Contents

Volume 8/ Issue 8/ June-July 2019/ `200

22 Editorial 40 Infrastructure 76 Under construction
Text by Kaiwan Mehta The 150-Year Evolution of The observer

India 24 Tribute
I M Pei
Mumbai’s Coastal Road
Text by Robert Stephens
Taipei Performing Arts Center, Taiwan
Taipei, Taiwan
Project by OMA
1917 — 2019 48 Projects Photos by Kevin Mak, Chris Stowers

Text by Manoj Parmar Pluralism in the

built environment 80 Urbanism
26 Tribute Children’s Museum, CSMVS, Mumbai Darwin comes to town
Kasturbhai Lalbhai Museum, Ahmedabad
Okwui Enwezor by RMA Architects
New city creatures
1963 — 2019 Text by Frida Rosenberg
Text by Rahul Mehrotra and Kaiwan Mehta
Text by Ranjit Hoskote Photos by Marco Zorzanello
Photos courtesy RMA Architects

30 Books 88 Future city products

70 Poetry
Urban thinking in objects
A moment of pause In this room, the poems
On Mary Oliver’s ‘Upstream’ A report from the Milan Design Week 2019
come and go
Text and photos by Aparna Andhare Milan, Italy
Jonahwhale
Projects by Matteo Cibic, Panter & Tourron, Wendelin
Poet Ranjit Hoskote in conversation with Kaiwan Mehta
Federer, Reto Togni, Guto Indio da Costa, Ankita Ravindra
34 Indian Aesthetics
Chaudhari, Yi-Yun Wang, Elias Balda Reta, Iuliia Kharina,
Museum in transit
Umar Jamaal Green, Chi-Wen Kao
The Jaya He Museum, Mumbai
Text and photos by Sudha Ganapathi
and Anuradha Shankar 100 Architecture
Hometowns
Architects that made their cities
Madrid, Spain; Rotterdam, the Netherlands;
Milan, Italy; and Basel, Switzerland
Text by Eduardo Prieto
Photos by Pedro Albornoz, Iwan Baan, Adriano A.
Biondo, Duccio Malagamba, Maurizo Montagna,
Ossip van Duivenbode, Ruedi Walti

110 Rassegna
The art of light
Presented by Giulia Guzzini

About the cover: safeguarding the integrity of the trees.

Designed by RMA Architects, the
cover juxtaposes an image of the New
Children’s Museum at the Chhatrapati
Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya
(CSMVS) in Mumbai with foundation
drawings that involved a detailed
mapping of existing tree roots around
which the building was designed. Also
incorporated in the collage is a
35-year-old dolphin skeleton
discovered during manual excavation.
As the footprint available for building
overlapped exactly with the location of
the oldest trees on the site, the challenge
involved incorporating a structure while
Through a detailed study of the existing
tree root system, the architects
protected and preserved the trees on
the site, some of which are a century old.
The foundations were then carefully
designed amidst the roots, ensuring
holistic growth within and around the
New Children’s Museum building. The
collage represents the resulting footprint
of the building which is a response to the
existing trees to construct a built form
that subtly intervenes and creates a
verdant atmosphere for users of all ages
to enjoy within the space of the Museum.
For more details turn to page 48.

21
 (the Guest Editor for the international edition of Domus
in 2019) impresses the urgency of time and pressures
on geography once more. The process of constant review
of what we do and how we do as makers of our material
world becomes most important. The pages of the magazine
collect and ponder, and collect and present, asking
every reader to
the provisional collect
pause and and
to review reflect
debate atour
her/his
conditions end. In a
monthly
of being,cycle
working,of such reflections crowded with other
and living?
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kinds situation it —
of reflections becomes
reflectionsevident how different
building up cheek-by
generations
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material working and producing
collections — produces
Context, collections, and cartography dominate produce time again and again. The museum contemporary designs and
issue debates contexts buildings at the
in architecture, in present are in
conservation,
this issue of Domus India. The cartography of is a map of sorts, a map in time and space. thepoetry,
everyday
and in
sense
the idea
of
of
our world
museums.
today.
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text, time, and nature builds up experiences Objects as material and aesthetic compositions returning interestingly to questions of form, structure,
and produces grounds for ruminations on life, are footprints of civilisations, as civilisations world in all
and the
details, manyitsintersecting
contemporary
references journeys
and notions manifestations,
of individuals and
of visual-thinking making
as ideas
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produce them, use them, and then review and
reuse them over time, and across time.
usmuch
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oursystems human
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space, asking for a geography that is not bound used, misused, forgotten, allowed to rot, or and the politics
articulated as ways ofofsurvival,
addressing the groundPractice
creativity, ofand challenges
humanity.
conditions
by land freed by the flight of the mind across renovated, or discovered from loss and context. Practice then shapes the idea of context. Practice but
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builds economic,
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words familial
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built
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maps in our minds produce a way of living and every stage, that one mould of a building has be seen asof
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forcity
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from far and wide, present in the context of change it is new, renewed. In this context, and the by
reality, process
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into a projected future. Objects located in building maps, building contexts. Context is
imagined pasts escape the stereotypes of time a changing map of connections and
to become their own chroniclers and connectivities, and needs to be negotiated
cartographers of our landscapes and lives. constantly as a changing map, and as
Collections and museums that hold them then collections of networks and locations. This

