Domus India October 2017

Prévia do material em texto

INDIA LA CITTÀ DELL’ UOMO
October
2017
Volume 06 / Issue 11
R200
066
NEWS6 domus 66 October 2017
table 
of contents
 
Public Art Fund
‘Good Fences Make Good 
 Neighbors’ by Ai Weiwei 
CERA India
New collection of designer tiles
GRAFF
New range of faucets 
 
HOF
‘Jalsa’ and ‘Aaram’ chairs
Century Ply
VenLam
World Architecture Festival
World Architecture Festival 
in Berlin 
 
Domus India 
Domus India 66 cover 
design 
Festival del Paesaggio
Landscape anatomy
 
Perrotin
Bears with feathers
Tecno
Tecno’s new maison
Christian Boltanski
One place after another
Recontres de la Photographie 
Date with photography
MAXXI 
Improvised architecture 
 
Premio Dedalo Minosse 
The best patrons 
Barbican 
Basquiat: Boom for Real
Tinguely Museum
Flemish neogothic 
Premio Archittectura Toscana
Design culture in Tuscany 
Targetti
Customised lights 
IOC 
25 years of office concepts
Linea Light 
Volumes of light 
Mutina 
Refettorio Felix
Zumtobel 
Light serving art
6
 
8
8
8
10
10
10
12
12
12 
 
12
12 
14
14
14
 
18
18
 
20
20
20
20
20
 
N
E
W
S
This October, the Public Art Fund, New York City, 
presents Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, 
a timely exhibition across multiple boroughs 
by renowned artist Ai Weiwei. Inspired by the 
international migration crisis and tense socio-
political battles surrounding the issue in the United 
States and worldwide, the artist has conceived 
this ambitious, multi-site project as a way of 
transforming the metal wire security fence into 
a powerful artistic symbol. By installing fences 
in varying, site-specific forms at locations across 
the city — including sites like the New York City 
Economic Development Corporation-managed 
Essex Street Market on the Lower East Side; The 
Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science 
and Art on Astor Place; JCDecaux bus shelters 
in Brooklyn in partnership with the New York City 
Department of Transportation; Doris C. Freedman 
Plaza at Central Park; and Flushing Meadows-
Corona Park in Queens, both in partnership with 
NYC Parks, and numerous others throughout the 
city — Weiwei will create striking installations that 
draw attention to the role of the fence as both a 
physical manifestation and metaphorical expression 
of division. In this way, he will explore one of 
society’s most urgent issues, namely the psychic 
and physical barriers that divide us, which is at the 
heart of debates about immigration and 
refugees today. 
The exhibition takes its name from the classic 
American poem Mending Wall by Robert Frost, 
which explores the role and impulse for boundaries 
in society, where tradition and habit often mask fear 
and narrow-mindedness. It is curated by Public Art 
Fund Director & Chief Curator Nicholas Baume 
with the assistance of Associate Curator Daniel S. 
Palmer. Good Fences Make Good Neighbors is a 
conceptual work that engages subjects of division 
and separation: political, social, and personal themes 
made literal and visible in the form of wire fencing. 
Weiwei’s interventions will appear in unexpected 
urban contexts across the city — on rooftops, in 
spaces between buildings, on bus shelters, as 
freestanding sculptures, and more — as if growing 
out of the existing urban landscape, while also 
changing how we perceive our environment. Rather 
than impeding daily life, the fences will serve as 
metaphors in a city that has served as a gateway to 
the United States for millions of immigrants. 
Ai Weiwei: Good Fences Make Good Neighbors will be 
on view October 12, 2017 – February 11, 2018 at sites 
throughout New York City.
publicartfund.org
‘Good Fences Make Good 
Neighbors’ by Ai Weiwei
NEWS8 domus 66 October 2017
CERA Sanitaryware Ltd., 
India’s fastest growing home 
solutions provider, launched 
a new collection of exclusive 
designer tiles for floor and 
wall at an event held in 
Kadi, Gujarat, where its main 
manufacturing plants for 
sanitaryware and faucets 
are located. CERA invited 
around 500 distributors of 
tiles from across the country 
to see the new collection, 
which was displayed over an 
area of 9,000 square feet. 
The collection included 500 
designs in floor tiles and 
over 150 design concepts 
in wall tiles. The categories 
included digital glazed vitrified 
tiles, digital wall tiles, third-
fired tiles, digital porcelain 
tiles, and so forth, in sizes 
varying from 600x600mm to 
800x1200mm. 
The newly-launched range 
of designs include: Lucido 
range — digital glazed vitrified 
tiles; Eterno range — digital 
porcelain tiles; Digitale range 
— digital wall tiles; Passion 
Range — third-fired tiles; 
and the Hardrock series – 
for high-traffic spaces like 
showrooms. All designs are 
unique and break the current 
clutter of tile designs in the 
industry. Lucido, the glazed 
vitrified range, which includes 
the new book match series 
are popular in both residential 
and commercial constructions. 
The marble series and rustic 
stone series have been 
designed keeping in mind the 
consumers’ changing tastes. 
The new highlighter series in 
the glazed vitrified tiles are 
truly unique designs that can 
be used both for floors as 
well as for walls. Passion, the 
third-fired wall tiles range are 
designed in such a way so as 
to enhance the aesthetics. 
Apart from the 23 third-fired 
designs, one can also select 
from a range of 104 regular 
wall tiles. These look equally 
New collection of designer tiles by CERA New range of faucets by GRAFF
GRAFF, the worldwide 
manufacturer of innovative 
faucets has come up with a 
new elegant faucet line that 
furnishes the bar as well as 
kitchen spaces. The latest 
innovation from GRAFF’s 
internal G+ Design Studio, 
the Sospiro Collection, offers 
a contemporary twist on 
traditional style. Inspired by 
the silhouette of a classic 
bridge, the faucet features 
clean, sleek curvilinear 
lines that fit perfectly inside 
modern kitchens and bars. 
The faucet is offered both as 
a single-hole and as a ‘bridge’ 
model and is available in four 
finishes — polished chrome, 
brushed nickel, polished 
nickel, and olive bronze — in 
order to allow wide flexibility 
in design. The stylish faucet 
is outfitted with two levers 
that match both the single-
hole and bridge options. The 
single-hole model is equipped 
with a pull-down spray head 
with dual spray and stream 
water flow functions. Flexible 
in its capabilities, Sospiro 
meets various necessities 
in terms of application too. 
Sospiro’s bar application, 
in fact, with its small-space 
design, falls in line with the 
growing trend of in-house 
bars and bar stations.
With its headquarters in 
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, 
and with locations across 
Europe, GRAFF is globally 
recognised for its trend-
setting products and unique 
vision. Supported since 1922 
by extensive plumbing and 
hardware manufacturing 
experience, GRAFF has 
positioned itself at the 
forefront of design, creating 
bathroom and kitchen fixtures 
for the luxury market.
graff-faucets.com
With a traditional yet fresh 
perspective on the ‘the art 
of sitting’, leading furniture 
brand HOF has come up with 
an innovation that redefines 
the basics of ergonomics. 
The country’s foremost 
premium furniture brand has 
been known in the past for 
intelligently combining the 
aesthetics of furniture-making 
with the science of comfort. 
With an objective to redefine 
the country’s workspace 
environment, HOF has been 
a step ahead in incorporating 
the latest technology into its 
products. Collaborating with 
NID graduate Mann Singh 
was the first step in achieving 
this objective. Singh is known 
for being the only Indian 
product designer on thecoveted list of the renowned 
elegant in both contemporary 
and traditional settings. 
Conceived by a team of well-
known tile designers, the new 
range gives a refreshingly 
different look from the 
present designs available in 
the market at present.
CERA’s product range also 
include bathroom cabinets, 
storage water tanks, kitchen 
sinks, mirrors, and sensors. 
Its distribution network 
consists of over 2,000 dealers 
and 10,000 retailers. The 
company also showcases its 
products through company-
managed CERA Style Studios 
and dealer-managed CERA 
Style Galleries.
cera-india.com
Italian aesthetics laboratory, 
Driade. With the visionary 
artistic sensibility of the young 
designer, HOF has been able 
to cross the limits of creativity 
and push the benchmark of 
manufacturing excellence.
It is this vision of Singh that 
has culminated into the 
conceptualisation of the 
‘Aaram’ and ‘Jalsa’ chairs. 
Anticipated to be a level of 
perfection, the ‘Aaram’ series 
of chairs is a new definition of 
comfort blended luxury, made 
using cotton. Equipped with a 
sturdy structure and premium 
teak-wood finish, one of the 
main highlights of this product 
is its light-weight pouffe — 
an additional footrest that 
provides relaxation. The 
‘Aaram’ series of chairs have 
been designed in line with 
providing comfort, especially 
for reading and other 
leisurely activities.
The ‘Jalsa’ series of chairs 
delivers a message of 
‘returning to one’s roots’ 
by its appearance itself. 
The design of the product 
is dedicated to the Indian 
style of seating, one that has 
been scientifically proven 
to be the optimum sitting 
position. Sharing its fine 
cotton upholstery and teak 
wood material with ‘Aaram’, 
the ‘Jalsa’ line of chairs is 
equipped with continuous 
back and side supports. The 
idea behind is an east west 
collaboration — a merger 
of the western concept of 
using chairs and the Indian 
tradition of leg-wrapping. 
The differences in both the 
products speak the diversity 
of Singh’s artistic vision. 
The appearance of ‘Jalsa’ 
series of chairs seems to 
be a language of ancient 
wisdom, trying to revive a 
sturdy seating tradition, 
whereas ‘Aaram’ suggests 
the redefinition of the known 
levels of comfort and luxury. 
The consistency of thought is 
the key focus on maintaining 
an ergonomically accurate 
structure, and manifest in the 
designs. 
hofindia.com
‘Jalsa’ and ‘Aaram’ chairs from HOF NEWS
NEWS10 domus 66 October 2017
Century Ply, one of the largest 
sellers of multi-use plywood 
and decorative veneers 
in India foray into a new 
category by launching a one-
of-its-kind product. The new 
product, VenLam, provides the 
aesthetic beauty of real wood 
and the comfort of working 
with high-pressure laminates. 
As the name ‘VenLam’ 
suggests, it is a combination 
of veneers and laminates. It 
is made by a technologically 
advanced process where 
decorative face veneer layers 
are fused together with 
layers of impregnated Kraft 
paper. There are 17 designs 
available with dimensions of 
8x4 feet, and the thickness of 
1mm. The superior lustre and 
increased durability makes 
VenLam an ideal choice for 
a wide range of applications. 
Laminates along with VenLam 
can be used side by side 
(which was not possible in 
case of traditional veneers as 
the thickness was 3.5mm/
4mm as compared to 1mm 
laminates). On account of its 
light weight, it is easier to use 
for kitchen doors, modular 
furniture, and also while 
refurbishing antique furniture. 
centuryply.com
VenLam by Century Ply
World Architecture Festival, Berlin
The World Architecture 
Festival is a three-day event 
for architects and interior 
design professionals, and 
where the architecture 
community meets to 
celebrate, learn, and 
exchange. Held from 
November 15-17 this 
year at the Arena Berlin in 
Germany, the festival will 
focus on the overarching 
theme of performance in 
architecture. This will include 
various additions to the tour 
programme, including a visit to 
Hans Scharoun’s revolutionary 
Berlin Philharmonie; Gerhard 
Spangenberg’s Radialsystem 
V, a former pump station 
transformed into a venue 
for contemporary dance and 
music; and Frank Gehry’s 
recently-completed Pierre 
Boulez Concert Hall. 
