can follow each other and fame can be an ever-burning fire if fuelled regularly, beyond which lies the greatness of a person. So, this essay does…

[100hands]

Thanks to SwissNex and the Swiss Consulate, it was our good fortune to have had some time with Mr. Peter Zumthor, the great Swiss architect here in Bangalore. As part of his visit he saw BV Doshi’s masterwork, the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, the Bhoga Nandeeshwara Temple, Bangalore International Centre and MAP.

I also had the opportunity to engage Mr. Zumthor in an hour long conversation about his work and realizations. This event felt like the opening night of a big Bollywood blockbuster. Mr. Zumthor’s work and writings find a particular resonance in India. His ideas of work predicated on place, memory, materiality and presence, a word he uses often, make direct connections to our own traditional buildings and the work of masters like Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, Charles Correa and BV Doshi.

I haven’t visited any of Mr. Zumthor’s buildings, but from his drawings and ethereal photographs often by Hélène Binet, they seem archaic, primordial – evoking the sense of refuge within geological formations. His work and methods seem anachronistic – reminding us of the rigour and care architecture demands and the single minded pursuit of emotionally charged space. Mr. Zumthor’s work attempts to discover ‘deep structure’, drawing out a shared recapitulation of ancient memory.

[architecture-beyond-the-syllabus]

What I have been doing lately 😢

Just when I thought I could bloom in and write passionately, I got strung up in threads of academics, extracurriculars, and competitions. It's all too exhausting. Moreover, I moved out to a new home. The best leisurely thing I did as of now was indulge in and watch 5 episodes of Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan, one fine evening ( the one anime about a comedic deer girl and a tsundere)

In addition, I also indulged in and played Genshin's new Simulanka quest in hopes of earning enough primogems to pull a Kaveh, but unfortunately, I lost him to the 5-star Navia. I was lying there wondering if I had to cry or rejoice

But aside from all this, I also had fun researching architecture. I enjoyed doing my academic literature case study on Harvard Business School, Boston. I was also exploring bits of BV Doshis' Aranya Housing block. I simply love how the forms are geometric and colorful. Doshi's concept of people's participation to reduce costs and provide individuality really fascinated me. This is clearly something I want to study in detail sometime in the future.

(A picture of an Aranya house I drew)

For my elective assignment, I also explored impressionism and Claude Monet's work. and in doing so I made a poor half an hour, half-assed attempt of it too. But it was fun trying.

I also hastily attempted an intense 5-day rhino and grasshopper workshop. It was way too informational to me. The assignment given to us after the workshop was to design a parametric form based on one of the 6 briefs given. They ranged from furniture design to moon base design. And being the unrealistic over-passionate feeler person that I am I went on to design a very conceptual moon base. Although my final design was awful, I enjoyed researching about the leading technologies on moon construction, the difficulties of building on the moon, and mooncrete. Yess mooncrete that sounds so exciting. I was considering if space architecture has room for a person like me. and whether I should try and pursue it. It's unconventional and very much discouraged in theses and dissertations.

I wish I could get more time to research things enough to compose a proud article about them later. I have a lot of topics I want to explore, it's simply a matter of time management and prioritization.

K bye <3 Have fun

[gautambhatia]

BV Doshi’s Office, Ahmedabad - Gautam Bhatia

It is hard to imagine that the world’s buildings – and in particular Indian architecture – Has produced such enormous variety, scale, size and type of structures. Historic ingenuity, engineering prowess, and contemporary designhas doubtless created this range. And I, as an observer, writer, and a practicing architect here delve into a few examples.

[bestitalianmarbleindia]

One of the most distinguished Indian minds in the world of architecture, BV Doshi, passed away at the age of 95 on Tuesday, leaving behind a tall legacy and an irreplaceable void in the world’s design community. RIP BY BHANDARI MARBLE GROUP

[bhandarimarblekishangarh]

One of the most distinguished Indian minds in the world of architecture, BV Doshi, passed away at the age of 95 on Tuesday, leaving behind a tall legacy and an irreplaceable void in the world’s design community. RIP BY BHANDARI MARBLE GROUP

[rnewspost]

Renowned architect BV Doshi passes away at 95, PM Modi condoles demise

Renowned architect Balkrishna Doshi passed away on Tuesday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi condoled Doshi’s demise, calling him “a brilliant architect and a remarkable institution builder”. BV Doshi was widely regarded as the foremost architect of modern India. (Image: Instagram/ @archdigestindia) By Press Trust of India: Well-known architect and Padma Bhushan recipient Balkrishna Doshi, who…

[awardsrethinkingthefuture]

Receiving Recognition and Appreciation through Architecture Awards

While working in any profession, it  is important that good work is recognised and appreciated by fellow colleagues or people who are experts in the field. Recognition and appreciation boosts a person’s confidence and makes him/her strive to achieve further goals. More than anything else, the professionals  in a certain field bring about the advancement of the field, contributing with innovative ideas, providing solutions that are relevant to the times we live in. 