22 Editorial KaiwanMehta
Kaiwan Mehta 23 17
 Pluralism in the
Two recent projects by RMA
Architects — the New Children’s

built environment
Museum at the CSMVS in Mumbai
and the Kasturbhai Lalbhai
Museum in Ahmedabad — open up
RMA Architects a conversation about the practice
Text by Rahul Mehrotra and Kaiwan Mehta of conservation architecture in
Photos courtesy RMA Architects
India today. These design
interventions are, in fact, a
reminder of the dynamic nature of
buildings where architecture is a
depository of the past on the one
hand and engages with
speculating about the future on
the other

Photo Rajesh Vora

Photo Tina Nandi

This page: Adjacent to the Opposite page, top:

Natural History Society A minimal visual
building, the New intervention of steel and
Children’s Museum at the glass is added to house a
CSMVS, Mumbai, is on an contemporary art gallery
oddly-shaped site. The on the pavilion of the
construction was carried Lalbaug estate in
Photo Rajesh Vora

out in a away so that the Ahmedabad; bottom: a

large existing trees were view of the exterior of the
included within the Lalbhai Gallery
available footprint

48 49
 New Children’s Museum
at CSMVS
Located within the historic Fort precinct in
Mumbai, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu
Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), formerly the Prince of
Wales Museum, is one of the finest architectural
landmarks of the city and a Grade I heritage
building as per the Heritage Regulations of
Greater Bombay, 1995. Designed by George
Wittet, the architectural vocabulary of the
structure comprised of grey basalt and Kurla
stone, is strongly representative of the Indo-
Saracenic style. The main elevation is crowned
by a dome that, in its profile and sculpture
detailing, is reminiscent of and inspired by the
forms of Bijapur’s Gol Gumbaz. The presence of
the dome in the visual landscape of Mumbai is
powerful and perhaps one of the most important
Photo Tina Nandi

landmarks in the city.

For over two decades, starting in the mid-1990’s,
RMA Architects has been continuously engaged
as consultants with the CSMVS. The project for
the Children’s Museum and its scope, in some
ways, stems from, or is inspired by the initial
mappings of the Fort area of Mumbai and the
political advocacy for its conservation — of which
the Museum was an integral part. This process
ultimately led to India’s first historic conservation
district legislation in 1995 and the designation

Photo Tina Nandi

of the Kala Ghoda Art District, with the CSMVS
occupying a pivotal location in this sub-
district. The first stage in this project was to
Photo Tina Nandi

Photo Rajesh Vora

Photo Tina Nandi

This spread: With the the low-key nature of

extensive use of steel the intervention
and glass, the minimal responds to the
structure of the scale of the child,
Children’s Museum positioned in a way
frames the existing that frames the
trees and surrounding Museum from
landscape. In addition, a distance
Photo Tina Nandi

50 51
 prepare a conservation masterplan for the
historic building of the CSMVS, which involved
painstakingly creating measured drawings,
mapping of defects, laying out an inventory of
conservation tasks, and suggesting contemporary
interventions to supplement the programmatic
projections for the museum in the future. This
report served as a basis for ambitious conservation
projects that the Museum has undertaken with
different conservation architects, starting in
the mid-2000s. Interestingly, this otherwise
conservation-centric process of preparing
a masterplan also surfaced the idea of three
contemporary architectural interventions
in this Grade 1 heritage campus: The Museum
Annex, the Visitors’ Center, and the New
Children’s Museum.
The first of these interventions, completed in
2000, was an addition in the Museum Annex to
make this wing more accessible and, by extension,
more usable. This involved reconfiguring the
eastern extension wing (formerly used as a
warehouse for the Museum) in order to optimise
the spatial usage of the building. It was felt that
the extension had to be integrated well with
the rest of the gallery spaces and that a more
public usage of this space would assist in making
it popular with visitors. It was also decided to
incorporate an additional gallery space within
this structure and make the internal circulation
more flexible, to allow for greater movement
Photo Rajesh Vora
between the new exhibition areas. Built in
steel-and-glass operable vertical louvres, this
Photo Tina Nandi
This page: Toilets on the multipurpose hall with
campus of the New projection facilities,
Children’s Museum are picture rails, and
designed with variable adjustable track-lighting;
heights for various bottom: the construction
facilities within of the Museum had to be
the bathrooms carried out in a way so
Opposite page, top: the that it is in harmony
Museum includes a with the existing trees
1200-square-feet on the site
air-conditioned
Photo Rajesh Vora
52
addition was imagined as an easily reversible
intervention that would serve a clearly defined
purpose till such time the Museum reconfigured
and renovated its existing galleries and could
define its long-term requirements for the annex.
The second of the contemporary architectural
interventions, completed in 2011, was the
Visitors’ Center located at the entrance of
the Museum. The contemporary structure
expands upon the footprint of a previously
existing multipurpose hall, and is a part of an
expansion plan for the Museum. The Center
fulfills programmatic functions, ranging from
the integration of baggage collection and storage,
to ticketing and security, as well as a museum
shop, a 200-seater auditorium, and restrooms.
A lightweight, stainless steel-clad elliptical
roof creates a covered verandah for circulation,
integrating disparate visitor programmes into a
consolidated and modest, yet contemporary
form. Glass and metal surfaces exist as a visual
counterpoint to stout basalt stone of local
heritage structures. Reflective material planes
create a paradoxical visual poetry in which
archaic forms of the adjacent museum are
recast and distorted in a new perspective. The
pre- defined footprint is organically punctured
by existing trees that project through openings
in the roof, yielding localised deviations in the
otherwise low-key spaces. Integration of natural
textures with modern means and materials
further expands the defining narrative of
the Center, that of a culturally meaningful
Photo Rajesh Vora
53
 Photo Rajesh Vora
Photo Rajesh Vora
CSMVS Museum: Site Plan with interventions

