Tag Archives: Contemporary Indian Architecture

Frame Conclave, Lectures, Modern Heritage

The Architecture of Golconde

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Pankaj Vir Gupta

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.

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PRAXIS Initiative

PRAXIS 26 | A THRESHOLD

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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.

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Lectures

CONSTRUCTING THE SACRED OUTSIDE TRADITION

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A Srivathsan

A Recorded Lecture from FRAME Conclave 2019: Modern Heritage

In this lecture, A Srivathsan presents his view on the construction of Hindu Temples, and raises pertinent questions about the orientation of contemporary and modern architecture within this discourse. Using examples of temples built by young practitioners as a prism, he draws distinctions and similarities between what the sacred is and what is modern.

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Praxis

Praxis 22 | Varna Shashidhar Landscape Architecture

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An editorial project by Matter in partnership with Şişecam Flat Glass, PRAXIS investigates the work and positions of diverse contemporary architecture practices in India. This episode features a discussion with Varna Shashidhar of Bengaluru-based Varna Shashidhar Landscape Architecture [VSLA]. The practice of VSLA develops from a contextual ethos of approaching and representing landscape from an integrated and multidisciplinary perspective. Through projects and research that traverse scales, their work centres around “beauty in the ordinary”. Varna elaborates on envisioning designs that develop over time and terrains and working in harmony with endemic ecosystems that form an underlay to their process. To advance collaborative cultural production, she also speaks of founding Design United to enable dialogues and a palpable sense of collectivity.

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PRAXIS Initiative

PRAXIS 21 | Hundredhands

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An editorial project by Matter in partnership with Şişecam Flat Glass, PRAXIS investigates the work and positions of diverse contemporary architecture practices in India. This episode features a discussion with Sunitha Kondur and Bijoy Ramachandran from the Bengaluru-based practice, Hundredhands. Their work spans public and private typologies with an intent to navigate abstract as well as real world conditions. Reflecting on their journey from the years of study at MIT, collaborations within and outside India, family, peer groups in Bengaluru, the conversation delves into the grounding influences and ideologies that have shaped over twenty years of practice. At the core of the practice is, as they articulate, ‘how does one create places of intimacy, places for congregation, places for celebration’.

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