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.

Architecture, 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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History, Modern Heritage, Research

Modern Heritage: Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur

July 2, 2021 Matter 1 Comment

CHARLES CORREA

Designed in 1986 by Charles Correa, the Jawahar Kala Kendra in Jaipur is of critical significance for the Post-Independence architecture of India. Imagined as a metaphysical echo of the city of Jaipur itself, the building represents Correa’s interest in the abstract, mythical dimensions of architecture and the power of their manifestation in a civic building.

Film and Text: Aman Amin
Analytical Drawings : Studio Matter; Plan of JKK traced over original.

A Point in the Universe

Programmed and built as a National Cultural Institution, the Jawahar Kala Kendra is a testament of the everyday in the City of Jaipur. Reinterpreted from Jai Singh’s plan for the Jaipur City, Correa’s manifestation allows for interpretation of the form and programme – inviting the people and the city to a familial occurring.

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Discourse, History, Lectures, Modern Heritage

Claiming Space/Designing Space: Women Architects in Modern India

March 8, 2021 Matter Leave a comment

Mary Norman Woods

A Recorded Lecture from FRAME Conclave 2019: Modern Heritage

In this lecture, Mary Norman Woods talks about women architects in post-independent India, and their role in Indian society. She also speaks at length about two prominent women architects from two different generations, and their illustrated body of work.

Edited Transcript

Exploring the different forms that architectural practice might take beyond the usual metrics of originality and innovation can complicate our understanding of modern heritage and its implications for contemporary practice.

Peggy Deamer, US architect, educator, and activist has argued that how architects practice is as important as what they design and build. Writing in 2018, Deamer put forth the proposition that “architecture cannot produce spaces of freedom — public spaces, healthy spaces, accessible spaces, affordable spaces, sensually liberating spaces — for the society architects presume to serve if they are produced in unfree circumstances such as unpaid labour, gender inequality, generational hegemony, unsustainable work hours, non-existence work-life balance, lack of collegiality or discipline, [and] crippling competition.” Her words remind me of a question that Ellen Perry Berkeley, another American architectural critic, writer, and educator, posed exactly four decades ago. Then, Berkeley wrote: “the real problem for a thoughtful woman is not whether she is accepted into the profession, but whether she wants to be accepted into the profession as it is now.”

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Architecture, History, Lectures, Modern Heritage

Structural narrative of Indian Modernity as an oeuvre of Mahendra Raj

December 15, 2020 Matter 1 Comment

Rohit Raj Mehndiratta and Vandini Mehta

A Recorded Lecture from FRAME Conclave 2019: Modern Heritage

In this lecture, Rohit and Vandini talk about Mahendra Raj’s journey as a Structural Designer. They also provide an in-depth insight into the structural expressiveness, innovations and elements that allowed for new spatial possibilities in his illustrious body of work.

Edited Transcript

To talk about the works of Mahendra Raj, we have titled the work, “Structural narrative of Indian Modernity as an oeuvre of Mahendra Raj” as you will see, inflects and contributes, and helped create many artefacts that pioneer the narrative of Indian Architectural Modernism post-independence.

In this presentation, we will discuss only a few of Raj’s most important projects from over 250 projects that he has realised in the last six decades. Each project that we have chosen shows a visionary and pioneering engineering solution, exemplifying the bold and adventurous innovations his practice engaged in. As we discuss these works, the underlying story that emerges is of transnational exposures and exchanges of brilliant architectural and engineering minds, Le Corbusier and Louis Khan experimenting in India, Indian architects and engineers travelling West and coming back to engage with each other and local systems, we feel, created a fertile environment and incubator of sorts for new ideas that defined Indian Modernism.

Raj’s interest in structure started in 1951 when he was appointed as the Assistant Design Engineer for the construction of Chandigarh’s High Court. The geometric parasol roof consisting of shells presented the engineers with bold structural and functional hurdles. Working with other engineers, he, with his senior Gulzar Singh proposed modifications, that of a balanced cantilever, that supported on two columns, the fins that we now see which made the construction possible. This is what Corbusier wanted, and this is what finally came about from there.

Architecture, Archives, Discourse, History, Lectures, Modern Heritage

Charles Correa: Trajectories and Contexts

September 1, 2020 Matter 1 Comment

Ranjit Hoskote

A Recorded Lecture from FRAME Conclave 2019: Modern Heritage

In this lecture, Ranjit Hoskote postulates a portrait of Charles Correa as a curator. He speaks about Correa’s contribution to culture at large and his preoccupation with societal institutions albeit being an architect.

Edited Transcript

Good Morning.

Since I have 35 minutes, I am not really going to try and engage with absolutely everything that Charles Correa built in the course of a magnificent career. I am going to try and focus on a very particular strand in his work, his preoccupation with cultural institutions, and through what I have to say, I am going to try and develop provisionally a portrait of the architect as not only a member of a particular profession but as a contributor to ‘culture’ at large.

Charles Correa’s architecture was really part of my growing up in Bombay. Whether it was the Salvacao Church or Kanchenjunga, these were part of the urban fabric, part of the way in which one experience the city and part of what one identified with one’s home city. But also in the course of my professional life, there are Correa buildings to which I have often returned, where I have sometimes done things and which again have been part of my consciousness in my being. I am thinking particularly here of the Crafts Museum in Delhi, indeed the Kala Academy, the Jawahar Kala Kendra in Jaipur, the British Council building in Delhi and Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal. Also, on a far more personal note, my wife and I spent for many years our New Year holidays in a Charles Correa house, a spare elegant home that Charles designed for his and our friend, the artist Mehlli Gobhai in a chikoo orchard in Gholvad. To be there around Christmas and the turn of the year, every year, was very special. It is still a visceral experience that remains with me. Last year as part of an exhibition called ‘The Sacred Everyday‘, which I curated for the Serendipity Arts Festival here at the Adil Shah Palace, I thought that it might not be out of place to have, so to speak, a shrine that honoured the way in which Correa dealt with these questions of the ‘Circulation of the Sacred in the Everyday’ and how one might by means, both mythic and material, invoke these larger contexts of being so. But I am not going to talk about this today, I am actually going to move on.