1 2

Photo Rajesh Vora

Photo Rajesh Vora

4
This page, clockwise from Visitors’ Centre
top-right: the Annex Block juxtaposed against the
of the main building heritage building of
involved reconfiguring the CSMVS; a set of images of
1 Heritage Building eastern extension wing; the Annex Block before
2 Annex Building the Visitors’ Centre was and after the intervention
3 Children’s Museum completed in 2011; the was made in 2000
4 Visitors’ Center and
Museum Shop
5 Jehangir Art Gallery
CSMVS Museum: Site Plan
1 HERITAGE BUILDING
SITE PLAN 2 ANNEXE BUILDING
3 CHILDREN'S MUSEUM
4 VISITOR CENTER AND MUSEUM SHOP
5 JEHANGIR ART GALLERY

Photo Rajesh Vora

54 55
 Project: Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Design team intervention within a monumental and with seating for ten, storage facilities, and a
Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) Shivani Shah, Zenia Vandrewala historic context. common meeting area. Toilets are designed with
Location: Mumbai, Maharashtra Consultants The most recent intervention on the CSMVS variable heights for various facilities within
Dates of design and completion New Children’s Museum: campus is the New Children’s Museum. Located the bathrooms. An open-to-sky amphitheatre
Annex Block: 1998-2000 Structural Consultants — Vijay Patil in the eastern quadrant of the crescent, it is and adjacent plaza activates external spaces,
Conservation Plan: 2003 and Associates nestled in the midst of a grove of existing trees, creating opportunities for outdoor activities
Visitors’ Center: 2009-2011 Services Consultants — Design Bureau including a rare baobab tree. The verdant in a safe environment. Accessed via the
New Children’s Museum: 2015-2018 Liasoning Consultants — NB Dharmadhikari atmosphere creates an ideal setting for the amphitheatre staircase, a 750-square-feet
Area Landscape Consultants — Urmila Rajadhyaksha introduction of a new cultural space for children terrace deck functions like a tree house,
New Children’s Museum: 3500 sq ft Contractor — Impex Engineers and adults alike. An asymmetrical footprint welcoming children and adults alike into the
Principal designers was established by existing setbacks from canopy of more than a dozen trees.
Rahul Mehrotra, Robert Stephens the street and the adjacent Natural History
Society building, resulting in an oddly-shaped
site which was further constrained by existing
large trees that were within the available
footprint. Given these limitations, the centre is
conceived as a light pavilion in a verdant setting.
1. STORAGE
2. OFFICE
3. MULTIPURPOSE HALL
With the extensive use of steel and glass, this
minimal structure frames the existing trees
GROUND FLOOR PLAN 0 1 2 5
and surrounding landscape. In addition, the
low-key nature of the intervention responds to
the scale of the child, and is positioned in a way
that frames the Museum from a distance.
The salient features of the New Children’s
Museum include a 1200-square-feet air-
1
conditioned multipurpose hall with blackout
and projection facilities, picture rails for
2
hanging art, and adjustable track-lighting.
The hall is framed by a glass facade on three
sides, with sliding glass panels for cross- Bottom: The New
ventilation as and when required. Adjacent Children’s Museum
comprises a store and a
1 3 is a store, as well as a Reading Corner which
1 Storage Reading Corner which
2 Office
can accommodate more than 500 books. can accommodate
3 Multipurpose Hall Centrally located is an administrative office more than 500 books

