However Indian cities have a clear demarcation in terms of the urban aesthetics when looked at within the time frame of the last century.

The big four metros, all cities in existence for at least 400 years have an evolved sense of architecture and urban aesthetic that spans from the Mughal times to the British Raj. Each city got its own distinct version of style and look. However this sense of aesthetic took a nosedive post-Independence.

All of a sudden, for every great piece of architecture, there were 100 examples of very banal, characterless buildings. Entire sections of cities, or even entire small cities grew up with no sense of architectural character and style.

This anomaly, compounded with a complete lack of urban planning and vision, created a mish-mash of architectural style that is in most cases a visual nightmare. Things took a turn for the better in the early 90’s when the opening up of the markets brought transformation into India in all sectors. IT Parks, Techology campuses and the supporting housing, retail and commercial needs brought about an architectural boom that has been on a continuous steady rise over the last two decades.

However a total lack of a masterplan and vision for the entire city has created a new jigsaw of competing styles, materials, designs, that somehow don’t fit in all together.

Below is an article by an architect elaborating on the missed opportunity of enhanced infrastructure that would have brought about a disciplined design aesthetic in Indian cities.

What are your thoughts?

Making sense of aesthetics in Indian cities

Srinivas Murthy G, | Times of India, Hyderabad Edition

About three years ago I decided to make Hyderabad my home. I was living in Delhi, city of my birth and education, before moving to this city.

I have been designing projects in and around Hyderabad for the last decade and have been part of its growth story in many ways. It was a strange realisation that only after relocating myself here I started thinking about its existing as a living organism and not just as another destination for business purpose.

Two things that struck me most (or rather absence of them) and probably affect me in many ways are the so called cultural scene that one is so used to in Delhi and secondly, how the architectural sensibilities of people of this historic city changed due to the fast paced development. While the first one is more specific to this city given its strong historical and cultural background that it once boasted of, the second one is about the built environment of Hyderabad, though nothing unusual as many other cities have gone though the same fate during the same timeline. I will reserve the first one for another time and write about the second one first, as being an architect by profession, this moves me both in personal and professional spectrums.

During the last decade or two, many Indian cities have witnessed stupendous growth due to the IT boom abroad and also due to the new era of liberalised economy. Hyderabad’s growth has been watched very keenly and closely by other neighbouring big cities. The city is in many ways like Delhi, more particularly on architectural front. It has an equally important architectural heritage and does not stay too behind in display of wealth and affluence. It has its own South Delhi charms that you can feel while moving around in Banjara Hills and Jubilee Hills with large villas and bungalows dotting the landscape.

Importance is given more to the size and grandeur than the aesthetics of architectural design. To borrow from Gautam Bhatia’s comments on architectural scene in Delhi, the Punjabi Baroque is replaced by a hugely Greek, Corinthian and Roman Renaissance styles and if this was not enough, completed it with riot of coloured facades and glass facades to add to fetish to show off.

This is so much different from how Bangalore and Pune responded during their growth years. While Bangalore is known for its small and well built designer homes, Pune has some of the earliest and finest examples of housing in multi-storied apartment type buildings. Architectural professional gained respectability very soon in these cities much to surprise of many even in Delhi and Mumbai. And now the so called newer parts of the city, which incidentally are not more than a decade and half old, still lack some of the basic facilities. No pedestrian safety and footpaths, no decent greenery and plantation, overcrowded and congested roads, no streetlights, and signage is something which one can only dream of, are regular features of these supposedly happening places.

Public utilities like bus shelter and drinking water for commuters, underpasses for pedestrians, drainage channels and communication and electrical services ducts, and the list of requirements appears to be never ending. And on the architectural front, there is a complete sense of chaos and absurdness of design elements. There is no architecture at all. They are all covered with huge and brightly coloured hoardings that make the skyline of the city and glaringly tell you that nobody cares for the aesthetical composition of the street.

