In that respect, the new move by the Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority raises a few issues.

Architects, engineers and developers have strongly opposed the decision of the Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority (AUDA) making it compulsory to renew their registration and licences every year for projects within its limit.

According to them, the fiat issued this week is highly unwarranted and would not serve any purpose other than causing harassment and inconvenience to over 4,000 engineers and hundreds of builders, real estate developers.

Senior architect Pravin Patel said that forcing for renewal of registration and licenses amounts to harassment because one would have to rush to AUDA every nine or 12 months.

He said all the architects having passed out from engineering and architecture colleges were registered with the Council of Architecture, a Central government body with legal status, and hence, there was no need for another registration with the urban bodies or corporations. “Do physicians or surgeons renew their licenses every year? Then why engineers and architects are being treated like this?”  [ link to article ]

This is a pretty dumb move on many levels. This just increases bureaucracy and creates more instances where bribes can be extracted because someone forgot to renew their license in time.

However there is a a larger issue that remains unanswered. Should architects renew their license with the COA periodically? And what about continuing education, professional development and knowledge upgrade? Unlike many other countries, India has an architect for life license scenario. Just keep on paying fees and you will be an architect till you die. There is no onus for the professional to update their knowledge, revamp their skill set and keep abreast of new technology etc.

In the US, architects need to take a certain number of Continuing Education Units (CEU’s) and document that process and submit it to their licensing body. This is in no way a fool proof system, however this forces all architects to take their continuing education seriously and in an idealized scenario is completely beneficial to the profession and society in general.

This is something that the Council of Architecture needs to consider in the coming years. The floodgates to educational institutions opened in 1992 and the first set of graduating students from those schools have already been out of college for more than a decade. Time to update skills ? I say yes.

Rahul Bhatia at Open Magazine tries to bring the persona of Hafeez to life. This is a perspective of a non-architect looking at what an architect is doing to the urban fabric of the city we stay in and we all love.

Bhatia creates a fine balance in trying to bring out the issues without getting into any of the bias that clouds most architectural arguements concering Hafeez. And daresay I even agree with Hafeez on this one point

Hafeez believes the only reason people object to taller buildings is that builders lobby for permissions to build them, which means someone, somewhere, is making a lot of money. “Can you believe that?” he exclaims. He wants Mumbai to be taller so that there’s room for its inhabitants.

Hafeez Contractor is India’s starchitect, whether architects like it or not. It. At this stage in his professional career Hafeez could do a lot more to improve the overall urban quality of the cities he practises in. His clout with the developer, politician and his understanding of architecture and design should allow him to push a better agenda for our cities. Exploiting loopholes in the law is not one of them.

Rahul Bhatia / Open Magazine.

Deconstructing Hafeez Contractor

In Hafeez Contractor’s factory, hundreds of architects and draftsmen sit elbow to elbow to churn out buildings. From morning to night, their sole purpose is to draft and design the innumerable rough sketches that originate from Hafeez, who has a good view of the office exit. As a result, employees do not attempt to leave before dinner. When a project is over they immediately begin work on the next. There are no milestones, only more buildings to make. People here do not linger. They have been taught to respect time. The act of endless production has stripped them of most ideologies, bar one: the client’s happiness comes above all else. Here, the architect is as the dictionary defines him: a person who designs buildings. This is not about form follows function, or less is more, or envisioning habitats. The factory’s patrons know the worth of a buck, and they do not care much for architecture as art. Which is why they come here. They like their costs minimised, and design amplified.

Contractor’s employees work towards this end, honoured to be a part of his assembly line. Whatever other architects think of Hafeez (“Worthless”, “Over-rated”), his workers believe he’s a genius. “Why do people hate me?” Hafeez Contractor asked his cousin, the architect Tehmasp Khareghat, one day. Khareghat, who had once convinced a young Hafeez that his future lay in architecture, replied that he wasn’t hated, just misunderstood. But the misunderstanding is a deep, divisive one. Called a mouthpiece for the builder lobby, accused of being a media manipulator, Hafeez’s ideas for a taller Mumbai are ridiculed, and his buildings are deemed ugly. He is viewed as an unfortunate freak by many in his profession, as well as by conservationists. This is because his allegiance is to the builders, and the popular perception is that he ignores the principles more discerning architects abide by. This perception gets him shouted down at lectures and public presentations, though he does himself no favours by letting his mouth run ahead of him, like he did when he called mangroves ghaas-phoos at a discussion where environmentalists and conservationists were present. To the naked eye, Hafeez’s dominant contribution to the Mumbai skyline is rooftop domes, and a mish-mash of elements derived from Greek and Roman architecture. A noted professor calls the style “deconstructivism and neo-modernism—there is no deeper connection to anything”. Asked to describe the development that first turned the spotlight on him in 1986-87, Lake Castle at Hiranandani Garden in Powai, architects opined that it was unspeakably horrible.