0 2m N
New Children’s Museum: Ground Floor Plan

Photo Tina Nandi

North-west Elevation: Representational

0 2m

56 57
Kasturbhai Lalbhai The Kasturbhai Lalbhai Museum project
Museum, Ahmedabad was initiated in 2014 to restore the ancestral
estate of the Lalbhai family that included
restoring the Lalbhai House and Lalbaug estate,
located in Shahibaug, Ahmedabad, built by the
Indian industrialist, Lalbhai Dalpathbhai Sheth
in 1905, including an annex block designed
by the British architect, Claude Batley in the
1930s, introducing contemporary new galleries.
The project was commissioned by Sanjay
and Jayashree Lalbhai of the Lalbhai family to
preserve the legacy of their father, Kasturbhai
Lalbhai. The Lalbhais aspired to restore and
re-use the ancestral estate as a dynamic archive
to preserve, document and narrate the rich
cultural and social history of their family.
Through the past six years, the project was
commissioned in phases that included not only
new interventions but also restoration and
readapting of the existing historical building. The
project was designed and built in three phases.
The first phase, involved the restoration
through an extensive conservation process
to convert the ancestral Lalbhai house into a
museum to hold the family’s collection of art
and antiques. The spaces in the house were
restored to their original character and
configuration for visitors to enjoy both the
collection and the ambience of the house as
intended, reinforced by the display of art.
58
The second phase involved restoring and
readapting the annex block to house contemporary
art collection of the Lalbhai family in the
Claude Batley gallery and included adding an
art store and a pavilion in steel and glass for
travelling shows.
The third phase involved creating a new
3000-square-feet gallery. It was designed in a way
so as to avoid visually impinging on the presence
of the original house and historic structure. The
landscape was used to tie together the heritage
of the ancestral house, the modern heritage of
the Batley building, and the new contemporary
gallery designed partly subterranean to respect
the existing context on the estate.
THE HERITAGE CONTEXT
The Lalbaug estate is situated in an area
called Shahibaug. During the rule of Shah Jahan
in the late 1600s, Shahibaug was located outside
of the walled city of Ahmedabad. On account
of this exclusion from the dense quarters of
the city, landscape and ecological growth in
the area thrived. Simultaneously, Shah Jahan
choose to develop a palace here, lending the
name: “Shahibaug,” meaning “Royal Gardens”
to the vicinity. Shahibaug was considered to be
a repository of riches in Ahmedabad, and this
is obvious from the fact that virtually most of the
mill owners used to live here. As the city grew,
the ‘aristocracy’ of Ahmedabad moved out of
Shahibaug and chose to relocate to other plush
areas of the city.
The Lalbhai house was built as a colonial-
style mansion in 1905 on a large piece of land
in Shahibaug. The defining features of this
two-storied structure are its colonnaded
entry porch spanned by segmental arches and
verandahs with sloping roofs on either sides.
The house has arched windows and doorways
that punctuate the surface and spindle-
shaped balusters that border the terrace,
verandahs and balconies. The verandahs that
span the length of the building on the north
and south sides were added by Claude Batley
in the 1930s when the house underwent major
renovation and had a new kitchen block added.
The new kitchen block was designed in the
language of modern Indian architecture that
Batley highly propagated in his work. With
an introverted structure, the building wraps
around a courtyard, centric to the functioning
of every traditional household.
In that context, the Lalbaug is a site which
illustrates both historic heritage to the colonial
past of India as well as modern architecture
heritage defined through vernacular domestic
language that Claude Batley was attempting
to define through his work in the early
20th century.
DESIGN INTERVENTION This spread: Images
showcasing the many
In addition to restoration of the existing house,
three design interventions were made by
spaces on the Lalbaug
estate in Ahmedabad
RMA Architects within the historical before and after the
context of the Lalbaug estate, that were process of conservation
bound together by the landscape elements. was undertaken
Pavilion at the Claude Batley Gallery: On the
terrace of the Claude Batley Gallery, a minimal
visual intervention of steel and glass is
added to house a contemporary art gallery.
Lalbhai Gallery: This is a 3000-square-feet
gallery designed partly subterranean so as
not to visually impinge on the presence of the
original house and historic structure. The
subterranean gallery is flanked by two large
courtyards which draw natural light into the
spaces and frame views back to the existing
historic structure.
Plaza in the Lalbaug Estate: An amphitheatre
for performances and lectures along with a
large garden was designed around what was a
fountain on the site that existed from when
the house was built, to create two different
spatial ambiences and allow different views
of the site. Vines from the garden climb
over the subterranean structure, further
visually embedding it in the ground while
extending the green space leading towards the
historic structures.
59
Photo Rajesh Vora
Photo Tina Nandi
This spread, top: images The design interventions, though contemporary
of the restored Heritage in form, use minimal presence architecturally so
House on the Lalbaug
Estate; above and below:
that they don’t overpower the existing context
glimpses from a portfolio and are only visual counterpoints for viewing the
made to document the components of the original Heritage building.
conservation process The Pavilion designed on the first floor terrace
of the Claude Batley Gallery uses steel and glass
with display panels with the background of the
old house viewed through the glass façade. The
trees on site provide a less encumbering texture
to the pavilion from the courtyards on the site.
The pathway leading to the old house
transitions seamlessly into an extended one,
leading to the new Lalbhai Gallery. The plaza,
with an amphitheatre and garden, uses landscape
as a gentle way to coalesce the other more
distinct elements on the site. The garden around
the original fountain creates a different spatial
ambience and allows for varying views of the site.
Contemporary interventions at the
Kasturbhai Lalbhai Museum draw visitors
through the property and existing heritage
buildings, creating new experiences and
framing vistas that look to the past through a
modern architectural framework. A glass and
steel pavilion, located in the mid-20th century
Claude Batley kitchen block on the first floor,
becomes a core space for displaying art. In
60
addition, it is from this vantage point that views
back towards the restored Heritage House are
framed making evident aspects of the house
not otherwise seen from other parts of the
property. The location of the contemporary
intervention necessitates one to literally
walkthrough the Claude Batley building, which
is otherwise at one corner of the property, and
creates an experience facilitated by a gallery
assistant who narrates the story of the former
use of the space as a kitchen and a zone for
staff, and how it was repurposed for a new
public space for displaying art.
Similarly, the partially subterranean
gallery near the main Heritage House draws
the visitor through the campus to a previously
inaccessible part of the garden. In contrast
to the elevated view that the glass pavilion
provides, this gallery frames an alternate
perspective — “rooted” in the site.
Architecturally, the gallery is framed by a
series of beige walls which align with the
beige plinth base of the adjacent Heritage
House, creating and accentuating a
“datum”, which (metaphorically)
consistent for both the original heritage
building and the contemporary addition —
built a century apart!
Photo Tina Nandi
Both interventions — minimal, discrete,
conservative, and modern — are reflective of
and inspired by the qualities and characteristics
of Kasturbhai Lalbhai, who first commissioned
the ancestral house at the core of the property in
the late 19th Century. Socially, the interventions
activate, for broader public consumption, what
was once an entirely private property.
While the old house and the annex block are
restored to display the family’s art collection, the
two new galleries i.e. the Pavilion on the terrace
of the Claude Batley Gallery and the Lalbhai
Gallery show travelling exhibitions.
The amphitheatre and garden are used as
extensions to the museum space for lectures and
programmes that are organised in conjunction
with the ongoing exhibitions at the multiple
galleries. The stage to the amphitheatre sits in
the background of the heritage building, adding
a new dimension to the events organised.
The expansive gardens surrounding the
Kasturbhai Lalbhai Museum are central to the
development of the site, and the newly built
interventions were extremely mindful of not
is interrupting the expanse of the open space.
Between the Heritage House and the Claude
Batley block (where the Pavilion is located),
are three large raintrees, five decades old.
Photo Rajesh Vora
Traditional seats were built around the existing
trees — protecting the trees and creating a
shaded public plaza for outdoor events.By
simply moulding, and in many ways, protecting
the existing landscape, the natural heritage of
the site is retained and transformed into a usable
space — with the east façade of the Heritage House
framed as a stately backdrop.
Similarly, the north façade of the Heritage
House is framed by an open-to-sky amphitheatre
that uses the borrowed views of mature
trees in the adjoining property as a backdrop
when viewed form the historic house or
performance stage. Thus the presence of the
green space is accentuated by the manner in
which different vistas are established.
The green outdoor public spaces support the
two contemporary interventions — the glass
pavilion and the partial subterranean art
gallery. Located on the first floor of the Claude
Batley building, the glass pavilion frames
panoramic views of canopies and heritage
buildings. The subterranean gallery, similar
to the glass pavilion, is envisaged as a “non-
building” — blurring visual lines where the
building starts, and the surrounding landscape
takes over. In the sunken gallery, the landscape
literally climbs over the building in the form of a
green roof. In the glass pavilion, glass reflects the
adjacent trees, creating a visual dissolution.
The materials used in the interventions on the
site are lightweight and lend the new buildings
a contemporary language without subsuming
the character and historical relevance of the
existing historic structures.
Soft landscaping creates a smooth transition
between the buildings, and vines from the
garden climb over the subterranean structure of
the Lalbhai Gallery, further visually embedding
it in the ground while visually extending the
green space.
The Lalbhai family of Ahmedabad has played
a foundational role in the institutional built
environment of the city for more than a century.
The ancestral home at the core of the Museum,
was commissioned by Kasturbhai Lalbhai, who
also was instrumental in inviting Le Corbusier
and Louis Kahn to work in Ahmedabad.
He was also responsible for commissioning
Charles Correa to design the Gandhi
Ashram, and BV Doshi to design the Indology
Institute, both seminal works in Ahmedabad
by the first generation of Post-Independent
architects in India. Lalbhai also engaged with
Albert Mayer, the American town planner, to
prepare a masterplan for Ahmedabad in the
61
Photo Rajesh Vora