It is the rich of the world, who with their huge budgets for advertising are responsible for such ghastly act of taking pleasantness out of our cities. I for one will be very eagerly waiting to see a hoarding on top of one of their spacious high rise villas designed by probably one of the best imported architects of the world.

I always wondered if we needed huge amounts of money or technological knowhow or just simple willingness to provide for some of the basic amenities that make many other cities world over, truly world class. Just one look at any of the cities in the US or Europe, for that matter nearer home, Putrajaya City on the outskirts of KL, Malaysia, or Chinese Cities, we will learn that it is a matter of simple attitude. When will our planning and urban development bodies understand the real meaning of development? When will we, the citizens of our country, get some of the basic facilities? Secondly most of us are not even aware of what we should have and deserve, not only in terms of list of amenities but even the required or desired standards for it, in order to demand these from our system. I for one believe that everything has a demand and supply equation.

As the demand for more features and facility increases, the suppliers will make those things available and at a very affordable price. Isn’t this true in real estate sector? Compared to the demands two decade ago, look at the facilities that every developer is offering today. More aware and educated buyers are at the core of ever improving supply chain system.

And that is where the solution lies. We need initiatives that help people understand the need and importance to improved and aesthetically sensitive built environment through the collaboration of professionals, designers, leaders and local communities. It should strive to promote and encourage the best in contemporary urban planning and development and bring modern architecture, traditional craft and design closer to people. And with such initiatives, the day may not be far, when we will start rejecting a city the way we do our films or music albums if they are not good.

(Author is a practising architect based in Hyderabad and writes on design and architecture in India

Infrastructure has not kept pace with this development in the way we would want it. A two hour commute from Gurgaon to NOIDA or Goregaon to Churchgate are the classic examples. However there seems to be a sense of urgency that is now creeping up….maybe a decade too late, to get things in order. Case in point, the new airport terminals in Bangalore, Hyderabad and New Delhi all opening in the span of 12 months.

Gautam Bhatia, a very well know architect and writer talks about this event in his recent article in the Times of India and touches upon a very “touchy” topic. Why does India invite foreign architects, planners, and designers to conceptualize things for them. Where is the homegrown talent and the pride in the same.

His reasoning for the most part follows a very predictable arguement that has been tossed around for a few years. However from whatever I have gathered, there is a dearth of the technical expertise to somehow figure out the logistical and programming challenges that come with mega projects. And with the need to get them built as of yesterday; there is a very small margin of error for experimentation and a trial  error exercise.

It is only a matter of time, if not already in place; that Indian firms will have the expertise that they have picked up working side by side with these foreign firms to have the confidence to deal with megastructures and projects. Till then there is no shortcut out. Or at least one without risks.

Continue reading Gautam Bhatia’s article

Pride of India ?

By Gautam Bhatia / Times of India

When questioned about the cultural and technological stagnation that came with socialism, a bureaucrat in Nehru’s time once remarked that all the best work had already been done in the West, and we merely had to pick ideas for our own use. At a time when Indian inventiveness and productivity were state-controlled and highly suspect, borrowing made a lot of sense.

Sadly, even in today’s era of open economic borders, we still remain unconvinced that the Indian mind is capable of producing anything of real value. The new Terminal 3 at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International airport is cited as the eighth-largest in the world, and comes loaded with other enthralling statistics: a floor area of over six million square feet, the equivalent of 20 malls, 92 automatic walkways, 78 aerobridges and 168 check-in counters. In every respect, the building showcases all the high-tech skills of construction and automation, and all the customer satisfying conveniences that say that the building belongs to the new century.

Certainly, the successful completion of a large and complex structure like an airport is to be commended. But is the satisfaction of statistical demands the only way to go?

What makes London’s Heathrow airport a traveller’s nightmare is the unfortunate mile after mile of mind-numbing anonymity that goes with the experience of moving 40 million people annually. Jakarta airport may not be in the same league, but its thoughtful, extremely Indonesian layout provides precisely the opposite experience. You move past courtyards of plantations that induce a quiet intimacy and a background of such calm that the trials of long distance travel are subdued and annulled.

