He’s the only Indian in 40 years to win the Pritzker
“The game of theatre,” B V Doshi calls it. An architect plays a thinking game constantly — How do people behave in a space? It’s the only profession that builds around people’s lives. Car designers come close but really, whoever designs another lookalike sports coupe has nothing on an architect. Especially the 2018 Pritzker Prize winning one. The equivalent of a Nobel Prize for architecture, I note to myself a bit nervously, as I speak to him.
“Nature,” says Doshi, putting me at ease, “is part of our life but we usually want to avoid it. With air-conditioned rooms and controlled places, but it’s good no, to have a break?” Public space and a connect with nature and community has a premium in Doshi’s planning. Enquiring about his low-cost housing project designs for Aranya in Indore and Atira, I ask him: passion or imperative? Once upon a time, he had the opportunity to create townships for industries. Typically around a major project, migrant labour and the influx of the unorganised sector is a given. Doshi visualised how to improve the quality of life for this segment — human beings, with aspirations, like anybody else. He wasn’t, he says, thinking about changing the world. “If you want to have a proper environment, it has to be holistic, it cannot be a segregated approach.”
Fair enough, but the sad truth is that no government in the country — centre or state — has replicated any of these much-awarded and recognised projects.
Within the macrocosm of nature, all objects have their own characteristics, their own nature. Doshi describes it in biological terms, like an organism in which you assemble living spaces. Each space can be slightly different from the other or radically different. It’s like meeting different people at different times. “I think that makes it even more enchanting,” Doshi says. “Participation with space is very important, and that articulates architecture — it becomes very personal.”
“Suppose you added a jharokha (semi-enclosed, decorative balcony presenting outward from the wall) and a bench, you will naturally sit outside and look out. Now if you put a little
chhatri (pergola) on the terrace, you will sit there in the evening; you want to sit there with friends and have a party.” The bulk of design today does not reflect that.
Reflecting on “the game of theatre,” I begin to see the interplay between the sets and the characters on Doshi’s stage. Nature, its elements, the spaces between, us, a plot, movement, dialogue. Change is a constant and Doshi’s design thinking reflects that. Doshi provides open spaces inbetween, so that he can add, subtract, connect — his structures are created for adaptations. So design is not immutable, and the building is not permanent. At any rate, he doesn’t see himself churning out a product. Like a good play, it is rather, a process, one with architectural actors.
Amdavad ni Gufa, an underground art gallery displaying the works of MF Husain. Doshi speaks of conceptualising a malleable, fluid structure, made with ferro-cement, designed on the computer, and executed by tribals… a structural web. Antoni Gaudi’s undulating, non-rigid lines in Barcelona come to mind. Closer home, Zaha Hadid exclaimed similarly that there are no corners in nature. While Doshi explains the evolving of design and materials in this project, I can’t help thinking that he is actually 90 years old. Across the phone, he is sharp, clear, witty but also enormously humble. And he has just explained the nuances of a work he designed 26 years ago.
Seven decades — what has been the most satisfying design project so far for him? The School of Architecture (now CEPT: Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology) in Ahmedabad, India. It covered a checklist of intentions: about space, form, light, ventilation and sustainability. The institute that he conceived and established in 1962 did not have doors. A place without barriers — and presumably, access for all. “I am primarily a teacher,” he says. “I started the school with an idea: let us open the doors to the unknown and create something new.”
Continuing the journey with nature, the much admired IIM Bangalore campus allows students to study under trees or sheltered walkways. They practice here for the drama of life. When I ask about Doshi’s work with Corbusier, I can hear the smile in his voice. “I have never seen anybody like Corbusier. All restrictions to him were virtues. He took them in his stride and created things — created art — that was unexpected. Scarcity of material, time delays — none of that was a problem for him. He thought, what can I do that will excite me, and excite others.” He describes the French architect in glowing terms, as being a highly cultivated soul, creative, sensitive, and spiritual. With grace.
“Corbusier’s buildings fascinate me, because of this diverse, exciting vision that you get when you walk through his buildings — in different seasons or different times of the day. That very, very few people can do.” He counts him as a mentor, and also Louis Kahn but felt the need to return to India to work where he felt more rooted. “Wonder, is what I learnt from them,” he muses, “How to create wonder.” He is the consummate showman.
That sentiment prompts me to ask the hard question: what has happened with urban planning in India? “Nothing!” he says. Troublesome growth is how he describes the urban sprawl. The growth is organic, and therefore chaotic. “We are a circumstantially designing people. We don’t look at the needs of the future, much less the impact of the current growth.” I talk about regulations that are needed and the need for enforcement, and he protests the lack of vision and planning. “We have to visualise what we’ll do in another 10 years. But nobody plans…” I think of
nukkad natak (street theatre) instead of the grand operas that the maestro envisions.
Interestingly, he does not repeat his experiments. “One should enjoy an experience and move on. Experiment with something else, with time,” he says. “There are no limits. There are no limits to creation.”