Photo Rajesh Vora

This spread: The Lalbhai
Gallery, measuring 3000
square feet, is designed
partly subterranean so
as not to visually impinge
on the presence of the
original house and
historic structure. It is
flanked by two large
courtyards which draw
natural light into the
spaces and frame views
back to the existing
historic structure. The
sp-ace is currently used
for travelling exhibitions

Photo Rajesh Vora

Photo Tina Nandi

Photo Tina Nandi

Photo Tina Nandi

Photo Tina Nandi

62 63
 mid-20th century. Therefore, the family’s
decision to transform their private residence into
a public institution dedicated to his legacy was
yet another contribution in their long tradition
of public initiatives in the city.
Furthermore, by making the space publicly
accessible, and at no fee, the space, its
history, and the art on display is available for
engagement by citizens and visitors from an
array of backgrounds.
While this is hard for designers of the project
to discern, what we have been conscious about is
the broader discussion about the issue of ‘critical’
conservation where new interventions are made
Photo Tina Nandi

Photo Tina Nandi

in historic settings.
This project opens up a conversation about
the dialogue between historic architecture as
well as visual sensibilities and contemporary
1 Foyer This page: The plaza first floor terrace of the
2 Gallery surrounding the new Claude Batley Gallery expressions. In the conservation debate globally,
3 Courtyard Lalbhai Gallery uses steel and glass with this is a key emerging issue as we expand our
comprises an display panels with the understanding and public awareness of what
amphitheatre and background of the old
constitutes our heritage in different localities.
garden, and uses house viewed through
landscape as a gentle the glass façade. The The most obvious fallout of this broadening
way to coalesce the other trees on site provide a of our understanding of Heritage assets is
elements on the site less encumbering texture the exponential growth of the extent of what
Opposite page: The to the pavilion from the
we want to conserve as a society. This often
pavilion designed on the courtyards on the site
3 brings in close physical proximity the historic
with the contingencies and aspirations of the
contemporary. Thus we believe this project and
2 1 2 others in this genre globally are very important
to further this discussion which could become
the foundation to evolve appropriate attitudes
and resulting policies. This dialogue is a crucial
first step.
E
Lalbhai Gallery: Ground Floor Plan 0 2m ALLET A N