But Jakarta and London are specific to the identities of the two very different places. Unfortunately the grand design of infrastructure in India is still based on the bureaucrat’s belief that the best work has already happened in the West. Terminal 3, though built in Delhi, was designed by American architects, and managed by MGF, a Dubai-based construction consortium. It uses tempered glass, a steel frame, and aluminum cladding all shipped from abroad. However, as a concession to India, Indian labour was employed in its erection. World class it is, because it’s conceived and built by the world.

The various venues for the upcoming Commonwealth Games reveal a similar story. Peddle Thorp, an Australian architecture firm, has designed the indoor stadium for badminton and squash; the new, aquatic centre is the brainchild of a foreign company that specialises in water sports facilities; the refurbishment of Jawaharlal Nehru stadium, which now looks like a space ship, was carried out by the German engineering firm of Schlaich Bergermann and Partners. The food concessions at the Games Village are being handled by another Australian company. In almost all facilities, the foreign hand can be felt from conception to realisation, catering to management. Enthralled by the scale of the endeavours, the shine and sparkle of steel and glass, as Indians we have stood by proudly to watch from the sidelines.

Foreign technology and inventiveness on Indian soil is certainly not new, especially in a country that has had a long history of direct imitation and mimicry. In the 1970s, it was a matter of Punjabi pride that the world’s most successful innovations could be copied in Ludhiana. Grimy workshops filled with labour were kept busy producing German machine parts, American denim, and other sundry items picked up in European markets. Indian businessmen travelled abroad to European industrial fairs and American specialty stores merely to buy items that could be duplicated in India at a fifth of the cost. Today, things remain much the same, only the scale of the borrowing has changed; as an open society we need no longer secretly copy and produce, but invite the original inventors to participate in a global bid.

By comparison, the 1982 Asian Games were a wholly indigenous effort. Local architects and construction firms built modestly, with brick and plaster, whitewashing the buildings before the foreigners arrived. The athletes were garlanded at an airport where the fused tube lights were quickly changed and the staff instructed to smile and take fewer tea breaks. Everyone stayed at a games village constructed by the PWD and travelled around in a bus service quite similar to the ordinary commuter’s. By all counts, the city and its services put up an entirely Indian and reasonably successful show.

While many of the new projects for the Commonwealth Games airports, stadiums and metro stations provide sparkle to the ramshackle grime of the Indian city, they remain foreign implants, silent spaceships sent by self-absorbed cultures. Faced with situations and conditions that are uniquely Indian, none among the new buildings seek Indian resolutions. Designed neither for the unforgiving landscape nor the general misuse of public facilities expected in India, their long-term usefulness is suspect.

Hard-pressed though we are to find symbols of the new India, the new terminal, with its import of foreign designs, foreign materials and construction technology, does little to promote India and Indian ideas. If the prime minister is proud of the airport as the gateway to a new global India, as he said at its inauguration, he is only crediting the many international companies now working in the country, thanking them for making India appear more efficient, more competent, more capable…more, well, like everyone else.

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It is no secret that a lot of contemporary architecture in India is a recycled pastiche of western historical styles. Many feel that its a result of the Western colonization of India that ended only 60+ years ago. And brought about the strong undercurrent of Western influences.

Shruti Ravindran at Outlook India writes a very interesting article of how a lot of architecture today is a photocopy (“Xerox”) of buildings and monuments that are from another civilization in another part of the world and dont even belong in the previous millenium, leave alone century. She poses a very valid question today

“Why are we still emulating colonial structures? Where are our starchitects??”

Contextualism seems to be a “foreign” word to man

y architects who ape Greek and Roman architecture that even the Greeks and Romans of today dont follow. Some places would make Asterix and Obelix feel at home if they landed up in India today.

