Author’s Note
Auroville is conceived as an urban experiment to undertake the work of “evolution of consciousness” in a society that would concretely experiment with the challenges of economy, sociology, environment and culture while seeking the spiritual life. The very first settlers who arrived in 1968 in Pondicherry, South India, were adventurers who believed in a new world order: in the fact that Auroville was a necessity to evolve a new species, wherein a rich collective life was a prerequisite for the individual to progress towards that end. This monograph series on Auroville architects—The Pioneers—emerged from a deep sense of gratitude. Gratitude towards Auroville, that it exists even after 50 years, through all its struggles and limitations, and continues to be an ideal, a concept, a city in the making, nurturing the lives of those who converge here from all over the world. Gratitude also towards those pioneers who came to a barren red plateau and had the conviction to follow a dream, who gave their youth to make it what it is today: a green haven with opportunities for all. Auroville, 1968
The lack of pre-defined laws and societal norms has allowed a multitude of expressions to manifest in the course of Auroville’s development, as natural extensions of the quest for the new, both within and without. The idealism with which Auroville was launched in 1968 and the numerous multifaceted experiments undertaken since the early years in all aspects of architectural expression—from innovative spatial designs using appropriate building materials and technologies to questioning the user’s lifestyle; from environment-friendly building infrastructure and cost-effective solutions in a tropical hot-humid climate to research on the relationship between the human organism and the built-form—continues to attract visitors from everywhere. I was fortunate in conceptualizing and giving form to this series of monographs in 2005, at a time when, about 40 years since its inception, Auroville was ready to look back and introspect critically at where it had reached from those first years of struggle and heady idealism. Fortunate also because it gave me the opportunity to reflect upon and analyse