The members of the 
Super Jury that will judge 
the awards programme 
include jury chair Robert 
Ivy Chief Executive Offi cer 
of the American Institute 
of Architects along with 
Nathalie de Vries, Director & 
Co-founder of MVRDV; Ian 
Ritchie, Founder of Ian Ritchie 
Architects; and Christoph 
Ingenhoven, Founder of 
Ingenhoven Architects. These 
four join the list of over 80 
festival judges comprising 
infl uential fi gures from the 
architecture world such 
as Gert Wingårdh, Sergei 
Tchoban, David Basulto, 
Sanjay Puri, and Robert 
Konieczny. After the selection 
of winners from across 
31 categories on the fi rst two 
days of the event, category 
winners will present to the 
Super Jury, who will decide 
the winners of the World 
Landscape, Future Project, 
and Completed Building of 
the Year Awards. Furthermore, 
the Festival also includes 
the WAF Tour Programme, a 
tour programme around the 
city of Berlin. Since Berlin 
has a unique architectural 
landscape, the moving history 
of the capital city even today 
defi nes the built environment. 
Berlin’s vacant spaces made 
the city a pioneering place for 
visionary architecture as well 
as development. 
worldarchitecturefestival.com
The cover of this edition of Domus India is designed by 
photographer, curator, and researcher Ram Rahman. Rahman 
has been a unique observer of modern and contemporary India 
through the lives and works of many photographers, artists, and 
architects. He has often employed the format of the poster and 
the collage/bricolage to convey strong ideas on history and 
politics through the aesthetics of a composed image. We invited 
Rahman to suggest a cover based on his very crucial exhibition 
that was on display at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) 
in New Delhi early this year on the history, trials, and tribulations 
of Modern Architecture in the capital city. His exhibition comes 
at an imporatant moment in time when much of modern and 
twentieth-century architecture in India is under the threat of 
severe change or demolition as a result of a drastic shift in 
political ideologies in contemporary India. An India that was 
imagined after independence in 1947 was a bold vision of 
innovation and identity, and architecture played a central role 
in the establishment of that vision. This collage is a historical 
enquiry, and a tribute to that vision of a modern India that was 
bold and strong, and where innovation and aesthetics were the 
route to a modern social ethos that was secular and believed 
in multiple historical identities co-existing, debating, within that 
modern nation.
Domus India 66 cover design
INDIA LA CITTÀ DELL’ UOMO
September
2017
Volume 06 / Issue 10
R200
065 INDIA LA CITTÀ DELL’ UOMO
September
2017
Volume 06 / Issue 10
R200
065
INDIA LA CITTÀ DELL’ UOMO
October
2017
Volume 06 / Issue 11
R200
066
N
E
W
S
NEWS12 domus 66 October 2017
R
ä 
di
 M
ar
tin
o,
 T
he
 s
w
im
m
er
 #
5,
 2
01
7
The pool, in a metaphysical 
and timeless dimension, was 
the Festival del Paesaggio’s 
theme. Works by Gianfranco 
Baruchello, Marco Basta, 
Gregorio Botta, Giovanna Silva, 
Landscape anatomy 
Rä di Martino, Marzia Migliora, 
Maurizio Nannucci, Gabriele 
Piccoi offer natural-artificial, 
public-private landscape views.
www.festivaldelpaesaggio.com
Since last June, the residence-
atelier designed by Le 
Corbusier for the painter 
Amédée Ozenfant in 1922 
is nowTecno’s new Parisian 
“home”. Conceived as a space 
for encounters with designers 
and field professionals in 
search of innovative solutions 
on new ways of working, the 
modernist icon hosts a vast 
catalogue: the company in 
Mariano Comense offers 
classic pieces – Osvaldo 
Borsani’s icons and the Nomos 
table by Foster+Partners, just 
to name a few – and creations 
like the io.T system which 
makes furniture “intelligent”; 
Clavis tool-free tables; and 
Vela responsive chairs. 
www.tecnospa.com
Recent interventions 
around Bologna are for the 
special project on Christian 
Boltanski’s work, curated by 
Danilo Eccher. In addition to 
the survey show “Anime. Di 
luogo in luogo” at MAMbo 
(until 12.11.2017), the French 
artist’s work is accessible in 
the city streets: the installation 
Tecno’s new maison One place after another 
P
ho
to
 M
at
te
o 
M
on
ti
Réserve (ex armoury-
bunker at Giardino Lunetta 
Gamberini); special project 
Take Me (I’m Yours) in the ex 
Giuriolo parking lot; the series 
Billboards (above), publicity 
events in the city outskirts. 
www.mambo-bologna.org
Bears with feathers 
For its participation in the 
Yokohama Triennale, the 
Galerie Perrotin in Tokyo hosts 
works by Paola Pivi (until 
7.10.2017): various series, for 
a sampling of the Milanese 
artist’s phantasmagorical 
universe (she now lives 
in Anchorage, Alaska): 
polar bears, coloured with 
feathers and feathery wheels, 
nonchalantly coexist in the new 
venue of the French gallery 
recently inaugurated in Japan’s 
capital. Plus, photographs of 
animals which she loves are the 
protagonists of her most 
recent performances. 
www.perrotin.com
P
ho
to
 A
tti
lio
 M
ar
an
za
no
. C
ou
rte
sy
 o
f G
al
er
ie
 P
er
ro
tin
Twenty-five sites for 250 
artists and lots of events — 
edition 48 of “Rencontres de 
la photographie” in Arles was 
once again ambitious, just like 
the stimulating programme, 
from Latin America to Iran, 
the Bosphorus to the Syrian 
border, Russia to Ukraine. 
It comprised of exhibitions 
scattered across the city, 
on new landscapes (“The 
Experience of Territory”): 
photos from the “big” Joel 
Meyerowitz and Michael Wolf 
(left) to emerging talents 
Marie Bovo, Dune Varela, 
Christophe Rihet. 
www.rencontres-arles.com
Date with photography 
N
E
W
S
NEWS14 domus 66 October 2017
Improvised architecture The best patrons 
The MAXXI show “Yona Friedman. 
Mobile Architecture, People’s 
Architecture”, curated by Gong Yan 
and Elena Motisi (until 29.10.2017), 
is on the visionary Yona Friedman 
and his spatial villas. “Improvised” 
sketches, models, animations, 
mobile structures (with instructions), 
he gave life to a temporary street 
museum with inhabitants’ objects 
collected thanks to the museum’s 
open call. On show is a large mural 
that sums up his playful view of 
architecture: “Can I stay with you?”, a 
dot asks another dot. “Welcome”!
www.maxxi.art
After the June awards and the 
show in Vicenza, the winners of the 
10th Premio Internazionale Dedalo 
Minosse (architecture) kick off the 
“tour”. Monza (September), then 
Bologna (Cersaie, 25–29.9.2017), 
Bolzano (late-October), Buenos 
Aires (Bienal de Arquitectura, 
9–21.10.2017). In November, Paris 
(Batimat, 6–10.11.2017), then Japan 
and Egypt (March 2018).
www.dedalominosse.org
London’s Barbican pays homage 
to the talent of Jean-Michel 
Basquiat with the exhibition 
“Basquiat: Boom for Real” 
(21.9.2017–28.1.2018): an 
exploration of the American 
artist’s relationship with music 
(bebop and jazz), writing, 
performance, and television. 
In over 100 works paired with 
fi lms, photos, music and other 
archival materials, the exhibition 
narrates the meteoric trajectory 
of one of the most important 
self-taught artists on the New 
York underground art scene in 
the 1980s. 
www.barbican.org.uk
Basquiat: Boom for Real
Left: Jean-Michel 
Basquiat, A Panel of 
Experts, 1982. Courtesy of 
The Montreal Museum of 
Fine Arts © 
Th
e 
E
st
at
e 
of
 J
ea
n-
M
ic
he
l B
as
qu
ia
t, 
Li
ce
ns
ed
 b
y 
A
rte
st
ar
, N
ew
 Y
or
k.
 P
ho
to
 M
FA
, D
ou
gl
as
 M
. P
ar
ke
r
N
E
W
S
2017
DESIGN
EXCELLENCE
AWARDS
For further details
Website - www.iiid.net.in | Email id - iiidanchoraward@gmail.com
Join us in the journey.... towards celebrating 
excellence in design.
Inviting entries for IIID Awards 2017.
Early bird submission until 30th October 2017
Last date of submission 30th December 2017
A Good
Design
is momentous
A Great
Design
is timeless
NEWS18 domus 66 October 2017
Flemish neogothic 
In a major retrospective that the 
Museum Tinguely (Basel) dedicates to 
Wim Delvoye (until 1.1.2018), tradition 
clashes with utopia, and artisanry with 
high technology — as in Cement Truck, a 
real-life Corten steel cement mixer with 
laser-cut neogothic decorations. Or the 
carved tyre (Pneu, above) and the most 
provoking work: Tim (right), with Tim 
Steiner, the 40-year-old who in 2006 
had his back tattooed by Delvoye 
and since then tours the world as a 
living sculpture. 
www.tinguely.ch
©
 2
01
7 
P
ro
Li
tte
ris
, Z
ur
ic
h 
/ 
W
im
 D
el
vo
ye
. P
ho
to
 M
us
eu
m
 T
in
gu
el
y, 
B
as
el
 /
 S
te
fa
n 
S
ch
m
id
lin
©
 2
01
7 
P
ro
Li
tte
ris
, Z
ur
ic
h 
/ 
W
im
 D
el
vo
ye
. P
ho
to
 M
us
eu
m
 T
in
gu
el
y, 
B
as
el
 /
 S
te
fa
n 
S
ch
m
id
lin
Design culture in Tuscany 
With over 150 participants, 20 works 
selected, and five winners, the first 
edition of PAT, Premio Architettura 
Toscana, was held in July to spread 
design culture. It was organised by 
the Consiglio Regionale Toscana, 
Ordine degli Architetti di Firenze e 
Pisa, Federazione degli Architetti della 
Toscana, Fondazione degli Architetti 
di Firenze and ANCE Toscana. Aimed 
at works realised in Tuscany in the 
past five years, it’s divided into five 
categories: “first work” (won by the 
Piazza dell’immaginario by Studio Ecol, 
above left); “new construction” (Cantina 
Bulgari by Alvisi Kirimoto + Partners, 
above right); “installation or interiors” 
(Museo delle Statue Stele Lunigianesi 
by Canali Associati); and “public 
space, landscape, renewal” (urban 
requalification of Piazza dei Tre Re by 
Chiara Fanigliulo).
 
www.premio-architettura-toscana.it
NEWS
NEWS20 domus 66 October 2017
Customised lights 
Comprising of 141 LED devices, 
the new lighting system for 
the Salone dei Cinquecento in 
Florence is by Targetti Sankey and 
Silfi, under the supervision of the 
Fabbrica di Palazzo Vecchio. This 
new system satisfies the needs 
of a multipurpose space while 
respecting the architecture and 
artwork. The devices by Targetti 
were made to measure: for Vasari’s 
frescoes and ceiling special 
standard lamps were created with 
projectors that discretely blend in 
with the surroundings, while the high-
performance LED devices at variable 
temperatures accentuate the colours 
and details of the space itself. 
www.targetti.com
For its 25th anniversary, IOC 
(International Office Concept, part of 
Gruppo Lema) in May opened a new 
venue in New York, presenting, in 
world premiere, Brera25, a modular/
integrated tailor-made office furnishing 
system by Gensler. The strong point of 
this versatile system is customisation, 
thanks to the intense research and 
development activity by a team of 
25 years of office concepts 
engineers and technicians who 
created asystem that can satisfy 
technical and aesthetic expectations; 
plus the many finishings – lacquer, 
wood, leather – uncommon for office 
furniture and the countless colours/
materials to choose from. 
www.ioc.it
Volumes of light 
Linea Light completes and 
enhances IFI Group’s project at 
Ekali, outside Athens. Architects 
chose specific solutions from the 
brand’s collections for a luxury 
residence with square volumes: 
LED Strips for bedrooms on the 
bookshelf profiles; recessed Mini-
Outline; Gypsum in the kitchen; and 
Outdoors, Beret floor uplights light 
up the space and work table. 
www.linealight.com
Refettorio Felix 
Food for Soul, chef Massimo Bottura’s 
non-profit, joins with The Felix Project, 
a British charity, for the Refettorio Felix. 