Kings of Xeroxia

By Shruti Ravindran / Outlook India [ link to article]

Critic’s View

• Greek architecture is an absurd reference for contemporary India Still, why Greek?
• This structure belongs in a filmset, not a place of learning
• Using an ancient kit of parts—a touch of the Parthenon here, a dab of Capitol Hill there—how is this a building for our times?
• Students will feel dwarfed here This is not sustainable and out of sync with Infosys’s character, based on the ideals of knowledge economy .

Counterpoint

• Mr Murthy wanted something that looked like the universities abroad
• Greek classical architecture lasted for centuries as will this institution
• The plaza, the crescent shape, the musical fountain: everything about the building shows the transformative power of education
• It’ll inculcate a sense of pride in them We have all the green gizmos. This building saves 60 per cent of energy as compared to others.

This September, two supposed marvels of institutional architecture were unveiled before the public. The first, in honour of the fast-approaching Commonwealth Games, was a Lutyens-style makeover—large white pillars and incongruous purple-black glass—for the Ajmeri Gate side of New Delhi railway station. The second was the spanking-new addition to the Infosys Mysore campus: the classical Greek architecture-inspired Global Education Centre-2 (GEC-2).

Inaugurated by a radiant, admiring Sonia Gandhi who said she wouldn’t mind “bunking party politics” to study there, it was hyperbolically proclaimed by Infosys chief mentor Narayana Murthy to be “the largest monolith classical building of post-independent India”. The GEC-2 might win the awe of its young executive trainees, and the New Delhi railway station the glancing attention (or dismay) of those hurrying through it, but these two buildings nevertheless throw up a few questions about the practice of institutional architecture in India.

Is imitating the architecture of the past—including colonial styles intended to intimidate and subjugate us—really the way to engage a contemporary public? Why does institutional architecture in India invariably entail ransacking the past and reducing it to a bunch of carefully traced out columns and pediments? Is it possible to adapt historic references to modern uses in a responsible, low-impact manner?

All is not bleak in our urban skyline. There is, for instance, Charles Correa’s marvellous use of open spaces.

Consider the public architecture around us: imposing colonial railway stations, universities, hospitals, and museums. Then, the newer additions darkening the horizon: no less imposing office complexes and malls—those temples of consumption that double as public squares. The past gave us bossily grandiose Indo-Saracenic colonial confections, pre-Independence cinema halls and hotels with Art Deco ornaments, and the boxy utilitarian sarkari bhawans of ’50s Delhi.

Then, there’s the internationally trained modernists who ‘made it new’ for us in the ’60s, giving us well-ventilated, geometric forms, free of the flourishes that expressed the ‘vanity of the ruling class’, as architect Achyut Kanvinde put it. But how do we characterise buildings that contemporary India has given us—the New Galactic, as seen in the futuristic glass-and-steel gated palaces of IT companies, or the Histrionic Historic, represented by towering malls with imperial facades slapped on to their faces, as well as the GEC-2 and the New Delhi railway station?

Or, in the same derivative spirit, the ethnic kitsch of Goa University and the Vikasa Soudha in Bangalore—a hotchpotch of styles that’s been dubbed ‘Indo-Dravidian’. These buildings have one thing in common, says architect and researcher Himanshu Burte, “These are institutions that aren’t interested in engaging the individual. This is just architecture as a marketing strategy. It’s less about the functions inside; more about the surface impact of image.” That’s why these monuments look best when they’re emptied of people. “Architects rush to photograph buildings before they’ve been occupied,” observes architect and critic Gautam Bhatia, “so they can have remote, timeless photographs with no life inside or outside them.”

Infosys’s timeless photo-op was dreamed up by Bombay-based architect Hafeez Contractor, often described as “India’s busiest architect” and the “enfant terrible” of his profession. Contractor is also behind Infosys’s fantastical facilities in other cities, from Bangalore and Pune to far-flung Hangzhou. The inspirations for these appear to be derived from spaceships, Gruyere cheese, origami, pyramids and giant eggs.

