domus 14
January 2013
Contents
14 14 • Volume 02 • Issue 03 • January 2013 / CCBA, Christopher Benninger when I awake in the still of the night... / Opolis deriving value in places / MAD, Matthew Allen an empathetic twist / Frida Escobedo, José Esparza modernist masks / a-RT, Bhattacharjee detailing gestures / Y D Pitkar, Smita Dalvi deep surfaces / Pedro Reyes transforms weapons into musical instruments / K T Ravindran on Oscar Niemeyer CCBA / Opolis / MAD, Allen / Escobedo, Esparza / a-RT, Bhattacharjee / Pitkar, Dalvi / Ravindran, Niemeyer
R200
14 • Volume 02 • Issue 03 • January 2013 / CCBA, Christopher Benninger when I awake in the still of the night... / Opolis deriving value in places / MAD, Matthew Allen an empathetic twist / Frida Escobedo, José Esparza modernist masks / a-RT, Bhattacharjee detailing gestures / Y D Pitkar, Smita Dalvi deep surfaces / Pedro Reyes transforms weapons into musical instruments / K T Ravindran on Oscar Niemeyer
India
R200
Op-ed Edgar F N Ribeiro
Future of the Delhi Master Plan Op-ed Mario Lupano
14 • January 2013
India
Editorial
11
Architects made in Italy
12
Journal
25
Photoessay Tommaso Bonaventura, Alessandro Imbriaco Cover The Suzlon One Earth campus in Pune is the head office of the Indian wind power company, designed by Christopher Charles Benninger Architects. The building set in generous gardens and waterbodies draws inspiration from iconic motifs such as the Brahmasthan and the deepasthambh, around which the buildings and spaces organise themselves. The corporate atrium is imagined as a vertical glass garden from which channels of water flow and radiate out. All of this, along with the transparency of the buildings achieved by a calculated design of form and skin helps to energise the campus as an inspiring place of work (Photo courtesy CCBA)
5
Material evidence
CCB Architects, Christopher Benninger
When I awake in the still of the night... Opolis Architects, Kaiwan Mehta
Deriving value in places MAD Architects, Matthew Allen
An empathetic twist
Rishav Jain
Contemplating the crafts Photoessay Y D Pitkar, Smita Dalvi
Deep surfaces
Contemporary Museum for architecture in India curated by Kaiwan Mehta, text by Suprio Bhattacharjee
The Heinz oeuvre
44
Oscar Niemeyer, K T Ravindran
Meeting the Master Beatrice Galilee
Audi Urban Futures
54
92 98
Pedro Reyes, José Esparza
Gun Politics
32
86
Rassegna
Bathroom
104 106 112 116
60
Frida Escobedo, José Esparza
Modernist masks a-RT, Suprio Bhattacharjee
Detailing gestures
70 78
23
contemporary museum for architecture in india
domus 14
January 2013
The Heinz oeuvre Investigating the architecture of Karl Malte von Heinz who lived and worked in Delhi, India, in the first half of the 20th century, we revisit many issues that need investigation within the history of modern architecture in India, as well as the relationships of architectural language, style and ideological schemes
98
Husain’s depiction of Heinz as the idiosyncratic artist-architect, there is an image of the man, always dressed in a dark suit who would step out of his black Mercedes-Benz accompanied by his black standard poodle, speaking Hindi with a thick accent5 . The specific purpose of my early-winter trip6 to Delhi is to experience first-hand the works of this architect. Dr S M Akhtar, Dean of Jamia Millia Islamia University’s Faculty of Architecture and Ekistics, mentions of the immense contribution made to Delhi's post-independent built fabric by Heinz and Habib Rahman7 — who gave the fledgling new city a set of important buildings. This observation is revelatory and inclusive — two architects whose works are polar opposites in terms of approach and inception. Rahman's brutalist legacy is celebrated today, with a renewed emphasis on its documentation over recent years by his photographer son Ram Rahman. The legacy of Heinz’s work which straddles across two periods of ‘nation-building’ remains in question however — widely sought after as an architect in postindependence Delhi, with an oeuvre of significant buildings, such as those designed for the Jamia in the colonial years. Close to the diplomatic quarter is West End Colony8 , home today of many expatriates. My journey begins there. I visit two independent dwellings. First, a 1969 twin house for an Army officer — with a crisp, unadorned façade and a sombre presence in the shadows
•
•
“In the distance thou dids’t appear” — from the poem Kohistan by Rabindranath Tagore. Seldom does a Nobel laureate write a poem devoted to a unique architectural creation. As a guest of the Nawab Mehdi Nawaz Jung during his visit to Hyderabad in 1933, Tagore stayed in a house part cut into the rocks, and part built out of it. Enchanted, he penned a verse called Kohistan1 (after the name of the house — Persian for ‘land of mountains’). Such was the magnetic draw of the works of Karl Malte von Heinz that he was eagerly sought after by the city’s Nawabs and bourgeoisie in the early part of his career in India. Recently, Heinz’s architecture inspired Oliver Husain, a Torontobased, Hyderabad-born artist, to create an installation2 conjuring the image of a lost magical realm, a phantasmagoria, a dip into the unreal. The architect is portrayed as this madly obsessive individual who locks himself up to conceive worlds of fantasy. As a lament to his fast-disappearing legacy, a hand-painted poster as part of a mise en scène captures an image of the first known building to be designed by Heinz in India, an early-1930s family home3 in Hyderabad, during its unfortunate demolition in 2008. Not much is known about the architect today, as Aga Khan Scholar Dr Omar Khalidi and Austrian historian Dr Margit Franz4 have described in an overview of Heinz’s work. He was probably of Austrian descent and came to India in the early 1930s. Other than
