Golconde. The Introduction of Modernism in India

Neelkanth Chhaya

Professor of Architecture, CEPT University

Kevin Keim

Director, The Charles Moore Foundation

Rather than a dogmatic reiteration of principle, Golconde is a generous and carefully wrought illustration of modern architecture. Here we find a building whose order is not its principle characteristic, but rather a means towards a more serendipitous end.

Kevin Alter

Sid W. Richardson Professor of Architecture University of Texas at Austin

Mohammed Shaheer

Landscape Architect, Shaheer Associates

All young protégés who are starting their own studios should read this book.

Golconde is more than the description of an amazing Indian building; it is a clear demonstration of how to successfully negotiate the self-transformation necessary as you strike out on the road to master your craft.

Max Underwood

President’s Professor of Architecture Arizona State University

This constructive document mirrors the exquisite meters of ennobling everyday routines in a modest setting. It offers an alternative way of understanding modernism in India heretofore dominated by the heroic monuments of postindependence architecture. Golconde whispers a response to Sanford Kwinter’s query: “What can be more modern than the archaic?”

Peter Waldman

Professor of Architecture The University of Virginia

Through careful archival research and vivid photographs, the authors unearth the rich history of this beautiful but littleknown ashram building in India. This book establishes an important place for Golconde in the history of modern architecture and contributes to a broader understanding of modernism that extends beyond the Western canon.

Alexander Purves

Stephanie Whitlock

the introduction of modernism in india

pankaj vir gupta

409564

Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts

golconde

9 781638

Golconde stands as living proof of the potential of modernism to produce strong but sensitive environments. A building of such handcrafted integrity could have been realized only in extraordinary circumstances. By presenting documents that bear witness to Golconde’s creation, this book reveals the spirit of those that imagined it and of those that continue to care for it.

Professor Emeritus of Architecture Yale University

the introduction of modernism in india

By patiently researching and assembling this story, the authors have brought to light an architectural tale of spiritual adherents, and how they built a place of enduring significance. Golconde stands out as an elemental work, a geometric and social composition of great beauty.

There is a meditative quality to this book which quietly but with great conviction evokes the spiritual heart at the centre of this little known architectural masterpiece.

Golconde is unique in many ways, not least because it is a continuing embodiment and also a very significant reminder of the noble intentions of modernism’s original agenda.

golconde

Golconde exemplifies without bombast, a blending of the material with the spiritual, the inner environment with the outer, the local with the universal - with a gentle dignity and caring assurance.

This book relates the story of its making, and in the process points to attitudes and ways of working which can guide the architect today. It is written and illustrated to beautifully convey the craftsman-like intensity necessary to achieve stillness and vibrancy in our environments.

52995

christine mueller cyrus samii

golconde golconde the introduction of modernism in india

pankaj vir gupta christine mueller cyrus samii

table of contents

5

Acknowledgements

6

Foreword

Mira Nakashima 8

Preface to the Second Edition

Pankaj Vir Gupta, Christine Mueller 10

I Introduction Peter Heehs

20

II Project History

36

III An Architecture Made Explicit

88

IV The Legacy of Golconde

105

Authors

107

Bibliography

108

Credits

foreword

I shall never forget the wide-eyed wonder and excitement of Pankaj Vir Gupta and Christine Mueller when they first returned from India with their photographic “discovery” of Golconde. At the time – in 2003, shortly after my father had passed, Golconde had remained a carefully guarded secret, a hidden treasure of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

Perhaps it was then time for this treasure to be shared with the world of architecture.

