Indian archetypes - institutional architecture in India

Architectural Review, The, May, 1995 by Gautam Bhatia

Yet the main feature of the composition is not so much the actual building, but the spaces in between. Individual components, such as the canteen and auditorium, gravitate around the main court; the three major departments of administration, research and training are organised around their own secondary courts. The housing, though secluded from the institute by a grove of trees, is kept in close proximity, allowing students easy access to workplaces. The architecture was created to encourage a greater interaction between students and teachers, and to allow the potential for informal meeting and discussions by suggesting the memory of familiar buildings and friendly surroundings. The volumetric alignments and deflections of the plans within an orthogonal layout are meant to direct the attention to the special areas of the institute. At the same time, the simple brick forms, adorned only by recessed concrete lintels, achieve their complexity largely by organisation. By bringing into play varying qualities of light, and changing sequences of closure and openness, they suggest links to the surrounding landscape.

Similar concerns for establishing a hierarchy of institutional functions are seen in B. V. Doshi's complex for the Gandhi Labour Institute also in Ahmedabad. Though few architects ever achieve the desired synthesis between the original idea and its eventual execution, the Gandhi Labour Institute, like Sangath - the studio Doshi built for himself - expresses all the architect's memories, associations and desires in a single form.

Located on the western outskirts of the city, the peculiar shape of this site determined, to a large extent, the layout of the buildings. The three major blocks - the institute, the rector's residence and the hostels are manipulated, like Patel and in skilful deflections. But here the changes from the orthogonal are used to suggest both the irregular periphery of the site and the potential for open-air links between buildings. While the main institute conforms to the orthogonal grid of the road, the minor complexes move away in a studied, but informal manner, creating among themselves three courts: an arrival apron that staggers along the street front to suggest entrance, a formal institutional court adjacent to the classrooms, and beyond, a landscaped court and amphitheatre. The main spaces of the institute disperse along a corridor, conceived with the extra width of a potential exhibition gallery that also links the teaching and seminar rooms. The terraced and stepped building further allows activities to extend outdoors, in genial manipulation of the existing terrain into grassy knolls and amphitheatre. The intention was to create a setting conducive to discourse, meeting and exchange of ideas.

Doshi, Raje, Bimal Patel - three architects of different generations, experience and background but with the common heritage of practising in the same city. Yet it would be unreasonable to draw conclusive statements of shared influences. Perhaps an interpretative similarity lies only in their sacrosanct treatment of space, in their regard for enclosure, the geometric delineation of inside and outside, of room and court, and the eventual trace of Louis Kahn's Indian legacy.