The legendary Pritzker Prize-winning architect Balkrishna Doshi, whom we lost recently, not only shaped the course of architecture in India and neighboring regions but also became a source of inspiration, influencing the world’s architects for generations, with his buildings in which he integrated modernism with the local language. Innovative urban planning and social housing throughout his 70-year career Balkrishna Doshi, known for his projects and also the winner of the 2018 Pritzker Prize, is a name that has influenced world architects for generations with inspiration from Indian architecture, climate, local culture, and craft traditions. Influenced by the time he spent in the office of Le Corbusier, one of the most powerful architects of Modernism, Doshi’s works still had an original and independent mindset with an understanding that could be recycled, rebuilt, and improved. The Balkrishna hinterland in the 20th century, when technology made it easier for many architects to build regardless of local climate and customs; continued to maintain its connection with climate, handicrafts, and old and new technologies. Balkrishna Doshi’s outstanding contributions to the art of architecture, the craft of construction, and the practice of urban design have made him one of the most deserving of Pritzker. Balkrishna Doshi, born in Pune, India, in 1927 to a family of furniture manufacturers, studied at the JJ School of Architecture in Mumbai. Then he worked as a senior designer in Le Corbusier’s office in Paris between 1951-1954 and supervised projects in Ahmedabad, India for 4 years. He worked with Louis Kahn to establish the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad and their collaboration continued for more than a decade.
Doshi’s early works were influenced by these two great masters, Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn, who shaped 20th-century architecture. However, Doshi took his architectural language even further beyond this initial model. Understanding and appreciating the deep traditions of Indian architecture, he combined prefabrication with local craftsmanship and developed an approach that is harmonious with the history, culture, local traditions, and changes of his native India. Not only an architect and urban planner but also a highly respected educator, Doshi founded the Vastushilpa Environmental Design Studies and Research Foundation to develop indigenous design and planning standards for built environments in accordance with India’s sociocultural landscape. With his passion for education, Doshi founded The School of Architecture in Ahmedabad in 1966. The building, with its dramatic brick and concrete shell, displayed strong influences from Le Corbusier’s 20th-century modernist features. The architect had also carefully considered India’s climate, using sloping skylights, sliding doors, and tree-shaded recessed plazas. The complex was later expanded to house the School of Planning (1970), the Center for Visual Arts (1978), and the School of Interior Design (1982) and was renamed CEPT University in 2002.
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Balkrishna Doshi has signed many housing projects with public, educational and cultural buildings with his high quality, original architectural language and his desire to contribute to his own people, away from pretentiousness and ephemeral trends. Doshi, who undertook the first housing project for low-income communities in the 1950s, said in 1954, “I have sworn to design housing for the lowest classes all my life.” He has fulfilled this promise in midwest India with projects such as Aranya Low Cost Housing in Indore and Middle-Income Cooperative Homes in Ahmedabad in 1989 and 1982. Using patios, courtyards, and covered walkways, as in the Madhya Pradesh Electricity Board (1979) in Jabalpur or the Indian Institute of Management (1992) in Bangalore, Doshi created sustainable spaces to protect users from the sun, catch breezes, and provide comfort and enjoyment. Sangath, the architectural office of the Indian-born architect located in Ahmedabad, had the Sanskrit meanings of “to accompany”, and “to act together”. According to Doshi, Sangath combined images and connotations of the Indian way of life: “The campus integrates and memories of places visited collide, evoking and connecting forgotten chapters. Sangath is a continuous school where one learns, forgets, and relearns. It has become a sanctuary of culture, art, and sustainability, emphasizing research, institutional opportunities, and maximum sustainability.”
Balkrishna Doshi said that “Every object around us and nature itself— lights, sky, water, and storm—everything is in a symphony, and this symphony is the subject of architecture.” His architecture explored the relationships between the basic needs of human life, connection with self and culture, and understanding of social traditions in a context of place and environment and through a response to modernism. Defining architecture as an extension of the human body, Doshi used materials that appeal to function in the most appropriate way, considering the climate, landscape and urbanization in his buildings. Balkrishna Doshi, who has received many awards throughout his career, was honored with the 2022 Royal Gold Medal of Architecture by the RIBA last year, after receiving the Pritzker Prize in 2018.