Their excellent photography documented the innovative design. Constructed in precast as well as poured concrete, with operable louvers for natural ventilation, custom-made brass fittings and extraordinary architectural woodworking, all executed in teak, as well as all the furnishings for the disciples, this was a truly integrated project. There were beautiful shimmering white plaster walls made with ground seashells and perfectly fitted exquisitely polished black granite floors, still in constant use, maintained by Mona Pinto, wife of Udar Pinto - my father’s dear engineer friend who had worked alongside him, and monitored the completion of the project after 1939, when the impending war forced Nakashima to return to the United States via Japan. We remain forever grateful to our dear friends - the Pinto family - for maintaining Golconde not only as an Ashram retreat house, but as the “Egyptian Temple” envisioned by The Mother, where disciples could live in peace and quiet, and pursue their own meditation and spiritual work in an environment of beauty.

Although my father volunteered from the architectural office of Antonin Raymond in Tokyo to be the site architect, this work became the cornerstone of Nakashima’s life philosophy. As an employee of the Raymond office, he worked closely with Raymond himself and the engineers in Tokyo, but also developed and drew the architectural

6

7

details, including all the concrete formwork, made of teak. He had to arrange for most of the construction materials to be imported from other parts of the world. In allaying his concern about the construction schedule, The Mother reassured him that it was more important for the work to be a way of spiritual progress, and a thing of beauty, than to be completed on time and within budget! Nakashima would consult with the Mother on all issues of the project, and became so involved in the spiritual environment of the Ashram, that he gave up his salary from Raymond. He became a disciple of Sri Aurobindo in 1938, and thought he would spend the rest of his life in the Ashram. However, with the second world war posing a danger, and the rest of his family in the USA, he reluctantly left India in 1939. He met my mother Marion in Tokyo in 1940, married in 1941 and started his furniture business in Seattle with the help of the Maryknoll Missionaries. After the incarceration of our family in the United States – the fate of Japanese-Americans on the west coast in 1942, Antonin and Noemi Raymond petitioned for our release to their farm in Pennsylvania in 1943. Nakashima continued his quest for and creation of Beauty his entire life in New Hope, guided by the teachings of Sri Aurobindo, the Mother, and his life-changing experiences building Golconde.

Mira Nakashima The daughter of George Nakashima is an architect and furniture maker. She studied Architecture at Harvard University and at Waseda University, Tokyo. She is the President and Creative Director of George Nakashima Woodworkers.

I

introduction

10

11

Architecture, sculpture and painting, beacause they are the three great arts which appeal to the spirit through the eye, are those too in which the sensible and the invisible meet with the strongest emphasis on themselves and yet the greatest necessity of each other.

The form with its insistent masses, proportions, lines, colours can here only justify them by their service for the something intangible it has to express; the spirit needs all the possible help of the material body to interpret itself to itself through the eye, yet asks of it that it shall be as transparent a veil as possible of its own greater significance.

Sri Aurobindo 1

3 opposite: entry facade

introduction Peter Heehs Archivist Sri Aurobindo Ashram

12

When Sri Aurobindo came to Pondicherry in April 1910, he did not plan to stay for more than a year or two. He had, to be sure, left his political life behind him. Government repression, in the form of ordinances and prosecutions, had shut down the activities of the Nationalist Party that he had led. An arrest warrant had been issued against him.

Before it could be served, he left Calcutta on a French ship bound for Pondicherry. There he stayed in a small apartment that local sympathizers found for him. For more than six months he hardly set foot outside his room. This enforced solitude suited him well. For the last three years, his main interest had been yoga, the cultivation of inner capacities through meditation and other spiritual techniques. In Pondicherry, for the first time in months, he was able to devote himself to yoga to the exclusion of everything else. When he learned towards the end of 1910 that the case against him had been dropped, he put off his return till he had completed his sadhana or practice of yoga. He thought this might take two years. This stretched to four, then ten. Eventually he realized it was impossible to set a deadline. He remained in Pondicherry, absorbed in yoga, for the rest of his life.

