Haig Beck and Jackie Cooper are editors, critics, writers and publishers of UME, an independent international magazine available online, www.umemagazine.com. Haig Beck is a former editor of Architectural Design. With Jackie Cooper, he edited and published International Architect. They write widely on architecture and design.
His concerns for response to climate and making spaces that are lively are informed by his historical understanding: this guides the spatial language of his architecture, the functional concepts, and the aesthetically appealing elements and motifs he creatively transforms and incorporates into his own designs. Today he is one of India’s foremost contemporary architects. Professor MA Dhaky, Director (Emeritus), American Institute of Indian Studies, Gurgaon
Mapin Publishing www.mapinpub.com
Akshara http://snehalshaharchitect.com/research.html
oTHER TITLES oF InTEREST By MAPIn Learning from Mumbai Practicing Architecture in Urban India Pelle Poiesz, Gert Jan Scholte and Sanne Vanderkaaij Gandhi
ALSo By THE AkSHARA FoUnDATIon Architectural models Works of Architect Balkrishna Doshi Forthcoming Water Structures of Western India UME 23
PRInTED In CHInA
SneHAl SHAH
Snehal Shah studied at CEPT University, Ahmadabad, graduating in 1980. His thesis was supervised by BV Doshi. He undertook postgraduate studies at the Architectural Association Graduate School in London under Royston Landau, and Robin Middleton supervised his history paper on Labrouste and Quatremere de Quincy. He worked in Lugarno at the studio of Mario Botta for two years before returning to India in 1987. In that year he passed the RIBA Part Three professional exam and began practice in Ahmedabad. Since 1987 he has been an honorary professor at CEPT. He has lectured in Asia, Europe and the USA. His writings on the history of Indian architecture include the book Ahmedabad, with George Michell. ‘The Water Architecture of Western India’ is a forthcoming edition of UME.
Dr George Michell, art and architecture historian
Snehal Shah believes in making architecture that is ‘of its time’, as a Gujarati proverb states, vakhat tevu vaju. History confirms that buildings appropriate to their time, place and climate, endure.
Architect
The Akshara Foundation was launched in 1977 at CEPT University, Ahmedabad, by a group of students. Between 1977 and 1982, they published the magazine Akshara (presiding spirit). In 2000 Snehal Shah revived the Foundation to promote the culture of architecture. The Akshara Foundation hosts lectures and exhibitions and publishes books and catalogues. It offers two scholarships annually to Indian students to study and document temple architecture. Around six lectures a year given by distinguished architects and scholars from around the world are open to students, academics and architects in Ahmedabad.
One explanation of Snehal’s amazing range of projects and diversity of designs is that he has strategically located himself between the past and the future. Snehal’s intense interest in architectural history, especially of western India, the region from which he hails, has sensitised him to traditional stone and timber constructional techniques, rigorous geometric codes of design, and local environmental conditions, especially the scarcity of water in an arid landscape. Returning to India thus equipped, Snehal has over the last 20 years embarked upon an ambitious repertory of private and public buildings that testifies to a unique cosmopolitan sensibility and refined aesthetic.
SneHAl SHAH
Snehal Shah’s interest in the monumental architecture of the past – the Renaissance and subsequent periods in Europe, and also medieval architecture in western India, especially the Solanki period of the 10th-13th centuries – astonishes. He has researched medieval water architecture in western India, and his studies in that hitherto neglected field are producing remarkably insightful information.
MAPin
In learning to build, his architecture adopted a variety of expressions – with the constant being the will to manipulate light and ventilation to the best advantage. He studies vernacular techniques as well as learns from wider Indian exemplars and also Western architectural history. References from all these find their way into his buildings, along with his debt to the geometry of Louis Kahn and Mario Botta. In this book, Shah exhibits the work of 25 years in practice. He describes his concerns and development as an architect in parallel with the emergence of India onto the world stage as a mighty, populous, modern nation rich in contradictions.
Architect