Text & Images
Suprio Bhattacharjee
Jamia Middle School Buildings, New Delhi
amongst the trees. The original grey-brown stucco plaster is intact — the owners wire-brush this surface often, I am informed. The smaller section of the house centres on a free-spirited stairway. Each flight follows its own (seemingly free-hand sketched) profile while inexplicable ornamental flourishes within alcoves along the staircase abound. Rooms have large picture windows. The uppermost bedroom has a shallow dome (not immediately visible from outside), originally painted in pastel blues. A wrought iron grille with avian, zoomorphic and phytomorphic abstractions makes for an intriguing moment. One also notices the extensive use of terrazzo floors. The larger section’s entrance is troglodytic, under the anti-clockwise upward spiral of the staircase-upon-entry — which I begin to infer as a Heinz spatial device. The living areas open to the garden through French windows, and the rooms have an almost Baroque disposition with their curved, inflected walls and rounded corners, obscuring an otherwise functionalist plan. I take the staircase — its railing a frenzy of activity — the patterns evoking figures of unknown origin. Past a crafted hardwood jaali in a simple yet bold chequered pattern, the passage to the terrace floor offers a moment of introspection in a grotto-like space with an alcove set into a curved wall. Past an anteroom, the journey ends in a linear balcony that brings one at level with the tree canopies. This is rewarding.
The other house I visit has a curious presence from the street — not immediately visible through the crafted wrought-iron gates, other than a distinctive belvedere-like oriel window; its fragmented massing consumed by a bougainvillea that has now outgrown it. Once inside, the central hall is freely-shaped, a sweeping staircase with its frenetic handrail arcs up along one side. Halfway up, another stairway becomes visible in the light streaming in through a ‘fissure’ in the wall. There is this beguiling sense of mystery as I climb this narrow twisting second stair to a passage leading to the barsaati ( a small rooftop room, where I greet the triumphant bougainvillea) and the room with the aforementioned oriel window — with its glyphs and volutes that seem like markings of some obscure foreign allegiance. My first stop in the diplomatic quarter is that of the late-1950s Vatican Embassy. This is a ‘pretty-looking’ pastel yellow essay in classicist imagery executed impeccably in stucco — a worthy example of scenography, something the international architectural community would adopt a decade later. ‘Proto-postmodernism’? I recall Ada Louis Huxtable’s charming description of an excessively adorned early-1900s skyscraper in New York as ‘French pastry’. I enter through the diminutive entrance porch with a domesticscaled doorway. Past the trademark Heinz staircase and the brown 99
The Heinz oeuvre
• Images from an article published in Architecture & Interiors magazine, 2009; one of the few sources on Karl Malte von Heinz
Suprio Bhattacharjee
domus 14
January 2013
Extreme below: Part of the installation Onsite [at] OCAD U Gallery titled Bhoot Bangla. Backdrop painting by Santhosh Panchal and photographed by Oliver Husain. (centre) A still from Husain's video titled Item Number, which used the painting as a backdrop
• Views of the staircase at the Vatican Embassy, New Delhi
• Views of details at the West End twin house, New Delhi
100
terrazzo floor in abstract crucifix-inspired patterns, I come to a stoic verandah colonnade fronting a sumptuous rear garden with a large water body. Seen from the other end with the colonnaded façade as backdrop one can only speculate if this was Heinz’s interpretation of St Peter’s Piazza. Now infiltrated with bronze flamingos, fish and other animals — a mise en scène for a vision of paradise? The chapel9 has few remaining pieces of Heinz-designed furniture. A door leads to a luminous yellow mosaic stairwell (yes, spiralling anti-clockwise upward) with yellow glass windows. One comes across hallways with rounded corners and modernist furniture — unflinching modern gestures within a classicist carapace. A tight, dark, twisting stairway is a delight. Glimpsed through the Delhi haze10, the late-1950s Pakistan Embassy building appears as a fortressed medieval fantasy palace — replete with a blue mosaic-clad dome raised on exaggerated flutings complemented by pastel peach stucco walls. The corners are marked by smaller domes on chhatris with triangular motifs. From the street,11 the Thai Ambassador’s residence12 has a similar façade parti and proportion as the Pakistan Embassy, with a kalasha topped central dome instead. The rest of the façade is unadorned except for pilasters along the façade. This completes a trio of scenographic buildings. The mid-1930s Pataudi