Letters To A Young Architect

by Christopher Benninger

  My fellow students were my teachers also. Thomas Cooper, Bruce Creager, Marc Trieb and Louis Kiszonak who also came up from Florida to Cambridge, remain sources of inspiration and shoulders to lean on even today! Michael Pyatok and Urs Gauchat were my classmates and competitors in Sert’s studio. When I was twenty-six years old I was promoted as a tenured Assistant Professor at Harvard, and became a Member of the Faculty Senate. That’s when my mentors cautioned me to move on. “Leave now,” Joseph Zalewski warned me, “or you will rot here”. Jaqueline Tyrwhitt scolded me, “You know too many famous people. You are becoming Harvard’s official greeter!”

  The Cambridge ashram was the center of the modernist gharana and had, as its gurus-in-residence, Gropius, Sert, Mirko Basaldella and many others. The intellectual atmosphere was full of ferment. We gleaned enough ideas and concepts to carry us through a lifetime. We learned that by opening one window of knowledge, we would be presented with ten more windows to open. But the real learning was not through the multiple windows, it was through the human examples around us who lived amazing lives. Their grasp of eternity and their place in history was astounding. Their vision, their missions and their sense of purpose infused passion in us. It set us off on a long journey and search. So when my mentor Balkrishna Doshi called me to Ahmedabad, I resigned from Harvard and embarked upon a great adventure.

  Making an Institute: The Life of a Householder

  In Ahmedabad, it was Doshi who inspired and encouraged me. I had been there on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1968-69 and thereafter returned to teach in the summers. He called me back to start the School of Planning at CEPT in late 1971 and encouraged me to run my own architectural studio. There I got my first design commissions: the Alliance Française in Ahmedabad, Dr. Bhanuben Parekh’s House in Bhavnagar, low cost housing for hundreds of families in Jamnagar, and the SOS Children’s Village outside Delhi and another in Kolkata. For the World Bank I designed a program called Site and Services Shelter in Chennai, which created habitats for five thousand families in our first experiment at Arambakkam. More sites followed sheltering another ten thousand households at Villivakkam and other sites where habitats were built by the people with their own hands.

  In Ahmedabad we were limited to a few basic materials – concrete, brick, mild steel window and door frames and local glass. We made floors out of concrete and Kota stone. With these simply expressed materials I tried to carve out interlocking visual spaces, and to shape my sites into convivial social spaces, using the settings to guide my designs. A simple concrete column centered in a two-storied space, a cantilevered balcony, a bridge, skylights and plug-in modular toilets were the parts that made a building ‘come alive’. These were the components from which I tried to make art.

  At the other end of the scale was the massive low income shelter scheme at Chennai from 1973 onwards. This was one of the first projects I did with Kenneth Bohr and Donald Strombolm of the World Bank. Here, self-help construction and the most efficient layout of plots set the theme. The narrower and deeper the plot configuration, the shorter was the length of all of the infrastructure networks, reducing capital and running expenditures. This made the entire scheme cheaper and more economically accessible to the urban poor. On these small plots people built their own shelters, confident that with land ownership, their sweat and savings would not be lost. This typology became a model for the World Bank around the world, to use and misuse! Another challenging project for the World Bank was the Busti Improvement Scheme at Kolkata. Here we accepted what we found, improving health and hygiene, safety and comfort levels. We improved the hutments as we found them. Paved pathways and corner street lights were added. Communal bathing places and separate toilets for men and women were carefully placed. Potable water from common water taps was introduced. Storm drainage was added. Thousands of families had a better life due to this intervention. In Kolkata I came into contact with Sivaramakrishnan, a brilliant urbanist, and Arthur Row, a hands-on urban development man.

  In Ahmedabad for the first time I earned my own way and lived as a householder and teacher. The Ahmedabad ashram integrated the modernist movement of the West into a search for an ‘Indian tradition.’ Balkrishna Doshi, Hasmukh Patel and Anant Raje were my gurus. Mentors like Charles Correa, Achyut Kanvinde and Laurie Baker guided me.

  But in Ahmedabad I had to try being a Guru too! Doshi had asked me to start a School of Planning. He just said, “Do it! Pick up on your Harvard teaching experience and run!” The Ford Foundation supported our efforts through a grant of books, visiting professors and office equipment. Suddenly I had to write a curriculum, hire professors and scout all over India to find good students. I had to plan teaching schedules, make rules and try to bring a sense of order into natural chaos. My office attendant Baldevji put it very aptly. He would say, “This is not the School of Planning; it is the School of Problems!”