Mutina, London, with Domus Tiles, 
provided the Mews collection by the 
London designers Edward Barber & Jay 
Osgerby (below). Like the community 
kitchen models in Milan and Rio, the 
Refettorio will serve 2,000 meals per 
week with surplus ingredients. 
www.mutina.it
P
ho
to
 M
au
ro
 D
av
ol
i
Light serving art 
Using only LED, the lighting design for the 
new Museo degli Innocenti in Florence was 
developed by Zumtobel in close collaboration 
with Ipostudio. In addition to an 85% drop in 
energy use, LED lighting ensures top quality 
in all shades of white. In the Picture Gallery, 
each work is lit softly and precisely: larger 
paintings with projectors (6m tall) and ad 
hoc lenses to perfectly outline the works 
and avoid shininess and reflection. For the 
room hosting the Adoration of the Magi by 
Ghirlandaio (right) the lighting emphasises 
the way we perceive the work. Two softly 
blended shades of white: a colder 
gradient at the top, which becomes softer as 
the eye descends. 
www.zumtobel.com
CONTENTS24 domus 66 October 2017
Domus Magazine founded in 1928
Publisher and Managing Editor
Maria Giovanna Mazzocchi Bordone
Editor
Nicola Di Battista 
Art Director
Giuseppe Basile
The College of Masters
David Chipperfield
Kenneth Frampton 
Hans Kollhoff
Werner Oechslin
Eduardo Souto de Moura
Study Centre
Massimo Curzi
Francesco Maggiore
Spartaco Paris 
Andrea Zamboni
Special Projects
Giulia Guzzini 
Brand Manager and International Director
Tommaso Vincenzetti
Licensing & Syndication
Carmen Figini
t +39 02 82472487
fi gini@edidomus.it
Website
www.domusweb.it
Facebook
www.facebook.com/domus
Twitter @domusweb
Domus Local Edition
Mexico, Central America & 
Caribbean − China − India − Sri Lanka 
− Germany, Austria and Switzerland
06
6Editor and PublisherManeck DavarManaging EditorKaiwan Mehta, PhDSenior Sub-Editor
Khorshed Deboo
Art Director
Parvez Shaikh
Senior Graphic Designer
Yogesh Jadhav
Digital & Graphics
Ninad Jadhav
Rohit Nayak
Sachin Bhogate
Director, Marketing and Sales
Geetu Rai
Marketing and Sales
Vishal Maruti Dolas
contact: t +91 88987 33241
vishald@spentamultimedia.com
Senior Vice President
Bobby Daniel
Spenta Online
Viraf B Hansotia
Manager, Circulation
Bhautik Mehta
bhautik@spentamultimedia.com
Subscriptions
Robert Gomes
t +022 2481 1031 / 24
circulation@spentamultimedia.com
Editorial & Marketing Queries
domus@spentamultimedia.com
editorial.domusindia@gmail.com
contact: t +022 2481 1053
Marketing offi ces
Mumbai
Peninsula Spenta, Mathuradas Mill Compound,
N. M. Joshi Marg, Lower Parel (W), Mumbai - 13
Tel: 022-2481 1010 Fax: 022-2481 1021
New Delhi
Roger Wong / Abhilash Das Gupta
1102, 11th Floor, Akashdeep Building, Barakhamba Road, 
New Delhi – 110001, Ph: 9910586772, 46699999 
Bengaluru
Tina Pillai, Sandeep Kumar
Old No. 583, New No. 9, Sri Manjunatha Krupa,
80 feet Road, 3rd Cross, Opp. Koramangala 
Police Station, Bengaluru - 560 095
Tel: +91 80 41618966 / 77
Kolkata
Pulak Ghosh
32/6 Gariahat Road (S), Dhakuria,
Ground Floor, Kolkata - 700 031.
Tel: 033 4073 5025 / Email: pulak.spenta@gmail.com
Chennai
Shoba Rebecca
8/4, First Floor, Meridian House, Montieth Lane
( Behind Westin Park Hotel), Egmore
Chennai 600 008
Tel: +044 42188984 | 84 Cell no: 98840 55523
spenta MULTIMEDIA PVT LTD
Peninsula Spenta, Mathuradas Mill Compound,
N. M. Joshi Marg, Lower Parel (W),
Mumbai - 400 013. 
Tel: +91-22-2481 1062 Fax: +91-22-2481 1021 
Website: www.spentamultimedia.com
Domus, magazine of Spenta Multimedia Pvt Ltd, is printed and 
published by Maneck Davar, on behalf of Spenta Multimedia Pvt Ltd. 
Printed at Spenta Multimedia, Peninsula Spenta, Mathuradas 
Mill Compound, N. M. Joshi Marg, Lower Parel (W), Mumbai 
400 013.
Published from Spenta Multimedia, Peninsula Spenta, 
Mathuradas Mill Compound, N. M. Joshi Marg, Lower Parel (W), 
Mumbai 400 013. Editor - Maneck Davar.
The views and opinions expressed or implied in Domus are 
those of the authors and do not neccessarily reflect those of 
Spenta Multimedia. Unsolicited articles and transparencies are 
sent in at the owner’s risk and the publisher accepts no liability 
for loss or damage. Material in this publication may not be 
reproduced, whether in part or in whole, without the consent of 
Spenta Multimedia.
INDIA LA CITTÀ DELL’ UOMO
October
2017
Volume 06 / Issue 11
R200
066
CONTENTS 25domus 66 October 2017
Authors
Amita Baig 
Rahul Mehrotra 
Vineet Diwadkar 
José Mayoral Moratilla 
Mark Mulligan 
Sally Young 
Andrew Howard
Ram Rahman 
Vishal K Dar 
Samira Rathod 
Tishani Doshi 
Sonal Sundararajan
Andrea Zamboni
Zoran Dukanovic
Spartaco Paris
Contributor
Ranjit Hoskote
Photographers
Dinesh Mehta 
Dipti Mehta 
Pratik Perane 
Madan Mahatta 
Pankaj Anand 
Ravi Agarwal 
Edmund Sumner 
Dewald van Helsdingen 
Aleksandar Kujucev 
Author Design Title
Kaiwan Mehta 26
Editorial
Aesthetics, action, and the self
Kaiwan Mehta 28 Gandhi Ashram
Confetti 
A tryst with contemporary India
Amita Baig, Rahul Mehrotra 32 Taj Mahal: Multiple Narratives From the sacred to the profane
Rahul Mehrotra, Vineet Diwadkar, 
José Mayoral Moratilla, Mark 
Mulligan, Sally Young, 
Andrew Howard 42
Extreme Urbanism 3 — Planning for 
Conservation: Looking at Agra Preservation as a philosophy towards planning
Kaiwan Mehta 50 Monuments, landscapes, cities
Kaiwan Mehta 52 AKAR: Achyut Kanvinde India and the life of an architect
Ram Rahman, Vishal K Dar 58 Delhi: Building the Modern Constructing a language of the modern
Kaiwan Mehta, Samira Rathod 68 Pankaj Anand Spaces of belonging
Tishani Doshi 74 Ravi Agarwal, Ranjit Hoskote In this room, the poems come and go
Sonal Sundararajan 78 Edmund Sumner, SRDA
Projects 
Traces and presences in the house of shadows
Andrea Zamboni 90 Marco Zanuso Press House, Lydenburg, South Africa
Zoran Dukanović 102
Feedback 
Belgrade
Spartaco Paris 108
Rassegna 
Envelopes
Cover: The design is a collage based 
on an important exhibition currently 
on display at the KNMA in New Delhi 
on the history, trials, and tribulations 
of Modern Architecture in New 
Delhi, curated by Ram Rahman. This 
exhibition comes at an important 
moment in time when key buildings 
of modern and twentieth century 
architecture in India are under the 
threat of demolition with a drastic shift 
in political and economic ideologies in 
contemporary India.
The section elevation of the Gandhi Smarak Sangrahalaya at Sabarmati 
Ashram in Ahmedabad, as designed by Charles Correa
“The life of the imagination is now more critical 
than ever” - Rebecca Solnit
The project of recovering the architect is more 
urgent today than the criticism we had only 
a brief while ago, of the architect playing the 
god-role, and being the star-architect working 
with a top-down approach. Times have changed 
in the past two decades. And the architect, in 
this short time, has simply fallen in the gaps.A while ago somebody defended that it is a 
beautiful profession and we should celebrate 
it — no doubt, yes, but to deny that the social 
presence of the architect is diminishing would 
only be turning a deaf ear to the shouting 
problem. The architect as a professional can 
actually claim the larger place of a social 
being, but at times, that same professional 
position has reduced the architect to a task 
and job — a perfroming entity lost in the 
larger bureaucracy and fantasy of building 
and designing. When lost in the bureaucratic 
space we justify by calling ourselves ‘smart’ 
and when lost and subsumed in the fantastical 
world of others’ fantasies, we defend by calling 
ourselves artists!
The architect will have to be the imaginer — 
the one who leaps with a sense of revolution 
and risk in her/his heart, and the love for 
utopia in the heart and guts. The architect will 
have to write everywhere, but the dotted line. 
Design is the space for critical thinking with 
humour and reason, through metaphors and 
using fi gures of speech, and then translate 
that into the boldness and surety of a building. 
As much as in the pages of this magazine 
we have invested our ink and paper to the 
understanding of the contemporary, we have 
also invested in the sense of the Modern, 
especially in India's post-Independence 
scenario. One of the reasons why the Modern in 
architecture in India is becoming so important 
today is probably that we are missing today the 
Utopia the moderns built for, and some sense of 
dearth draws us to a past that heavily relied on 
it. We may not be able to work with the idea of 
Utopia as our grandparents did, but the Utopia 
of today is one of hope and action; the will to 
intervene and extract from life conditions the 
rasas of being — both culturally and politically. 
I invoke Rasa here, not in its full structure as 
Sanskritic Classical aesthetics but briefl y as 
the core and abstract idea in the aesthetics 
it stands for — the heightened experience 
of emotion through a structured narration 
of stimulus from external forces and objects. 
The urge that draws us to the Beautiful is 
important and necessary, but the Beautiful 
may not always be pretty and fi ne; Beauty 
is in rejection, in the scary, in the repulsive. 
Beauty is in the political response to that 
which is repulsive, and rejected. Beauty is in 
the recovery of that which is thrown out with 
time and from ideology. Beauty is in rejecting 
amnesia and invoking memories to return. 
Beauty is in action. The redrawing of the idea 
of Beauty is necessary in the way we have 
to shape our contemporary selves as acting-
doing workers, producers of cultural spaces 
and ideas in the build environment, and those 
engaging with economic and politics of being. 
The experience of beauty is in the process 
of working with the critical imaginations of, 
and for, our times. The architect has to be the 
public intellectual.
We are situated in many unfamiliar 
landscapes, with objects of beauty fl oating 
within. What do we prefer? Always that object 
of innocent beauty. But we rarely struggle 
to understand and discern the unfamiliar 
and strange landscapes that are erupting, 
emerging, and transforming around us at 
all times. The architect has to act in that 
landscape. Can s/he be the imaginer and 
intervener in that space, negotiating it to 
work with it through the intellectual processes 
of designing and building? The architect as 
domus 66 October 201726 EDITORIAL
AESTHETICS, ACTION, 
AND THE SELF Kaiwan Mehta
@Domus_India
the one who argues through the details of 
ornament and elements of style. The architect 
as the one who ponders and thinks through the 
contours of the built spaces. The architect as 
the one who employs the aesthetic and spatial 
codes to approach the political, and contribute 
to the social space of cultural debates.Then 
form and structure, aesthetics and engineering 
are invested in the politics of location and 
being as ideas of innovation and resistance, 
exploration and thoughtful rejection.
