Indian Summary: A recent addition to Ahmedabad continues that city's most distinguished tradition of fine modern academic buildings - Brief Article

Architectural Review, The, Dec, 2001

Ahmedabad is one of the finest centres of learning and modern architecture in India. Here are Kahn's internationally renowned (for both its buildings and its teaching) Indian Institute of Management, and Corbusier's Mill Owners' building. HCP's building for the Ahmedabad Management Association draws on both masters.

The Association is a non-profit making organization that offers courses, training and education for the management people of over 400 firms in the city. The building's parti is simple and clear. Its ground floor is largely devoted to teaching, with classrooms and a bookshop. On the upper floor is a 250-seat auditorium, a library and exhibition space. In some ways, the disposition seems almost perverse, but it is clearly influenced by Corb's Mill Owner's organization, where the main public rooms are on the first floor, approached by a processional ramp. It continues the pedestrian promenade from the main gate, through a row of very fine existing Neem trees to the ceremonial entrance. The trees shade the street-side front, which in the evenings and at night (when the building is most used) is lit from inside, acting as a sort of advertisement for the institution.

The Management Association's site is much more restricted in depth than that of the Mill Owners', so that the ramp cranks in a dog-leg from a double-height portico carved into the long slab, which is made of 180mm thick reinforced concrete to provide thermal mass. Buildings do not weather too well in Ahmedabad's climate (until its recent restoration, Corb's building was in a terrible state), so the whole exterior is treated with silicon-based fungal repellent.

Frames of the fenestration are of mild steel, and made on site -- the long vistas down the circular Kahn-like windows which can be obtained across the portico are a triumph of local craftsmanship. We were very impressed by the whole quality of building in a country where, though labour is cheap, standards are difficult to maintain. And by the simplicity and response to site and people in interpreting what could have been a very dreary programme.