Set in Stone

Set in Stone Naintara Maya Oberoi studies the legacy of Raj Rewal Image courtesy: Architectural Research Cell Research Image courtesy: Architectural Pompidou Centre Image courtesy: ©Hervé Véronèse In Perspective N 1961, a yOuNG raJ rEwal, fresh out planner as well. He worked extensively in the ideal incubatory environment for the young as dividers around the busy office mimic the In the Centre The Parliament of the Brixton School of Building in mid-20th century in what were then French Rewal. There, he developed an intellectual white buildings of the Sheikh Sarai housing Pompidou Library with its London, went to meet with French mas- colonies and protectorates, designing and understanding of how architects could—or complex he designed in the seventies, which Part of the special reference point ter planner Le Corbusier in Paris. The laying the plans for the city centre of Damascus, should—shape a city, and saw first-hand how surround the office. Rewal’s projects are scat- section devoted to in the background greatI architect was welcoming, but had little the first master plan for Beirut and a massive regional culture, building traditions and cli- tered all over Indian cities, though it is in Delhi Rewal’s works in or no work for Rewal to do at the time. So he urbanisation project for Casablanca. As late as mate solutions could be the sources of modern that his stamp is most visible. “Architects, ur- Modernités Plurielles rang a fellow architect’s office to see whether 1978, Ecochard was still designing master plans urban planning ideas. ban designers and planners create an envelope. 1905-1970 they could offer this young Indian a job. That for the new capital of the Sultanate of Oman Five decades after leaving Ecochard’s of- [Now] how people use it, within it, is another fellow architect was Michel Ecochard, and that and for Teheran in Iran. His plans applied ideas fices, Rewal is sitting in his own office in New thing,” he said. “At a citywide level, you can phone call probably changed the landscape of of vernacular architecture, taking as their point Delhi’s Triveni Commercial Complex in Sheikh only put the seeds in, as urban design. And modern Indian cities. of departure local culture and time-tested ways Sarai—a sunlit, glass-walled office tiled with then it grows. A city is a very living thing.” A graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts in of dealing with the geography of a site. books and papered with plans and old draw- As chairman of the Delhi Urban Arts Paris, Ecochard was an urban designer and city Back in Paris, Ecochard’s office was an ings. The low white brick walls that function Commission, Rewal has been pushing for a 94 : ThE INDIaN quarTErly : aPrIl – JuNE 2014 ON DESIGN : 95 renewed focus on the city’s neighbourhoods decades were particularly fruitful for Indian Quiet Courtyard and the sprucing up of public spaces so that architecture. A new nation needs new insti- National Institute Delhi becomes more pedestrian friendly, with tutions, and somewhere to house them, to of Immunology, local area- and municipal ward-specific plans. give shape to the social and political aspira- New Delhi “Planning and urban design, these are integrat- tions of the new order. Building commissions, ed processes,” he explained. “Planning is done enormous in their scope, were given out for the whole city. Local area plans, what we through national open competitions, where a call urban design (the French are very good jury of peers evaluated the proposals. Rewal at it), lie somewhere between planning and won several of these tenders, embarking on a architecture. What is happening in India, long career of designing and constructing state and elsewhere as well, is that this is all often institutional buildings. dictated by the market economy, by consumers The earliest generation of modern archi- and building promoters, which has caused a tects working in India in the fifties and sixties— serious disruption in urban planning.” Habib Rahman, Achyut Kanvinde, Joseph Allen This April, the National Gallery of Modern Stein, JK Chowdhury, the Design Group—were Art in New Delhi is hosting a massive retro- fairly functionalist in their approach. Rahman spective of Rewal’s work—the first time that and Kanvinde, in particular, had studied under the NGMA is showing architectural work. The Walter Gropius at the Massachusetts Institute Musée National d’Art Moderne in the Centre of Technology, and their style followed the Pompidou in Paris is also hosting some of global current of European and American Rewal’s work, in a special section devoted to modernism. The simplicity of this genera- the architect as part of its permanent exhibition’s designs, with little embellishment, is tion, Modernités Plurielles 1905–1970, which visible in buildings like Habib Rahman’s New will run until early 