This issue explores the journeys of buildings 
and idea, architects, monuments, and cities 
— all playing their roles in the exploration of 
grounds that shift between the familiar and 
the unfamiliar constantly. We have scales of 
varied kind covered in one issue — the fl oating 
self within home, or the wandering thinker 
inside a memorial space, making conversations 
with ideas — of Gandhi and Nehru, and 
philosophies of people and places, expanding 
the boundaries of history and monumentality 
to meet the melting borders and the shifting 
ground beneath our urban situations. This 
issue is, in many ways, a tryst with our social 
and national space today and a negotiating of 
ourselves in these complex times. What is the 
self looking for in the spaces we inhabit — from 
the home or the Taj Mahal to Gandhi’s Ashram, 
or the missing Hall of Nations, from riverfront 
cities living through changing times to regions 
such as Africa far away yet near, in our shared 
struggles. We let poetry draw us to the edges of 
landforms, where worlds of different mediums 
and content, meet and depart, share and 
exchange, and move on, leaving back memory, 
traces, and the hope to return. km
Drawings for Tantra Museum, New Delhi by A P Kanvinde
 CONFETTI
CONFETTI28 domus 66 October 2017
A TRYST WITH CONTEMPORARY INDIA
Charles Correa’s design for the Gandhi Smarak Sangrahalaya at Sabarmati 
Ashram in Ahmedabad is that one rare occasion where architecture is 
cleansed of ego — it neither indulges in iconicity nor in symbolism; it is 
cleansed architecture
Text Kaiwan Mehta
A visit to Ahmedabad, for an architecture student, 
has primarily been a tour of the structures of 
Modern Architecture, the raw brick and concrete, 
followed by a visit to sites of tradition and heritage 
— Teen Darwaza, Rani Siri Mosque, Sarkhej, and 
the Calico Museum. It is also one of the urban 
centres we have celebrated in twentieth-century 
India as the city of ‘Indian-ness’ (whatever that 
means), and one of patronage from industrial 
accumulation. At a later point in time, my 
research on the neighbourhoods of Bhuleshwar 
and Kalbadevi in Mumbai led to an exploration 
of Gujarati literature, and brought me a new 
connection to Ahmedabad as a centre of Gujarati 
literary activity. At some points, the glimpses of the 
city as a political centre, and the base of Gandhi 
during the freedom movement keep flashing. 
But events in the state of Gujarat in 2002 made 
my comfortable and distant relationship with this 
city, difficult. A state torn apart by severe riots, 
arson, looting, murder, and worse, brought many 
understandings of a place and its culture in 
question. Where did that liberal ethos you read in 
literature or Modern architecture vanish? Had it 
not penetrated a society, to avoid and control the 
violence it allowed? And a key question — did they 
CONFETTI 29domus 66 October 2017
Opposite page, top: 
The architecture of 
the Gandhi Smarak 
Sangrahalaya at 
Sabarmati Ashram 
involves a series of 
modular pavilions 
arranged around the 
courtyards, thereby 
not know Gandhi’s ashram was a national heritage 
they housed?
Gandhi is a complex political figure in India’s 
modern history. Today we are more aware of the 
critical readings of Gandhi: as a human being, as 
a political figure, his methods of operation, and 
his philosophical beliefs. My engagement with 
Gandhi, and the complex figure he is, began with 
a study of his classic text — the Hind Swaraj — a 
text that perplexed me, irritated me, but also one 
that compelled me to engage with it, argue with, 
but never a text I could discard or deny. It remains 
a key text in many seminars I teach, and I continue 
to quote from it, discuss it, and recommend itto young researchers and students. And every 
time that I now visit Ahmedabad, I feel the urge 
and compulsion to be at Gandhi Ashram — walk 
around, look around, and think — staring at its 
buildings new and old, and at some point, force 
myself to walk out. The Navjivan Press has become 
a another site I feel the need to visit — to look 
and peer through its book cases, although I have 
bought every book I should buy from there, maybe 
twice at times. Nevertheless, reading through the 
spines of those books in the showcase is as if I am 
ritually praying through a string of beads or reciting 
the 101 names of eternal God. It has taken some 
time, since 2002, to start feeling comfortable or 
at home in Ahmedabad once again, and going to 
Gandhi Ashram has been part of this perplexed 
and vexed relationship with a city after one of its 
crucial historical moments of violence. I had never 
taken to non-violence or Ahimsa very naturally, 
except as an abstract and ethical concept, very 
necessary for a civilisation, but not really as an 
automatic value of everyday life. But going to 
Gandhi Ashram was akin to finding some haven 
of ethical safety in a shrinking cocoon of ethics 
and values — a space where values were not 
totems, neither were they rituals or slogans, but 
where practice produced the reality of an idea 
and its civilisational role in the everyday lives of 
people. It was somewhere I was trying to purge 
myself of a burden — the burden of witnessing 
and participating in a violence, much as every 
citizen of this country that lived somewhere in the 
subcontinent in those days did, when Ahmedabad 
and other cities in Gujarat boiled in the fire of 
hatred and an imagined revenge. That burden is 
too much, and the only place that helped me was 
Gandhi Ashram. Moreover, Gandhi became the 
figure that not only allowed me, but invited me to 
argue with him, instigated me to debate with him… 
but respected and engaged with everything I said, 
and helped me learn in every thing about him that 
I rejected. 
Gandhi Ashram — every time I talk about it, it is not 
simply about the site and location, but the campus 
of buildings and spaces between a fairly busy road 
and the calm flow of the river. The new buildings 
and the old buildings — and architects have often 
asked this useless and perverse question: which 
one do you think is really good or beautiful, or 
closer to the ideology of Gandhi? The old Ashram? 
Or the one designed by Charles Correa? The old 
buildings have the simplicity of a local life that was 
regional, global, and cosmic — all at once. The new 
building is that which tries to understand a man 
that was politically and philosophically complex, but 
always extremely direct and clear in his message, 
and all of this in an India that was now free from 
colonial rule for the last about 25 years. When 
I think about the politics and anxieties, located 
within ourselves as well as abstracted in our 
everyday relationships with people and places — 
within the Gandhi Ashram — I am staring at these 
buildings. I would emphatically say that Correa’s 
design for Gandhi Smarak Sangrahalaya is the 
most important of modern and twentieth-century 
architecture in India; and this I say after much 
thought. It is where architecture meets people. 
It brings, through the experience of spaces and 
studied emptiness (that key notion of shunyata 
as the calmness at the centre of an abyss) the 
notion and belief of a man in the potential and 
strength of simplicity, the power of truth, and key 
need to cleanse the self — empty that vessel of 
ego, hatred, and dissatisfaction. Charles Correa 
produces an emptiness of great value in this 
building he designs. The core of the inner self is 
not different from the turmoil of the outside; the 
two have to merge in the process of cleansing 
and thinking, and in this design by Correa, that is 
what precisely happens… the inside walks out to 
meet the outside, the outside enters to talk with 
the inside. It is that one piece of monumental 
and iconic architecture, one piece of modern 
architecture, that with humility, hugs the very 
ground it grows tall and bold from. Its a piece of 
architecture that allows you to simply be — but not 
be there without thinking. There is warmth in this 
building — not the blind warmth of conspicuous 
affection, but the warmth of intellectual strength, 
of that invitation to think of life and work in which 
there are many journeys hidden. These are 
journeys accompanied by clarity of thought, and 
the pertinence of a message you (as in Gandhi) 
truthfully believe in. If there is one place we really 
need to ‘clean’ the nation, it is within ourselves. 
Correa’s design is that one rare occasion where 
architecture is cleansed of ego — it is neither 
iconic (in its self-expression), nor behave symbolic 
as a building; it is cleansed architecture. 
My tryst with contemporary India will continue 
with further intensity with every passing day, but in 
Gandhi Ashram, and especially Charles Correa’s 
building, I have a calm yet intense friend I can be 
with, rest with, and argue along! 
creating a compelling 
asymmetry of the 
inside and the 
outside; bottom: 
the pavilions are 
evocative of a simple 
village hut; large 
wooden louvres are 
incorporated in the 
design in order to 
facilitate ventilation 
within the interiors 
Bottom: Snapshots 
of the campus of the 
Gandhi Ashram, taken 
by the author. Replete 
with wide corridors, 
courtyards, and 
ample greenery, the 
space allows one to 
explore and dwell 
upon -the various 
intersections 
between the inside 
and the outside 
CONFETTI30 domus 66 October 2017
CONFETTI 31domus 66 October 2017
Top: The water court 
at the Gandhi Smarak 
Sangrahalaya 
Opposite page, from top: 
structural and spatial 
plan of the Gandhi 
Smarak Sangrahalaya, 
designed by Charles 
Correa in 1963; an 
archival image of a 
drawing illustrating the 
processes of making 
louvres for the structure 
Bottom strip: 
photographs within the 
campus of the Ashram 
as encountered by the 
author while walking and 
exploring its environs
All photographs, drawings, and renderings used in this 
feature are sourced from, and published with the permission 
of, the archives of the Charles Correa Foundation, Panjim. 
CONFETTI32 domus 66 October 2017
To tell the story of the Taj Mahal is a daunting task; 
to tell it anew is perhaps even more so. Yet in India, 
no building is comparable in concept, beauty, scale, 
and ambition, and no story about it can ever be 
complete. The Taj Mahal in its white marble glory 
stands out, a symbol of love, of empire, and of an 
emperor’s unyielding determination to construct 
jannat or paradise on earth. Each of its multiple 
narratives which try to reconstruct the whole, 
has a nuance that elicits new interpretations. In 
Myths of the Taj Mahal and a New Theory of its 
Symbolic Meaning (1972), Wayne Begley makes 
a persuasive argument that this was not a mere 
mausoleum. It was far more symbolic and had 
profound and ambitious dimensions. Writings 
on the Taj Mahal vary from the flowery, almost 
obsequious court records, to latter accounts of 
19th- and 20th-century travel writers, influenced 
by the new liberal and rational discourse, emerging 
socio-political thinkers, and democratisation 
imbued with more measured interpretations 
bordering on the prosaic. But never before, or 
since, has a tomb of this stature been built for 
an empress, and certainly Shah Jahan’s own 
ancestors were far more modestly interred. 
However, even as we venture to interpret what 
Shah Jahan envisioned, why he didn’t plan for 
his own mortality still remains a mystery. It was 
certainly this absence which gave rise to the 
legend of the Black Taj across the river where 
Mehtab Bagh stands.Perhaps, he was so 
inebriated with power that he believed he was 
infallible, or in all likelihood, despite their rivalry, 
he believed his sons would provide for him. 
Maybe time simply ran out, since after building 
Shahjahanabad in Delhi, he was imprisoned in 
Agra until his end.
A descendant of Timur on the one side, and of 
Rajputs on the other, Shah Jahan was born of 
a mother who was a Suryavanshi – believed to 
have descended from the sun – from Marwar. 