Aurobindo left his first apartment at the end of 1910 and found a house in the ville blanche or French part of town. He could not stay here long. Lack of funds meant that he and the young men living with him had to move three times in the next three years. Wherever he set up house, he made a point of living as a “householder:” paying rent, buying food in the bazaar, generally avoiding the ascetic way of life. Asked by a friend around this time whether it was true that he was practicing sannyasa or asceticism, he answered sharply: “The Yoga I am practising has not the ghost of a connection with sannyasa. It is a Yoga meant for life and life only.’’ The purpose of his Yoga was not to escape from life, but to

perfect its powers and capacities. For this, it was necessary to be active.

Any work could be useful to the yogin if it was done with the proper attitude. Aurobindo therefore never insisted that those who followed his path had to pass their time doing “spiritual’’ things like repeating mantras or meditating. “All life is yoga’’ was his motto.

Aurobindo himself needed solitude for his practice, but he did not impose this way of life on others. The young men who stayed with him played football, studied French, wrote poetry, and roamed about the town. He did not give them lessons in yoga, because he did not think that yoga could be taught. Each person’s push to practice had to come from within. Eventually, most of those around him found their way.

He meanwhile was engaged in his own special type of experimental psychology, observing the movements of his consciousness and recording his experiences in his diary. When he read the Vedas and Upanishads, he found that many of his experiences were prefigured in those ancient texts. Before long, he began to write commentaries on the Rig Veda and Isha Upanishad; but he wrote also on a variety of other topics: philosophy, sociology, political science, and literature. Between 1914 and 1920 he published the equivalent of ten or twelve books in the pages of a monthly journal. But from 1921, he began to decrease his outward activities. He saw less and less of the men and women who regarded him as their guru. Finally, in 1926, he retired completely. His little community of seekers would be looked after by Mirra Alfassa, a Frenchwoman he had acknowledged as his spiritual partner and given the name “the Mother’’. This was the beginning of what is now called the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

The Mother had grown up in France during the Belle Epoch. A talented painter, she exhibited in Paris salons, and knew Rodin, Zola, César Franck and other artists and intellectuals of the period. But her primary interest was not art but spirituality. In 1914 she met Aurobindo in Pondicherry, and recognized him immediately as her spiritual master.

After passing the years of the First World War in Europe and Japan, she returned to Pondicherry in 1920. When, six years later, Aurobindo asked her to look after the people who had gathered round him, she went about it with characteristic energy and an eye for harmonious organization.

4 above: portrait of Sri Aurobindo

5 below: portrait of ‘The Mother’

14

6 above: model elevation

7 below: model plan

15

Under the Mother’s direction, the Ashram grew from twenty-five members at the end of 1926 to a hundred-fifty in 1934.

The lives of the disciples were focused on yoga, but this did not mean a flight from life. Everyone spent the better part of the day working. There was a community kitchen, a building department, an automotive workshop; but there was also a library, an embroidery department, and dozens of full and part-time writers, artists and musicians. The Mother gave special attention to the artists. Under her direction they executed large paintings on partition-walls, and separate works on canvas and paper.

The Ashram’s first spurt of growth came to an end in 1934, when the Government of French India asked the Mother to stop buying and renting properties. If she wanted more rooms for members, she should build her own houses. This put an end to new admissions for a number of years. Then the Ashram received a sizable donation from the ruler of the state of Hyderabad. The Mother decided to use the funds to build a dormitory. Her secretary, Phillipe B. Saint Hilaire, asked his friend Antonin Raymond, a Czech-American architect then based in Japan, if he wanted the commission. Raymond accepted, and work soon began on the building that would be given the name Golconde. The Mother took an active interest in its design. The spacious halls and quiet gardens of Golconde doubtless owe something to the houses and temples she had known in Japan. The simple furnishings and general lack of clutter were influenced by her ideal of the yogic life: full without excess, beautiful without ostentation.

By the mid-1940s, the Ashram consisted of some four hundred people. Many of the newcomers arrived during the war; some brought their children with them. The Ashram was now a much different place from the quiet, compact community of ten years earlier. The Mother started a school, and taught some of the classes herself. She also encouraged everyone, young and old alike, to do daily exercise or sports. People were as likely to see her at the tennis courts as in the meditation hall.