Architecture is a field that requires critical thinking of a space and creating spaces for the users that give them comfort. For a field that requires thinking and designing for multiple users, architects and designers might not always feel appreciated and validated for the work that they do. This is the reason why it is important that awards that recognize and appreciate architects and designers across the globe irrespective of their backgrounds are held every year in honour of their work. It is crucial to acknowledge the beneficial effects that well-designed or constructed structures have on the communities in which they are located. Aside from acknowledgment, prizes give architects the chance to promote their work and set a good example for future generations.

There are quite a few awards that recognize architects for their work around the world. In today’s world, one also has to be mindful of the inclusivity and diversity of the profession. While the early 20th century was quite focused on the western world, in today’s world, it is seen that the developing countries have contributed equally to the advancement of the field of architecture and design. Along with different backgrounds, it has also become important to promote equality in the workplace. The role of women in architecture and design has been recognized across the world. “Zaha Hadid has been unswerving in her commitment to modernism. Always inventive, she’s moved away from existing typology, from high tech, and has shifted the geometry of buildings.” Pritzker Prize jury chairman, Lord Rothschild, commented. Zaha Hadid is seen as an inspirational figure for the upcoming generation of women architects who strive to achieve excellence. 

Certain architecture awards ensure that women in architecture are recognised for their exceptional contributions to the area of architecture and design in today's world where global concerns of equality and diversity are also crucial. Women are frequently overlooked, so we still need to highlight their contributions. The Pritzker Prize Executive Director, Martha Thorne, said that these honours "truly push them to the forefront, where they deserve to be." The W awards honour the accomplishments made by women in architecture who have progressed the industry. The upcoming generation of female architects are motivated by this, giving them the confidence to pursue their dreams. The W awards have sections that honour young architects, building and architectural innovators, sustainability, and architects from a variety of backgrounds.

Some of the prestigious architecture awards across the globe include the Pritzker Prize, RIBA medal, AIA gold medal, etc. The most prestigious and important honour that each architect aspires to get is the Pritzker Award, commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize of architecture. Regardless of nationality, race, creed, or ideology, the prize honours the architect's outstanding contribution to the area of architecture. Peter Zumthor, BV Doshi, and Zaha Hadid are just a few of the honorees.

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Gold Medal honours an architect or architectural practise for their contribution to the development of world architecture. Through the President's Medal, the RIBA not only recognises the outstanding body of work produced by architects, but also the work of current students and recent graduates. 

Aside from rewarding innovation, architecture awards provide a forum for addressing today's social challenges. Additionally, rather than competing, prizes encourage interaction and cooperation among colleagues in the architectural community. When one architect picks up skills from the other, it is usually a plus and strengthens their individual skill sets.

Rethinking The Future (RTF) will hold the 13th edition of the RTF Architecture, Construction & Design Awards as the awards season gets underway. The Re-Thinking the Future (RTF) platform (www.re-thinkingthefuture.com) showcases the creativity and talent of designers from around the world. The RTF Awards recognise designers working in all scales and fields. A prize, a certificate, as well as the publication of the winning entry on social networking sites and the RTF newsletter may go to the winner of these awards. The fascinating thing is that the designer may have designed a sizable home development or even a cosy sofa. 

Along with architecture, the RTF Awards also honour achievements in a number of other sectors, including interior design, landscape design, construction, and design. To be inclusive and diverse awards, each field has a number of subcategories. Along with recognising a variety of areas, RTF Awards also honour businesses that have promoted inclusion, diversity, and workplace equality.

[ageae]

[noosphe-re]

Sangath, B. V. Doshi, Ahmedabad, India, 1980

[maya-sorabjee]

[100hands]

I was invited to give the convocation address at KS School of Architecture on 6th May, 2023. Here are a few excerpts from the talk:

--

Congratulations to all of you on the successful completion of five years of what was possibly often demanding and confusing but also hopefully deeply satisfying. 

Working in architecture, as a practitioner is much the same - long periods of doubt, consumed by the fog - the ways unclear, the goals obscured -  but occasionally the parting of the clouds and brilliant light in those moments of epiphany and realisation. As practitioners we live for these moments of clarity - when universal expression finds a conduit, so to speak.