FROM THE SACRED TO THE PROFANE
A recent book on the Taj Mahal puts forward various perspectives that 
do not only contextualise the exquisite heritage structure but also the 
changing topography of the city in which it stands. It maps the vision 
and commitment required for the future of the city whose heart and 
identity hinges largely on the monument
Text Amita Baig, Rahul Mehrotra
Introduction 
Multiple Narratives
To tell the story of the Taj Mahal is a daunting task; to tell it 
anew is perhaps even more so. Yet in India, no building is 
comparable in concept, beauty, scale and ambition, and no story 
about it can ever be complete. The Taj Mahal in its white marble 
glory stands out, a symbol of love, of empire and of an emperor’s 
unyielding determination to construct jannat or paradise on 
earth. Each of its multiple narratives which try to reconstruct 
the whole, has a nuance that elicits new interpretations. In 
Myths of the Taj Mahal and a New Theory of its Symbolic Meaning (1972),1 
Wayne Begley makes a persuasive argument that this was not a 
mere mausoleum. It was far more symbolic and had profound 
and ambitious dimensions. Writings on the Taj Mahal vary 
from the flowery, almost obsequious court records, to latter 
accounts of 19th- and 20th-century travel writers, influenced by 
the new liberal and rational discourse, emerging socio-political 
thinkers, and democratisation imbued with more measured 
interpretations bordering on the prosaic. But never before, or 
since, has a tomb of this stature been built for an empress, 
and certainly Shah Jahan’s own ancestors were far more 
modestly interred.
However, even as we venture to interpret what Shah Jahan 
envisioned, why he didn’t plan for his own mortality still remains 
a mystery. It was certainly this absence which gave rise to the 
legend of the Black Taj across the river where Mehtab Bagh stands. 
Perhaps, he was so inebriated with power that he believed he was 
infallible, or in all likelihood, despite their rivalry, he believed 
his sons would provide for him. Maybe time simply ran out, since 
after building Shahjahanabad in Delhi, he was imprisoned in 
Agra until his end. 
Facing page: One of the most abiding 
narratives of Shah Jahan's life is that 
of his last years, held captive by his son 
Aurangzeb in Agra Fort, with only his 
daughter Jahanara to keep him company. 
This painting by Abanindranath Tagore 
captures the poignancy.
Preceding pages: Humayun’s Tomb 
(p. 20) and the Taj Mahal (p.21), viewed 
from their gateways, undoubtedly 
show that the design of the Taj was 
inspired by that of Humayun’s Tomb, 
taking its grandeur to another level of 
spatial composition and architectural 
articulation.
23
Undoubtedly influenced by his twin lineage, and 
unlike Akbar who dabbled in the possibility of a 
new and overarching faith under his leadership, 
Shah Jahan possibly appropriated the paradigm 
of merging the spiritual and temporal from 
Hindu rulers. In fact, he often deviated from the 
puritanism of the ulema as he was undoubtedly 
influenced by his Hindu lineage as well. 
Mughal emperors were great devotees of 
Sufi saints, and even Babur circumambulated 
Nizamuddin Auliya’s grave in Delhi before moving 
to Agra where he made his palace garden.
Akbar built Fatehpur Sikri, following his devotions 
to Salim Chisti, an influence that stayed with his 
sons and grandson. Several scholars are of the 
opinion that the Taj Mahal was a monument which 
reflected the zenith of the Mughal Empire, and was 
patronised by a man possibly experimenting with 
the hereafter, with perhaps a touch of xenophobia. 
The emperor would remain the unrivalled emperor 
of the world, and explore a dimension in which 
emperor and God became one, each a reflection of 
the other.
Shah Jahan only ever saw the tomb from the 
riverfront as he travelled by barge from his fort. 
His vision, therefore, was circumscribed by a 
perceptual map, one rarely seen by the visitor and 
one that potentially offers new imaginations of 
the monument. If one were to see the Taj Mahal 
through the emperor’s eyes, one would realise 
that the northern wall along the waterfront is the 
only external wall so richly embellished, clearly in 
recognition that this was the emperor’s entrance. 
He would have arrived by barge, below the takht, 
his perspective of the Taj Mahal determined by this 
vantage point. Furthermore, maps of the time show 
the projection at the Taj Mahal using the river, not 
the char bagh, as the central point, thus clearly 
indicating that all perspective of the time used the 
river as the point of arrival, the centre of the larger 
complex of the Taj Mahal. 
This page, top-left: an 
image of the cover of the 
book Taj Mahal: Multiple 
Narratives (2017); top-
right: a spread from the 
introductory chapter of 
the book 
Opposite page, top: 
The emperor only ever 
approached the Taj 
Mahal by boat from 
the fort, which defined 
his perspective of the 
monument. The richly 
embellished façade befits 
the royal entrance at a 
time when the pristine 
waters of the Yamuna 
would have flowed 
alongside; bottom: a 
spread from the book 
indicating the fortification 
of the city of Agra over 
the ages, and the creation 
of its riverfront
 CONFETTI 33domus 66 October 2017
Facing page: This rare painting of the 
Agra Fort, in the Company School 
style, was made by Indian artists 
for the British employees of the East 
India Company. This painting shows 
the fort before it was destroyed in the 
1857 uprising. The massive scale of the 
fort is clearly visible as also its layers 
of buildings, from the outer public 
buildings to the more private palaces 
perched over the river. The painting also 
provides a clear view of the riverfront 
gardens across the river from the fort.
the whole kingdom) enabled the king whenever he had the 
occasion, easily to go himself in any direction, or to summon 
his subjects to meet him.’15 
Agra Fort is distinctive for its massive protective wall 
dressed in red sandstone, some 70-feet high and miles in 
circumference. Encircled by a moat and along the river with 
direct access to the water, the fort stands high above the city, 
its ramparts defining the skyline, its eminence reinforced 
with each generation making new additions to its already 
elegant architecture. It is perhaps one of the most rebuilt forts 
in India. And although Agra Fort was already a Mughal fort, 
Akbar set about a massive reconstruction at a scale befitting 
his empire. Situated at the heart of Akbar’s huge empire, 
it was built at a cost of three-and-a-half-million rupees, a 
staggering amount in those days, and took a mere eight years 
to complete. Although only a few structures remain of the 
500 buildings in the wonderful designs of Bengal and Gujarat 
recorded by Abul Fazl, the fort’s architectural history spans 
three generations of Mughal emperors. 
Although rebuilt by Akbar in 1556, construction within Agra 
Fort continued well into the second half of the 17th century, 
and the reign of Aurangzeb, arguably the last great Mughal. 
Jahangir and Shah Jahan also contributed to the grandeur of 
this fort. 
The impressive architectural styles of thiscomplex are a rare 
amalgamation of the aesthetic sensibilities of three different 
Mughal emperors greatly influenced by the design aesthetic 
of the lands they had conquered. Shah Jahan’s architectural 
style changed the palaces from the forbidding red sandstone 
structures of Akbar’s reign, to delicate finely carved and inlaid 
marble, creating richly embellished palaces and mosques, 
often with material sourced from great distances. By now, 
Mughal architects were familiar with the vast skills available 
in India and presided over the emerging Mughal architectural 
vocabulary. The transition from Akbar’s bold red sandstone as a 
statement of power to the refined elegance of Shahjahani white 
marble marked the emergence of the spiritual and temporal 
symbolism in Mughal architecture. 
Designed for protection with double ramparts, slits and 
loopholes, the battlements were substantial. On the landward 
side, there was an additional moat with a drawbridge leading 
to the Delhi Gate. This is heavily decorated with a gajyavala. 
One of the most notable examples of syncretism, symbolising 
the indestructible power of the empire, the panel shows 
Below and bottom: The scale of the 
outer fortifications with a huge moat 
was daunting to most. Rising to great 
heights, with a double fortification wall 
on the city side, the fort was designed to 
be virtually impregnable. 
69
B U I L D I N G T H E R I V E R F RO N T C I T Y
CONFETTI34 domus 66 October 2017
Above and left: Contemporarily, in 
Europe, the Renaissance was underway 
and a more cultured way of life was 
gaining ground as castles and forts gave 
way to palaces of immense luxury and 
grandeur. Nation-states were beginning 
to form and in France, Spain and 
Britain, shifting from forbidding forts, 
the palace became a symbol of power 
as seen in the Tuileries and Versailles. 
In Hindustan, the Taj Mahal, perhaps 
unintentionally, became the symbol of 
the end of the Mughal Empire, even as 
Shajahanabad was being built in Delhi 
around the same time.
it, floundered. Behind this immense enterprise with staggering 
statistics, are the stories of the building of the monument and 
the rise and fall of the city whose destiny is inextricably linked 
to it. Shah Jahan lived a life of colossal excess at the cost of the 
people who made it possible. While there are no records of the 
impoverishment of the workforce at the Taj Mahal, certainly in 
1632, Hindustan was in the grip of a famine, and Mughal wars 
further laid to waste huge tracts of land which would contribute 
in no small part to the decline of the Mughal Empire.
The city which sourced its life and energy from the river 
with its waterfront gardens, tombs, grand mansions and 
its prosperous trade with merchants, traders, Jesuits and 
mercenaries constantly pouring in, gradually dissipated once 
the economic hub moved north. Gone were the days when 
music, art and literature had flourished alongside vast tanneries 
engaged in making leather shoes for the Mughal armies, the 
mahouts who trained fighting elephants and the craftsmen 
who catered to the insatiable desire to build and embellish the 
city. Agra, once a cosmopolitan capital city, was doomed. As 
the Mughal power declined and marauders stripped the heart 
of India, even the sacred tomb was desecrated. Colonial rulers 
danced on the platform once used by the devout, and young 
lovers etched their names on the glass windows of the hasht 
bihisht. But for the common sense of Lord Curzon in the late 19th 
century, much more would have been lost. Clearing the gardens 
of overgrowth, he made valiant efforts to protect and promote 
the Taj Mahal. Much of how one views the Taj Mahal in present 
times is circumscribed by his views on neatness and order.
Today, the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort, both World Heritage 
Sites, still dominate the riverfront. They have attracted 
TA J M A H A L: M U LT I P L E NA R R AT I V E S
3938
I N T RO D U C T I O N: M U LT I P L E NA R R AT I V E S
Right: Calcutta was essentially 
dependent on river trade which came 
down the Ganges from the north and 
west. Calcutta’s fortunes flourished on 
trade from the hinterland and its tidal 
river was the lifeline for its prosperity. 
Built on the east of the river, the city has 
spread north and south, while industrial 
development which was much later took 
place on its west bank.
Below: The seven cities of Delhi were 
also largely developed along the 
waterfront. This was primarly because 
access to the river ensured water supply 
to the settlement but also the river was 
a transport and trade lifeline.
Above: Nestled on the banks of the 
Gomti, a tributary of the Ganga, 
Lucknow was believed to have sacred 
qualities as the city developed as the 
capital of the former princely state 
of Awadh. It developed as a centre of 
high art and culture under successive 
rulers over the centuries and is today at 
the centre of the State’s heritage arc, 
connecting the riverfront cities of Agra 
and Varanasi.
on the banks of the Ganga as water, cultivable lands, extensive 
forests and access to riverine trade were basic requirements 
for a sustainable settlement. As a result, the form of the city 
became very particular, with clear architectural responses to 
access the river in the form of ghats, as well as to celebrate its 
edges in the form of well-articulated walls and embankments, 
and then punctuating these with pavilions and other such 
architectural elements that signified a celebration of the river 
and its presence in the people’s lives.
The riverfront was defined by three major fortified cities 
built over many centuries on the west bank of the Yamuna 
– Delhi, the capital city of the Sultanate; Vrindavan, with 
its sacred space as the birthplace of Lord Krishna, and Agra, 
further south, the Mughal capital of India. Between these 
three great cities on the Yamuna, the river swept across the 
Indian plains in immense oxbows. The Yamuna frequently 
changed its course and submerged vast tracts of lands. The 
stability of these cities depended on how they were built, 
articulating the edge of the river to ensure that it was to be 
momentarily trained. An entire architectural expression arose 
from this interface between man and water, symbolising 
creation, renewal and destruction or erasure.