Adjectives like these have followed him since, and serious discussions that invoke him usually turn to aesthetic and moral objections. A former associate from Hafeez’s firm recalled watching students drown out his presentation at JJ School of Architecture a year ago as they objected to his plan to create a belt of greenery and skyscrapers around the city. “That was the first time I saw him feel bad,” says Santosh Wadekar, who worked with Hafeez for a decade before starting an interior design firm. “He didn’t say anything for a while, but you could tell he was shaken.” They returned to their office, where he seemed to forget the day’s events under a deluge of work.

Before Hafeez, architects usually worked on government projects, and residential buildings were built mostly by people without imagination. It resulted in a dour landscape with a depressingly bland skyline. His arrival changed how people saw the profession. Architecture had critically-acclaimed professionals, but in Hafeez it found a man of the people. “When Hafeez came into the picture, he looked at buildings from head to toe,” says Harshad Bhatia, an architect. “He tries to do something that makes it distinct. He thinks about adding value to skyscrapers. No one else treated their buildings like this. It’s a testament to him that we’re even talking about the skyline right now.” He made people look up.

At its heart, the issue regarding Hafeez Contractor goes beyond architecture. He is guided by the principles of free markets. He does not like restrictions nor does he impose restrictions on others. For him, his supporters say, every client is of value. He has turned down only two clients in nearly three decades—decisions he says he regrets (he refused because those projects were planned close to the sites he was working on, and would have led to a conflict of interest). The debate over Contractor can be condensed to this: is his work art? Some have made their peace with him, but many others (“The retired people,” he calls them) find him distasteful. “I feel senior members of the profession felt antagonised. He loves doing things quickly, while others would tell him not to take more,” says Bhatia.

Architects used to come with a standard understanding of rules and regulations, and gave their clients no options. “But he looked at things from the view of design economy as well as the market economy,” Bhatia says. “He told builders that if they added extra floors it would cost a little more, but their returns would be substantially higher. He sold them the idea of penthouses.”

Soon after Hafeez joined his cousin Khareghat’s small practice to learn the ropes, he asked Khareghat why he didn’t expand. He was better than the others, the teenage Hafeez insisted, so why didn’t he market himself better? Khareghat had a life outside architecture, and he says that he worked “for his own satisfaction, not the client’s”. He would leave at six, while Hafeez stayed on to draft projects until midnight. After his formal education was complete, Hafeez returned to his cousin’s practice, where projects moved disconcertingly slowly.

Also, he found Khareghat’s resistance to client suggestions baffling. “A client would tell him what she wanted,” he recalls. “But he would tell her she was not looking at the inside flow. Then there was a wife-husband client who we designed a bungalow for very enthusiastically. But she wasn’t happy. She liked pitched roofs, she liked Spanish villas. But we didn’t do it for her.” Khareghat didn’t believe an architect could design a Spanish villa in Maharashtra in the late seventies. After a few unsatisfactory meetings, the couple vanished.

“That hurt me,” Contractor says. He left to start his own practice. By now, his belief that architectural philosophy was futile hardened. The rules students were judged by were of little use outside. “I felt ‘why should we practise architecture the way it is taught, when those you are practising it for don’t want you to practise it that way?’” he says. “If a man wants something, if he has something in mind, why do you want to give him something else and lump it? A lot of times, architects force their will and views on others. All that happens is you get unsatisfied customers.” Every client deserved to derive satisfaction.

Among his first clients were the Hiranandanis, whose township in Powai (a suburb of Mumbai) is critically despised for its design but admired for the sense of community. “The thought for that first building came from wanting to construct something cheaper, and also wanting to create an environment so that people felt at home. We looked at Gothic arches and looked at palaces. Nobody had done this 18-20 storeys high. I knew that if we mastered it, people would love it,” Hafeez says. “But just because I did it for a builder, nobody (read: his peers) bought it.” (Asked about the rationale behind importing Roman and Greek elements, he said, “The world is connected in every way now. We drive Japanese cars.”) With today’s emphasis on client experience, Hafeez’s approach seems sensible. But at the time, it was completely unheard of. Architects who worked primarily on official patronage looked down upon most private developers. “All the great dons would not even touch builders,” Hafeez says.

The eighties were witnessing the rise of private developers, and he was there to catch the wave. Anybody with land came to him, and he was, by all accounts, an equal opportunity service provider. A Marwari client came to him one day, he says, with an aim to make 800 square foot flats. He had the measurements down pat. When Hafeez added them up, he saw that the client’s numbers fell short. “Kirti, how does this add up?” Kirti replied, “Boss, that’s why I came to you.” Even if he thought a request couldn’t be done, he didn’t tell the client. “Usually there was an answer.” Clients came in droves, and he said yes to everything. More spectacular, and contentious, was his method to design. They sat across a table in his office, telling him what they wanted. As they talked, he formulated the design mentally. By the time they were done talking, he asked an assistant to hand him a sheet of paper and a sketch pen. In minutes, he would have an external design ready, and this would be passed down to draftsmen. He understood the builders’ language perfectly. The ultimate buyers were people emerging from the stasis of socialist India, and the building had to be about aspiration. Of course, the builder had to maximise value too. So came the domes—which also served the purpose of covering rooftop water tanks—and fancy exteriors with a post-modern touch. The insides suffered, but this did not affect demand for the apartments. Their purpose had been fulfilled; it didn’t matter how uncomfortable the interior was, as long as the building looked great from outside. This was anathema to other architects, who selected their projects with consideration and deliberated on every space.