8 George Nakashima (fourth from right) in Pondicherry

16

9 construction of precast concrete roof tiles

17

But the basic pattern of life remained the same. Both she and Sri Aurobindo felt that traditional spiritual institutions tended to crush the spiritual impulse they were meant to foster. For this reason they avoided encumbering the Ashram’s life with rules and timetables that everyone had to follow. People could structure their personal lives as they saw best, joining in collective activities whenever they wished, but never under compulsion.

By the time Golconde opened its doors in 1942, most of the houses in the neighborhood had been bought by the Ashram for use as lodgings and workplaces.

Raymond’s modernist structure somehow managed to blend in with its plain colonial neighbors. Sixty years on, the Ashram consists of around fifteen hundred people from all parts of India and many foreign countries. Only a handful of them live in Golconde, but the building remains a model of the physical environment that the Mother envisaged for all members of the Ashram, in which simple accommodations and beautiful surroundings provide space for the practice of a life-affirming yoga.

10 Golconde workers

11 following pages: view of Golconde from the south east

18

19

II

project history

20

21

It is difficult in a few words to convey the idea of the spiritual significance of the Mother. To the disciples of the Ashram, she was both their spiritual guide and the manager of things secular. She was always intently watching over the welfare of each individual, seeing to particular needs of each one, for each disciple lived according to his own particular rule. The Mother is a truly remarkable person, organizing everything concerning this large organization, giving out instructions to every individual of the community as to his duties, and even to his daily work and diet. Among many other things, she took care of the accounts for the design and construction operations. Her attention even to the smallest details of the administration of this complicated community filled me with wonder and seemed often quite miraculous.

Antonin Raymond 2

12 opposite: south elevation

30

21 model house exterior

By 1937, the imminent threat of war impelled Antonin Raymond to close his Tokyo office and leave Japan.

Accompanied by his family members, he arrived in Pondicherry and spent a few months at the Ashram before returning to the United States. Nakashima and Sammer were entrusted with the completion of the project.

31

The lack of construction experience among the workers required Nakashima and Sammer to explain the precise methodology of reinforced concrete construction. Hence Nakashima’s duties included the preparation of detailed drawings for the construction of the concrete form work. Chandulal supervised the on-site scheduling of materials and labor, and Sammer took charge of completing the construction drawings. The political unrest in Asia and Europe had disrupted the supply of imported goods. Several materials originally stipulated in the building specifications were no longer available in India. The development of alternative solutions on-site became necessary.

After almost three years of living in the Ashram, George Nakashima decided to return to the United States. He left India in October 1939, having completed most of the concrete work for the structure. After Nakashima’s departure, Udar Pinto, an Indian aeronautical engineer, assumed the task of supervising the construction. Udar and his British wife Mona had joined the Ashram in 1937. Sammer continued to work on completion of the drawings and the design of the furniture. Udar enjoyed the Mother’s confidence and consulted with her on all decisions pertaining to the design. He developed many of the prototypes of the building hardware in Harpagaon, the Ashram workshop.

Golconde was substantially completed in 1942 and continues to function as a dormitory for devotees in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. It remains a remarkable architectural edifice, seamlessly negotiating the tenets of early modernist architecture, while addressing the pragmatic impositions of a tropical context.

22 George Nakashima (standing third from right) with workers on site

46

37, 38 perspective views in watercolor

Due to the oblique angle given to the building, the gardens assume an interesting shape. Enclosed on all sides, the gardens become tranquil cloisters where one may happily walk or spend time.

Construction. Notice the exceeding simplicity which gives style and elegance to the building and at the same time is very economical.

The floors are concrete slabs supported by pillars of brick. The cantilevered sections of these slabs form the corridor; and the awnings are as wide as possible to give the maximum shade.

Floors - of the rooms: ceramic tiles for coolness.