Agra was one such city and perhaps one of the most 
significant early cities on the Indo-Gangetic plains, situated 
not far from the holy city of Vrindavan. It finds mention in the 
Mahabharata as Agravana or the forest of Agra. It is plausible 
that Agravana lay on the outskirts of the flourishing empire 
of Sursena of Mathura somewhere in 1800 BC. The first person 
who referred to Agra by its present name was Ptolemy 1 Soter, 
Alexander’s trusted general and geographer, who travelled 
in the region in 323–283 BC. In the 10th century, Muhammad 
Shah, a descendent of Ghazni, invaded the city and captured it 
from the ruling Chauhans. The first recorded history of Agra, 
however, dates back to AD 1475, during the reign of Badal Singh. 
In 1475, Badal Singh built a brick fort known as Badalgarh as 
a defence against the continuous waves of Muslim invasions 
sweeping across the northern plains of Hindustan. It was 
a well-fortified city that eventually fell to the powerful and 
ruthless Sikander Lodi.1
Lodi captured Agra at the turn of the century and under his 
rule, the city flourished, gaining the reputation of being the 
Shiraz of Hindustan as Persian became the court language. 
Agra gained importance even though in 1505, the year Lodi 
moved here,it was devastated by an earthquake and had to be 
extensively rebuilt. Agra became known for its wealth, and 
the city flourished as eminent scholars, Sufi saints and poets 
came to the court of the Lodi Sultans. Soon, Agra became a 
Above: Kashidarpana, the famous 
ancient map of Kashi accentuates its 
symbiotic relationship with the river – 
one could not exist without the other.
TA J M A H A L: M U LT I P L E NA R R AT I V E S
4746
B U I L D I N G T H E R I V E R F RO N T C I T Y
TA J M A H A L: M U LT I P L E NA R R AT I V E S
159158
C R A F T I N G T H E TA J
Equally, this site expresses the duality of the 
emperor’s ideas, one so powerful that little stood 
between him and the unknown – perhaps a power 
which even drove him to create, rather simulate, 
the unknown. Each element provides an allegory 
of this duality – from the royal to the spiritual, 
the ruler and the ulema, the emperor and the 
commoner, perhaps even ‘heaven’ and earth. The 
metaphor extends throughout the complex and 
is most clearly captured in the calligraphy on the 
pishtaqs, leaving little doubt that the entire plan 
was based on the idea of the hereafter, the rest 
taking creativity and architecture to such a level 
that no one would ever surpass it or even question 
its symbolism. The Taj Mahal is undoubtedly 
conceived as a sacred space. Perhaps, Shah 
Jahan was conceited enough to experiment with 
the duality of the ideals of building the mythical 
place – an imagined connection between heaven 
and earth? The entire concept reflects this duality, 
the sense of reaching for the unreachable, creating 
jannat. Each element is so fantastical that, in fact, 
it is just that.
The story of the Taj Mahal today is often that of 
the overwhelming magnificence of a man who 
loved his wife so deeply that he built this sublime 
monument. But the narrative is more complex – of 
a man consumed by passion for his wife, illusions 
of grandeur in wanting to make jannat on earth, 
and his desire to ensure his own immortality 
through this monument. Many other stories are 
yet to be explored – sketches of how its design 
might have been etched in stone; gardens that 
transformed every season on the emperor’s whim; 
water systems that nourished the landscape; 
fantastical flowers in perpetual mourning, and 
markings left behind by faceless craftspeople who 
made all this possible. 
Standing at the podium of the Taj Mahal, looking 
down at the turbid waters of the Yamuna, one can 
hardly imagine the excitement of the Mughals who 
settled in Agra because of its snow-fed waters. 
But there are many evolving ideas, not least that 
the Yamuna was appropriated by Shah Jahan as 
the centrepiece of his design for the Taj Mahal. 
 CONFETTI 35domus 66 October 2017
Above, top and facing page: The Taj was 
always a much treasured icon of India’s 
heritage. During World War II, an 
elaborate scaffolding was erected over 
the dome in an attempt to camouflage 
it during possible bomb attacks. British 
soldiers oversaw its construction with 
precision; the sacred mausoleum was 
now a mere monument.
of more sublime beliefs. By the time Curzon saw the Taj, 
the central path was, as described by Rousselet, an alley. To 
him, the overgrowth detracted from the pristine beauty of 
the Taj Mahal and he introduced the European ideal of the 
picturesque…the rauza of Mumtaz Mahal, the jannat of Shah 
Jahan’s imagination became a monument with irreversibly 
altered values. In recent scholarly debates, discussions are 
afoot on whether to recreate the original garden but what will 
remain a mystery in this char bagh is the intent. 
The British perspective of form and order was as influential 
as the Mughal one had been in its time. ‘By 1905, a massive 
expenditure of 1,20,000 Pounds had been incurred in India; 
nearly half was spent in Agra and Fatehpur Sikri. Instead of 
a scruffy bazaar and dusty courts, a park now stood before the 
Taj. The mosques, tombs and arcades had been restored to the 
state in which they had been left by the masons of Shah Jahan. 
The discovery of old plans showing where the water channels 
once ran and the flowers bloomed, enabled the gardens to be 
laid out as they had once been.’14 
According to David Carroll, ‘ To do this, a number of native 
artisans were trained to cut marble and to repair mosaics and 
were put to work, replacing the stones that had been plucked 
and hacked away by souvenir hunters. They patched the cracks 
in the minarets caused by an earthquake in the early part of 
the 19th century, and they polished the dingy marble walls. 
The stone channels were dug out, flower beds and avenues of 
trees were replanted, water from the Jumna River was once 
again circulated through the fountains.’15 
Finally, in Curzon’s words, the Taj was ‘…no longer 
approached through dust, wastes and squalid bazaars. A 
beautiful park takes their place; and the group of mosques and 
tombs, the arcaded streets and the grassy courts that precede 
the main buildings, are once more as nearly as possible what 
they were when completed by the masons of Shah Jahan. 
Every building in the garden enclosure of the Taj  has been 
scrupulously repaired, and the discovery of old plans has 
enabled us to restore the water channels and flower beds in 
the garden more exactly to their original state.’16 Curzon was 
pleased with his work: ‘The central dome of the Taj is rising 
like some vast exhalation into the air,’ he proclaimed in a 
speech given on the terrace of the Taj Mahal, ‘and on the other 
side, the red rampart of the Fort stands like a crimson barricade 
against the sky… If I had never done anything else in India, I 
have written my name here, and the letters are a living joy.’17
TA J M A H A L: M U LT I P L E NA R R AT I V E S
214
This page, top: the ceiling 
of the tomb of Itimad-ud-
Daulah is as elaborate as 
the rest of the monument. 
The paintings made with 
crushed semi-precious 
stones, still retain their 
lustre; left: the Taj was 
always a much treasured 
icon of India’s heritage. 
During World War II, an 
elaborate scaffolding was 
erected over the dome in 
an attempt to camouflage
it during possible bomb 
attacks. British soldiers 
oversaw its construction 
with precision; the sacred 
mausoleum was now a 
mere monument 
Opposite page, top and 
centre: layouts from the 
book; bottom: in direct 
contrast to the huge 
scale of the building 
of the Taj Mahal, the 
carvings and inlay inside 
the tomb achieve the 
acme of design and 
craftsmanship. Although 
the marble screen is a 
later adddition, having 
replaced the gold screen, 
nonetheless it is superb 
in both carving and inlay
CONFETTI36 domus 66 October 2017
Contemporarily in Europe, the Renaissance was 
underway and a more cultured way of life was 
gaining ground as castles and forts gave way to 
palaces of immense luxury and grandeur, starting 
with the Medicis in Florence in the 15th century. 
Elsewhere, nation-states were beginning to form 
and in France, Spain, and Britain, a palace was 
a symbol of power for the monarchs of the 17th 
century. In France, the Louvre and Fontainebleau 
were converted from dismal castles into lavish 
palaces and similar transformations were taking 
place across Europe. In Hindustan, in many ways, 
the Taj Mahal became the symbol of the end of 
the Mughal Empire, while in North America, the 
foundation of Harvard University and several 
other universities were laid – a precursor to the 
construction of centres of learning and knowledge. 
St Peters in Rome and St Paul’s in London were 
also being built, with immense domes that were 
symbolic of the Church’s supremacy and power, 
distinct from those of the State. Against thisbackdrop of great buildings, the Taj Mahal stands 
apart for the rich narratives and symbolism
rolled into a single complex and yet codified piece 
of architecture and landscape. The Taj Mahal is 
imagination made tangible yet evasive.
Agra’s fate was also linked to its ruler. Historically 
at the crossroads of Indian civilisation, during 
Akbar’s rule, it was described as the ‘emporium of 
the traffic of the world’. The city played a pivotal 
role in the history of India but its own fortunes 
were determined when India was ruled from 
here. Shah Jahan moved his capital to Delhi soon 
after he built Shahjahanabad, and as the cost of 
construction of the Taj Mahal began to bankrupt 
the city, Agra’s destiny was sealed. Once a centre 
of trade and great cultural traditions, with royal 
patronage now shifted to Delhi, the fate of the 
monument, and the city which flourished around it, 
floundered. Behind this immense enterprise with 
staggering statistics, are the stories of the building 
of the monument and the rise and fall of the city 
whose destiny is inextricably linked to it. Shah 
Jahan lived a life of colossal excess at the cost of 
the people who made it possible. While there are 
no records of the impoverishment of the workforce 
at the Taj Mahal, certainly in 1632, Hindustan was 
in the grip of a famine, and Mughal wars further 
laid to waste huge tracts of land which would 
contribute in no small part to the decline of the 
Mughal Empire.
The city which sourced its life and energy from 
the river with its waterfront gardens, tombs, grand 
mansions and its prosperous trade with merchants, 
Top: it is not a matter of 
using only the past and 
the historic narratives 
to inform conservation 
strategies but of 
finding ways of using 
newer contemporary 
narratives and aspiration 
to inform the agendas 
for conservation in 
the present. If one 
were to simply look 
at the panorama of 
Agra, there is yet so 
much opportunity for 
sustainable development. 
The Taj Mahal will remain 
the centre of Agra; it 
needs to become the 
centre of its people
 CONFETTI 37domus 66 October 2017
traders, Jesuits and mercenaries constantly 
pouring in, gradually dissipated once the economic 
hub moved north. Gone were the days when 
music, art and literature had flourished alongside 
vast tanneries engaged in making leather shoes 
for the Mughal armies, the mahouts who trained 
fighting elephants and the craftsmen who catered 
to the insatiable desire to build and embellish 
the city. Agra, once a cosmopolitan capital city, 
was doomed. As the Mughal power declined 
and marauders stripped the heart of India, even 
the sacred tomb was desecrated. Colonial rulers 
danced on the platform once used by the devout, 
and young lovers etched their names on the glass 
windows of the hasht bihisht. But for the common 
sense of Lord Curzon in the late 19th century, 
much more would have been lost. Clearing the 
gardens of overgrowth, he made valiant efforts 
to protect and promote the Taj Mahal. Much of 
how one views the Taj Mahal in present times is 
circumscribed by his views on neatness and order.
Today, the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort, both World 
Heritage Sites, still dominate the riverfront. They 
have attracted national and international concern 
for their protection. A Public Interest Litigation filed 
in 1984 sought to control industrial pollution which 
was threatening to discolour the white marble of 
CONFETTI38 domus 66 October 2017
the Taj Mahal. The Taj Trapezium was notified and, 
today, no polluting industry can operate within a 
50-km radius of the monument. Moreover, in a 
law unprecedented in the history of preservation, 
a green belt of 500 metres has been provided 
around the Taj Mahal. 
