Link.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
Doshi/Bristol
In association with Arnolfini, this is the first in a series of screenings which will introduce key international architects.
A labour of love for its director, Premjit Ramachandran, this is an insightful and much-needed portrait of the low-cost-housing pioneer and architect Balkrishna Doshi. Doshi has led the evolution of contemporary Indian architecture, interpreting the modernist ideals of his former boss, Le Corbusier, and working within the constraints of the local conditions of site, climate and available technology.
Link.
A labour of love for its director, Premjit Ramachandran, this is an insightful and much-needed portrait of the low-cost-housing pioneer and architect Balkrishna Doshi. Doshi has led the evolution of contemporary Indian architecture, interpreting the modernist ideals of his former boss, Le Corbusier, and working within the constraints of the local conditions of site, climate and available technology.
Link.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Review: Sydney Morning Herald
The film “Doshi” follows the life and work of the famous Indian Architect Balkrishna Doshi and was conceived directed and scored by Premjit Ramachandran and Bijoy Ramachandran of 100hands who are based in Bangalore.
Doshi worked with Louis Kahn and Le Corbusier, two of the giants of 20th century architecture. Both had a profound effect on his work and life and modern day India, however he has sought to reinterpret this modernism of Europe and America to local conditions and climate, site and available technology.
At 81 years old Doshi is still very much engaged in building and in life and we are offered more than a simple outline of his work. The film and commentary give you an insight into the history and transformation of one of the 21st Centuries superpowers and the means by which its people have moved from a relatively agrarian and feudal society into a modern and technologically advanced country. It does so through the medium of architecture but I imagine the same may be applied to many areas of intellectual and technological activity.
Le Corbusier went to India to design Chandigarh, a capital city for the newly created state of the Punjab, and a post-independence symbol of progress and modernity. Doshi was a young architect at the time and worked for Le Corbusier on this and other projects in India. He thoroughly learned the lessons of modernism, but in time has modified these models with his particular understandings of the Indian way of life and its people. "India", he suggests contemplatively, "has survived and celebrated through a particular frugalness... by ingeniously finding several ways of using the same thing", this can be applied to clothing, furniture, buildings, music and technology.
His own office Sagath which in Sanskrit means moving together through participation is in essence a village, “trees, gardens and steps” and offers a real insight into how the outside world and influences are consumed, understood and reconstituted as his own. In this building or more accurately institution, you can see the influences, Chinese mosaic, Gaudi, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, “everything is there.... It is like a good food that you enjoy but made by the best chefs, But you are the one that is digesting this food. You have to convert this into your own blood and your own life.. Borrow everything and finally become yourself" ... Gandhi put it this way, “open the windows but see that your roof is not blown out, make sure that the foundations are strong. “…. You have to be deep inside an Indian who is frugal, who can invent, who can take a chance and who can starve”.
His institutional buildings, his schools, his low cost housing, his own home, all show a profound understanding of architecture but also of people, how they live and connect. He is full of reverence and with an Indian take on the meaning of "God", who is still profoundly wound up with his belief system and understanding of life.
“Life is to be lived not regulated” he states. But he has concerns for the future, he laments that much of the architects time is now taken up with mundane survival. “What can you give me, for how much money and in how much time?” The pragmatism of modern capitalism is also being felt in Doshi’s life and work. He notes that increasingly we are interested in conclusions; we have no time to understand process. “How can you enjoy the food if you have not aware of how it was cooked and how it all came together.”
He also asks us to consider the future and the past comparatively. How did people in the past have such profound understandings of material, scale, the size and even the kind of elaboration and joy of working you witness in ancient monuments? A place to sit, a place to rest your hand, “how come we do not think of this public realm today?” he asks.
In modern India he laments the lack of institutions, of communities, of civic spaces that inspire you. “What will we have to show as our heritage, our contemporary heritage? Yes you may have a beautiful house but what is outside it? What kind of street? Car parking, hotels, entertainment of a cheap type... we want to be alone isolated and enjoy ourselves, socially relevant architecture I do not think we have anymore, institutional architecture is gone.”
The architectural profession has become submissive and has nothing to do with society at large, Doshi feels, and apart from rare instances this is may also be true in our own society. What value to we place on the public realm? This is a beautiful film that offers some very relevant insights into the production of great architecture, institutions and what age and wisdom brings to a truly creative life.
Link.
Doshi worked with Louis Kahn and Le Corbusier, two of the giants of 20th century architecture. Both had a profound effect on his work and life and modern day India, however he has sought to reinterpret this modernism of Europe and America to local conditions and climate, site and available technology.
At 81 years old Doshi is still very much engaged in building and in life and we are offered more than a simple outline of his work. The film and commentary give you an insight into the history and transformation of one of the 21st Centuries superpowers and the means by which its people have moved from a relatively agrarian and feudal society into a modern and technologically advanced country. It does so through the medium of architecture but I imagine the same may be applied to many areas of intellectual and technological activity.
