Charles Correa

Architecture Charles Correa In and out of Goa Arguably India’s best-known architect, and celebrated especially for the mythic content of his works, Charles Correa’s projects in Goa were remarkably different from those outside. Words: Amita Kanekar esigned by Charles Correa nearly 40 years ago, Kala Academy is probably Goa’s best Dcontemporary building. This breezy, low-slung, and very popular arts centre and hang- out space in Campal, Panjim, is remarkable not just for a subtle historicism—the laterite-clad and sharp-angled frontage harking to Goa’s old seaforts, the inner walls enlivened by dreamy images of Goan stairways, balustrades, and windows—but also because it is that rarity in India: a genuine public space, or even ‘a public space roofed by a building’. (Burte 2008) This public quality results from the openness of both its facilities and its architecture. The complex is rarely ever closed to the public, and welcomes a wide variety of people— not just artists, connoisseurs of art, and art students, but also patrons of the canteen, and friends, courting couples, and others who just need a place to meet. But openness is 48 49 The ITC Hotels Magazine www.itchotels.in Architecture Buildings designed by Correa showcased an ingenuity with space and form, and what would become signature concepts like open-to-sky space, the tube-house that funnels air, and the expansive oversailing roof. (Frampton 1996) also seen in the architecture, in the institution is obvious in the high wide low gates and the expansively usage of all its facilities, and also the welcoming pergola-covered foyer high levels of lingering and loitering that leads into a large thoroughfare on its premises (Viegas 2016), despite which is the heart of the complex, an administration that has sometimes providing access to everything else, clamped down on the free use of its and containing plenty of informal spaces, like the toilets. One of the seating and a view of the Mandovi saddest things about it, however, is River right through, as if the building the lack of emulation. Many cultural is nothing but a shady corridor from centres, most of them state–run, the road to the riverside. have come up in Goa over the four decades since the Kala Academy, but he performances and boast a different kind of ambience: exhibitions held here are often forbidding, closed, air-conditioned, Tfree or nearly so, with Tiatr and free of loiterers. shows in the mammoth 980-seater main auditorium usually sold out. But if Kala Academy is a unique I have been told that the Academy building for Goa, it was a bit unique is the only place in India to host for Charles Correa as well. Arguably courses in both Indian and European India’s best-known architect, classical music. The facilities include Correa was Goan in heritage but auditoria, exhibition spaces, a library, spent most of his life and career schools of theatre, music and dance, away from Goa. One might in the canteen, and crucially for a public fact say, given his personal life, institution, a generous number of projects, writings, and advocacy, toilets (which were centrally, i.e. that he was an Indian from Bombay conveniently, located in Correa’s (today’s Mumbai). He was born in original design, but shifted to a 1930 to parents of Goan origin in distant corner later), and a vast Secunderabad, in British India, variety of independent seating, from and spent most of his early years the clusters in the thoroughfare, to in Bombay, before going to the US the amphitheatre steps, the lawn for an education in architecture. and shady groves, the benches along When he decided to leave the US the riverside promenade, and the in 1958, it was for Bombay again, movable chairs at the canteen tables. where he opened an office and from where he took up projects in Delhi, Kala Academy’s success as a public Ahmedabad, and other parts of The amphitheatre at Kala Academy, an arts institution in Goa 50 51 The ITC Hotels Magazine www.itchotels.in Architecture India, at a time when Goa was still some of which were built –mostly part of the Estado da Índia. private homes, upmarket apartments like Bombay’s Kanchenjunga (1970- orrea’s rise to renown was 83), and also public sector housing rapid, and at least partially like Bombay’s LIC colony (1972) Cthanks to the context of – while others, especially many nation-building; he opened his office proposals for low cost housing, just eleven years after the British left, were never realised. On his way to a time when Indian governments, making an international splash in the both national and provincial, were nineties, at MIT, New York, Toronto, busy in proving that the new republic and Lisbon, he had become probably was a serious, modern and historic the closest to a public figure that any enterprise. It couldn’t have hurt Indian architect could be, which is either that he hailed from a wealthy saying a lot in a country where the and influential family; architectural