By IANS,
New Delhi : A new book by a Delhi-based architect has compiled the journey of Indian architecture from the modernist, minimal and utilitarian structures in the first two decades after independence to the contemporary generic style today when all buildings look the same but have different facades.
Jagan Shah, a lecturer at the School of Planning and Architecture here, Wednesday released a volume on modern Indian built heritage, “Contemporary Indian Architecture”, which showcases best of contemporary Indian architecture over the past decades.
Featuring works by 20 architects, the book devotes itself to documenting, through photographs and texts, unique creations – both residential and commercial. It also includes public spaces.
The anthology, published by Roli Books, begins with a detailed introductory chapter on the trends in Indian architecture down the ages.
It probes the styles that architects had to conform to for the better part of the 20th century when they negotiated between the attractions of the modern architectural theories from abroad to the limitations of the local building industry.
“The buildings of the 50s, 60s and the 70s were built by die-hard modernists who worked for the government. They were influenced by American architecture. The structures were devoid of ornaments,” Shah says.
A subsequent chapter documents the fresh ideas that permeated the late 1980s while another chapter deals with the “noticeable absence” of Indianism in architecture that followed the new modern wave. It brings out universal aesthetics, marked by quality of design and detail.
Living the Present: The Triumph of Architecture over Circumstance, talks about the timelessness of good architecture that travels beyond circumstantial and temporal constraints.
“Architecture in India till the eighties was highly economical. Buildings were mass-produced and followed the popular western style. They were mostly of white concrete, very functional without any frills,” Shah told IANS.
“Western modernism is rich by nature but the kind of modernism we imported was rather droll and monotonous. The best architects, who were not aping the west, were not allowed to express creativity,” explains the bespectacled young architect.
But it slowly started changing in the eighties with historians and intellectuals like Pupul Jayakar who started promoting India in festivals abroad.
“Indian architects began questioning the ‘Indianness’ of the country’s architecture and started hunting for an identity to give the country’s modern builtscape a distinct character. Concepts like the ‘mandalas’ (rounded structures) and vaastu shastra (ancient science of building
layouts) – culled from ancient Indian texts – got a big boost in the 80s,” Shah said.
But this character of the 1980s lost itself somewhere in the busy world of styles and government policies.
“Post-globalisation, in the early 1990s, we started seeing a very different kind of architecture – the Hafeez Contractor type of buildings,” laughs Shah.
They were large buildings with diverse exteriors but generic interiors – all were similar inside. “You could different faces with the same heart. The modern mass architecture is rather box-like best described as what American architect Robert Ventury called ‘decorated sheds’ of the 60s. Build a shed and paste a colourful façade on it,” the architect said.
“As a result, you have buildings, especially the malls in the city which have the colourful western look, but all are the same inside. It is known as Alcubond architecture, which uses coloured aluminium-based sheets plastered on metal, steel and concrete. It looks good outside, and hides the flaws well,” Shah said.
Shah is an alumnus of Cincinnati and Columbia universities and contributes to leading journals in the country and abroad. He is the co-editor of Round, an annual journal of contributions from Asian countries writing on architecture.