We are fortunate to be a part of this creative legion -we work in the realm of dreams and aspirations, as assimilators but also as the articulators of shared ambitions. The realisation of one’s ideas, often shaped and modulated by consensus, is a deeply satisfying thing. Not many other professionals share this. I am sure your five years here must have given you the opportunity to experience the profound joy of successfully working together with others on a shared task - a measured drawing exercise perhaps, household surveys, college fest preparations, and of course NASA. 

I look back at my own graduation, in 1994, and remember the excitement and anxiety of being on this very threshold - but unlike all of you, that moment passed by most innocuously - a few friends at the university, paying a fee and collecting our certificates from a nondescript sarkari office - no fanfare, no angavastram, no convocation address - just the quiet realization that we were now out in the world on our own. 

That world seems benign compared to the turbulent and volatile one you are entering into now. We are in a time of momentous and epochal change. I can draw a straight line from post-independence practitioners like Charles Correa and BV Doshi to our practice - predicated as they are on ideas of context, prudence, empathy and careful labour. These principles are still valid in my mind, but added to them are the ideas of morality, speed and agility. Globalisation, the climate crisis and rapidly evolving technologies demand urgent and original responses. 

Globalisation has flattened our sensory world - the same cities, the same clothes, the same cars, the same music, the same architecture but has exacerbated latent inequities, and disparities in our socio-economic and emotional conditions. The promise of well-being and the great society haven’t come to pass. The simplistic focus on smart cities - infrastructure, metro-lines and the spreading stain of ‘development’ need fundamental re-evaluation. Graduating into this world, one must question the dubious frameworks holding up this facade. 

What more needs to said about the climate crisis? The construction industry is the single largest contributer to green houses gases. Our times demand that we approach our work and choices through the lens of morality - what is the right thing to do? Not how much but how little could we do? This time of crises offers us the opportunity for substantive invention.

And we are in a polynaistic age. Unlike earlier times where revolutionary discoveries and inventions - the wheel, the printing press, and so on had a long gestational period as they made their way into common usage, today there seem to be revolutions every two weeks - the iPhone, Midjourney, GPT4 and so on. The rapid evolution in the tools we use to imagine and articulate the future are both wildly exciting and deeply disturbing. 

I would like to offer you four core principles to hold close in these uncertain times. Architecture, at its most fundamental, is the making of places for well-being, as Richard Leplastrier, the great Australian master, once said. It is easy to lose sight of this basic condition when faced with such existential crises and profound change. These principles, embedded in the humanistic tradition, offer respite from the ubiquitous, and mostly banal work that is produced in the name of sustainability. Clever material choices, checklists and certificates masquerading as architecture. I urge you to consider the difficult pursuit of beauty and meaning rather than just mere sustenance and accreditation.

The first principle is Scenius

This is a word coined by the great music producer, Brian Eno. It is a rejection of the idea of creation as an individual pursuit of a solitary genius and instead crediting it to the scene - the milieu - creating the right environment and providing the impetus for meaningful creative production. This is most evident in the making of architecture - an inherently collaborative process.

These challenging times require the genius of a collective to comprehend, assimilate and speculate. As architects our principle role may now be to orchestrate this coming together of collaborators and the assimilation of this shared knowledge. As our cities grow denser we see what Constantinos Doxiades, the Greek planner hypothesised - the exponential growth of creative production. This tightness - people pushed closer by the city - giving rise to the meeting and collaboration between the outliers, the rebels, the marginalians. We are in a unique place in our cities to find revolutionary and innovative solutions through such Sceniuses.

The second principle is the Search for Meaning

As we imagine and describe our production as architects, we often speak of it in terms of technique - the materials and mechanical systems we have used, the formal strategies to address context and climate, and so on. We rarely discuss what Louis Kahn called the nature of architecture - going back to the beginnings of institutions. These origin metaphors make evident the latent and embedded conditions in a given site, within a given culture, for a given program. The work must give expression to this identity and provoke debate and conversation.

As a young professional, I hope you will try and articulate that abiding metaphor that encapsulates the circumstances you are presented with in your projects. These can be simple and personal like in that wonderful wall in Alvar Aalto’s summer house - a small blue tiled square embedded in a wall of red brick - bringing him the warmth of the Italian riviera in the harsh Finnish winter, or profound, like in Akbar’s tomb in Sikandra - the tomb becoming a portal to another realm through manipulations of embellishment and sensory stimuli...giving us for a fleeting moment an audience with the great man.