In an essay about contemporary architecture, a passage by Himanshu Burte about a certain kind of modern architect seems written keeping Hafeez in mind. ‘The approach of the architect to the surface of the building is similar to that of advertisers and marketing strategists. The objective is not just a beautiful surface, but a surface made saleable in a beautiful manner. Thus, the surface of a typical building is packed with a jumble of various elements borrowed from the popular imagination, for their association with exclusivity and opulence. The aspirational aspects of these images or elements (almost always of a Western pedigree) are startlingly similar to those in advertising campaigns for a consumer product… The development throws up the issue of the role of architects and architecture in society. On examination, it becomes obvious that the architect of this persona is working only as a member of the marketing team. That too, as a glorified packaging artist. This kind of service industry conception of architecture is limiting and socially irresponsible.’ (An aside: Khareghat has for long maintained that all architects are product designers.)

When Contractor cast out the thinking that academia encouraged, it was only natural the universities would fight back. Teachers used models of his work to show students how not to practise architecture. Particular colleges became bastions of an anti-Hafeez language and reaffirmed more traditional approaches to architecture. And yet, as Hafeez puts it, through it all, “half the students in college wanted to join me”. Not exactly half, but a large enough number. Prashant Chauhan, a product of Rizvi, was one. “For the first 2-3 weeks, I could not understand the volume of work,” he says. Other newbies reported feeling similarly disoriented. His dean, Professor Akhtar Chauhan, was puzzled by Prashant’s choice. But it made sense to the acolyte. He had heard of the factory, and it was so different from the world he lived in as a student that he had to experience it. He was given a space five metres away from Hafeez. “It’s a factory, and all ideas come from him. You do so much work that you start thinking like him.”

Wadekar, a product of the JJ architecture programme, got grief from his classmates when he told them that Hafeez had taken him on. “Thinking along his lines was a sin,” Wadekar says, “But I was never one of those guys who used to daydream about this or that. I just wanted to do. He’s very practical. There’s really no room for sentiment. In college, we are taught that form follows function, but this is not to context. Everybody did form follows function. What he did was something else. He did cityscaping.”

Cityscaping is not the term conservationists use to describe Hafeez’s work. They oppose a large number of his ideas as harmful, if not disastrous, to the city. One of them hinted that he laughed evilly as he planned to remove a century-old staircase for renovations on a heritage structure. His proposal to reclaim 500 m on either side of Mumbai for a continuous strip of parkland, a ring road, and a line of skyscrapers facing the sea was derided. “I’m not sure that’s the solution Mumbai needs,” says Mustansir Dalvi, a professor at JJ School of Architecture. Contractor says that at the time, he was invited to Bandra’s Bandstand promenade to present his plan, and felt humiliated when his talk was cut short. “I realised they had planned this… From then, I decided only to talk if I was invited to schools.”

Over the years, the heritage committee and Hafeez have met often. One of those instances was over the small matter of Buckley Court. Described as a seedy hotel, Buckley Court was, nonetheless, a heritage building, which meant builders needed approval from a committee before they touched it. The builders wanted to construct floors over the bungalow, a move that would have destroyed the aesthetic appearance of the building. A way out was found—the new floors would be placed over a 60-80 ft gaping arch that left the hotel seemingly untouched. “He sold the idea to the other members by telling them how the old structure had influenced the new design,” says Bhatia, who was also on the committee. “Despite me lodging a protest, they bought it. Now they agree that was a mistake.” What would have been a small building turned into a skyscraper that stuck out among the shorter structures in Colaba.

Hafeez believes the only reason people object to taller buildings is that builders lobby for permissions to build them, which means someone, somewhere, is making a lot of money. “Can you believe that?” he exclaims. He wants Mumbai to be taller so that there’s room for its inhabitants. “Do you know what age I was when I got married? I was 42. I got married at that age because that was when I could finally buy this house. If I wanted to be with somebody, we had nowhere to go. A lot of these guys who protest haven’t struggled. They live in South Bombay and don’t want things to change.” He thumps his chest. “I know what it’s like. I know what it takes to buy a home.” This is more than an act. Soon after I mentioned how beautiful his neighbourhood, Parsi Colony, looked, he said, “You think it looks good now, but ask the old Parsi lady who lives on the ground floor what it was like. She’ll say it was much better earlier. This place used to be a field. But things change. I’ll tell you something. Near my house, there’s a tall building. Before it was constructed, my wife came to me with a petition she wanted me to sign. When I asked her what it was for, she said it was to protest that the building would block our ventilation and light. I told her, ‘you married me?’”