2015. Rewal hopes that the Secretariat in Kolkata. At the same time, sever- NGMA exhibition will bring the focus back to al Central Public Works Department buildings the design and architectural quality of urban went the opposite way, doggedly imitating the spaces. “That’s why the Pompidou is having Indo-Saracenic style of Lutyens’ Delhi, so as to a dialogue between the kind of modernity as blend in with existing buildings. expressed in my works, and as the European ar- But the architects who came later had dif- chitects are doing it. Is there a dialogue? Is there ferent responses to the questions of how to any possibility for learning from each other?” create and express Indian modernity. How Born in Hoshiarpur in Punjab in 1934, could they build democratic, modern archi- Rewal was propelled by an early love of tecture for a nation still struggling with the drawing towards the School of Planning and ideas of democracy and modernity? How Architecture in Delhi in the early fifties. This could they refrain from imitating overbear- was followed by a stint in London, which in ing Western architectural discourses, which turn led him to Paris in 1961. glossed over individual societal differences? He returned to India to set up his own prac- Conversely, how could they infuse their new tice in Delhi in 1962, also teaching history at aesthetic with the resonances of India’s his- Photograph: Ferrante Ferranti Ferrante Photograph: the SPA. As luck would have it, the next two tory and culture, without falling into kitschy 96 : ThE INDIaN quarTErly : aPrIl – JuNE 2014 ON DESIGN : 97 He wanted the Parliament Library to complement Parliament House, not compete with it; to be a place for learning, not power pastiche? In contrast to the more functional naturally from the landscape, a natural pro- In 1985, Rewal curated an exhibition in Par- signature which occurs in his work in vary- Corbusier-influenced styles of the fifties, Re- gression from the Lal Qila. is titled Traditional Architecture in India on being scales. “In fact, his aesthetic in many of wal and his contemporaries—Kuldip Singh, It is perhaps easier to look at Rewal’s work half of the Indian government. As curator, his his buildings is derived from the structural Charles Correa, Balkrishna Doshi and others— from above—a viewing angle that demon- task was to meticulously study and record the expression of the jali,” said Ravindran. “He produced work that was rooted in its climate and strates the massive scope and sprawl of his details of a large number of Indian monuments, has converted the jali pattern, which one has surroundings, using ancient and medieval tech- constructions. At the Pompidou Centre, the which served to reinforce his understanding seen in small scale, modulating the light that niques and decorative elements to make state- rooms of the long gallery on the fifth floor of architecture as cultural expression. “His de- comes through from the vertical surfaces in ments of “modernity”. Among Rewal’s work at open onto the Rewal section: a series of ma- sign system invokes [the] memory of historical traditional constructions, into structure, using the time are the buildings for the Bhikaji Cama quettes, drawings and videos. Coincidentally, precedents, both as two and three dimension the Islamic geometry inherent in the jali as a Bazaar (1964) and the Hall of Nations Exhibi- they are mounted just a few feet away from two forms,” said Menon. “It involves structural form of structural expression.” tion Complex (1974) in Delhi. “Unlike Doshi, Ecochard drawings. “Construire la ville processes beyond the routine such as struc- The Hall of Nations in Pragati Maidan is one for instance, Rewal was not that close to Le Cor- Indienne”, reads the description here, demon- tural lattices and Vierendeels (an architectural such monumentally abstract expression of the busier; perhaps because he had more distance strating how essential Rewal’s work is for an feature) and a sophisticated understanding of jali. Built to commemorate the 25th anniversary from him, critiques of Corbusier’s functionalist understanding of the Indian metropolis. A surface finishes. Together, they have resulted of India’s independence in 1972, the reinforced approach came easier to him,” said Aurélien film is being projected onto one wall, the stolid in a recognisable style of architecture.” concrete structure is a kind of half-pyramid; Lemonier, curator and conservator at the terraces of the Asian Games Village flickering By his own account, Rewal was trying to the geometric panels of the jali work as a brise- Centre Pompidou. on and off. On other walls, films by Rewal’s change the very grammar of Indian design. soleil, or sun-breaker, and permit the circula- “Fortuitously, his [Rewal’s] career coincid- son Manu are playing on loop.

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