Palace is not immediately visible upon entry. First glimpsed obliquely amongst trees as the driveway arcs its way to the front porch, the building assumes a reserved, almost stoic presence. There are few ornamental flourishes immediately visible. Raised on a plinth to offer a view of the surrounding landscape and gardens, this building is designed with deep verandahs on all sides. The work itself has a raw appeal within its refined proportions. Not an opulent princely palace, more an elegant family mansion. Successive coats of whitewash13 over the years have given the walls a rough-hewn quality — the flaking of earlier layers now frozen in a rich, uneven texture. The floors display a faMilliar mastery in terrazzo — different colours and textures distinguish one space from another. A favourite is a sun-burnt blue balcony floor. This stark, whitewashed mansion appears like an apparition in the landscape, its ethereal qualities intensified in the pervasive early-winter haze that surrounds us. A ‘classical’ façade view from its manicured gardens showing its symmetrical flanks will never convey the building’s tremendous spatial qualities. The first set of buildings for the fledgling Jamia Millia Islamia University — an identical pair of school buildings, was designed
by Heinz in the mid-1930s. Their severe nature, with minimal ornamentation, is unquestionably modern. The buildings lie low and long, the verandahs as sleek incisions in the brick mass. Relief lines accentuate the building’s proportions. The brickwork is enthralling — few visible lintels, few legible supporting members — a pioneering reinforced-brick structure. Momentarily, within the inset forecourt, Louis Kahn’s IIM Ahmedabad begins to bear an uncanny resemblance. Elsewhere, the building draws on a suffusion of influences — not once does a singular one overpower another, making this a masterful expression of syncretic architecture. The building comes across as much ‘modern’ as it is rooted. One also confronts the taxonomist’s amusing dilemma. Like domes that seem to be Islamic but are not. Or trefoil arches and corner towers with curvilinear enveloping flanks. This is a complex, humble yet heroic work14 — a building that echoes the university founders' vision, and a work that in itself mirrors the act of nation-building; a forgotten and overlooked masterpiece? Its self-effacing nature as forceful now as it must have been 80 years ago as a signifier for an indigenous institution with a unique vision. This is indeed a canonical building. The grey stucco of the The Faculty of Education building built in the 1940s15 makes for a foreboding presence, relieved by patios that indent the symmetrical façade16 . A lota-shaped axial dome tops a jagged base outline. The key spatial moment is the surprisingly uplifting entrance hall with its rich sunny pastel hues in yellow and sky blue. It features a pair of stairways in grey terrazzo with balusters that originate from an impossibly twisting screw-like newel — executed in the same material. This space is strikingly modern, and is concurrent with some of the more celebrated protomodern architectures in the country. This hallway gives access to a garden with flanking wings that, with their sweeping curves, offer a dynamic foil to the sombre nature of the architecture. I am filled to the brim with what I have seen. There is a lot to infer and investigate. This has been a revealing journey. The architecture of Karl Malte von Heinz is diverse17 — with a refreshing refrain to adhere to any stylistic dogma. His early work is far ahead of its time. There are significant demonstrations of architectures that allude to a multitude of influences — both indigenous and foreign — and the search for a situational vocabulary. It would be limiting to dismiss these as merely eclectic. One only has to remember Romi Khosla’s 1975 Chakravarty Residence in South Delhi — a Robert Venturi18 inspired excursion in scenography — a work that is as
• Blue print for a proposed residence in West End Colony, New Delhi
101
The Heinz oeuvre
Suprio Bhattacharjee
domus 14
January 2013
much Indian as it is not. Many surveys on Delhi’s architecture overlook his repertoire, besides the misrepresentation of him as an architect who only made opulent homes for the wealthy (the Jamia school buildings were done free of any professional charges19, and the two houses I visited in West End were built by Government officers). His oeuvre’s relevant place in Delhi’s (and the country’s broader) architectural history is important and necessary, especially for practitioners in a country striving to find their own voice in a post-global world order. — Suprio Bhattacharjee Architect