LAL AI ALLE L PLAN

1 Contemporary Art Gallery

2 Seminar Room

Project: Kasturbhai Lalbhai Museum

2 Location: Ahmedabad, Gujarat
Client: Jayshree and Sanjay Lalbhai
Dates of design and completion
Lalbhai House: 2014 - 2016
Claude Batley Gallery: 2014- 2016
Lalbhai Gallery: 2015–2017
Area
Lalbaug House & Pavilion: 25,000 sq ft
Lalbhai Gallery: 4000 sq ft
Principal designers
Rahul Mehrotra, Robert Stephens
1 Consultants
Structural Consultants — Ami Engineers,
Consulting Engineers
Electrical Consultants — Antech Consultants
Plumbing Consultants — Avani Enterprise
HVAC Consultant — Mihir Patel
0 2m N
Claude Batley Gallery: First Floor Plan NTE P
SE INA
A A T ALLE Contractor — Keya Associates

64 LA E ATLE ALLE I ST L PLAN 65

Context, time and
architecture
In an interview with Kaiwan Mehta, architect Rahul Mehrotra reflects
upon whether conservation practice can be as much about imagining
futures as retaining pasts, and how, of late, models of practice are
constructed around the assumption that our cites are static and
stable entities.
Kaiwan Mehta (KM) : In a recent exhibition on your practice at the GSD
Harvard you drew an interesting set of connections between your
practice as a contemporary architect, which included working with
heritage buildings, and your practice as a researcher and writer/
author, which also involved an engagement with urban issues. Can you tell us a
bit about this? And what has ‘heritage’ or ‘conservation practice’ meant to you?
Rahul Mehrotra (RM) : In our practice, we see heritage conservation
and engagements with questions of historic buildings as part of the
same set of activities and not as siloed or isolated from our making of
contemporary buildings. For us, the making of new architecture and the
conservation of historic buildings and, by extension, urban districts as
well as the research and writing this entails are part of the repertoire of
practice. And I believe that on account of this approach, engaging with the
practice of conservation as an architect and urban designer (and perhaps
not as a ‘conservation architect’ per se) over the last three decades has
been extremely challenging as well as productive for RMA Architects.
For me personally, not being trained formally as a conservation architect
has had some severe disadvantages but also many advantages. The
disadvantages were obvious. We had to gain insights and training on
material conservation practices, expose ourselves to cultural practices
in the field, study methodology, obtain familiarity with the Charters
and so on. However, the major advantages were that one could take a
different view — a view of conservation practice from the vantage point of a
contemporary practising architect in India and a trained urban designer.
From this perspective, one was liberated to be engaging with the past
and the future simultaneously — that is, speculate about the future of the
past. Additionally, one could not help but see conservation as a planning
instrument for society, to modulate and calibrate the rate of change in the
built environment. Perhaps this is a pragmatic perspective but clearly is
one rooted in a critical view of privileging architecture and its eventual
conservation as both being simultaneously valid and essentially being
practices in the service of society. We also realised that as compared to
contemporary architectural design processes where the design decisions
66
often are subjective, in the practice of conservation there is a greater
play of objective decisions. Thus, this clearly allowed for forms of
collaboration that were perhaps easier to facilitate than in design practice.
This interest in a model of collaborative practice is what led in 1994
to the formation of The Bombay Collaborative (TBC) — a conservation
practice which brought together three different firms (Urban Innovations
and David Cardoz Associates together with Rahul Mehrotra Associates
and five years later, Sewri Consultants, a firm specialising in structural
engineering). As a team we worked on a number of projects ranging from the
restoration of the Oval Maidan in Mumbai to the conservation of perhaps
the oldest church in Old Goa and several conservation reports and projects
for buildings in Mumbai’s historic district. In 2000, we followed this model
for two major assignments for the Taj Mahal and two palaces in Hyderabad.
In the case of the conservation of the Nizam of Hyderabad’s Chowmahalla
and Falaknuma Palaces the dimensions of conservation were extremely
complex and contested. Teams of textile and photography conservators,
who the curators Martand Singh and Shobita Punja had put together, had
to work in close coordination with our team for architecture conservation
led by Abha Narain Lambah. What complicated the project besides the
range of disciplines involved was the contestations that surrounded
the site in terms of ownership, encroachments and politically charged
questions of interpreting the Nizam’s legacy. This was possible only within
a collaborative framework that sustained the project’s trajectory over a
decade. Similarly, when we were appointed to prepare a conservation
strategy for the Taj Mahal, we formulated an entity called the Taj Mahal
Conservation Collaborative (TMCC) with Amita Baig, Arup Sabhadhikary,
Annabel Lopez, Navin Piplani, Priyaleen Singh, and Tara Sharma among
other consultants. This was an assignment where the objectivity of the
decisions was critical as well as contested, as it was a World Heritage Site.
And the collaborative format worked well to evolve a management plan
and restore several components of the Taj Mahal including the riverside
wall and spaces for visitors’ centres. In short, I believe conservation practice
is an appropriate ground for collaborative and interdisciplinary
working and this is one of the many significant lessons we have culled
and extended for our practice as contemporary architects.
KM : Could you also tell us how these subjects and their related practices have
changed over the last 30 years?
RM : With the practice of conservation in India — while it has had a long
and complicated historical legacy from the colonial to the post-colonial
period — the biggest shift I have seen in the last 30 years is that there are
more intersections with, and the embracing of, other disciplines. This is a
welcome shift from the narrowness of the material conservation-centric
debate that overwhelmed conversation in say the early 1990s when we
started our practice. While material conservation is a critical component
of the practice of conservation, I think by expanding the debate to the
intangible, and also in scale to the urban, has made it more relevant
to the Indian context. While unfortunately today the most celebrated
projects in the country, and more specifically in Mumbai, are the ones
that are limited to this narrow definition, I think in India the debate is
much broader. In Mumbai I see more architects now writing and situating
the debate in their readings of the urban context. This complicates
things for the trained conservation architects but I think draws a
broader spectrum of architects and urbanists into the debate in more