Thursday’s first session was an introduction to the theme. Kazi Ashraf gave an overview of the current state of Indian architecture which was basically paraphrasing his article for the “Made In India” AD Issue of 2007. In showing a lot of proposals for projects he tried to cover ground about the typologies of emergent Indian architecture. However as Rahul Mehrotra pointed out later in the conference, most of them were just proposals and never ever left the drawing board. And sadly this would be a constant criticism of the conference over the next two days. More of that later in the article.

Some of the outstanding presentations were:

Ahmedabada-based Rajeev Kathpalia of Vastu Shilpa Foundation gave an overview of some of his latest work and the IMAX project for Ahmedabad stood out for its clarity of thought, site and function response and spatial organisation.

Another Ahmedabad based practise, that of Gurjeet Singh Matharoo gave a wonderful overview of the various materials they work with. A comparative analysis of the embodied energies of Concrete, Steel, Wood, and Earth showed how each material embodies and transforms energy. And then Gurjeet went on to turn his entire analysis over its head and showed 4 projects that did everything contrary to his analysis. Most people did not get the sarcasm which was a compliment to the straight-faced Gurpreet. The projects shown…especially the "House with Balls" and the Crematorium were really well thought of and executed.  By far the most impressive of all the presentations over the duration of the conference, in terms of content and clarity.

Bombay-based Rahul Mehrotra was his usual eloquent self and plowed straight into the issues that his practise deals with. He gave an overview of some of the conservation/preservation work that the practise deals with and then showed some of their recent projects. Notable amongst them were the TISS Rural campus and the House for an Actor in Alibag, and the Orchard house. Rahul presentation also brought forward the point about how presentations can be so intense and inspiring when the speaker has total control and command over his subject matter. Right through the conference and especially during the panel discussions Rahul brought forth a deep understanding of the non-architectural issues to the process of architecture. Be it the politics of SEZ licenses, or the issues of developers as majority clients in India or the reasons for US firms filling the lack of technical know how of Indian practises, when it comes to large scale projects.

Bangalore based Prem Chandavarkar of Chandavarkar n Thacker Architects presented the direction his firm set out on 4 years ago. In a series of questions they posed to themselves four years ago, the practise has tried to find answers to these questions through the work they do. Their Flower Auction House project was really inspiring as was the Valuelabs Software office that was built under the constraints of Vastu and turns out to be a wonderful inside-out building with public and private spaces interwoven. Prem through his presentation and later panel discussions showed a deep understanding of the theory of art and architecture and that was evident in all his work. What was also remarkable was his use of quotes to illustrate his points so succinctly.

Berlin and Auroville based Anupama Kundoo showed a series of projects that she has completed over the years that have dealt with the use of material and the issues of sustainability, way before it became a buzzword. Her use of bamboo, recycled glass and earthernware pots was completely refreshing in approach to design and as built work. Anupama spoke with a passion that comes from having lived in Auroville for years in dwellings that she then builds. Hence her practical know-how of materials and how they function in a built environment made her a true proponent of the sustainability movement in all its manifestations: environmental, economic and social.  One of her most poignant statements was "The essence of the pot is in its nothingness"….something that stuck to my mind the minute she said it.

New York based Tod Williams and Billie Tsien showed the right way that "starchitects" can bring their design talent and expertise to India. Their Banyan Tree project for the Tatas in the western suburbs of Bombay, showed a deep understanding of the ground realities and the sensibilites that are needed to design in a foreign culture. They spoke about the challenges of being foreign architects and hence having to prove more than their Indian counterparts, the "Indian-ness" of their design. Their insistence on understanding the skills and capabilities of the Indian craftsmen and their use of visual mockups before getting into construction, allowed them to sort out a lot of the issues that mar a project as it leaves the drawing board and touches the ground.

Philadelphia based landscape architects Dilip da Cunha and Anuradha Mathur gave a peek at their upcoming exhibition SOAK at the NGMA in Mumbai. They studied and analysed water bodies in and around Mumbai, especially the ecosystem that supports the Mithi River and the surrounding areas near the original 5 forts of Bombay. Through a rigorous design exercise they evolve a series of guidelines for the urban ecology and landscape in Mumbai. The exhibition starts in mid June and is a must-see.

Other notable presentations included the Shillom Spa resort in the Western Ghats by Margie Ruddick and Tom Zook. And a series of projects by Nisha Mathew and Soumitra Ghosh from Bangalore.

The structure and the pairing of speakers in the conference was not as seamless as one would expect. Also the co-chairs wasted too much time in introducing the same participants again and again.

Friday’s session started with an introduction by Brian McGrath who was completely off topic and his use of maps to illustrate some points was vague and ambigious. As was his need for self-publicity at each and every opportunity. In trying to sound too scholarly and academic he completely lost the plot and thankfully the presenters after him saved the day with their presentations and work.

