Recent Trends in Indian Architecture

As at the time of independence, India had about 300 trained architects - and that was in 1947, in a population that was about 330 million then. Also, there was only one training institution, the Indian Institute of Architects in Bombay and this was grossly inadequate which led many people who could afford it to study abroad. Many of them went to the United States and came back with a new optimism to offer their services to their free country. Prominent among them was Habib Rahman, Achyut Kavinde and Gautam Sarabhai. They used their gained knowledge to develop great works to the admiration of many citizens.

Furthermore, the contribution of Charles Correa can never be overemphasized in the development of architecture in India. He returned to India from MIT in Cambridge/Boston in 1958 and had worked under Minoru Yamasaki in Detroit who designed the World Trade Centre in New York. He came back to India at a time when the great architect, Le Corbusier, had realized his career's greatest project in India.

Nehru personally invited Le Corbusier to build the Chandigarh, the new capital of the Punjab state. He worked with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret, and other architects, Jane Drew and Mazwell Fry, to build amazing structures in the state. He personally designed the government building, the Capitol, which remains a point of reference for today's architects. He also had an Indian in his team who has worked for him in Paris in the person of Balkrishna Vitaldhas Doshi, who got in touch with Louis I Kahn in the early 1960s to develop the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad.

Charles Correa developed a memorial for Mahatma Gandhi in Ahmedabad in 1963 which reminds one of Kahn's design for the Trenton Bath House. He would also be remembered for his other works like his Kanchanjunga high-rise apartments in Mumbai which were built between 1970 and 1983. Others are the government building in Bhopal which was built between 1980 and 1996, and the art centre in Jaipur which was constructed between 1986 and 1992. It was during the construction of the art centre in Jaipur that Correa discovered the spiritual aspect of Indian thought and incorporated it into his work.

In today's India, there are many architects that have taken the profession to the next level. Advancement in technology has improved delivery making today's architects to tread the paths that many of their mentors could not venture into in the past. This has lead to the creation of so many magnificent works which will also be points of references for future architects.

Speak to competent architects in Mumbai and architects of India for your next project.

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