The other option for the station was worse, says duac’s Ravindran. “They wanted to copy-paste the Postdamer Platz.”

Contractor staunchly defends this shape-shifting. “Every one of those shapes and forms is for a purpose. The spaceship form (of the Pune Infosys building) was for a purpose; the classical Greek form for GEC-2 was for a purpose. That’s why you’re talking to me: because this purpose was successful.” The ‘purpose’ of the GEC-2, with its colonnades, and a relief as dominating as the Acropolis, is patently clear to Contractor. “When people see the crescent-shaped building, the large plaza in front, the musical fountain, we want them to feel that education can transform everything; that it’s the most important thing in the world.”

Burte, on the other hand, considers Contractor’s attention-grabbing oeuvre ‘the Bollywoodisation of architecture’. “Contractor treats architecture as if it’s a film,” says Burte. “Sometimes he makes a period piece, or a thriller, or a sci-fi film. It’s not a broader vision for society, just a very theatrical effect; entertainment.” And that underlines the way architecture is increasingly being viewed in corporate culture: as towering, lasting press releases, blotting out the sky.

The GEC-2, to Burte, is a missed opportunity for Infosys to provide a counterpoint to the wasteful, power-guzzling, glass-faced cut-rate copies of Singaporean skyscrapers that have now become synonymous with IT sector buildings. “This overblown rhetoric is a letdown considering what we know to be Infosys’s progressive work culture, and their emphasis on a knowledge economy,” says Burte. “A low-impact, climate-sensitive, energy-efficient, sensible building; a vision of sustainable corporate living and working, would be commensurate with the image we have of them.”

Ravindra Kumar is part of the Bangalore firm that designed previous Infosys campuses, and he had mixed feelings about the GEC-2 when he saw it. “So far as the quality of its construction, landscape, facilities and cuisine goes, I say ‘Hats off’ to NRM (Murthy)!” Kumar says. “But when you bring in an architectural style that’s not rooted to the land or its context, but taken out from a kit of ancient parts, it becomes a pastiche. A fascination with ornamentation doesn’t necessarily complement the sensibility of an institution.” This inordinate preference for ornamentation over utility is also why Delhi-based architect Abhimanyu Dalal is less than enamoured with the New Delhi railway station’s Lutyens-like facade.

“Why does a building that’s supposed to support modern train travel go back 50 years for inspiration? It’s not like we’re going to have horse-drawn carriages draw up to them. There’s a total disconnect between facade and function. I don’t think the architects who design this are thinking people.” It’s hard not to agree if you’ve had a look at the “revamping”: dust is already caking the purplish glass front of the station, which casts a melancholy bluish light on the waiting passengers dwarfed beneath the towering pillars—looks straight out of a film set. Buggy!:

The new New Delhi station facade The original, much-vaunted Rs 5,000 crore plan to turn the station into a “world-class” one proposed by two Hong Kong-based firms and an Indian one was far worse, says K.T. Ravindran, head of the Delhi Urban Arts Commission. “It was the Postdamer Platz (station in Berlin) plan copy-pasted on to the New Delhi railway station,” recalls Ravindran, somewhat incredulously. “It had astonishingly little relevance to our context. It was unsustainable, an insult to this country.” When four separate subcommittees rejected the plans, the railway ministry hastily devised a plan B: “facade improvement”.

Correa Chic: Salt Lake City Centre,

Calcutta All is not bleak in the Indian skyline. There are some instances of public architecture which are quite comfortably inhabited by the public and the Indian elements: Bimal Patel’s elegantly laid out extension to Louis Kahn’s masterful IIM-Ahmedabad; Charles Correa’s Salt Lake City Centre and its marvelous use of open spaces; Ashok B. Lall’s innovative, low-impact Delhi headquarters for the NGO Development Alternatives. Nubian fortress?:

The Khalsa Memorial Museum coming up in Anandpur Sahib For the most part, though, our inability to develop our own architectural languages inspired by fast-changing contemporary realities leave the field wide open for internationally renowned ‘starchitects’ to conjure up ambitious projects; future icons of contemporary India. The Swiss Herzog and de Meuron—of the Bird’s Nest Stadium fame—will unveil a no-less-spectacular Kolkata Museum of Modern Art (KMOMA) next year. Another dramatic project, the Khalsa Memorial Museum, is taking shape in Anandpur Sahib.