A question that I posed to the co-chairs concluded the conference. The issue I raised had to do with the choice of the participants in the conference. All of the speakers showed great work and are fantastic proponents of their talent and craft. Sadly, however that was but a miniscule of the architecture of India in the past decade. The architecture that has come up in the past few years has been the developer driven, high-rise architecture that has built entire cities like Gurgaon, or enclaves like the Bandra Kurla Complex, or gated communities like the IT Parks outside of Bangalore. No one except Sudhir Jambhekar of FXFowle addressed such projects. It was in hindsight really nice of Sudhir Jambhekar to go out on a limb and present the 300 m tower proposed for South Bombay.

And thank god he did it. It made the entire "emerging" arguement a bit skewed in the typology of projects discussed. Sudhir did get some flak for the project and very professionally addressed all concerns of the audience and the panel. However one heartily wished for a Hafeez Contractor or the likes to present some of their work and discuss some of the challenges they would have faced. More insight into the developer-architect nexus would have made the conference a bit more worthwhile.

Asking the selected presenters to speak to the audience present was like preaching to the choir.

Hopefully the organisers will, in the future be more open to not pandering to just the "published" names in architecture, but scratch beneath the surface and bring about a more diverse array of presenters for a more meaningful and intense debate of the issues.

All in all, a wonderful two days spent. Hope that the next conference of such kind is not 12 years away, as was the case with the current one….following the previous edition in 1997.

The booming economy and the burgeoning middle class has prompted developers to bring in foreign architects with foreign fees to design everything from airports to residential and office towers and bungalows and resorts.

Foreign architects bring in the tried and tested processes and function precision to bring about a complete turnaround in the way projects are designed and built. They pair up with Indian firms who have the expertise on the ground to get things done and built.

Foreign architects for the most part are bringing in foreign solutions and design principles which may not all work in India, but the public does not think a second before lapping it all up. We are literally bringing New York, Chicago, Tokyo or Shanghai to Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta, Madras and countless other towns and cities.

Only time will tell if this is successful in the long term. India is not the only place in the world where this is happening. China is way ahead of us in transplanting urban fabric from the West into their cities.

The TOI has an interesting article about the whole phenomenon of foreign architects coming to India.

Time was when there was only the occasional eruption of concrete. Today, India’s skyline is a work in progress. But while the towering new skyscrapers, sprawling IT parks, glitzy airports and swanky townships reflect desi aspirations, the blueprint, more often than not, is foreign.

Be it a slum redevelopment project in congested Mumbai or Kolkata’s new museum of modern art, the global imprint on the country’s fast-changing urban landscape is evident. Made in India but designed by a clutch of foreign architects looking to cash in on the country’s real estate boom. For Edinburgh-based RMJM, the company behind the distinctive Scottish Parliament, a foray into India four years ago has translated into business of £1 billion. That, the company says, is unprecedented for a UK architecture firm doing business in India. “There’s a cue here for UK business — we need to be in India in a very big way,” says RMJM CEO Peter Morrison. RMJM, which currently has 38 projects under way in India, is now looking to establish a permanent base in Mumbai.

Many others have taken the cue. Celebrated British architect Lord Norman Foster, who shaped London’s skyline with buildings such as the Gherkin and designed the Reichstag in Berlin, has entered India in a tie-up with a Mumbai real estate firm, the Neptune group. Other big UK names in India are Laing O’Rourke, Davis Langdon and Mott MacDonald. Not just UK, firms from Canada (Arcop) to Australia (Omiros One) have designs on India.

But does India really need foreign architects or is it just about getting a brand on the brochure? Most builders agree it’s as much about star power as it is about international quality. After all, well-heeled buyers respond to designers with international reputations as much as they respond to a luxury label like Gucci or Prada. “When people purchase an expensive apartment, a famous architect is extra validation they’re making a good choice,” says Kunal Banerji of Ansal API which signed up US firm Chelsea West to design Manhattan-style condos at its Aquapolis project in Ghaziabad.

The Mahindra group’s real estate arm Mahindra Lifespaces, which has roped in US-based architect and design firm HOK (of Dubai marina fame), says their reasons go much beyond the brand. “The selection of an international architect or planner is driven by the unique needs of the project. For instance, the 325-acre Mahindra World City project is one of the largest such developments under implementation and to that extent the width and depth of on-ground implementation experience is currently available only with international firms who have conceived and implemented such projects in different parts of the world,” says Anita Arjundas, COO of Mahindra Lifespaces.

Size does matter and with Indian developers going beyond stand-alone commercial blocks and residences to converting huge swathes of land into townships and IT parks, a ‘foreign hand’ does come in handy. “Foreign firms can visualise and handle massive scale. Also, their designs are very innovative. They create landmarks and not just buildings,” says Shantanu Malik, DGM-Architect, Unitech Ltd.

It’s a win-win for Indian architects as well. “Working with foreign firms gives us exposure to international standards. There is a lot to learn from their use of detailing and modern materials,” adds Malik.

