Balkrishna Doshi

Balkrishna Doshi: Writings on Architecture & Identity
Vera Simone Bader (Editor)
ArchiTangle, October 2019



Hardcover | 6-1/4 x 8-1/4 inches | 224 pages | 64 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-3966800013 | 24,00 €

Publisher's Description:

The book is edited by Vera Simone Bader and has been published on October 16, 2019­, accompanying the Balkrishna Doshi Exhibition at the Architekturmuseum der TUM, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich.

Balkrishna Doshi (born 1927 in Pune, India) played a pivotal role in shaping of postcolonial architecture in India. He is a pioneer in addressing crucial issues of social housing and urbanization in India. Doshi influenced the development of Indian architecture significantly through his teaching and lecturing activities and played a major role in the development of Ahmedabad into a center of Indian architectural education. This anthology assembles a selection of his writings, such as lectures, articles and essays.

dDAB Commentary:

One year after Indian architect Balkrishna Doshi was named the recipient of the 2018 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the retrospective exhibition Balkrishna Doshi: Architecture for the People opened at the Vitra Design Museum in Germany. After the exhibition wrapped up in September 2019, it traveled to the Architekturmuseum der TUM in Munich for a three-month run that closed last month. For that leg of the traveling exhibition, the museum's Vera Simone Bader edited a collection of Doshi's writings that also includes a short interview between the two at Kamala House, his home in Ahmedabad.

Doshi tells Bader, "for me, writing is clarifying my inner thoughts," and for me this statement starts to get at the lack of attention given to his writings. For instance, Doshi's Pritzker announcement said little about his writings. But as Bader further explains in her introduction to this book, Doshi's writings often take the form of diaries. So, much of his writing is personal, even though he has contributed to journals in the decades since he began the diaries in 1953. The fifteen writings collected here have a few of those contributions, but about half of them are lectures, which I find interesting.

To be certain, even though they are read aloud, lectures are written statements. In fact, many academic lectures are treated as papers — and are called such — for eventual publication. Still, to me they are more closely aligned to the diary as a form of writing than to an article in a journal. Just as a diary serves to clarify thoughts, the writing for a lecture has a function: a script for a verbal address. But reading through some of the writings in this collection, I'm not so sure that distinction is important. Doshi has a consistent and assured voice, one apparently born from decades of writing in his diaries — writing on his own terms.

Images:


Author Bio:

Balkrishna Doshi is a practitioner of architecture for over 70 years, has received numerous awards and he has been awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2018. Vera Simone Bader is part of the team at the Architecture Museum of TUM.

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