  The School of Planning was an important experiment. It drew students from architecture, engineering, social work, the liberal arts and technology, upsetting the accreditation committees of civil engineers, geographers and architects from New Delhi. Our pedagogy was through ‘laboratories’ rather than classrooms and studios. Students and teachers lived in villages, rural towns and slums ‘learning from the people’ with whom we made plans for the future. Theoretical subjects were cross-disciplinary involving economists, managers, social scientists, architects, community leaders and technicians. With Jaswant Krishnayya we introduced the first computer link in India between social science research, public policy and decision making. With Yoginder Alagh we prepared India’s first district plan. That was way back in 1972. We all worked in multidisciplinary teams, where teachers were students and students were teachers. After all I was only twenty-eight years old when I initiated the School of Planning. My life in Cambridge, Massachusetts was in the ashram of truth, empiricism and progress. In Ahmedabad it was the ashram of devotion, social change and passionate service to community. ‘From each according to his abilities and to each according to his need’ was our battle cry. In Ahmedabad the word ‘modern’ meant transformation, not progress. We wanted to create a ‘new man’ and design a ‘new culture’. Maybe we even wanted a revolution!

  The CDSA Ashram: The Life of a Hermit

  An eccentric administrator named Vasant Bawa unexpectedly entered to catalyze a new ashram. He had taken my advice on the new legislation creating the Hyderabad Urban Development Authority (HUDA). Now he wanted me to design the HUDA’s very first project. It was the new township for two thousand Class IV employees of the Government of Andhra Pradesh. Twelve labor unions had formed a housing federation and within their limited means they wanted shelter. Working closely with these people, who were securely employed and had access to housing finance, we built a township of two thousand houses and amenities at Yousufguda near Hyderabad. The scheme provided one hundred square meter plots on a grid of serviced access roads. Each plot had a water tap, a separate toilet, a bathing cubicle and one room. These incremental houses had a secret agenda: each owner could add more rooms and rent them out to less fortunate relatives and fellow villagers. Thus, an ‘organized informal sector’ rental housing market was catalyzed. Five families could use one set of wet cores designed for one family. A lower income user group was addressed who would never have access to land or institutional finance. The owners became low cost housing managers. A rental market was created. This project drew lessons from the housing township for economically weaker groups that I had done for the Gujarat Housing Board in the early 1970s and the site and services schemes in Chennai. The fees from this project translated into my opportunity to jump out of Doshi’s nest and fly! I wanted to start my own institute and this project provided the finances for that. Thus, the Centre for Development Studies and Activities (CDSA) in Pune was born.

  When I shifted to Pune to start CDSA in 1976 I was thirty-three years old. This was my second institution. This was a place of intellect
ual research and social action. The design of my new campus followed the lead of the Alliance Française in Ahmedabad. Honestly expressed concrete beams and window boxes; natural stone from the area; clay tile roofs; and the then newly introduced powder-coated aluminum sliding doors. Again, large waterspouts from Le Corbusier; naturally expressed materials from Wright and Kahn. Then I was on my own to create interior and exterior spaces, find human scale, interlock spaces, and play with the landscape. At the peak of CDSA’s ascendance more than eighty young professionals worked with me at offices in Pune, Bhutan, Goa, Almora in (then) Uttar Pradesh, and in Jaffna and Galle in Sri Lanka. We prepared town plans, slum improvement programs, village, district and regional plans. We pioneered micro-watershed planning, micro-level social services planning, decentralized planning and participatory planning. It was a retreat from the real world, from where we wanted to change it. The ‘thinker-doer’ was our model.

  My twenty years at CDSA were spent inventing, enabling and facilitating programs, all to assist households to climb out of poverty. Most of our ideas were put into practice. Again we worked in teams; again we used villages and slums as our research laboratories, classrooms and teachers; again we drew from all disciplines. The Centre was part of an active network including the Indian Planning Commission, the National Housing Bank, the Housing and Urban Development Corporation and the Ministry of Urban Affairs. Internationally we worked with the UNHCS (Habitat) in Nairobi, the Asian Development Bank in Manila and the World Bank in Washington.

  The new School of Planning at CDSA was founded on didactic techniques initiated in Ahmedabad. The real world became the learning laboratory. Students lived in slums and villages learning from those they would plan for. Poverty, sustainability and inequality were the main concerns and issues to be debated. Methods of ‘stress identification’, problem identification, program design and monitoring the results of development inputs were evolved. At CDSA ‘modern’ came to mean planned amelioration and facilitated change. It involved the civil society, NGOs, governments and people.

  Toward the end of my stint at CDSA my interest in design and architecture was awakened again. A commission to design the Mahindra United World College of India allowed me to employ my architectural language, while discovering a new sense of poetry. The stone walls reached up to the sky like the massive surrounding mountains; the little streets focused views toward lakes and valleys; small spaces, large spaces, low ceilings and high ceilings were all interlinked into an articulated experiential built fabric.

  It was this commission from Harish Mahindra that lit a flame in me to confine myself to the ashram of a simple studio, yet re-engage with society as a maker of artifacts. Thus, my academic life came to an end and I left my life as a teacher and householder, entering a more inward and meditative stage. At CDSA the ashram was both one of retreat and one of engagement; it was the place of thinker-doers who explored more relevant ways of doing things with optimism to change the world.

  The India House Ashram: The Life of a Rishi

  Perhaps India House is more of a real ashram than either CDSA or CEPT were. It is even more of a retreat than Harvard Yard, or the Endless Corridor at MIT. It is a self contained residence, guesthouse, art gallery, office, studio, and public space for cultural events. One can even swim in the lap pool and thus pass weeks without ever leaving its limited compound walls. Surely this is my true forest retreat.

