The rise of media and of science has propelled us into the straitjackets of specialized disciplines. The further we advance in knowledge, the less clearly we can see either the world around us, or understand our own selves. We have plunged into what Milan Kundera has called the ‘forgetting of being’. True modernism began in an era when the ‘passion to know’ became the essence of spirituality. The essence of modern architecture is to explore that which only a piece of architecture can discover. A building which does not express some unknown segment of existence is meaningless. Revealing truths is architecture’s only reality. Bringing the ‘good life’ to humanity is our mission. The sequence of discovery, not the sum total of what is built, is what constitutes the history of modern architecture; of all architecture. It is only in such a cross-cultural, historical context that the value of any work can be fully revealed and understood.
Friends, with these few words, I thank you for the great honor that you have bestowed upon me today.
(Sunday, December 21, 2008 at the Architect of the Year Award Ceremony, Kolkata)
In my life as an architect ninety percent of my work ended up in the trashcan of my dreams. Some work survived in the form of models and drawings made to scale. What got built was a mere fraction of my life’s efforts. When people praise that small evidence of my truth, I feel very nice. When they garland me, and call me a Great Master, I feel humbled, yet truly elated. All of those trashcan dreams get reborn and come to life again with new meaning.
Letter
What Made Raje Laugh
Friends, we have lost a great teacher and a great architect by the name of Anant Raje.
He is special to all of us who knew his work. He is still more special to all of his students who learned how to think from him, how to question and how to make decisions. He is very special for those of us who shared a beautiful intimate friendship with him.
He laid out an Epic Path in front of us and showed us the poetry of being a tiny part of it. Most of all he showed us how small we are, by painting on a huge canvas. He made the human condition real.
Man pretending to be God, while being a mere human, was Raje‘s endless joke. Man greedily seeking fame and money in the name of art was Raje’s joke. Man reaching for greatness and instead grabbing “meaningless success” was Raje’s joke!
The friendship was beautiful because he always made us laugh. Raje spoke to his friends through the medium of stories. These were epic stories about Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, great projects, masterpieces of art and amazing people.
Raje called upon all of us to be great men, and we shared a dream I would like to call the Great Man Theory. It was a ‘theory of the possible’ and of the human condition. It was an idea that challenged us.
Many decades ago, in 1970, I was teaching at Harvard and Raje called me on a June evening from Philadelphia, inviting me to join him early the next morning. He wanted us to visit the Richards Medical Center, see Furess Hall and share other architectural marvels of that city.
We walked for miles and talked for hours. We drank red wine in the evening, and we went to sleep charged with memories and dreams of great architects.
Waking on Sunday morning, Raje told me that he had a special gift for me! Kahn had agreed that he would spend Sunday afternoon alone with us in his studio.
You see, for Raje to share his great treasures; for Raje to share his knowledge; for Raje to place the window glass of life in front of us and to challenge us, was his personal mission.
Louis Kahn, for Raje, embodied all of the aspects of a great man that one needed to know. Raje used his iconic image of Kahn as an intellectual mirror through which he, and all of us around him, could see ourselves. Kahn made the complex simple, while we made the simple complex in the name of design. Kahn could quickly grasp the fundamentals of complex problems and interpret their complexities into simple forms and great spatial systems that all became iconic images.
Raje’s Kahn became my Kahn. Like Mohammed about Allah, what Raje had to say about Kahn carried a profundity and a sense of the eternal Truth. Through these stories of truth Raje laid bare all our ambitions and our weaknesses. By rendering this epic image of Kahn, the perfect architect, Raje made each of us feel very small and fragile.
While I was listening to Kahn on that Sunday afternoon, four decades ago in his studio, he crumpled up an A4 sheet of paper, handed me a pen and said “Sketch it!” As I fumbled to pen down the incredible complexity, he grabbed the pen back and drew four lines, making the image of paper in its true simplicity. Kahn smiled and we all laughed.
I realize that Raje played this ‘trick of truth’ on me continuously, making me sharper in my thoughts. In his generosity and insights, Raje the chela, went beyond Kahn the guru.
When Raje told a story about Kahn, Le Corbusier or Picasso he would usually end it with an incident where a well known architect misused architecture for personal glory, rather than as a spiritual path toward self realization.
Yet Raje also saw the beauty in this ‘wrong step’, because there is poetry in man’s weakness. There is a slice of each of us in every foolish act. Man seeks love, fame and fortune that weaves a lyrical story keeping the epic possibility just beyond his coveted reach. In a sense Raje knew the fundamental stupidity of mankind, understood man’s weaknesses, and by comparing arrogant architects, or fools, with his icon Kahn, he expressed humorously great errors, blunders and follies. Man approaches epic greatness, but trips over lyrical desire at the last moment, losing eternity for immediate gratification.
Raje used his iconic image of Kahn as an intellectual mirror through which he, and all of us around him, could see ourselves.
