Open spaces

The film was conceived by Premjit’s brother Bijoy Ramachandran,39,an architect in Bangalore,who wanted to “try and understand how Doshi achieved so much”. “Film is the perfect medium in which to capture architecture. It is also the best way to engage a person like Doshi. Having a conversation with him is to immediately understand his appeal,” says Bijoy.
There couldn’t have been a better subject for a film that teases out connections between architecture and social life,modernity and tradition. Doshi has been part of several defining moments of Indian architecture. In 1951,he was a young architect in his twenties when he walked into the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) to find it buzzing with one word: Chandigarh. He went on to join Le Corbusier’s team as it built a symbol of modernity for newly-independent India.

His early work was heavily inspired by Corbusier but he soon found an idiom of his own,one that fused together older Indian traditions of architecture with Western models. People and public spaces are at the heart of his architecture and his work has been closely allied with education and the idea of the community. Besides setting up the CEPT,Doshi was instrumental in inviting Louis Kahn to design the Indian Institute of Management,Ahmedabad. “Doshi has always interpreted Corbusier’s modernism through local conditions of site,climate and available technology,” says Bijoy.

Doshi has a minimalist,calming beauty despite the basic equipment with which it was shot. The film was shot in six months,between October 2007 and April 2008. It has been shown in Bangalore,Baroda and Auroville and the film-makers are planning a second round of screening. The DVD is now available for sale.
Like the best of Doshi’s architecture,the film is permeated with light and air and visually opens up the spaces of your mind. The soundtrack,composed by Premjit,complements the visual imagery of Doshi’s buildings—the wide,expansive corridors of IIM,Bangalore,which are called “covered streets” for the way in which they invite interaction between students or his office Sangath,a cluster of stupas built close to the ground in a web of greenery and flowing water or the mystical darkness of Husain-Doshi gufa,the result of a collaboration between artist M.F. Husain and the architect.

What holds the film together is Doshi’s personality,at once a teacher and a philosopher,and the warmth he emanates. Here he is,a spry 82-year-old,talking about what was in his mind when he designed IIM,Bangalore: “Go back to your childhood and remember how you used to be,always wanting to be outside playing. That’s the effect I wanted to create.” Or telling us why he conceived CEPT,arguably one of the best architecture schools in India,as “an open place without doors.” His views on life and what it is to be Indian makes the film relevant not just for architects but to anyone interested in the contours of Indian thought. “As Indians,we have always celebrated frugality and ingenuity. We are always looking for ingeniously doing different things in one,” he says.

It’s a line of thought that has made Doshi’s work a prime example of sustainable architecture across the world. “Sustainability is fundamental to architecture. In India,unlike in the richer western countries,we were very conscious of the efficiency with which we built — this isn’t true anymore,” says Bijoy. “Doshi’s work is sustainable in very fundamental ways because he is always conscious in a holistic way of the context in which he builds,the local climate,topography,availability of materials and the kind of skills”.

The film ends with Doshi watching the sun go down at Sarkhej,a 15th century architectural complex near Ahmedabad,grouped around a great stepped tank. He points to the steps going down to the water and across at a spot where elephants arrive every evening to drink. “But what is our heritage? What is that we have left behind? We have no sense of a public realm. Communities or neighbourhoods don’t exist. We are obsessed with price and cost. But to collect water is not expensive. To create with light and shadow and sun and to show people the play of volume and sculptures…is not expensive,” he says. As his work has shown,beauty is in the realm of the possible.