47

Ceilings - Celotex, against resonance; and excellent insulation against noise and heat.

The shutters are an important element. We manufacture them here. Made of a thin board of wood 25 centimeters wide, and painted, they slide on metal rods and are controlled by means of cords on the inside. They can be set at various angles or closed completely.

The windows are of sliding type, with a wooden frame. We have learned to make them quite weather-proof. The doors are of plywood and insulated against sound and heat.

Furnishing. The walls between the rooms are sectioned to form built-in cupboards, and shelves for books. The bed is moveable. The tables and chairs are moveable except for the desk which is fixed. As for the bed, we suggest a wooden platform with legs made of steel, and an inner-spring mattress. This [type of] mattress canW be moved and aired easily, and at the same time is very comfortable.

Materials. Even while there is no import duty in Pondicherry, it would seem advantageous to buy much of the materials here. Attached is a list of approximate prices, so that you might compare with the prices in Pondicherry. Everything could be manufactured here; doors, windows, furniture would then have only to be installed.

Kindly study the plans with care. If they are at all of interest to you, then please communicate to us your ideas on the subject. Then we would study the details of the construction at a later date. If you would like to build, we would make “full-size” detail drawings, etc. We could even send you one of our architects who would be able, with the help of your engineer to construct the building.

Best wishes, Antonin

48

39 view from central corridor

49

The area available was quite small, for a building of any large size to be built in, nevertheless, Raymond took up the challenge. As the length of the land lay from east to west, this suited him very well and he designed the building oriented very strictly, east to west – with all the openings only on the North and South – and he designed that both faces should be openable fully, so that it could get the fullest current of air, which is south to north in summer and north to south in winter. He also arranged that the sunlight should not enter any room directly and bring its heat directly with it. So the rooms were always cool.

Udar Pinto 9

60

Each room achieves a seamless unification with the garden through the veil of louvers.

As the louvers are opened, the separation between interior and exterior dissolves, animating the highly reflective interior surfaces of stone, wood and plaster with a mélange of breeze and light.

50 detail drawing of louvers

51 opposite: lotus pond

61

62

The most striking feature of Golconde is the skillful integration of the building with its landscape. The abstract permutations of the operable concrete skin are balanced with the serenity of the lotus pond and garden - a calm and meditative environment for devotees.

63

52 schematic landscape plan

80

The pivoting concrete panels located in the service rooms, provide views of the garden, and facilitate ventilation. Fitted with custom brass hardware, each panel may be removed for maintenance and cleaning.

64 pivoting concrete windows

81

Pivoting concrete grilles are to be mounted in the following way: To allow some play to the upper pivots, the small holes are to be chipped with dia. 10-12mm, and also with a depth of 10-15mm, exactly at the marked spot.

In the existing groove of the beam, a bar with bearings is to be inserted so that its two ends touch the column and the upright. On this bar (round steel, 9mm diameter, painted with minium) at the intervals corresponding to the positions of the pivots on the grilles (precision) bearings are to be riveted, which will be self-supporting once the grilles are in place.

Once this bar is held in the groove, a grille will be inserted by its upper pivot onto the bearing. After a bottom bearing has been fixed onto its bottom pivot, the grille is to be pushed into its vertical position, so that the bottom bearing enters into the hollow kept for it in the crossbar. With the position of the grille adjusted by means of washers, the lower bearing will be screwed with a screw onto its wooden block. By first fixing two even or uneven grilles you will avoid having to support the bearings bar for the two other grilles.

Francois Sammer Construction Specifications 17

96

The rituals of everyday life such as refilling the earthen drinking water vessels and the folding of laundry, animate the mornings at Golconde.