meaningful ways. I think it enriches the conversation on conservation
tremendously but more importantly, draws it closer to the pressing
debates and issues related to planning more broadly in our cities and the
contexts of our historic sites.
KM : The two projects we feature here are both within heritage contexts and
buildings/campuses — what was your approach, conceptually, to begin with?
RM : Our approach was clearly to create a dialogue between the old
and the new, to challenge ourselves with the idea that how do built
artifacts from different centuries coexist? How do you make contemporary
interventions in a historic campus and spatially negotiate the adjacencies
between the new and old? For us the most important question is
how the architect, even if encumbered by the definition and related
expectations of what conservation practice may mean, is also an agent
of change and not just one who resists change. Of course, the challenge in
this situation is how the integrity of both the new and old is maintained
and actually reinforced. This is such a beautiful problem!
KM : Why is this approach important? Is there a larger argument vis-à-vis
conservation or the practice in contemporary India that you are hinting or
aiming at?
RM : The impulse is to broaden the interpretation of our Heritage for
contemporary relevance and this is what became extremely important
for us in the practice. The practice of conservation then is considered in
“It is critical to see conservation as but one instrument
of planning, where the significance of the area of the city
and its space is continually reinterpreted.”
its broadest sense, of extending the life of environments as resources
that have embodied energy both in terms of their materiality as well as
memory and association. This ‘critical’ view of conservation as a practice
facilitates its engagement across the scales of architecture as well as
urban planning. For, it is critical to see conservation as but one instrument
of planning, where the significance of the area of the city and its space
is continually reinterpreted. In the context of a historic space for the
planner, architect, or conservation architect, the challenge is how
to grapple with change and evolving significance and also keep the
illusion of the architecture or its physical context as intact as possible.
Finally, conservation is illusionary, in that it is like the smile of the
‘Cheshire cat’ whose grin extends beyond the moment of its exitance!
KM : Can you tell us specifically about any particular approaches or features
in each project — towards heritage, towards architecture, and towards the idea
of the contemporary?
RM : We believe both these projects for museums, one in Ahmedabad and
the other in Mumbai, open up a conversation about the dialogue between
historic architecture as well as visual sensibilities and contemporary
expressions. In the conservation debate globally, this is a key emerging
issue as we expand our understanding and public awareness of what
constitutes our heritage in different localities. The most obvious
fallout of this broadening of our understanding of Heritage assets is the
exponential growth of the extent of what we want to conserve as a
society. This often brings in close physical proximity the historic with
the contingencies and aspirations of the contemporary. Thus we believe
these projects and others in this genre globally are important to further
this discussion which could become the foundation to evolve appropriate
attitudes and resulting policies. This dialogue is a crucial first step.
The New Children’s Museum, in Mumbai (somewhat like all the other
interventions we have made in the CSMVS Museum precinct), incorporates
various requirements and organic forms into the structure and user
experience. The subsequently very small footprint is made to feel larger
through the introduction of a glass façade overlooking the adjacent
garden. An outdoor amphitheatre, built into the sectional profile of the
structure, is shaded by existing trees integrated into the building form.
Through the integration of built and natural forms, challenges of the site
are transformed into unique opportunities for a biophilic experience.
The glass used for the façade has a calibrated reflective quality allowing
67
 “So often there is a pretence inherent in the way we
define the idea of conservation for it seems to suggest
a much self-important task than just repair!”
reflections of the surrounding landscape to become visible in varying
degrees during different times of the day.
When viewed in relation to the Grade I heritage building, the light
pavilion in which the centre is housed, accentuates the sense of the
Museum’s monumentality in the mind of the onlooking child — a foil and
contrast to the large-scale stone Grade I heritage museum. As such, the
low-key, glass-and-steel structure is imagined as a gentle introduction
for young visitors, dissolving visually with reflections in the glass from
the surrounding landscape. The New Children’s Museum’s presence is
reversed at night when the heritage building is silhouetted in darkness
and the glow from the pavilion exerts its visual presence on the CSMVS
campus, guiding adult visitors towards the centre for events in the
evening. Thus, the play of light and shade, and changing perceptions,
is hoped to create multiple associations with the centre for the regular
users of the Museum campus. These associations are facilitated by
simple and neutral spaces capable of adjusting to a range of activities
demanded by a spectrum of constituencies that comprise the visitation
of the Museum campus. But more importantly, the role of the centre,
together with its family of contemporary architectural interventions
in the CSMVS campus, is to expand the margins of the Museum through
the provision of an array of spaces in response to the contingencies
and often unpredictable requirements of the time.
In the case of the Lalbhai Museum in Ahmedabad, all interventions
are finished in the same colour palette as the existing heritage
building — a beige base for surfaces below the 1.2-metre datum,
and white for surfaces above the datum. This continuity of colour
accentuates the discrete nature of the new interventions, establishing
visual references between the historic and contemporary. It
is through form and texture that the interventions establish
their identity, albeit in a subtle manner. Minimalistic forms
with large panels of glass, devoid of the intricacies that are
expressed in mouldings and parapets of the heritage house, define the
new additions — attempting to become a neutral background where
art and vistas are the objects on display — not the architecture.
Moreover, glass reflects the historic fabric and the green that surrounds
them, further dissolving the visual presence of the new interventions.
Lastly, and perhaps most critically, the contemporary expressions
of these interventions in both projects (that are museums of different
kinds) are a reminder of the dynamic nature of the Museum as an
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068
institution that straddles its role as a depository of the past and
