Designed by Balkrishna Doshi / Vāstu Shilpā Consultants, the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore is an important site for the heritage of modern architecture in India – a study in the possibility for architecture to assimilate time and human presence in a composition of the built, open and in-between spaces.
The Indian Institute of Management campus in Bangalore occupies about 54,000 square meters within a 100-acre site. Designed as a poly-nuclear plan, the overall spatial arrangement relies on a series of intersecting corridors that form the basic skeletal structure.
In a discussion with Sanjay Mohe, Principal, Mindspace Architects, we explore the relationship between architecture and the specific peculiarities of the Indian landscape to try and decipher a unique way of seeing that is at the core of our experience of the built environment in India.
In a curated series on archival texts, views, discussions and comments on the state of architecture and design education in India, Shirish Beri provides observations, on the importance of a student-teacher relationship and challenges students to nurture their inquisitiveness which lies at the core of architectural education.
A monograph on the work of Prof. Christopher Charles Benninger chronicles buildings that express his transition from an architect in India to an Indian Architect outlining and emphasising on the core values of his work and the changing nature of the context that it negotiates with.
A 1972 Photograph Shows Christopher Benninger with Balkrishna Doshi on the CEPT Campus.
Through a visual journey, acclaimed photographer Ram Rahman talks about a critical time for architecture in India – from Independence to Economic Liberalization – as we observe the anxiety of architectural positions in times of uncertainty and struggle for identity.
In India, masters are revered and apprentices forgotten. But it is the apprentices who religiously took the message, the art and the knowledge across India from the first generation of experimenters till the generation of architects and designers who work in an economically liberal India.
This video [with Ram in the background narrative] takes one through an incredibly rich history of the architecture of post-independence India when the socialist ideology worked through democracy creating a fertile ground for experiments in housing and civic architecture. This time stands in stark contrast to the present as the patterns of patronage change and the state becomes increasingly impervious to the core issues.
Profile:
Ram Rahman is a photographer, designer, curator and activist based in Delhi. He has been an observer of modern movement in architecture in post-colonial India. Using photography as a window to history and the present, he observes the changing landscape of architecture, design and art in India.
He is one of the founding members of the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust. Ram Rahman has studied Physics from MIT followed by Graphic Design from Yale.
Credit:
This presentation is excerpted from a closed-door session with MoMA‘s C-MAP Asia Group in June 2015.
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