73 east service corridor

97

74 west service corridor

Golconde, The Introduction of Modernism in India

Published by Actar Publishers, New York, Barcelona www.actar.com First edition on 2010 Second edition on September 2021 Authors Pankaj Vir Gupta Christine Mueller Cyrus Samii Edited by vir.mueller architects Graphic design and layout Actar D Digital reproduction Actar D Printing and binding Arlequín SL, Barcelona © Co-publishers for this edition: vir.mueller architects www.virmueller.com All rights reserved © Edition: publishers © Texts: authors © Design, drawings, illustrations and photographs: authors This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in data banks. For any kind of use, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained.

Distribution Actar D, Inc. New York, Barcelona.

New York 440 Park Avenue South, 17th Floor New York, NY 10016, USA T+1 2129662207 salesnewyork@actar-d.com Barcelona Roca i Batlle 2 08023 Barcelona, Spain T+34 933 282 183 eurosales@actar-d.com Image credits Archival photographs & drawings printed with the permission of : The Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India.

1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 34, 35, 36, 38, 43, 45, 47, 52, 55 and cover Ashok Dilwali Kinsey Brothers Studios, New Delhi, India.

2, 20, 21, 24, 25, 30, 32, 39, 40, 41, 42, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54, 57 Robi Ganguli Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry India.

23, 37, 44, 46 Pankaj Vir Gupta and Christine Mueller vir.mueller architects, New Delhi, India.

33, 53, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69 Printed and bound in Spain.

ISBN 978-1-63840-956-4 PCN 2021940443

Neelkanth Chhaya

Professor of Architecture, CEPT University

Kevin Keim

Director, The Charles Moore Foundation

Rather than a dogmatic reiteration of principle, Golconde is a generous and carefully wrought illustration of modern architecture. Here we find a building whose order is not its principle characteristic, but rather a means towards a more serendipitous end.

Kevin Alter

Sid W. Richardson Professor of Architecture University of Texas at Austin

Mohammed Shaheer

Landscape Architect, Shaheer Associates

All young protégés who are starting their own studios should read this book.

Golconde is more than the description of an amazing Indian building; it is a clear demonstration of how to successfully negotiate the self-transformation necessary as you strike out on the road to master your craft.

Max Underwood

President’s Professor of Architecture Arizona State University

This constructive document mirrors the exquisite meters of ennobling everyday routines in a modest setting. It offers an alternative way of understanding modernism in India heretofore dominated by the heroic monuments of postindependence architecture. Golconde whispers a response to Sanford Kwinter’s query: “What can be more modern than the archaic?”

Peter Waldman

Professor of Architecture The University of Virginia

Through careful archival research and vivid photographs, the authors unearth the rich history of this beautiful but littleknown ashram building in India. This book establishes an important place for Golconde in the history of modern architecture and contributes to a broader understanding of modernism that extends beyond the Western canon.

Alexander Purves

Stephanie Whitlock

the introduction of modernism in india

pankaj vir gupta

409564

Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts

golconde

9 781638

Golconde stands as living proof of the potential of modernism to produce strong but sensitive environments. A building of such handcrafted integrity could have been realized only in extraordinary circumstances. By presenting documents that bear witness to Golconde’s creation, this book reveals the spirit of those that imagined it and of those that continue to care for it.

Professor Emeritus of Architecture Yale University

the introduction of modernism in india

By patiently researching and assembling this story, the authors have brought to light an architectural tale of spiritual adherents, and how they built a place of enduring significance. Golconde stands out as an elemental work, a geometric and social composition of great beauty.

There is a meditative quality to this book which quietly but with great conviction evokes the spiritual heart at the centre of this little known architectural masterpiece.

Golconde is unique in many ways, not least because it is a continuing embodiment and also a very significant reminder of the noble intentions of modernism’s original agenda.

golconde

Golconde exemplifies without bombast, a blending of the material with the spiritual, the inner environment with the outer, the local with the universal - with a gentle dignity and caring assurance.

This book relates the story of its making, and in the process points to attitudes and ways of working which can guide the architect today. It is written and illustrated to beautifully convey the craftsman-like intensity necessary to achieve stillness and vibrancy in our environments.

52995

christine mueller cyrus samii