Le Corbusier went to India to design Chandigarh, a capital city for the newly created state of the Punjab, and a post-independence symbol of progress and modernity. Doshi was a young architect at the time and worked for Le Corbusier on this and other projects in India. He thoroughly learned the lessons of modernism, but in time has modified these models with his particular understandings of the Indian way of life and its people. "India", he suggests contemplatively, "has survived and celebrated through a particular frugalness... by ingeniously finding several ways of using the same thing", this can be applied to clothing, furniture, buildings, music and technology.
His own office Sagath which in Sanskrit means moving together through participation is in essence a village, “trees, gardens and steps” and offers a real insight into how the outside world and influences are consumed, understood and reconstituted as his own. In this building or more accurately institution, you can see the influences, Chinese mosaic, Gaudi, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, “everything is there.... It is like a good food that you enjoy but made by the best chefs, But you are the one that is digesting this food. You have to convert this into your own blood and your own life.. Borrow everything and finally become yourself" ... Gandhi put it this way, “open the windows but see that your roof is not blown out, make sure that the foundations are strong. “…. You have to be deep inside an Indian who is frugal, who can invent, who can take a chance and who can starve”.
His institutional buildings, his schools, his low cost housing, his own home, all show a profound understanding of architecture but also of people, how they live and connect. He is full of reverence and with an Indian take on the meaning of "God", who is still profoundly wound up with his belief system and understanding of life.
“Life is to be lived not regulated” he states. But he has concerns for the future, he laments that much of the architects time is now taken up with mundane survival. “What can you give me, for how much money and in how much time?” The pragmatism of modern capitalism is also being felt in Doshi’s life and work. He notes that increasingly we are interested in conclusions; we have no time to understand process. “How can you enjoy the food if you have not aware of how it was cooked and how it all came together.”
He also asks us to consider the future and the past comparatively. How did people in the past have such profound understandings of material, scale, the size and even the kind of elaboration and joy of working you witness in ancient monuments? A place to sit, a place to rest your hand, “how come we do not think of this public realm today?” he asks.
In modern India he laments the lack of institutions, of communities, of civic spaces that inspire you. “What will we have to show as our heritage, our contemporary heritage? Yes you may have a beautiful house but what is outside it? What kind of street? Car parking, hotels, entertainment of a cheap type... we want to be alone isolated and enjoy ourselves, socially relevant architecture I do not think we have anymore, institutional architecture is gone.”
The architectural profession has become submissive and has nothing to do with society at large, Doshi feels, and apart from rare instances this is may also be true in our own society. What value to we place on the public realm? This is a beautiful film that offers some very relevant insights into the production of great architecture, institutions and what age and wisdom brings to a truly creative life.
Link.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Doshi / BNCA / Pune
'Doshi' was screened in Pune at the IUCAA Auditorium on the 22nd of November. Dr. Bhanuben Nanavati College for Architecture for Women (BNCA) organized the event. The film was shown with 'Beginnings' and 'Karma' as bookends. Mr. BV. Doshi, Mr. Samar Nakhate, Mr. Nachiket Patwardhan and the two of us discussed the film after the show. BNCA has initiated an annual Kanvinde Memorial Lecture and this was the inaugural event along with a lecture by Mr. Doshi on Mr. Achyut Kanvinde's work.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Building Design, London
Doshi
Directed by Premjit Ramachandran
100 Hands
4 Stars
Doshi, directed by Bangalore-based film-maker Premjit Ramachandran, captures the intense energy and enigma behind the seminal Indian architect, now 82. Gripping interviews with Balkrishna Doshi, his former students, practitioners (including Graham Morrison of Allies & Morrison) and family members deal with critical questions on working as an architect within the Indian context.
Doshi has made an immense contribution to contemporary practice and polemic in India, which has been well documented in two monographs and countless publications. What is different about the film is that it is also about the philosophical underpinnings that inform the stuff of life, where architecture has a small but significant place.
Doshi looks with almost mystical wonder at the sequence of events that has led to where he is today. He stumbled into studying architecture at the suggestion of a schoolteacher. Later he travelled to London in 1951 to find himself participating in the activities of the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM). There he was offered his first job with Le Corbusier in Paris, who was designing Chandigarh at the time.
“Corbusier had a profound impact on Doshi”, says Ramachandran, “but he has always sought to interpret Corbusier’s modernism through local conditions of site, climate and available technology.”
Apart from the practice of architecture, his most significant achievements include setting up two important institutions in Ahmedabad, Gujarat: the Centre for Environment, Planning & Technology (CEPT) in 1962, one of India’s best architecture schools; and the Vastu Shilpa Foundation in 1972, which conducts pioneering research into sustainability, traditional Indian settlements and available technology. He was also responsible for inviting Louis Kahn to design a campus for the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad.
