Category Archives: Modern Heritage

MODERN HERITAGE is a research, listing and documentation initiative that attempts to chronicle the rich history of modern architecture in India with a view that irrespective of the legal and conventional understanding of ‘Heritage’, these buildings must be protected, and this history must be recognised in academic and professional discourses. With many works of significance already altered or even demolished, the need for a Modern Heritage list is all the more urgent.

Frame Conclave, Modern Heritage

DESIGN EDUCATION IN INDIA: AN EXPERIMENT IN MODERNITY

April 19, 2024 Matter Leave a comment

Ashoke Chatterjee

A Recorded Lecture from FRAME Conclave 2019: Modern Heritage

In this lecture, Ashoke Chatterjee talks about the inception of the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, its formative years, the pedagogy provided to the students, the experiments with the curriculum, the challenges, successes, and failures it faced in becoming the ‘world-class’ institute it sought out to be today.

Edited Transcript

I am delighted to have this opportunity to be back in Goa after forty-one years. The last time I came here, it was to assist the Government of Goa with a clue on what was called ‘carrying capacity in the tourism business; how will Goa manage its tourism prospects in those years?’ I need not tell you that my report was trashed well before the Hall of Nations, but it is good to be back, and I am grateful to the organisers, to FRAME Conclave for inviting me.

I need to start, however, by indicating what this brief talk will not be about. This is a very personal view of one part of contemporary Indian design history around the experience of one institution, the National Institute of Design, its educators, and those who studied there. This is part of a very interesting story. The NID had a catalytic effect, so it is quite valid to use that example.

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Frame Conclave, Modern Heritage

INDIA: MANY MODERNITIES – THE JOURNEY OF INDIAN RASAS

July 14, 2023 Matter

Frame Conclave, Modern Heritage

LE CORBUSIER AND M K GANDHI: AN UNLIKELY DIALOGUE

March 14, 2023 Matter Leave a comment

Riyaz Tayyibji

A Recorded Lecture from FRAME Conclave 2019: Modern Heritage

In this lecture, Riyaz Tayyibji speaks about a fictional conversation between M K Gandhi and Le Corbusier. Through the dialogue, he discusses their relationship with work and lifestyle, and their intimate connection with the inside and the outside.

Edited Transcript

Before I get to the two gentlemen that I would like to talk about today, a short note about the method I have used of juxtaposing two seemingly unrelated people together; this was a method that was first introduced to us as students of Prof. A.D. Raje, who would give students an exercise to imagine a conversation between, say Louis Kahn and Mimar Sinan at a coffee shop in Istanbul. This is certainly not a historian’s method; it is an architect’s method. An approach that would not only require the rigours of research to imagine the content of the conversation but would allow you to play with these ‘facts’ and their interpretations. In Raje’s exercise, the hypothetical context, the coffee shop was important. You had to define the hypothetical time in which the conversation was taking place. Somewhere in the process, it would emerge that this ‘hypothetical time’ was really a mirror of our own time.

Often the narrative of the present in which our history is written remains covert. One of the things that I enjoy about this method is that it ensures that the preoccupations of our own time are integrated into the narrative while always remaining explicit. Given the formality of our gathering today, I have chosen the form of a dialogue between one, Mr. M.K. Gandhi and another, Le Corbusier rather than a causal chat in a Byzantine café.

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Frame Conclave, Modern Heritage

Nehru and the Delhi Modern Movement: Architecture and Design in Delhi 1947-1980

December 24, 2022 Matter Leave a comment

Ram Rahman

A Recorded Lecture from FRAME Conclave 2019: Modern Heritage

In this lecture, Ram Rahman speaks about the works of his father, the noted architect Habib Rahman. He also speaks at length about Jawaharlal Nehru‘s vision for the new nation, the architecture and design in Delhi post-independence and its present-day state.

Edited Transcript

Basically, my approach to what I am talking about has come through photography. I am not really a historian. I am only here because my father, who you see there (referring to image 01), Habib Rahman was an architect and I grew up in the milieu of many of the architects whose work will be discussed today, but I will begin very quickly.

In a tribute to some of my Goan friends, these are pictures I did of Mario Miranda and Charles Correa at Dona Sylvia a number of years ago (referring to image 02). So, a tribute to them, tribute to these fantastic people who came out of Goa and did amazing work.

I first came here in 1986, it was for ‘Architecture + Design’ magazine (referring to image 03) at that time edited by Razia Grover. My introduction to Goa was actually Goan modernism in architecture. I came here to photograph the work of Ralino De Souza, Peter Scriver mentioned him earlier today, and I am happy he did. Also, Sarto Almeida and Lucio Miranda amongst many others. And these were wonderful issues at the time when much of this work had actually not been seen in the rest of India. So, salute to these architects too.

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Frame Conclave, Modern Heritage

CONTRAPUNTAL MODERNISM: THE ARCHITECTURE OF MUZHARUL ISLAM AND LOUIS KAHN

April 18, 2022 Matter Leave a comment

Kazi Khaleed Ashraf

A Recorded Lecture from FRAME Conclave 2019: Modern Heritage

In this lecture, Kazi Khaleed Ashraf discusses the works of two prominent contemporary architects – Muzharul Islam and Louis Kahn as counterpoints to modernism in the Indian subcontinent. He also speaks about understanding modernity, modernism and the positions either took in the way they practised architecture.

Edited Transcript

In the pursuit of framing and reframing modernism, perhaps we might have to rethink the various ways we described modernism, tropical modernism, we might have to call it – monsoon modernism. Monsoon in the subcontinent is what sank European modernism; that is something to think about. I have been tasked to talk about two architects – Muzharul Islam and Louis Kahn. Muzharul Islam is from Bangladesh. He is what one could describe as the kind of a father figure of modern architecture. That term, ‘father figure’, is how Ranjit Hoskote described Charles Correa. If you replace Charles Correa with Muzharul Islam and other specific details, that is Muzharul Islam in Bangladesh. He was an architect, teacher, activist and most importantly, he was openly engaged in politics. He was a hardcore Marxist, a politically engaged persona. So I think among all the pioneering architects we are discussing here today, this is an interesting moment to think about an architect, who is both – an architect professionally engaged with the larger cultural milieu, and also devotedly engaged in politics. And the other person whom you are more familiar with, especially I am thinking about the younger architects and students. I am not sure how much you are familiar with Muzharul Islam so I will be taking up the task of talking about him in the next fifteen-twenty minutes, but you are surely familiar with the other person, Louis Kahn, who was invited to Bangladesh, and Muzharul Islam was involved in that invitation.