The Architecture of the Twentieth Century Chapter 46 SOUTH AND SOUTH-EAST ASIA Architectural Character The principal buildings of New Delhi, by Lutyens, Baker and others, have been dealt with in Chapter 37 under the general heading of colonial architecture. They are twentieth-century buildings, though for classification purposes more appropriately placed in the earlier position in the book as comprising the architectural apogee of the colonial period in India. In the event, the period was to last for less than two decadesafter the completion of Lutyens’s work, until 1945, the end gf.World War II and the formal achievement of dependence and the partition in 1947, In some pists of south-east Asia, however, French and Dutcigas well as British dominion was to last well into the 1960s. Only Hong Kong, occupied asa Treaty Port sfice 1841, still remains under British jurisdiction, an arrangement which is due to termin- ate in 1997, In India and elsewhere, the imposition of wholly European models had given way since the tur of the century to amore sympathetic attitude to local build- ing forms, especially those of the Moghul Empire— originally because it was thought that they offered solutions to the problems of providing comfort in the hot arid or humid climates prevailing in the region. Later there began to dawn an understanding of the nced to respond to the social and cultural as well as the aesthetic values of Indian civilisation, The forms of Islamic architecture, however, were often applied to purely neo-Classical spatial arrangements. Several buildings in this category are described or mentioned in Chapter 37, for example public buildings in Mad- ras by Robert Chisholm and Henry Irwin and in Hyderabad by Vincent Esch. Islamic forms were used by British architects also in palaces for the Maharajas—thet in Mysore by Irwin being anotable and exuberant example. The resulting buildings were referred to at the time as Indo-Seracenic, a term also used in many earlier editions of this book. Through- out this edition, however, the word Islamic has been used in the nomenclature for buildings in countries where the Muslim religion prevails or where Muslim dynasties influenced events. New Delhi itself is per- haps the most distinguished example of integration of 1482 Islamic symbolism with Classical forms and even holds subtle echoes of Hindu motifs—the product is original and dominating architecture, enshrined in buildings of high quality. In India, the status of engineers was modified to the extent that Consulting Architects were appointed to the central government. Although by the turn of the century Victorian eclectic attitudes to design were beginning to give way to the self-assurance of so-called Edwardian Baroque, efforts continued to be made to incorporate Indian forms into the design of agrowing diversity of building types. This was true of both private and public architects whose work, though to some extent overshadowed by Lutyens and Baker, nevertheless produced notable buildings in the years up to the beginning of World War If, and in some cases also after it had ended. Amongst this number were the first Consultants to the Govern- ment of India, James Ransome (1865-1944), who served from 1902 to 1908, and John Begg (1866~ 1937), who succeeded him and served until 1921. The former designed buildings in a number of styles, in- cluding several in a popular picturesque manner. Begg spent a few years in South Africa before going to India, where he worked first in Bombay. He too was capable of producing buildings in several styles and wasone of those who soughta means f incorpor- ating the forms of Moghul architecture into the public buildings for which he was responsible. He was con- sultant io the railway and worked for the Post Office ‘as well as designing many fine buildings, including a hospital and medical school in Delhi and several colleges. Both architects worked in Burma as well as India. The tradition of distinguished public service in architecture was continued into the 1930s by another Chief Architect to the India Government, Robert Tor Russell, the designer of Connaught Place (q.v.) and other buildings in New Delhi. The influence of Lutyens and Baker persisted in the work of government and private architects but was much reduced after World War I, although 2 few British architects worked on in India, Sri Lanka and other south-east Asian countries after indepen- dence. But in common with most countries newly independent of colonial control, the first few decadesSOUTH AND SOUTH-EAST ASIA. have been marked by a continuation of the Interna- tional Style introduced by European architects in the 1930s and continued through the 1950s, ’60s and "70s, both by local architects trained in Europe, Australia or America and by expatriate architectural practices commissioned by governments or institutions, It would be difficult to find a public building or a major housing project of the period which does not reflect contemporary European architectural ideals. ‘There are a number of factors which explain the acceptance of the International Style on such a scale by Third World countries in the period of up to forty years since