Unitech often hires multiple design firms for a single project. For instance, it has 10 global architecture and design consultants for the $3 billion Unitech Grande, a super-luxury residential complex spread over 347 acres along the Noida expressway. This project draws on the expertise of US-based mall designer Callison, landscape artists SWA and EDAW, Britain’s RMJM for architecture and interiors and HOK for floor plans, besides a course designed by Australian golfer Greg Norman.

With so much demand, it isn’t surprising that Mark Igou, director in the US architectural firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill Llp (SOM), has been shuttling between New York and India over the last three years. “I spend more than three months a year in India, familiarising myself with the ground situation.” And ground reality is what SOM — the firm which has designed the Burj Dubai, which will be the world’s tallest skyscraper when it is finished in 2009 — is faced with in Mumbai where it is designing homes for slum dwellers in Mumbai’s Santa Cruz as part of a masterplan for Unitech. “It’s a unique design challenge — recreating the same sense of community that exists in their current housing so that people don’t want to return to the slums they left,” says Igou. SOM is also using the services of sociologists and cultural anthropologists to get a sense of the social and cultural aspects of the lives of those being rehabilitated.

Whether it’s slum housing or a swanky township, India is essential to the design inputs. “Education and social interaction are both important to Indians so our designs will reflect these needs. So residential units would have schools nearby and public spaces for people to interact,” he says. Besides projects like the Jet Airways headquarters in Mumbai, SOM is also working in Tier-II cities like Ahmedabad and Nagpur.

Be it the Indian ethos or the vagaries of its climate, Uruguayan architect Carlos Ott keeps it in mind when he is on the drawing board. Ott, who has designed a technopark for Tata Consultancy Services at Siruseri, Chennai, in association with countryman Carlos Ponce de Leon, says, “I am constantly studying the history and traditions of India, hoping to integrate some of its characteristics in my buildings. And though my work is definitely contemporary, the clues from the past are integrated in a modern vocabulary.”

Ott is building on the work that earlier foreign architects have done in India. Apart from Lutyens and Le Corbusier, several other international architects have showcased their designs in India. Ahmedabad’s Indian Institute of Management reflects Louis Kahn’s trademark style of veering towards monolithic masses resembling ancient ruins. Christopher Charles Benninger designed the Mahindra United World College of India, near Pune. British-born Laurie Baker planned the Fishermen’s Village in Poonthura in Kerala, while American Joseph Stein gave shape to Delhi’s India International Centre.

Now, a new generation of foreign architects has designs on India. And their glittering computer-generated images look set to redefine the country’s skyline.

Original article

However, comparing India’s so called building activity on par with China, is by far a long shot. Business Week does exactly that in this article. Reena Jana, the author of the article is based in New York and remote-writing is very evident in the article.

I also don’t understand why Business Week would not get an architectural critic to write an article on architecture. I don’t think Reena Jana is an architect, and if she is, it does not show in her writing.

She says

While its glassy, futuristic design might evoke corporate buildings in Silicon Valley, the campus also features an Indian touch: a cricket pitch.

What she is actually referring to is curtain wall buildings. Now even in Silicon Valley, most curtain wall buildings are considered energy guzzlers. And that is when the buildings need heating half the year. Can you imagine what happens when you put these same glass boxes in hot humid climates like those of New Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore et al.

She does identify one of the major underlying problems that face foreign firms that design in cultures that are ancient

such as SOM’s Jin Mao tower in Shanghai, completed in 1999 and known for its pagoda-like details, as an earlier example of too-obvious, recognizably “Asian” architecture.

I have not had an opportunity to see detailed drawings or renderings of the said design…

Williams and Tsien’s jali is more angular and contemporary and less florid than screens of the past. But it serves as a nod to Indian architectural history as well as providing an eco-friendly way to keep offices cool using natural shade and ventilation.

But I don’t know how the author can say that it serves as a not to Indian architectural history.

All along we were taught about the various elements of Indian design. Be it the pergola, the jali, the courtyard, the chhaja….and so on. In the earlier years in school, one had to have at least some of these in their design to make it look “cool” and authentically Indian.

The author reflects to that same syndrome. However as one matures as an architect, you realize that all these are mere devices that were architectural responses to conditions….climatic, social and others.

Indian architecture is not just that. Sadly, besides a few Indian architects, most are blindly aping the west. The band leader of the latter is none other than Hafeez Contractor.

In a recent interview that he gave to a very good friend Rahul Bhatia, Contractor was asked

“When you look across the Mumbai skyline, there’s a kind of sameness, nothing that catches the eye.”

and his response was

“When you have a residential building, it consists of a living room, bedroom, hall, and kitchen. It’s only when you have something different, like a museum, or a hotel, that things are different.”

I am baffled by such comments. What he is trying to imply is that residential buildings all look the same. How wrong can he be. Residential buildings the world over offer an amazing variety of design. He does not even have to look so far. Kanchenjunga, at Kemps Corner is one of the best examples of residential high rises. Sadly not one of the hundreds of Hafeez buildings can even aspire to come close to that.