majority still respond to the word practice has always benefited from ‘architect’ with a blank stare. – perhaps even relied on – the right connections. He began with a bang, This stare is not surprising, for the with plum institutional projects field of architecture has generally like Delhi’s Handloom Pavillion been, notwithstanding honourable (1958), and the Gandhi Smarak exceptions, socially and politically Sangrahalaya at Ahmedabad conservative, and focussed on the (1958-63), along with many private needs of the elite. Correa was, residences. They showcased an however, one of the few Indian ingenuity with space and form, architects to speak out about the and what would become signature public environment, especially to concepts like open-to-sky space, criticise the disaster that is Indian the tube-house that funnels air, urbanism, calling out ‘our criminal and the expansive oversailing roof. indifference’ to the ‘subhuman (Frampton 1996) conditions’ of Indian cities. He offered solutions too, which were Prestigious projects continued almost always ignored. He proposed through the sixties and seventies, a redesign of Mumbai’s streets to including government and public provide for hawkers and pedestrians sector buildings, corporate (1968); it was not taken up. He headquarters and large hotels. He made proposals for expanding designed a lot of housing as well, Mumbai’s green spaces; they were Correa’s rise to renown was rapid, partially thanks to the context of nation-building; he opened his office eleven years after the British left at a time when Indian governments were keen to prove that the country was a modern and historic enterprise. Jawahar Kala Kendra, a multi arts centre located in Jaipur 52 53 The ITC Hotels Magazine www.itchotels.in Architecture never taken up. He offered solutions Was it all this futile advocacy that education has never been the Little for affordable housing; they were won him some of India’s highest state Red Schoolhouse of North America, taken up only as a few stand-alone awards? Or was it for the increasing but the guru sitting under the tree’ projects, like at Belapur (1986). He ‘Indianness’ of his designs? The (Correa, 1996). called for decongesting Mumbai latter tendency won critical acclaim and bringing down housing prices for ‘demonstrating an authentic ut, unlike the little red through the development of New modernity that superceded the schoolhouse, the guru was Bombay; this was taken up but along condescending orientalism and Bnever for all. Most of the old with the simultaneous reclamation stale imports of colonialism’ and traditional Indian concepts that of Nariman Point, sending real (Rykwert 2015), and ‘finding Correa adopted were exclusionary estate prices rocketing upwards inspirational depth in the mythic ones that segregated people by birth. instead. He maintained a presence and cosmological beliefs of the past’ For example, his inspiration for on government and public sector (Frampton 1996). Most later works, the layout of New Bagalkot town commissions on urbanisation and like Bhopal’s Bharat Bhavan (1981), (1985) was that of the temple-town housing, which made no difference Jawahar Kala Kendra (1992), the of Srirangam, a pattern of concentric to the mess in both areas. He didn’t National Crafts Museum (1991), rectangles generated by traditional give up though, arguing furiously and the Intra-University Centre for social hierarchies. and futilely for the need to use Astronomy and Astrophysics (1993), Mumbai’s old mill lands for mass prominently incorporate Vedantic It was this uncritical celebration of housing and green spaces, and in concepts like the mandala and bindu, India’s exclusionary traditions in Goa, in the last decade of his life, and Brahmanical temple spaces like art and spatial design that perhaps for the need for people-centric and the ritual pathway and kund. These made him unable to call out the environment-conscious regional were concepts that he considered the cultural roots of the urban horror plans, and pedestrianised towns essence of India, or even Asia. As he that he railed against. For it has to with mass public transport. put it: ‘... to us in Asia, the symbol of be something inherently cultural that Façade of British Council of India building in Delhi Gandhi memorial museum at Sabarmati Ashram reflects a contemporary expression for the spirit of swadeshi. 54 55 The ITC Hotels Magazine www.itchotels.in Architecture .... to us in Asia, the symbol of education has never been the Little Red Schoolhouse of North America, but the guru sitting under the tree. (Correa, 1996) can produce and accept the obscene dressed Europeanised folks depicted differences in space, infrastructure, watching the performance in the and access that make India’s ‘Great big auditorium, who might be taken City’ such a ‘Terrible Place’, as Correa to represent Goan Christian elites, described Mumbai in 2002.

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