Architects play multiple roles in the overall making of any good and liveable city. They create public facilities, private estates and at time plan an entire city with a number of future needs of the people in mind. In other words, the built environment in a city tells us a lot about who all created that. Of course, some architects are extraordinary in their vision, planning and execution while others are not. Some build ordinary houses, shabby government buildings and private offices, while others design cities and use their creative genius and experience to build gorgeous public spaces and buildings which add to the urban aesthetics in a big way.
The bulky book which I have been reading for some time and then thought of reviewing it for the readers of Book Link is because of this celebrated American architect’s impressive vision for modern India which he has shared through this beautiful compendium, printed in Italy last year. What is special about Christopher Benninger is that after his studies in the renowned institutes in the United States (MIT and Harvard), he listened to his inner self and settled in India, first in Ahmedabad and now in Pune. So he is an architect who is an American by birth and education and an Indian by experience and learning—a rare combination of modernism and tradition. Public buildings, corporate headquarters, slum-upgradation project (Kolkata), mass self help housing (Chennai), experimental shelter strategies in Hyderabad, SOS Village near Delhi and government buildings designed by him proudly stand tall across India, from Delhi to Ahmedabad and Pune to Kolkata. Benninger and his team also built the Supreme Court of Bhutan and some other imposing structures in Nairobi, Sri Lanka, and New York. This book introduces to the readers his ideas and creativity in depth.
Many years ago I had had visited ‘Videsh Bhawan’, the External Affairs Ministry headquarters on the Raj Path, facing the Central Vista in New Delhi, and was pretty impressed to see its beautiful design. Frankly, then I had heard a little about Benninger or much of his stylish works elsewhere in the country. This Delhi building, built more than 15 years ago, was heavily influenced by the creations and thinking of Delhi’s famous British architect Edwin Lutyens in designing the Parliament building which is the most precious and prominent gift of Lutyens to Indians.
Benninger’s unique and chequered India journey begins with the eminent Indian architect Balkrishna Doshi who was instrumental in inviting the American architect to work on the School of Planning at Ahmedabad, now known as the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology University (CEPT), way back in 1971. Now 75, Benninger is still active and there is a long queue of young architecture students wanting to be trained under him, not to talk of a long list of private and government clients. Some of those who know Benninger, term the Gujarati doyen of architecture as the ‘Guru’ of American architect.
B e n n i n g e r ’ s modernism, according to Ramprasad Akkisetti, curator at India House & Art Gallery at Pune, has to do a lot with social architecture, urbanism, and the human conditions. ‘He is interested in creating the architectural building blocks that transform society and gift rationality to the institutions that build civil societies.’
In his many urban plans he has put ‘the last first’ and focussed on inclusive human settlements. He sees the plan of a city as harmony between networks of critical systems realised through rational structure plans, assuring potable water, mass transit, sanitation and other basic amenities. He sees planning itself as a continuous, ad hoc and disjointed process of public decision making for the common good and rationally distributing limited resources in a sustainable manner. According to Akkisetti, the septuagenarian architect rejects comprehensive planning, zoning and automobile oriented planning as ‘oppressive, polarising and creating inefficiencies’ that drive local communities into endless debt.
But don’t be mistaken about his environmental concerns, or lack of it. He believes in contraction of consumption, and the application of intelligent design principles to sustain homeostatic microclimates. He has practiced in utilising, rather than exploiting resources, replenishing energy, re-elaborating traditions authenticating cultures rather than cloning customs, respecting geo-climatic conditions and supporting conviviality, writes Rosa Maria Falvo from Milan, among others from different countries who wrote in the book about their impressions of the architect par excellence.
What does Benninger say about himself? Well, while explaining his experiences with India and why this book, he explains that the book is about the practice of architecture in South Asia and the kinds of artefacts his ‘studio’ produced over the past four decades. So it is a document about intentions, strategies and methods of producing buildings. It also illustrates how the products of these processes appear in reality. However, an architect produces more than just buildings; he or she practices art, aiming to create what poetically reflects their context in terms of social, economic and cultural forces. This book gives us sufficient insight into urban India’s varied issues, architect’s worries, approach and thinking of a well-trained and educated foreigner towards India and its badly managed cities, as it unfolds his superb creations one after the other before us while simultaneously telling us subtly a lot about urbanisation, importance of planning, environment and aesthetics.
Abhilash Khandekar
National Political Editor of
Dainik Bhaskar.