The conversations explore the ideological foundations that ground his work. Sustainability, which is fundamental to his thinking, is practised in a holistic way ingeniously working with not only local climate, topography, availability of materials and skills — as seen at Sangath, his studio — but also in the adaptive quality of the built environment. Here the ability for incremental growth means that communities can thrive over generations without losing architectural quality — as seen at the LIC housing project in Ahmedabad.
This aspect, completely alien to UK nimbyism, is also not easily found in the works of Doshi’s contemporaries in India. His fascination with how people behave in public space, including memories of his own childhood “always wanting to be outside, playing” gave spatial order to the campus for CEPT and the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. It was here that he set up the right conditions for social interaction between students.
“His ability to at once tackle architecture as both a modern structured and rigorous artefact as well as an intangible, archaic and philosophical idea made the work seem more rooted than his contemporaries,” says Bijoy Ramachandran, who conceived and researched the film.
The film ends with Doshi at Sarkhej, an ambitious 15th century “heritage” complex in Gujarat, asking larger questions on the role of the professional in making a socially relevant architecture, where communities can rejoice in the public realm. Submissiveness to the developer is not a problem restricted to India only, and so his question gains an international significance: “What, ideologically, is our contemporary heritage?”
The film’s only missed opportunity is that it fails to acknowledge the team behind the name. Some of the testimonies are reminiscent of those in My Architect, the film about Louis Kahn, where mesmerised individuals fervently eulogise the film’s subject, which viewers may find difficult. Despite this, the critical content, delectable cinematography and musical score leave you inspired.
Link.
Directed by Premjit Ramachandran
100 Hands
4 Stars
Doshi, directed by Bangalore-based film-maker Premjit Ramachandran, captures the intense energy and enigma behind the seminal Indian architect, now 82. Gripping interviews with Balkrishna Doshi, his former students, practitioners (including Graham Morrison of Allies & Morrison) and family members deal with critical questions on working as an architect within the Indian context.
Doshi has made an immense contribution to contemporary practice and polemic in India, which has been well documented in two monographs and countless publications. What is different about the film is that it is also about the philosophical underpinnings that inform the stuff of life, where architecture has a small but significant place.
Doshi looks with almost mystical wonder at the sequence of events that has led to where he is today. He stumbled into studying architecture at the suggestion of a schoolteacher. Later he travelled to London in 1951 to find himself participating in the activities of the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM). There he was offered his first job with Le Corbusier in Paris, who was designing Chandigarh at the time.
“Corbusier had a profound impact on Doshi”, says Ramachandran, “but he has always sought to interpret Corbusier’s modernism through local conditions of site, climate and available technology.”
Apart from the practice of architecture, his most significant achievements include setting up two important institutions in Ahmedabad, Gujarat: the Centre for Environment, Planning & Technology (CEPT) in 1962, one of India’s best architecture schools; and the Vastu Shilpa Foundation in 1972, which conducts pioneering research into sustainability, traditional Indian settlements and available technology. He was also responsible for inviting Louis Kahn to design a campus for the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad.
The conversations explore the ideological foundations that ground his work. Sustainability, which is fundamental to his thinking, is practised in a holistic way ingeniously working with not only local climate, topography, availability of materials and skills — as seen at Sangath, his studio — but also in the adaptive quality of the built environment. Here the ability for incremental growth means that communities can thrive over generations without losing architectural quality — as seen at the LIC housing project in Ahmedabad.
This aspect, completely alien to UK nimbyism, is also not easily found in the works of Doshi’s contemporaries in India. His fascination with how people behave in public space, including memories of his own childhood “always wanting to be outside, playing” gave spatial order to the campus for CEPT and the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. It was here that he set up the right conditions for social interaction between students.
“His ability to at once tackle architecture as both a modern structured and rigorous artefact as well as an intangible, archaic and philosophical idea made the work seem more rooted than his contemporaries,” says Bijoy Ramachandran, who conceived and researched the film.
The film ends with Doshi at Sarkhej, an ambitious 15th century “heritage” complex in Gujarat, asking larger questions on the role of the professional in making a socially relevant architecture, where communities can rejoice in the public realm. Submissiveness to the developer is not a problem restricted to India only, and so his question gains an international significance: “What, ideologically, is our contemporary heritage?”
The film’s only missed opportunity is that it fails to acknowledge the team behind the name. Some of the testimonies are reminiscent of those in My Architect, the film about Louis Kahn, where mesmerised individuals fervently eulogise the film’s subject, which viewers may find difficult. Despite this, the critical content, delectable cinematography and musical score leave you inspired.
Link.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
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