ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Two years ago, upon the urging of my architectural peers and my enthusiastic family, I began on a journey. The purpose of this monograph is to share my design process with all those who are interested. Architecture has to go beyond buildings, beyond the physical and extend into the soul, without feeling that one is compromising on creativity or the thrill and excitement of design. Working in India often makes each project feel like a completely new universe. We have to be both “barefoot architects” as well as hi-tech professionals. Every project has a distinctive client, parcel of land, climate, geography and social context, but when you put all these pieces together they form a seamless whole, much like India with its many ethnicities, languages and societies. We need to build appropriately. The 13 chapters in this book use different ways to explain this process, weaving slowly a quilt of many colors. There are so many people who made this journey possible. These include the architects who worked with me from the time I first set up my studio and my clients, some of whom started supporting me shortly after I began my practice: The Chauhan family, who have been my clients from the early 1970s; Vijay and the late Raj Chauhan, who believed a young sari-clad woman in her 20s could build their factories; the house of Tatas, who have enabled my studio to think big and support craftsmen and artists all over India; Mayur Patel, who gave me his carrot fields and trusted me to build the four Nalanda schools. Some good friends on my journey include Anita Garware, K.G. Premnath, Sudha Bhave, Cyrus Guzder, Meera Isaacs, T. Thomas, Peter FX D’lima and the late Gita Simoes. Turning to the book itself, I would like to first thank Porus Olpadwala who gave me the courage and confidence to proceed with this monograph. He and my daughter, Nandini, were the driving forces that allowed me to move ever forward. I would also like to thank Mary Woods, who was always there with valuable advice whenever I needed it. I was lucky to get Ruturaj Parikh to be the curator. It was his intellectual ability and dedication that helped me finalise the text and create the structure of the book, incorporating the dialogues and essays.
14