Ornament and style—It is noted that when Heinz was asked what style he is building the Jamia Millia campus in, he said “Jamia style”! A statement very indicative of one of the historical problems architects have faced — the need to be coherent in style or conform to one in either good or bad taste. However, we often realise how architects in their professional careers have changed their approach and ideas vis-à-vis architectural formats; in fact this is important to note as we have often forced architectural careers to follow a linear pattern of ideas in retrospect and then celebrated the ‘cohesiveness’ and ‘continuation’. On conducting detailed and perceptive studies one has often realised how change in style or architectural forms does not mean it is a change in concern or approach to the idea of architecture itself. Heinz is a case in point for this struggle with imagining an architecture that fits into, or draws up a landscape rather than ‘one size fits all’ approach. The flights of imagination that are trying to connect ‘tradition and context’ with visions that are modern define the formal scheme as well as details in his buildings. Like in the case of Habib Rahman or Durga Bajpai one can see the sense of ornament and detailing merging innovatively with the bold lines of modern visualisations. Brick in many ways is the ideal material for Heinz — its texture and structural multiplication provides for both textured and crafted ornamental propositions as well as broad and contained visual surfaces simultaneously. Arches, columns, capitals or domes are neither avoided in the modern language of his buildings nor are they copies from any heritage; these elements are reworked and sculpted with a fresh idea — only to the first glance do they appear as elements from history, but a closer looking will reveal how these are fresh propositions that also enjoys the repository of architectural features and aspects — resulting into a celebration of ‘nation-making’ rather than marking a super-conscious definition. Architectural ornament as the structuring principle of architecture extends beyond crafted details; the sculpting of spaces, juxtaposing forms and elements, composition of different materials or textures contribute to an elaborate visual language. An aspect we rarely acknowledge — ornamentation is a structuring principle, a visual guideline to a building and not the superfluous pastiche we often imagine it to be; and this is evident in the works of Heinz. It is high time we understood the difference between ornamentation as architectural language versus ornamentation as barely skin-deep and lame decoration. It was precisely for these reasons that a study of the works of Heinz was encouraged under this section. Some of the disappearing Heinz buildings have been photodocumented by Delhi-based photographer and curator Ram Rahman; Heinz was also an important influence on the early thinking of Mumbai-based architect I M Kadri who studied at Jamia Millia when Dr Zakir Husain was the Vice-Chancellor and Heinz was still working on the buildings on campus. — kAIWAN MEHTA Architect and critic
102
Translated into English by the poet himself
1
Bhoot Bangla, installation at Onsite [at] OCAD U Gallery, Toronto, 2012 2
The house belonged to Oliver Husain’s aunt
3
4 Dr Omar Khalidi and Dr Margit Franz, “Karl Malte von Heinz: Austrian Architect in India,” Architecture & Interiors 23 (2009): pp. 92-95
Conversation with the widow of an Army officer who had engaged Heinz
5
I am grateful to the owners of the West End twin-house for making this trip possible. I also wish to express my gratitude to the tenants for allowing me to visit, as well as the owner of the other West End house
6
Conversation with Dr S M Akhtar on Oct 31, 2012
7
Now an upmarket locality, it was a patch of barren nothingness on the outer fringes of Delhi in the 1960s. Besides the two houses by Heinz that I managed to visit, I came across other Heinz houses in the locality — few of them minimal (I was not allowed to photograph a particular stark work) 8
9 A later addition by Heinz — the interior no longer bears the original design (it was recently renovated). I was not enthused to take pictures as the space is now flooded with iconography — such as plain coloured glass windows replaced with painted religious depictions
Clockwise from left: Jamia Faculty of Education, New Delhi; Pataudi Palace, New Delhi (two views); Thai Embassy, New Delhi; Vatican Embassy, New Delhi
We could not enter the premises
10
We were unable to receive permission for a visit 11
Built in the late 1950s, this building too is slated for demolition
12
The palace is only ever to be whitewashed. Its current occupants, a hotel franchise, inform us that they have adhered to this dictat
13
14 Dr S M Akhtar offered us insights on the Jamia Middle School Buildings' raison d'être and its significant role in the process of nation building. He has been spearheading the process of restoration. I am also grateful to Tayaiba Munewar, Assistant Professor with the Faculty of Architecture and Ekistics, for her enthusiasm and her insights on the Middle School Buildings. She plays a pivotal role in the Jamia's efforts at restoring and repairing the Middle School Buildings 15 This building is slated for demolition due to structural reasons after the recent earthquake 16
Many of these have now been built upon
17 Prof S M Akhtar describes his work as experimental and versatile 18 Rahul Khanna and Manav Parhawk, The Moden Architecture of New Delhi 1928-2007, (Random House India, 2008). This handsome book makes no mention of the Jamia, though colonial buildings such as St Stephen’s college and St Martin’s Garrison Church are covered, as are post-modernist works by Khosla and the beautiful 'neo-vernacular' work of Vasant and Revathy Kamath 19 Dr Omar Khalidi and Dr Margit Franz, “Karl Malte von Heinz: Austrian Architect in India,” Architecture & Interiors 23 (2009): pp. 92-95
103