  At India House about fifty creative people work on a range of design and design management activities. Major new projects have been initiated here and older ones completed: the Capital City Plan of Bhutan; the Indian Institute of Management at Kolkata; the Samundra Institute of Maritime Studies near Mumbai; the YMCA Retreat at Nilshi; the Suzlon One Earth at Pune; works at the College of Engineering, Pune; the National Ceremonial Plaza in Thimphu; the Bajaj Science Centre at Wardha; the Supreme Court of Bhutan; the Aamby International School near Mumbai; the Super Computer Laboratory for the Tatas; the Center for Life Sciences, Health and Medicine at Pune; the Life Care Hospital at Udgir and many more. It is an ashram where young people gain their confidence and work from ‘tired to tired.’ It is my retreat into my secret world of ideas, sketches, design concepts and putting things into ‘buildable’ technology. It is a centre of art and architecture; a place of self discovery and transcendence.

  At India House I have found the solace to write this book. I have found the peace to focus on a series of articles on urbanism published by the Times of India group. New design ‘starts’ have been initiated almost every month. There is a team of devoted architects contributing to a fellowship of creativity. India House is a place of incessant creative activity. The clock never stops.

  Legacy

  If you are an architect your true legacy is the love and passion of those who went before you. It is the smile in your guru’s eyes when you excel and the annoyance in his voice when you fail. Your legacy is the stream of works built over the years, decades and centuries that were honestly created and are integral to their places. Your legacy is a challenge to be honest in your works and build in yourself the integrity that is expressed in your work. When you reach this plane true art will be your gift, and your endowment to the future.

  My good fortune was in having great teachers, mentors and gurus. My great luck was having wonderful students, friends and a great lover. I searched for them and found them. I stumbled upon some and some found me. From them I inherited an endowment of passion for architecture and a love for life. I was taught life is a shared journey. I have thrived on the brotherhood and camaraderie of my ‘fellows in arms’ on the great battlefield called Architecture. That battlefield spreads into urban and regional planning, cultural conservation and environmental management.

  Endowment

  In a small, isolated Mizo village on the border with Burma I came across a hand painted sign that read, “You have traveled so far to come here, leave something behind, for good or for bad!” I suppose as architects and designers we leave a large footprint. For better or worse, it is a kind of ‘endowment for the future.’ We plan cities, build campuses, create stone and concrete reliefs, and we shape the way people teach and learn. We are there when people die and when they cry. We are there years after we die when they laugh and make love. While we can ‘go on’ to the next project and our clients often change jobs, the inheritor of our ‘built wealth’ (or poverty) is the user community of our buildings and spaces. It is humanity. Let us hope that our humble legacy becomes a considered endowment for the future. The buildings we make are our lien on eternity. From living and working in our spaces and experiencing our choreographies of place, let us hope we are able to pass on the passions, the feelings and the humanity that becomes a legacy for the future.

  (Article in Insite Magazine published in June 2010 - Volume 3, Issue 5-6)

  Letter

  Five Lessons Life Has Taught Me

  LESSON ONE

  To gain something beautiful, one may have to give up something beautiful

  One day, while I sat in my garden campus near Pune, surrounded by fifteen acres of fruit trees, flowering plants and lawns, a young architecture student came unannounced to meet me, insisting on having our picture taken together. Like many students who visited my campus at CDSA he was studying my designs and my campus layout. At that moment I was completing the fiftieth policy paper I had written on ‘Development’ and it struck me that no student had ever approached me for a photo session after reading one of my hefty policy papers!

  At about the moment we said ‘cheese’ I decided to quit my post as Founder-Director of the institute and to devote my remaining life’s efforts to architecture. Among other things, I had to give up the sprawling campus I had created and move into a tiny apartment studio with modest equipment. The years since that impulsive decision have never allowed me time for regrets, or even to look back with nostalgia. But I had to give up my very
own little dream world, created over twenty years of toil, to seek transcendence through my art. By giving up something beautiful, I found something even more beautiful.

  LESSON TWO

  It is better to BE what you are than to SEEM what you are not

  In October 2001 I made a presentation of my new capital plan for Bhutan at the European Biennale along with some of the greatest painters, cinematographers and architects of our times. I noticed something very interesting. To seem a ‘creative artist’ in Europe you must wear the black uniform of an artist! To be a creative youth in Europe you must attend rock concerts waving your arms high in the air just like several thousand other conforming youth, pretending to be ‘free’. To be different, unique, free and an individual, you must wear the ‘uniform of the different’! You must wear a uniform – dress totally in black; wear black shoes; black socks; black pants; black belt; black shirt; black tie and black jacket. Perhaps even the underwear must be black! I realized that for these people, in fact for most people in the world, being creative is not a form of liberation, but is living a lie. There are people who never design anything, never write, never draw, and never search, never question, but who dress in the black uniform of creators. They are not ‘being’, they are ‘seeming’. If I have any lesson to share with young students, it is to BE, not SEEM.