Coming back to the article. I disagree strongly with the whole premise of the article. China brought in a lot of international architects and that has brought about an architectural renaissance. We in India need more of the same.

Gurcharan Das in a recent article wrote about how it was time for Indian business to bring in some international names to spice things up. I completely attest to that hypothesis. Its not that the Indian architects are not good. Its that there are too few of the good ones. And the people with the money, do not have the larger vision and land up going to the not so good ones. And we live in the same average architectural standard that has come to be our urban landscape.

If you look at the slide show that accompanies the article, you will realize the same. Most of the renderings look like design projects of third year B. Arch students. Not even final year. And to think that these are renderings that clients commit so much of their money to.

Sadly, India still lacks the big push towards better architecture. And from the contents of the article, may I add, that it lacks architectural writers and critics too.

Read the article after the fold.

India’s Modern Architectural Wonders

The country’s forthcoming wave of slick contemporary architecture is a potent symbol of its rocketing economy

The latest available statistics from the World Bank indicate that India’s gross domestic product has seen annual growth of 8.5%–more than doubling the 4% of 2000. Reflecting this growth and the country’s increasing presence on the international stage as an IT and economic powerhouse, the nation’s leading companies, including Wipro (WIT ), Infosys (INFY ), and Tata Consultancy Services are constructing new corporate campuses.

Similar to China’s architectural boom (see BusinessWeek.com, 12/23/2005, “China’s New Architectural Wonders”)”, India’s forthcoming wave of slick contemporary architecture, even beyond offices, symbolizes the Asian nation’s rocketing economy, which first began to open up 15 years ago. Via a series of superlative skyscrapers, shopping centers, and residences that are the tallest, the largest, the “greenest,” or the first of their kind, the country is quickly presenting itself as a 21st century global power.

In 2005, for example, Infosys Technologies opened its $65.4 million Global Education Center in Mysore. Located on a 270-acre, $119 million campus, the facility is the largest IT training center in the world, accommodating 4,500 trainees at any given time and hosting up to 15,000 per year. The center is being expanded to handle double the number of employees. While its glassy, futuristic design might evoke corporate buildings in Silicon Valley, the campus also features an Indian touch: a cricket pitch.

A MODERN TOUCH. Software, engineering, and management-consulting giant Wipro commissioned Indian architect Vidur Bhardwaj to design an office in Gurgaon based on the traditional structure, the haveli (a house built around an open-air courtyard). Meanwhile, Tata Consultancy Services, a division of mega-conglomerate Tata Group, will soon see a sprawling, $200 million campus in Chennai designed by noted Uruguayan architect Carlos Ott (a nod to Tata’s expansion into Latin America).

Buildings will feature a step-like structure recalling those found in centuries-old South Indian temples–only these are rendered in ultra-contemporary glass. It’s scheduled to be completed next year and will boast the tallest tower in Southern India.

“By proposing to build their offices referencing Indian architectural design in this age of globalization, Indian companies are sending several messages,” observes Islamabad (Pakistan)-based Saeed Shafqat, who teaches courses on South Asia at Columbia University’s School of International & Public Affairs, in an e-mail interview.

“They’re saying India has a heritage that is coming of age. And that Indians are taking genuine pride in their history, culture, and architectural contributions even in the modern era,” Shafqat continues. “Finally, they are saying that Indian multinationals are a force to be reckoned with. [The new architecture] suggests economic self-confidence and strong national identity.”

PROCEEDING WITH CARE. But some experts believe architects and corporations should proceed with caution when planning structures with obvious Indian references. Plans for brand-building via recognizably Indian design motifs could seem simplistic or theme-park-like in their approach.

“Culturally specific motif application is not new. To some extent, it is an easy way to refer to the notion of cultural context,” observes Vishakha Desai, President of the Asia Society, the nonprofit organization founded 50 years ago by John D. Rockefeller III to foster deeper understanding between Asian nations and the U.S.

She points to structures such as SOM’s Jin Mao tower in Shanghai, completed in 1999 and known for its pagoda-like details, as an earlier example of too-obvious, recognizably “Asian” architecture.

MOVING BEYOND MOTIFS. “The real challenge for contemporary Indian architects is to understand the historical principles of Indian architecture and design, as well as the specific materials used traditionally and appropriately in the climate,” says Desai, who holds a doctorate in Indian art history. “They need to think beyond the quick, knee-jerk reaction of simply adding an ‘Indian’ motif.”

Some architects commissioned to design projects to be completed within the next 10 years are doing exactly what Desai suggests. New York architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, for example, have designed a new Bombay campus for Tata Consultancy Services (to be completed by 2010) that incorporates elements such as a jali, a traditional carved screen used for centuries as both sunshade and ventilated wall.

Williams and Tsien’s jali is more angular and contemporary and less florid than screens of the past. But it serves as a nod to Indian architectural history as well as providing an eco-friendly way to keep offices cool using natural shade and ventilation.

