How Balkrishna Doshi carved out a new design language for post-independent India

The late architect’s work embodies the innumerable ways in which proportions, spatial perception and radical architectural thinking could come alive

The news of Pritzker Prize-winning architect Balkrishna Doshi having passed away at the age of 95 earlier today once again reminded us of his genius, if we even needed any reminding. 

Born in 1927 in a quiet alley in Pune, Doshi’s radical approach to design was a blend of many stories. Largely drawn from his years spent working alongside other masters like Le Corbusier (he spent four years in Corbusier’s architectural office) and with Louis Kahn, Doshi was cognisant of the fluid interplay of light and in-built geometry. 

An understanding of space

In the Indian context, Doshi deeply understood the geographical and sociological dimensions to a space. He didn’t believe in forcefitting something that stuck out like a sore thumb, solely because it made sense aesthetically. Take, for example, the design of Amdavad ni Gufa, an underground gallery in Ahmedabad featuring the works of painter Maqbool Fida Husain. The forms of the space are amorphous, the identity is multifaceted and a subtle play of light informs the space. 

For Doshi, the idea of ‘home’ took many shapes. His works inspired architects, particularly in South Asia, to reflect on the immediate needs of their communities, that of housing. What was the point, he seemed to argue, of crafting palatial structures for the rich when your own communities were at the receiving end of substandard housing? Through his community housing project Aranya in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, Doshi blended innovation and housing adaptation through resident participation. Each plot had spaces demarcated for electricity connections and a separate sanitary block too, as opposed to mixing all the solid waste in one septic tank.

Interestingly enough, when I visited Aranya last year, most of the elements from the original plan were demolished. I found out that the space was distributed vertically so that homes are not cramped and there is enough space for leisure. It was commissioned in 1983 by the Indore Development Authority in response to an acute shortage of housing, and co-funded by the World Bank and India’s Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO). 

In all his low-cost housing projects for the economically weaker sections of the society, Doshi consciously steered away from creating repetitive and isolated multi-storeyed blocks that would resemble dystopian Hong Kong high rises. Doshi had warmth; he understood the need to design spaces that could breathe and freely interact. This idea of groups mixing and not being isolated from each other, had already taken deeper root in his design for the housing for the Life Insurance Corporation of India in Ahmedabad in 1973. Here, a straight flight of stairs connected all the spaces, arranged like miniature ziggurats, with the smaller units below, rising upwards. 

Beauty in sparseness

When he won the Pritzker Prize in 2018, it was an affirmation of this precise spirit of warmth and compassion he brought to the spaces he designed. For Doshi, the primary function of his practice stemmed from his own experiences of growing up in Pune where class divisions were stark. He did not believe in needless facade ornamentations.

“Even if it is made of bricks, housing cannot be thought of as permanent’, he had famously said, “and the most important thing is to think about the project over time. Housing is not inert. It is a living entity.”

Over the past decades, Doshi has shown how Indian design needs to reflect on the society at large, and not be tone-deaf to those lives existing in and around us. Even though he worked with Corbusier, spaces, for him, were not concrete high rises such as the ones in Chandigarh. Doshi believed in sprawling homes that accommodated everyone, where the binaries of class and caste dwindled away. 

This ease is evident in his work, and his character. At the age of 92, a few years ago, he famously remarked: “I am not in a hurry.” Indeed he wasn’t. He never was.

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