A conversation with Abdul Kalam Shaikh, an extraordinary electrical contractor who built his contracting practice on an understanding of what well-executed electrical and power services enable quality work on site.
With over 15 years of experience, Kalam has enriched many projects, including a few at Matter. His work is a constant reminder of the many hands that make a good building. This episode is an insight into Kalam’s practice, his ideas on electrical contracting work, and his passion for things done well.
A Recorded Lecture from FRAME Conclave 2019: Modern Heritage
In this lecture, Pankaj Vir Gupta discusses the conception of Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry. Gupta delves into the architectural history of this structure, highlighting its pioneering use of concrete in India. He recounts his personal experiences at Golconde, sharing vivid details about the architecture and its unique features.
Edited Transcript
It is a particular privilege to be presenting a project with which we started our practice in 2003 and in the office archives, this is project 001 (referring to image 01). So, this morning to wake everyone up, I think it is important to understand why we are here to talk about this building and I will try and make it as energizing for you as possible.
My name is Pankaj Vir Gupta, and with my partner, Christine Mueller, I run a practice in New Delhi called Vir-Mueller Architects. I am also a professor of architecture at the University of Virginia, where I run what is called the Yamuna River Project, a multi-disciplinary research project, looking at ecology and urbanity in the megacities of the world. But to go back to how we started our practice, I was leading a study abroad program with some students from the University of Texas and we happened to be visiting Pondicherry, to look at the urban fabric of the city (referring to image 02), and we came across this extraordinary building (referring to image 02) and it was a surprise to me personally, because in several years of architectural education and research, I had never come across this building in any writing or any publication, at least not in the curricular work that we had been exposed to in our education.
An editorial project by Matter in partnership with Şişecam Flat Glass, PRAXIS investigates the work and positions of diverse contemporary architecture practices in India.Pooja Khairnar of the Nashik-based pk_iNCEPTiON speaks about a certain mutability of ideas holding deep personal and professional significance that travelled through time, experiences and cultures to shape ‘architecture’ for her. With careful definition and constant reflection, a vivid map of interactions with the city, meaningful dialogues with mentors, and self-introspective journey emerges to conceptually anchor and create a scaffolding for the studio’s growing body of work to be understood. The repertoire of projects thus created across scales demonstrate a sustained emphasis on multiple ways of cultivating cultural and aspirational exchange with communities, and on the notion of ‘expanding’ a brief based on a critical evaluation of what the project impacts and what is a ‘necessity’.
MODERN SOUTH ASIA A Visual Archive of South Asia’s Modernist Heritage
The Modern South Asia (MSA) series is dedicated to exploring modern architecture of historic importance in South Asia through photography-based books. The series will focus on architecture from the 20th century, designed and built by regional and international architects. Each book will provide the reader with an in-depth visual exploration of the architecture through contemporary photographs, architectural drawings, and newly commissioned writing by architects, thinkers, and academics.
The MSA series is edited and photographed by Randhir Singh. The project is supported and published by Arthshila Trust.
NATIONAL COOPERATIVE DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION (NCDC) Kuldip Singh, Mahendra Raj
COLLABORATIVE INVENTION AND THE ETHIC OF FRUGALITY: National Cooperative Development Corporation
Essay by Amit Srivastava & Peter Scriver Photographs by Randhir Singh
When it was built in the southern outskirts of metropolitan Delhi in the late 1970s, the National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) headquarters was one of the relatively few new buildings that stood out, or even above, the sea of low-rise residential development that was then just beginning to expand the national capital beyond its first ring of post-colonial suburbs. But this was not just a taller structure and far from a merely generic modern office block. ‘Architecture’, modern or not, was still a relatively unfamiliar concept that few of the uninitiated public understood to apply to anything less exalted than the monumental tombs and ruined historic forts and palaces that dotted Delhi’s urban hinterland, such as in the neighbouring Siri Fort area. If ‘engineering’ had any better grip on the popular imagination, it was understood to be the equally heavy but more utilitarian stuff of infrastructure and industry that was progressing and building the young Indian nation’s economic capacity. Yet there was something about this strange, almost ungainly concrete edifice that defied categorisation; it was both monumental and ingeniously light-footed at the same time. Growing up in South Delhi in the 1990s, where the NCDC offices stood opposite the gates of the housing colony in which one of the present authors lived, it was the first and most conspicuous example to which an untutored prospective student of architecture could look with both awe and fascination.
An editorial project by Matter in partnership with Şişecam Flat Glass, PRAXIS investigates the work and positions of diverse contemporary architecture practices in India.In this episode, Avinash Ankalge and Harshith Nayak of A Threshold, introspectively examine their practice from the perspective of evolving from a multitude of lived experiences over time. These vignettes link their work’s ability to look consistently towards traditional depictions and landscapes, their mentors, and travel in terms of cultivating dialogues, and exploring experiments in spatial systems and details. They connect their processes of sketching, making models, seeking exchanges in architecture and teaching back to these guiding impulses. In invoking the various inferences, they form a worldview of an architecture of – possibility – that has more to do with the stewardship of gained knowledge and steering it towards making new kinds of relations with the programme, light and public.
thinkMATTER 