This ‘exposure’ was Raje’s own personal insight that he shared with intimate friends. Raje could analyze the essence of a problem; lay out all of the pieces before you; point to the solutions, and then humorously give an example of the wrong solution to the same fundamental problem, exposing why perfectly intelligent people would take the wrong step. In Raje’s unique wisdom about folly and weakness we could see our own predicament in life. When he made us laugh, we were all laughing at ourselves!
Raje knew that life was short and he knew that he would die. He knew that in this short life truth and the struggle for perfection was his path in an epic search. Raje also knew that all of the students, architects and friends he was talking to were potentially great architects. He told his stories not to mock individuals, but to call forth the profound in humanity. It was his love for humanity that drew him to teaching and story telling, and it was his love for humanity that made him laugh. I suppose, to me personally, Raje was the ultimate teacher. Raje always gave more than he took; Raje always shared passionately what he had.
What Raje never said, nor ever hinted at, was that he himself was an avatar of greatness. He never praised his own ideas or concepts. He just explained them, leaving each of us to absorb what we could. But Raje was indeed the essence of a great man on an epic path. It showed in his knowing smile, in his sketches, in his anger with bad details and in the wonderful compositions and epic designs he left for humanity. Yes, Raje was a Master Builder.
Raje never doubted that he had been to the Promised Land, or that he knew what heaven’s vaults, domes and arches looked like. He merely wanted to share his grand vision with anyone who he thought could understand it. There was always sureness and never doubt. When Raje told his stories, there was always Amita, an architect and his life companion next to him. Theirs was a partnership and a shared journey. Like Raje, she knew the humor of life. She was his secret sharer. This made him still stronger and still surer. And over a glass of wine he laughed and laughed. He laughed at all the funny people who could not understand how simple the Truth is! And Raje laughed and laughed, while he shared his Great Vision and inspired all of us fortunate enough to know and love him.
In Raje’s unique wisdom about folly and weakness we could see our own predicament in life. When he made us laugh, we were all laughing at ourselves!
And Raje is still laughing!
(Obituary note on Prof. Anant Raje)
Letter
Doshi at Eighty
Doshi is both a man and an IDEA. I believe very special people are imprinted in our memories at birth. Even before the first time we meet them it is a kind of recollection from our memories! This is true only with a few unique people on this earth, and it was so when I met Doshi in October of 1968.
When one meets Doshi, even over a small matter, there is a glint in his eye that hints of the inevitable. It seems through mere glances and passing smiles that the larger concerns are demanded of us, which transcend the petty concerns of the moment. Rather than two people talking, Doshi is dealing with the collective concerns of humanity and thinking how this little problem is but a sliver – a sign – of the greater human condition.
There is a sense of vision, of the future and an excitement that we are not dealing with something small or mundane, but that we are unraveling the essence of the universe. The more one gets to know Doshi, the more his apparent contradictions seem to fall into an order and a unity. It is within these seeming contradictions that the essence of Doshi lies. What are these contradictions?
• Doshi is both simple and sophisticated! He tells his story in such a simple manner that his innocence obscures a great sophistication. Each building he describes and each question he answers is often analyzed through an analogy to a folk narrative, a riddle of life, or is explained through a passage from the great epics. His range and grasp of tales belies an underlying encyclopedic knowledge.
• Doshi is both a traditional Indian and a global man. He lives very simply within the great Indian tradition. Seeing his home one feels he could be in a relaxed village house lost in a rural place. Yet it is his great understanding of things which makes matters appear simple. He brings the reality of things down to their basics making them truly universal and global.
• Doshi is a wise sage yet he thinks like a child. Even at age eighty there is a child in his face; in the way he talks; and in the way he sketches. But behind that child-likeness, that playfulness is the ageless wisdom of a sage. Truth always presents itself in the simplicity of a child.
• Doshi seems as free as a bird, yet has the self-discipline to achieve. He is always relaxed, free and unfettered. He is not bound to any ideology, or to any ‘-ism’! He seems almost bindaas – like a free bird, or like a traveler without a destination; knowing only the joy of moving and exploring. Yet, the contradiction: he has labored to start institutions that live on discipline; create buildings that only hard work can bear; and create human relations which mature over decades of devotion. Doshi is free in his mind, yet a slave to his devotions!
• Lastly, Doshi is a Master of the Small, yet a Ponderer of the Infinite! If he draws a small bird, it will be in flight; it is all birds flying in one image; we too are watching it; we feel in flight; and we experience the transcendental beauty of flight, and the unimaginable! Doshi deals with the tiny seeds of things, yet in them lies the essence of all things.
The greatest fortune in life is to have good teachers. This fortune has indeed smiled on all of us who know Doshi. He makes us aware of the good in ourselves and we feel very good about that realization. He excites some deep understanding of our essential possibility and who we could be. That is what is known as inspiring.