independence. They include the percep- tion of modern buildings as symbols of progress, the mode of financing major developments through in- ternational agencies, and perhaps also the fact that the decision-makers are often those who have spent long periods in Western countries in education and training programmes; indeed a Westernised envi ment had been superimposed already to 2 major extent upon their homelands in the colonial period, especially in urban areas. Itis surprising, neverthe- less, that those responsible for selecting the creators of gheir greatest national symbols, the new capitals, turned to Europe and America—not that anyone would apply the International Style label to the work of Le Corbusier or Louis Kahn. though it may well be applicable to some of the buildings designed by ernational practices to fill the grids of Doxiadis's Dynapolis, the combined linear towns of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. In the years of planning and (so far) partial imple- mentation of the new cities, the availability of local qualified architects has improved. The number of architectural schools in the region has increased, as have the numbers receiving architectural education abroad, resulting in a growing body of architects designing buildings in their own countries. In many cases, of course, even education patterns have been geared to the production of buildings in the Interna- tional Style, and the impact is of necessity gradual rather than spectacular, but many changes are al- ready apparent and others are imminent. The leaders of such movements, such as Charles Correa in India, are motivated by the desire to provide environments suited to indigenous cultures and modes of living as well as to climate and locality. They base their work upon the needs of enormous and sill-growing deprived populations and upon the economic reali- ties of development finance in the Third World. Meanwhile, high-rise Bombay (p.1484A) and the thriving commercialised city-states of the region, dependent Singapore (p.1484B) and still-colonial Hong Kong, taking advantage of locational, sirategic or economic factors, have experienced unpre- cedented urban development, rivalling even Euro- pean and American urban centres in their rate of physical growth, 1483 Examples Although New Delhi has been largely dealt with in Chapter 37, it would be remiss not to include here references to the work of two architects associated with the offices of Baker and Lutyens respectively, Henry Alexander Nesbitt Medd (1892-1977) and Arthur Gordon Shoosmith (1888-1974). Medd worked in both Delhi and Calcutta and is now re- membered for his Cathedral Church of the Redemp- tion, New Delhi (1928 onwards), its soaring composi- tion rising to a dome with cupola on a low circular drum, the whole clevated on an octagonal storey with recessed windows above the square crossing tower. It is reminiscent of Palladio’s Tl Redentore in Venice (q.v.). Other buildings by Medd indude the Roman Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart, New Delhi (1934), and the New Mint, Calcutta, Shoosmith's Garrison Church of S. Martin, New Delhi (1928-30), is a massive unrelieved brick fortress-like building with plain battered walls and undecorated openings, recalling the great pylons of Edfu (q.v.). Its scale is vast and in the true Lutyens New Delhi spirit butalso imbued with the industrial aesthetic and a nascent modernism. Several of the south-east Asian countries remained under British and other colonial administrations for up to twenty years after the end of World War II. During this time many buildings were put up in the anonymous colonial modern practised by European architectural firms, whether basgd in their own coun- tries or abroad, or by architects employed by govern- ment (for example, in the Public Works Departments of British colonial administrations). Among the bet- ter examples in Malaysia (Malaya before 1957) was work of the PWD in such buildings as Kuala Lumpur Airport (architect P. S. Merer), or of private archi- tects Booty, Edwards and Partners in their pleasant verandah houses in Kuala Lumpur (p.1485A). In Singapore in the 1950s a number of housing schemes were implemented: among these were four-storey walk-up apartment blocks, Queenstown (p.1485B), some of them by P. R. Davison of the Public Works Department, others by Lincoln Page of the (then) Singapore Improvement Trust. Those by the former have fenestration arrangements which recall High- point, Highgate, London (q.v.), an impression rein- forced by the flat treatment of the facades which also respond to climate in their shuttering and louvre arrangements; those by the latter are more conven- tional by European standards of the 1950s, James Cubitt, Leonard Manasseh and Partners carried out work in south-east Asia as well as Africa: one of the more acceptable small buildings of this brief period is their Broadcasting Studios at Kuala Belait, Indonesia (Brunei) (1958) (p.1485C). Much of the discussion of urban planning and architecture in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh inthe1484 SOUTH AND SOUTH-EAST ASIA ‘A. Modern Bombay. See p.1483 B. Modern Singapore. See p.1483