The third principle is the Historical Sense

In his seminal essay, Tradition and the Individual Talent, TS Eliot talks about the cntral paradox of the creative pursuit. On the one hand it is to find the new - an expression of our times, the zeitgeist, and on the other hand it draws from the past for instruction but also to understand the effect the new work has on the canon. 

Charles Correa Associates completed the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon in 2011. It is a state-of-the-art facility guided by some of the best scientist in the world. Correa says, “What makes me most proud about this project is that it is NOT a Museum of Modern Art. On the contrary, it uses the highest levels of contemporary science and medicine to help people grappling with real problems; cancer, brain damage and going blind. And to house these cutting-edge activities, we tried to create a piece of architecture. Architecture as Sculpture. Architecture as Beauty. Beauty as therapy.”

The site, where the river meets the Atlantic Ocean, is steeped in history. It is the site where Henry the Navigator, Vasco de Gama and other great Portuguese left on their journeys into the unknown—a perfect metaphor for the discoveries of contemporary science today, Correa points out.

The recognition of the importance of this location in history from where these intrepid explorers hung a left out into the unknown, gives Correa’s idea of opening up the centre of the campus with a large ascending plaza out onto the ocean incredible gravitas. It at once makes a deep connection back to history and gives context to our enduring tryst with the unknown.  

And finally the fourth principle is Being in the world

This is probably the most important principle. Traditionally, an architect sits in her office and waits for the commission to arrive. We receive instruction and go about working on the commission. This approach to practice is primarily reactionary and is rapidly changing. As practitioners, young architects are redefining the way one engages with the world. They are initiating projects and finding the means to get them realised. They work with communities, philanthropic organisations or crowd fund these initiatives. It is refreshing to see that some of these young practices are involved in their communities as partners, working with larger teams to conceptualise and build public projects. 

We are besieged by crises and rather than wait for invitations to be in the world, we must get into the trenches and be a part of the solution. This architectural education has if nothing else, developed in each of you a sense of empathy...to see the world through the eyes of the other. Our studio projects invariably put you in unfamiliar contexts and force you to articulate the challenges and opportunities present here. 

This ability to see analyse and speculate, give us a unique position to take on a more proactive, rather than reactive engagement with the world. This may come in many forms. I remember when Prof. Sathya Prakash came back to Bangalore and was part of BIT (I was still in college then) and there was suddenly a stir in the air. He organised design walks, lectures, and was, as he is now, an instigator, a provocateur. He brought us his point of view and compelled us to engage. Each of us must find a way to be an active agent of change in the world - find your cause and commit to it. The work of an architect isn’t limited to the creation of a physical artifact - one can find other avenues of engagement, like writing, drawing, organising events, and so on...to give expression in our communities to the larger ideals this education has instilled in each of you. 

Though this moment may be filled with some anxiety, each of you should know that this particular time is one of infinite possibilities. The world waits for you...we wait for you...You carry with you the blessings of your teachers and parents, the values of this education and the untrammeled vision of youth. Take on this world and its crises head-on. There is no time to lose. 

Godspeed and good luck.

[archestudy]

LIC Housing, Ahmedabad by BV Doshi

LIC Housing, Ahmedabad by BV Doshi

LIC Housing designed by Architect BV Doshi in Ahmedabad in 1973. The scheme, known locally as Bimanagar, consists of 324 units organized in a duplex terraced unit scheme on 54 plots. The initial development was focusing on the efficient provision of sites and services with a phasing plan for growth. The lower units are around 200 sq. yds and cost 70-80 Lakhs; the second level is 120 sq. yds and…

[devambardekar]

Doshi : The Second Chapter.  A film by Hundred Hands and Premjit Ramachandran documenting the life and thoughts of B.V. Doshi after he was awarded the Prtizker Prize is 2018

[adamyamey]

Bricks for business Ahmedabad is rich in exciting 20th century architecture, designed both by Indian and non-Indian architects.  The prestigious, highly-rated IIMA (Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad) was founded in 1961.

[archatlas]

Contemporary House India

Edmund Sumner‘s book reveals a photo array and detailed plans of the boldest and most ambitious houses of India’s contemporary residential architecture. 

The new book with more than twenty pieces of modern domestic architecture is divided into four thematic chapters and unveils a glimpse of private dwellings spanning across the country and constructed by well-known and non, architects — including Architecture Brio, Matharoo Associates, Abraham John Architects, Khosla Associates, BV Doshi.