Its architect is Moshe Safdie—a former Louis Kahn student, known for his striking curved arrays of geometric patterns. When will we evolve our own ‘starchitects’ and icon-makers? “When we stop being imitative and become inventive,” says Bhatia. “Right now, we see ourselves as second-rate; our approach is just to play catch-up to other cultures—the Chinese, the Europeans, or Lutyens. It’s about time we followed our own instincts.” Click here to see the article in its standard web format

[Hat Tip: Mickie Sorabjee]

By Shilpa Raina for Thaindian.

He is the man who recreated the luxurious living experience of America’s Beverly Hills with the famous Aamby Valley project in Maharashtra. But Bobby Mukherji believes that post-independence Indian architecture has little to be proud of.

“We have shown people enough monuments and architecture from history, but what have we done after independence? Nothing! If you look around, we lure the West with monuments made in the Moghul era. After that it’s zilch,” Mukherji, who is in his 30s, told IANS.

“I would like to do something for today,” he said.

Perhaps he already has – by designing the master plan of Aamby Valley in Lonavala, Maharashtra, which is spread over 10,000 acres of land and offers all facets of luxury living. It took shape during 1998-2003.

“It was one of my most challenging assignments because the whole idea was to build a high-end residential area in a hilly and unexplored terrain. At that time we didn’t have Google earth to navigate, hence we had to take help from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to source satellite images,” said Mukherji in an interview.

“I still remember that we had to pay them Rs.40,000 for a picture and we took around eight pictures from them to finalise where to build houses, dams, lakes, etc.,” he added.

Based in Mumbai, he was in the capital on a business visit.

Mukherji started his design consultancy Bobby Mukherji and Associates (BMA) in 1993 and he has ever since been associated with many high-end luxury projects like Le Meridien hotel in Delhi and Lalit Group of hotels.

Talking about the Indian architecture industry, Mukherji said the scene is very “sad”.

“Unfortunately, the scene is very sad and one can blame the education system because the design courses that are offered in the country are not at all up to the mark. Also, they are very expensive courses and not everyone can afford it,” elaborates Mukherji who passed out of the Academy College of Architecture, Mumbai.

“To compete with international standards, one has to go out and explore. You can’t just make designs unless you have seen some great work. And the problem is that we don’t have such great work that would inspire young people to excel. We still have a long way to go,” he added.

Mukherji who has been in this business for over 15 years reveals that international architects still hold monopoly in the Indian market when it comes to major projects in the hotel industry.

“Today around 90 percent of big infrastructure projects are done by foreign architects because when someone is investing millions in a project, they want to get the returns as well. If the design aspect of their project is poor, they face losses. This has happened in the past; hence companies stay away from Indian architects,” Mukherji explained.

“These architects are mainly from Singapore, London, Los Angeles, New York. Even though it costs like crazy to communicate and coordinate with them as they are sitting miles away, for a major project you can’t take a chance,” he said.

Mukherji also emphasised that a client has to have trust in an architect’s work and design aesthetics.

“There are times when I give crazy ideas to my clients and they are skeptical about it. But they trust me blindly and when they see the final product, they are happy. Today I am here because my clients trusted me and gave me the freedom to experiment,” he said.

“They understood the designer’s language and that is what helps in building world-class projects,” he added.

I slipped forward along with the seat, when the car braked. Then I adjusted myself, pushed the seat back in place and sat into an upright position, until the brakes were pressed again. By the end of the journey, I had a vague sense of my backbone and lower back becoming a single unit. The pain that followed left me with no sense of either in place.

Continue reading at Designology