Sustainability is now a real consideration within Indian architecture. The country, which is highly dependent on coal for energy, is widely known to be one of the world’s most polluted.

A study published in June, 2006, by the Community Environmental Monitors (CEM), an independent environmental health agency, indicated that millions of Indians in both urban and rural environments were exposed to up to 32,000 times more than the globally accepted standards for 45 harmful chemicals and 13 carcinogens.

As if to combat such disturbing images of India’s polluted landscape, Indian and international architects commissioned to design edifices in India are increasingly producing “green,” or eco-friendly architecture.

ENERGY SAVERS. Projects such as Williams and Tsien’s design for Tata make use of natural light and ventilation, cutting down on energy consumption that contributes to air pollution. Vidur Bhardwaj’s haveli design for Wipro is not only an homage to traditional Indian buildings, but also provides cost-effective cooling–via the open-air public courtyard — that’s necessary for hot Indian days.

Carlos Ott’s forthcoming Chennai campus for Tata Consultancy Services uses these ideas and also recycles waste water to conserve resources, following the lead of the 2003 CII–Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Center in Hyderabad. This 20,000-square-foot minimalist office building became the only structure outside of the U.S. to receive the LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environment Design) Platinum ranking when it opened.

Will the new forms of Indian architecture endure as long as the spectacular Elephanta rock-cut temples (built circa 600 A.D.) or the elegant Taj Mahal (a wonder of the world dating back to the 17th-century Mughal era)? Only time will tell. India’s architectural past is certainly long, rich, and deep. But the newest additions to the continuum that is India’s architectural timeline appropriately reflect the latest chapters in the South Asian nation’s economic history.

RCA has been mentioned as one of the three institutions in the country that are imparting a quality of education that is way higher that the generally dropping conditions nationwide.

Much of that credit goes to my Principal and Director Prof. Chauhan who is my professional guru. He has been at the helm of affairs since the start in 1992 and his unstinting push for a higher standard of education has spurred students and faculty to excel.

Saturday 03rd of November 2007 India has around 140 schools of architecture that produce about 4,000 architects each year. But only about 40,000 architects are registered with the Council of Architecture to serve a population of over a billion.

‘Since the number of architects is grossly inadequate, most of the architectural work in the country is carried out by non-architects: engineers or masons who double up as petty contractors,’ says a review of the profession.

Further, though architects like to consider themselves a part of the westernised elite transforming the country, their actual status in society as effective professionals is low, says one of a series of papers published in the latest issue of the German architectural journal Archplus, focussing on ‘India’s Insular Urbanism’.

This special issue was released in time for the Nov 1-3, 2007 Urban Age conference held in Mumbai. This conference was part of a series of nine being held between February 2005 and November 2009 in New York, Shanghai, London, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Berlin, Mumbai and Sao Paulo (December 2008) and Istanbul (November 2009).

Architect, urban planner and conservation consultant A.G. Krishna Menon contends that the advice of Indian architects is ‘routinely substituted by others who hold influential opinions about the architectural product, thus reducing the economic worth of architectural service in the marketplace.’

In India, engineers have greater authority in deciding architectural issues compared to architects ‘whose contributions are reduced to merely manipulating the facade of the building under construction’.

Menon argues that the ‘burgeoning of architectural schools’ in India over the past decade-and-a-half led to a ‘precipitous drop’ in educational standards, and the shortage of architects worsened the ‘debilitating colonial pedagogic agenda that imparts vocational training’.

There is praise however for some institutions – the School of Architecture at the Centre for Environment and Planning (CEPT) of the University of Ahmedabad, the Kamala Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture and Environmental Studies (KRVIA) and The Rizvi College of Architecture in Mumbai.

Indian architecture has also gained from some locally produced magazines like Architecture+Design published from Delhi and The Indian Architect and Builder published from Mumbai. Issues of sustainability and low-cost housing are more widely appreciated, says Menon.

Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs adjunct associate professor Jyoti Hosagrahar views Indian architecture and urbanism as a ‘failure’ to become ‘modern’ in European terms, and also its ‘failure’ to remain true to its inherited forms.

She points to problems in definitions, saying: ‘Fundamental to the emergence of modernity as a global project was Western Europe’s colonization of Asia and Africa.’

The Archplus introduction to this focus on India notes that Indian urbanism has gone through a range of trends – the mood of upheaval in the period after Independence, as reflected in Le Corbusier’s planned city of Chandigarh, along with many other public buildings and projects, the search for identity during the 1970s and 1980s, and the socio-economic impact of liberalisation during the 1990s.

Questions about urban planning were also raised at the Urban Age conference. Mumbai-based planner Shirish Patel said: ‘We have no planners in the city (Mumbai) any more. The government has dismantled the planning process. We instead have a set of development control regulations, which are laid down by the government.’

Urban Age sees itself as a ‘worldwide investigation into the future of cities’ and is jointly organised by the London School of Economic and Political Science, and the Alfred Herrhausen Society, the international forum of the Deutsche Bank.

Original article link here