Celebrating Indian architecture

HYDERABAD: The launch of Rahul Mehrotra’s Architecture in India since 1990, under the aegis of the Prakriti Foundation was held in city at the Park Hotel on Tuesday.  “I’m going to share my intuitive experiences, to try to look at young practitioners, and the landscape of plurals that defines India in a global scenario,” explained Rahul Mehrotra, as he led his audience through his presentation on architecture in India, from 1990 to 2010, with beautiful slides. The book encapsulates the huge transformations that have engulfed Indian cities in the process of globalisation. It strives to make sense of the seeming chaos and highly pluralistic built landscape that we all confront in India. Mehrotra uses the economic changes in India as a metaphor for the new approaches to architecture and sustainability post-1990, and discovers a strong relationship between the two, hitherto unknown. This book is the first in a series that will explore India’s architecture as a “landscape of pluralism.”  His book also mentions about The Park Hyderabad’s unique architecture design which is a landmark in the city. A practising architect, Rahul Mehrotra is also an educator, who works in Mumbai and teaches at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, where he is Professor of Urban Design and Planning and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design. Rahul explained the four processes his book talks about. While global trends are a response to the dictates of economics, they are countered by the indigenous and the regional assertions. Citing the work of his father-in-law Charles Correa as an example of the latter and says Kanchanjunga at Cumballa Hill makes natural ventilation possible in a high rise. Alternate practices work towards sustainability and also respond to their context. Laurie Baker, who worked with low cost housing in Kerala, is Rahul’s example of an architect working in this fine grain. The last process entails a revival of the ancient that can be seen across the numerous temples sprouting across the country. He’s a member of the steering committee of Harvard’s South Asia Initiative, as well. No surprise then, that his work generated enormous interest among students and enthusiasts of aesthetics, in turn.