It is that good, our feeling GOOD, and our knowledge of ourselves that makes us want to celebrate Doshi’s eightieth birthday.
The life of any person is a dubious experiment. Life can be fleeting, meaningless and insignificant. It seems so amazing that anything can exist or develop! Yet Doshi’s life has been an epic journey:
• His boyhood in Pune in the old city;
• His student days at J.J. College of Architecture in Mumbai;
• A brief period in London with the good fortune to meet his guru;
• His years in Paris with Le Corbusier;
• His early days in Ahmedabad, moving about in the heat on a bicycle to supervise Le Corbusier’s buildings;
• His marriage to Kamuben;
• Founding his studio Vastu Shilpa;
• Starting the School of Architecture at Ahmedabad;
• Work with Louis Kahn on the Indian Institute of Management;
• Wonderful friendships;
• Transforming a single School of Architecture into the Centre for Environmental Planning & Technology, and then a university;
• Making great buildings; winning prizes and awards;
• Being surrounded by a loving family and lifelong friendships;
• International recognition;
• Achieving contentment.
Doshi’s life has been a psychic process that is only partly revealed and it still unfolds. Doshi is two beings inhabiting the same body. One being is the simple man, the friend, the husband, the father, and the architect. Yet there is another Doshi beyond the memories of encounters. There is the Doshi who is the avatar of imagination; there is the Doshi who is the manifestation of dreams; it is like two beings always walking together; inhabiting the same space; knowing us as a friend, but playing on our spirits like a phantom. On one level Doshi is an object, like a tree, a stone or a mountain or a human being; on another level he is ethereal, like a morning sunrise bursting over snow-clad mountains, awakening our inner spirit and making us question who we are. When we are standing next to Doshi we feel there are two beings next to us – one concerned with day-to-day life; the other drifting off transcending materiality. It is this second personality, this ‘other persona,’ which is a forming myth that carries within it the eternal spirit which lights up one’s imagination; one’s inspiration; one’s desire to be.
Thus, on his eightieth birthday celebration we must consider Doshi’s personal myth which will live forever. We must celebrate it without trying to understand it. We can only tell stories and recall incidents. Whether the stories are true has no bearing and is of no significance. The only important thing is whether we can grasp Doshi’s story, and Doshi’s Truth. The test of a man is in his myth; only his inner vision, which projects out to the vast universe and is etched into history, can have any meaning.
Every life is the story of the self-realization of the unconscious. Here Doshi’s life is unique. Everything in the unconscious seeks an outward manifestation, and Doshi’s personality also desires to evolve out of its unconscious condition to experience itself as a whole. Let us not employ the language of science or the words of measure to trace Doshi’s growth, his contribution and his gift. Let us celebrate the myth which we all own; that is part of our being; which now passes as folklore and sets boundaries to all of our imaginations and possibilities. It is the myth of Doshi which allows us to set our own parameters; which has forced us to dream, which asks us to search and to seek again and again, that we can never forget.
I came to India more than forty years ago in search of a guru; in search of truth, and in search of a believable myth. I was so fortunate to find all of these in one living being, who walks amongst us all here today: my guru, our guru, Balkrishna Doshi.
(Talk on the occasion of Padma Shri Balkrishna Doshi’s
80th Birthday – Saturday, the September 8th, 2007)
Letter
The Beautiful Room is Empty
It is in the late 1960’s. I search the side lanes amongst the haath-gaadi wallas of Bhadra in Ahmedabad for Doshi’s office at Dhun House, a rickety old building. The air has an acidic stench making me walk faster. I climb up the narrow stairs with wires hanging and cobwebs dangling in the ceilings with paan stains decorating the corners. I find a door on the second floor. There is a young ma
n standing there smiling, with baby-like smooth skin and amazing large dark eyes in white globes. It is Varkey in his twenties, with a receding hairline, warning that the boyish face hides within it an ancient man. Varkey invites me into the room. I enter the room where Kamuben welcomes me, saying Doshi is in Delhi. Our love of architecture and our youthful enthusiasm binds us into friendship immediately as Varkey shows me around Doshi’s studio. The messy studio morphs into a beautiful space. It lives on today as a secret room playing about in the antique land of our memories; in the minds of those of us survivors who were blessed in its shadows and laughter.
Weeks later Varkey enters my room at “M Block” at the Gujarat University hostels. It is dark outside, but the room alights with the glow on his face. He had slipped on the mud outside and we both laugh. We are both students; he a trainee with Doshi; I on a Fulbright Scholarship with Doshi. The room is suddenly warm, glowing and full of ideas.
A month later I enter his room. He has invited me for tea. There is an electric coil heater glowing orange, with a pot of water on it boiling in the anticipation of a guest. That makes me smile. There are a few books on Kahn and Corbusier here and there. We look out of the window; the window of life; and we gaze into the infinity of possibilities. His room is beautiful. Life is beautiful!
Letters To A Young Architect Page 24