The Taj Mahal, the jewel in India’s crown will be 
preserved for future generations. But the city has 
many more stories to be told – it has a successful 
marble craft trade, even though its tanneries were 
shut down by 1994, Agra remains one of the 
largest shoe-manufacturing centres, a legacy of 
Emperor Akbar who ordered shoes for his army, 
which were then made here. Akbar had mandated 
by law for the first time in Hindustan that all 
soldiers were required to wear shoes. Many such 
skilled workers including jewellers, goldsmiths, 
carpet-weavers and marble craftsmen survive in a 
city which, despite repeatedly losing its economic 
moorings, and not least because of the Taj Mahal, 
still prevails. Theirs are tales of resilience and grit 
that form the invisible backbone of Agra’s history.
New opportunities to craft a road map to bring the 
Taj back to its people require vision, determination 
and the exploration of the multiple narratives that 
make Agra and the Taj Mahal a potentially rich 
landscape and a true wonder of the world. India 
has the opportunity to craft its own roadmap to 
valourising its heritage but it needs vision to be 
inclusive of the citizens to whom these monuments 
belong, meshing the past and the present in 
imagining as well as constructing the future.
Taj Mahal and Agra in their 
changing avatars
Today, the Taj Mahal is an oasis in a city 
overburdened and degraded and although the 
huge green space around the monument offers 
to the citizens respite from urban pressures, and 
while many of the residents of Agra still seek 
refuge in its serene environs, away from the 
noise and chaos, its fate still remains uncertain in 
its changing avatars. There are a slew of issues 
which the city needs to address to restore the 
relationship between the city and its heritage. The 
interdependence of the citizens and their heritage 
was largely economic; without that the city has 
floundered. The future of the city whose heart 
and very identity hinges on the Taj Mahal requires 
breadth of vision and great commitment. 
Cities across India have faced immense challenges 
where development has been in conflict with the 
preservation of memory and the conservation of 
the past. With the Taj Mahal, secure behind its high 
walls and the ASI firmly mediating a very focussed 
path to restore and conserve this heritage, the 
danger of the monument being isolated from its 
context is very real.
Outside the Taj Mahal, beyond the sphere of its 
protectors lies a rudderless city without a renewed 
imagination about its future. Delhi remained the 
capital of independent India and Agra, a small and 
insignificant mid-sized town continued to survive 
its many avatars by adjusting to the reality of the 
contemporary landscape that emerged around 
it. Traditional industries gave way to small-scale 
workshops; metal workers once making swords 
established ad hoc foundries; brick kilns catered 
to the emerging middle class building their homes 
and tanneries served shoe factories that had 
replaced the cobblers making shoes for Akbar’s 
army. Agra indeed reflects how cities in India have 
coped with the transition of royal patronage to a 
robust democracy. It is the quintessential small 
town of contemporary India, omnipresent as a 
resource of historical and cultural memory that 
would remain unsung, were it not for the Taj Mahal.
 CONFETTI 39domus 66 October 2017
Reimagining the Taj and its context
‘The future of the monumental heritage of Agra 
will only be secure within a civic order which first 
provides for the wellbeing of the citizens and 
imbues them with a sense of pride.’ The vision 
statement of the Blue Ribbon Panel of the Indo-
US Joint Mission in 1995 remains as valid today 
as it was 21 years ago. It is equally important to 
recognise that the vision of the panel inextricably 
links the fate of the monument to that of the city, a 
vision born out of profound concern for the citizens
of Agra, whose futures are as fragile and 
unsustainable in its present condition. 
While the presence in their midst of a World 
HeritageSite is an obvious advantage, it is not 
leveraged in any way to enrich their cultural, social 
and economic ecology.
Tourism in Agra has grown exponentially, not just in
terms of international but also domestic tourists. 
Economic development and communication have 
made travel within India relatively easy for all 
Indians. Thus, the volume of domestic travellers 
to Agra, and indeed the Taj Mahal has already 
exceeded what the monuments can sustain. 
Today, six million tourists visit the Taj Mahal every 
year; approximately 30% of the tourists are foreign 
and 70% are Indian. Of the ASI’s income of rupees 
25.3 crores for Agra, approximately half comes 
from the income of entrance tickets to the Taj 
Mahal. The Agra Development Authority (ADA) 
earns rupees 25 crores from the Taj Mahal and 
nothing goes back for its upkeep – only the ASI 
spends rupees three crores independently a year 
to look after the the Taj Mahal. Thus, even the 
economic model of subsidies that surround the 
Taj Mahal does not privilege the monument, leave 
alone its position within the larger ecology of Agra.
This lopsided emphasis on the deployment 
of funds for the monument and the uneven 
relationship between the city authority and the 
custodians of the monument, is emblematic of the 
larger disjuncture in the conflicting relationships 
that exist between institutional authorities for their 
concern for the Taj Mahal. 
The book Taj Mahal: Multiple Narratives by Amita 
Baig and Rahul Mehrotra is published by Om 
Books (2017). All excerpts, texts, and photographs 
featured here are used with the permission of the 
authors, editors and publishers. 
This page, top: the 
riverfront of Agra 
seems frozen in time, 
with the factories 
closed under court 
orders. Highways cut 
into the city’s fabric, 
catapulting tourists 
into the Taj and evading 
the city; bottom: the 
transformation of the 
River Yamuna from 
an idyllic waterway 
to the way it is now 
demands a much 
more expansive 
response to the 
city’s future 
Opposite page, top: 
drawings of the Delhi 
Gate of the Agra Fort 
(top); the Itmad ud 
Daulah, or the tomb 
of Mirza Ghiyas Beg 
(centre); and the Taj 
Mahal (bottom) 
CONFETTI40 domus 66 October 2017
This page, and opposite 
page, below: the vaulted 
dome of the mausoleum 
showcases the immense 
height of the dome and 
the engineering skills it 
would have drawn on at 
the time to achieve this. 
The interior is inlaid and 
carved as much detail in 
the dome as it is at the 
level of the pishtaq 
Opposite page, above: 
today, restoration work 
at the Taj Mahal still 
engages with skilled 
craftsmen, without 
doubt descendants of 
the original families 
who moved to Agra. The 
jewelled inlay, vandalised 
over time, is methodically 
restored; the lapis luzuli 
inlay perhaps no longer 
two inches but a few 
millimetres deep. The 
monument has always 
had craftsmen restoring 
some element of the 
building, either replacing 
damaged marble inlay or 
flooring worn away with 
the heavy tourist footfalls 
 CONFETTI 41domus 66 October 2017
CONFETTI42 domus 66 October 2017
LOOKING AT AGRA 
Rahul Mehrotra, Vineet Diwadkar, 
José Mayoral Moratilla 
This volume presents the research 
and speculations produced through 
the Extreme Urbanism III: Planning 
for Conservation options studio 
conducted during the Spring 2015 
semester by students at the Harvard 
University Graduate School of 
Design. This studio, building upon the 
work from the Fall 2014 Planning 
for Conservation: Urban South 
Asia Research Seminar, explores 
possibilities for the city of Agra in 
India and the agency 
of design between Architecture, 
Critical Conservation, Urban 
Planning & Design, and 
Landscape Architecture. 
The city of Agra is a medium-sized 
South Asian city that exemplifies 
contemporary challenges in planning, 
designing, constructing, and 
governing the built environment with 
high population growth, over-stressed 
and poorly managed ecosystems, 
splintered financial and infrastructural 
investment, dense bureaucracies, and 
PRESERVATION AS A PHILOSOPHY TOWARDS PLANNING
A city which served as the capital of the Mughal Empire for 150 years, Agra is home to several monuments of historic 
significance. A recent project by the World Monuments Fund in partnership with the Harvard University resulted in a 
planning studio in Agra, focusing on various aspects of the riverfront city, including the natural and landscaped geography 
within which lie some of the old monumental buildings, and highlighting an important relationship between preservation 
and planning 
Text Rahul Mehrotra, Vineet Diwadkar, José Mayoral Moratilla, Mark Mulligan, Sally Young and Andrew Howard 
Photographs Dinesh Mehta and Dipti Mehta
layered cultural histories. Additionally, 
several characteristics of Agra 
make it a particularly interesting 
case for study through the Extreme 
Urbanism III Studio. Agra’s limited 
planning capacities have resulted 
from overlapping and competing 
interests between municipal, state, 
and central government agencies. 
The superimposition of historical 
layers have transformed Agra into its 
current social and economic reality, 
in which its rich physical heritage 
assets and the intangible cultural 
heritage within resident communities 
struggle to coexist. Lastly, the highly 
manipulated Yamuna River in Agra 
has been transformed from a 
multi-functional landscape that 
organises activity and land use along 
the river into Agra’s backyard, filled 
with municipal sewage and 
eutrophic water.
Agra’s planning capacities are 
explored throughout the studio as 
one of the main characteristics of this 
particular case. Multiple governing 
entities are housed in Agra at 
central, state, district, and municipal 
This page, top: The sprawling 
structure of the Agra Fort; 
above: Ram Bagh
CONFETTI 43domus 66 October 2017
levels, alongside non-governmental 
organisations, community-based 
organisations, and international 
funding agencies. Entities such as 
the Agra Development Authority, the 
Archaeological Survey of India, and 
the Taj Trapezium Zone Authority 
operate within close proximity. 
However, there is an absence of 
a holistic approach or governing 
body to oversee inclusive urban and 
economic development focused on 
heritage assets located along the 
Yamuna River in Agra.
The superimposition of historical 
layers illustrates an additional 
characteristic of Agra, proving the city 
as a compelling case of urbanism. 
Multiple forces and contingencies 
have transformed Agra as a Mughal, 
British Colonial, and Indian city. The 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
witnessed the city’s rise as a fortifi ed 
Mughal capital and the subsequent 
development of Agra’s riverfront 
into a landscape with funerary 
compounds and gardens of Mughal 
nobility. Under British rule, Agra 
transitioned into an industrial hub 
along the Yamuna River, with leather, 
chemical, glass, and other clusters 
that relied upon the fl ow of fresh 
water. The studio explored these 
historical evolutions with an emphasis 
on the current condition and the 
imprint of the Taj Mahal on Agra’s 
economy on account of the city’s loss 
of industrial activity. 
Agra’s people and its heritage are its 
greatest assets. The 45 monuments 
and gardens built by the Mughals 
concentrated their cultural landscape 
along the Yamuna River. Many of 
these sites have transitioned to other 
land uses with only a few intact 
buildings and remnants persisting 
such as the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort and 
I’timad-Ud-Daulah. This enduring 
physical heritage has proven an 
asset and a curse to the city, bringing 
millions of visitors every year to these 
specifi c sites, but without signifi cant 
physical improvements to the city’sinfrastructure or transformative 
economic benefi ts to those living in 
the city. While the Taj Mahal is the 
most visited monument in India, the 
income generated through tourism 
does not benefi t the local population. 
Many tourists take advantage of the 
165km-long Yamuna Expressway, 
constructed to connect Agra and Delhi, 
and spend less than one day in Agra to 
visit the most well-known
and prominent monument. Thus, 
tourists leave the city with a limited 
view of the reality of Agra and locals 
are left with little economic gain.
The Yamuna River, as the connector 
of the monuments and an infl uential 
geographical element within the city, 
is another defi ning characteristic of 
Agra. In order to understand the role of 
the Yamuna within the reality of Agra, 
it is essential to analyse the river’s 
transnational nature. The Yamuna 
River originates with glacial melt in the 
lower Himalayas in Uttarakhand and 
travels southeast, creating a complex 
and diverse ecological system along its 
basin until it merges with the Ganges 
at Allahabad. Along its length of 
1,376km it is dammed and diverted to 
supply drinking water and agricultural 
irrigation for Uttarakhand, Haryana and 
Uttar Pradesh before it reaches Agra 
as a highly polluted and low water 
supply river.