one that engages with speculating about the future.
KM : What were the processes or lessons from, or involved in, these
projects which may have not appeared in a regular building design
project and may now influence them? How does the design process in these
conservation projects then influence your larger practice or your thinking
as a contemporary architect?
RM : The two most important aspects are those of understanding
and becoming aware of the notion of ‘time’ and the other related, yet
separate question of ‘weathering’. In the practices of conservation,
the idea of time becomes so vivid and evident in an extremely productive
way. We often not only use time to calibrate the importance of the
artifact in question but then time is also a useful register to determine
the extent of its need for conservation. Time is something we can treat
with a prospective understanding for the health of the artifact, not just
retrospectively. Which, simply put, is asking the question — how much
should we invest in conserving something and for how long? Similarly,
the question of weathering (as opposed to weather-proofing which we
are obsessed with today) is an interesting question because that’s
perhaps the most critical aspect of material conservation. It is
related to the idea of time, in that, most issues usually associated with
material conservation reside at the intersection of materials with
different life cycles. And this is also where the ideas of time and
weathering intersect. These are both interesting sets of questions to
pose when you design new buildings. And this has been an important
lesson for our contemporary practice.
The other lesson from being involved with historic buildings and
sites is the awareness it has created for us that sometimes, innovations
or contemporary interventions are overrated. It has made us question
the lack of premium our society pays to the notions of maintenance and
repair. Often these so-called conservation projects while being celebrated
as such are merely projects engaged with maintaining and repairing
these buildings. Of course, these happened to be listed based on some
consensus society had built on their selection. So, often, there is a pretence
inherent in the way we define the idea of conservation for it seems to
suggest a much self-important task then just repair! And of course
there is an entire politics of the vested interest of the profession that
surrounds this narrative. But the real lesson for our practice was
that repair and maintenance should be as endemic to the culture of
the practice as much as us engaging with new buildings. This has led
us to continue being involved with our projects and clients decades
after completion (and we don’t call this conservation). And we regularly
engage in upgrading, repairing, and adding to the buildings we have
designed over the years.
Unfortunately, in the current culture of building and architecture,
far too much premium is paid to innovation over repair and
maintenance. Repair, a more pragmatic approach, is neutral to the
historical and symbolic value given to buildings but rather treats
every artifact as a politically neutral armature of resources and deals
with it on its own terms. Actually, in many ways, this makes repair and
the idea of maintenance more robust categories than conservation
or the even narrower historic preservation rubric. In fact, this
broadening could have interesting implications on the ecologies that
could be constructed around the general repair and maintenance of
the built environment, perhaps having a greater impact on the health
and quality of the built environment than conservation or historic
preservation as formalised, and most often rather narrow practices.
And lastly, being engaged with both architectural and urban
conservation has taught us to discern the context in more rigorous
ways. That is, defining the context and making a more nuanced
reading of what comprises the context — this also informs our
contemporary works in substantial ways.
KM : Picking up on your last point on the idea of ‘context’, can you
elaborate, especially in reference to this conversation we are having...
RM : The context is a far more complicated definition of our site of
operation than we seem to accept. For the conversations about
conservation, the critical thing is to not see the context as static.
And that the context is something that we continuously make and
remake. It’s a fluid notion. This is naturally not to say that change is
inevitable and that we just give in to it. But rather the challenge for us
professionals interested in conservation is to calibrate what might
be the rate of change and how we might facilitate that transition
in the built environment. The critical question for conservation
practice and theory today in India is that when we don’t have a vision
for conservation, we are restricted to operating in the ‘postcard city’
(landscapes of nostalgia). Our theories as well as ensuing forms or
“Defining the context and making a more nuanced
reading of what comprises the context informs our
contemporary works in substantial ways.”
models of practice are constructed around the assumption that our
city is a static and stable entity, and that architecture is the
only mechanism by which memory is codified. While we have
embraced the idea of cultural landscapes, intangible heritage and
so forth, the critical question is how these ideas intersect with our
ability to spatially imagine the preservation of environments more
broadly under these rubrics. This is a completely different understanding
of the context. Then the question is: can conservation practice be as
much about imagining futures as retaining pasts? In fact, what the
present structure of conservation practice does is emphasise the
validity of only continuous historic narratives and in the process,
perpetuates the nostalgia-driven motivation to preserve or reinstate a
past imagination. Discontinuities or inconsistencies in the environment
are seen as aberrations in an otherwise ideal built environment.
Furthermore, with current policies of the Indian Government and
the massive change that it has triggered in the built environment, this
approach, to create an imagined world of lost glory, seems a more futile,
irrelevant and unproductive path for conservation professionals to
take. Thus, the ability to accept the simultaneous validity of opposing or
seemingly irreconcilable forms, histories or narratives is not something
conservation debates address but rather draws professionals further
away from dealing with the pluralism that is inherent in the built
environment (both historic as well as contemporary) in India.
The palimpsest-like layers that truly make our history is what we
have to understand and then find ways to conserve in the dynamic
landscape of change, that is construct new and more effective
narratives to this end. To use these processes of conservation
productively to modulate the rate of change. This reconciliation and
the evolving appropriate theories and resulting policy is, I believe,
the critical need of the hour for the practice of conservation in India.
069
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