Within histories of empire and state, 
fantasy and myth, livelihoods and 
This page, clockwise from 
top-left: an aerial view 
of the Itimad ud Daulah; 
a plan indicating the 
conservation status of 
the 45 monuments and 
their surrounding gardens 
in Agra; an image of the 
cover of the book; the 
Mosque of Babur in Agra
Edited by 
Rahul Mehrotra, 
Vineet Diwadkar and 
José Mayoral Moratilla
CONFETTI44 domus 66 October 2017
crafts production, performing arts 
and water experiences, the Yamuna 
River has been both a site and an 
actor. Sites along Agra’s riverfront and 
the Yamuna River itself have served 
functional, cultural and religious needs 
for people living within its territory and 
its imaginary. However, degradation 
of the river, its increasingly reduced 
capacity and the obstructed flow of 
water that reaches the city of Agra 
have severe implications on both the 
cultural imagination of the river as well 
as its daily use by local communities. 
Numerous unsustainable practices 
in the area contribute to the pollution 
of the Yamuna river including the 
flushing of wastewater from Delhi, 
Mathura, Vrindavan, Etawah and 
Agra, as well as barrages that disrupt 
the river flow and facilitate the 
accumulation of polluted material.
As D.K. Joshi, member of the 
Supreme Court Monitoring Committee 
said in 2013, “The top officials of 
various departments have collectively 
played a crude joke on Agra. We 
neither have water, nor power; the 
sewage system does not work, 
community ponds have disappeared; 
trees have been chopped up; and 
the Yamuna river continues to wail 
and scream. Nothing has changed, 
conditions have worsened.”
Participants in the Extreme 
Urbanism III studio investigated the 
realities and challenges of the city 
of Agra, researching the Yamuna 
riverfront as well as the 45 Mughal 
gardens and monuments strung along 
a six-kilometer stretch of the river’s 
economic, cultural, and hydrologic 
field. Building upon the work of the 
Fall 2014 Planning for Conservation: 
Urban South Asia Research Seminar, 
this studio investigated the potential 
for more sustainable models of 
heritage
conservation and economic 
development, not only of the Taj 
Mahal but several other monuments 
lining the Yamuna River. Students’ 
analyses telescoped outwards from 
each of the 45 monuments to the 
six-kilometre length of the Yamuna 
in Agra and the metropolitan area, 
and into larger scales of the river 
landscape and region. They identified 
patterns of interdependence 
between these heritage sites and 
the intangible cultural heritage of 
the communities that have lived 
between and around them for 
generations. Students began with the 
following questions, and developed 
design propositions and strategies, 
interventions and sites for planning 
for conservation in Agra, India: How 
might the Yamuna River be imagined 
as a historic landscape of networked 
monuments, of which the Taj Mahal 
is only one of many monuments? 
How might spatial, infrastructural, 
narrative interventions encourage 
and reinforce these connections? 
How might policies, programs, 
and organisations re-connect the 
livelihoods of local communities of 
farmers, craftspeople and the urban 
poor with the Yamuna river and 
CONFETTI 45domus 66 October 2017
heritage monuments? Given Agra’s 
current water crisis, and existing 
legislative and political constraints, 
how might ecologic restoration 
of the Yamuna River be achieved 
through productive or mitigative 
landscapes, temporal operations, 
and the management of hydrologic 
infrastructures between local and 
regional scales?
IMPRESSIONS
Rahul Mehrotra, Vineet 
Diwadkar, José Mayoral 
Moratilla
Students analysed Agra during an 
intensive four-week long period 
through a framework emphasising a 
multitude of scales and perspectives 
with a focus on the metropolitan 
area of Agra, the Yamuna River, 
the 45 individual monuments and 
gardens within a six-kilometre stretch 
and the communities living and 
working at their intersections. This 
initial phase of research provided 
an understanding of the historic 
and present-day challenges facing 
the city and served as preparation 
for students to test their design 
hypotheses during an eight-day field 
visit in Agra. 
Field visit participants included 
12 students in the Departments 
of Urban Planning & Design, 
Architecture, and Landscape 
Architecture and six post-
professional students in the Master in 
Design Studies Critical Conservation 
concentration. In addition, ten 
mid-career Loeb Fellows, five 
teaching faculty and staff, and 
two photographers participated in 
the visit. The first part of the field 
visit presented opportunities for 
the students and Loeb Fellows to 
investigate sites and meet with 
communities within the context of 
the group, with guidance both from 
the instructors, World Monuments 
Fund (WMF) staff experts, and their 
site consultants. WMF conservation 
and community engagement 
professionals and their contacts 
within local communities guided 
the team through monuments and 
gardens sites and surrounding 
settlements. A full-day workshop, 
organised by the Harvard University 
team with the World Monuments 
This page, clockwise 
from top: Mehtab Bagh, 
Kacchpura, and a view 
of the Taj Mahal across 
the Yamuna River; 
settlements below the 
Ambedkar Bridge are 
indicative of changes 
in land use patterns; 
drying laundry below the 
Ambedkar Bridge 
Opposite page, from 
top: Settlements and 
nurseries adjacent to 
the Itimad ud Daulah; a 
functioning Decentralised 
Waste Water Treatment 
System (DEWATS) in 
Kacchapura facilitated 
by the Centre for Urban 
and Regional Excellence 
(CURE-India); a 
classroom in 
Gandhi Smarak
CONFETTI46 domus 66 October 2017
Fund and Archeological Survey of 
India, supported all three parties in 
learning from one another and in 
discussing strategies to address 
conservation and in meeting 
economic development goals in 
the city.
Meetings with community members 
illuminated residents’ concerns and 
their conflicted relationships with 
the agencies governing adjacent 
heritage monuments and gardens. 
The imaginary of the Taj Mahal and 
Mughal-era monuments is one 
of shimmering architecture and 
symbols of royalty. On the ground, 
heritage narratives are detached 
from the precarity and poverty of 
the communities that brought the 
monuments into being or who 
now live in their shadows. Through 
an exploration of thecity and the 
discussions with locals, the stark 
dichotomy between the preserved 
monuments and the neglected 
communities was unveiled, revealing 
a divided present condition.
Additionally, a spectrum of key 
actors shared varying perspectives 
from the World Monuments Fund 
and Archeological Survey of India 
facilitated a deeper understanding 
of organisational capacities in 
working in the city. The specific 
role, particular scope of work and 
responsibility of each one of the key 
agencies was identified throughout 
these interactions. Furthermore, 
the need became evident for a 
single governing body to act as 
a unifying platform and facilitator 
between these entities. Following 
the workshop, the Harvard team 
convened to delineate and focus 
individual design speculations within 
a Special Planning Zone spanning 
all 45 monuments and gardens 
along the six-kilometre stretch of the 
Yamuna River within Agra.
Major monuments on the Yamuna 
river, namely the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort, 
and Mehtab Bagh, were investigated 
throughout the trip along with 
lesser-known monuments, such 
as Chini ka Rauza and Ram Bagh, 
and the surrounding regions were 
also explored, demonstrating the 
untapped potential of Agra’s often 
forgotten heritage. While tourists visit 
Agra to see the glossy image of the 
Taj Mahal featured in travel guides 
come to life, they leave without 
having explored any of the other 
historical remnants that compose a 
fuller image of the Mughal Empire 
and the city beyond.
Granted the chance to focus on 
particular aspects of the city with the 
potential to advance conservation 
and economic development goals, 
the students investigated their 
individual projects independently 
throughout the final days of 
the field visit. Surveying water 
infrastructures and traversing open 
drainage channels illuminated the 
challenges of access to municipal 
sanitation networks. Uncovering 
interstitial spaces within the city 
and engaging with individuals from 
local communities furthered an 
understanding of the distance 
between investments in monument 
conservation and in upgrading 
settlements and economies of the 
larger population. Analysing the 
Yamuna River’s flow provoked an 
awareness of the fragmentation 
of the river edge, neglected status 
of the river itself, and the lack of 
ordering rules for how the river edge 
meets adjacent settlements. Once 
the spine of the Mughal Empire’s 
sites for concentrating power and 
leisure, the highly polluted Yamuna 
River is today left as the backyard 
for the city, without coordinated 
management and without support for 
residents to steward its landscape.
AGRA AT THE CROSSROADS
Mark Mulligan, Sally Young
By most accounts, India’s 1996 
Supreme Court decision establishing 
the Taj Trapezium Zone (TTZ) created 
clear winners and losers. Winners 
included all parties concerned with 
preserving and enhancing India’s 
cultural patrimony – that is, the 
Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), 
the World Monument Fund (WMF), 
India’s tourism industry, domestic and 
international tourists. Losers included 
nearly everyone who was employed 
by, or in any way economically 
dependent on, the coal-based 
industries shut down by the court 
order – that is, most of the region’s 
population and business interests. 
Nearly twenty years after the 
shuttering of its traditional industries, 
Agra ranks as India’s poorest major 
city, and local resentment towards 
the TTZ decision is well known. The 
notion that the local population has 
“lost” while non-local (national/global) 
interests have “won” is pervasive and 
exacerbates pre-existing adversarial 
relationships between national and 
local governments, between different 
segments of Indian society, and 
between insiders and outsiders. 
In reality, there are no clear winners 
in Agra’s situation today. Air pollution 
is only one of the many challenges 
facing the ASI and the WMF in 
preserving the city’s historical 
treasures, and it was never the most 
difficult to address. More problematic 
are the firmly rooted contentious 
relationships between national 
agencies, state and local bodies 
(including the Agra Development 
Authority), business interests, and 
residents, which have created 
impediments to progress on all 
fronts economic, social, and cultural. 
Insufficient resources, turf wars, and 
political inertia combine to prevent 
these bodies from tackling more 
intractable problems surrounding 
Agra’s monument sites and affecting 
its most vulnerable populations. To an 
outside observer, the lack of dialogue, 
trust, and goodwill between parties 
whose interests should be aligned 
Left: Remnants of 
the Garden of Wazir 
Khan, Agra 
Opposite page: 
spreads from 
the book. From 
top: a study of 
the geography of 
the Yamuna River 
Basin; an analysis 
of the architecture 
of the different 
monuments; 
the Tourism 
Employment 
Pyramid of Agra — 
with a total work 
participation rate 
of 25.5%, it is the 
lowest of cities with 
a population of over 
1 million residents 
CONFETTI 47domus 66 October 2017
R
E
S
E
A
R
C
H
 S
E
M
IN
A
R
 /
 S
T
U
D
IO
 C
O
N
T
E
N
T
75
M
A
P
P
IN
G
 A
G
R
A
Ganga Yamuna Basin
Water in the Ganga Yamuna Basin originates from melting glaciers 
and monsoon rainfall. The river changes its course from the Western 
Yamuna Canal through a drain to supply the raw water demand in Delhi. 
The river is relatively clean but pollution is increasing. This segment 
of the river receives water from 17 sewage drains from Delhi, and also 
from the Western and Eastern Yamuna Canal. The sources of water in 
this segments is ground water, other tributaries, and the wastewater 
that comes from Delhi, Mathura-Vrindavan, Agra and Etawah. This 
segment is used to provide water for drinking and industrial uses to 
Mathura and Agra. Agra locates in this segment of the river, which 
is the most polluted part of the river, full of organic matter with low 
oxygen levels. The water becomes cleaner due to the confluence of 
the other tributaries. However, Yamuna’s cleansing capacity has been 
reduced every year.
76
R
E
S
E
A
R
C
H
 S
E
M
IN
A
R
 /
 S
T
U
D
IO
 C
O
N
T
E
N
T Chini ka Rauza
This mausoleum is currently in physical disrepair and not conserved by 
central government conservators, Chini ka Rauza and its grounds are used 
for a variety of uses by communities in adjacent settlements.
The site suggests the possibility of integrating heritage conservation 
strategies with community based stewardship so that with economic 
development can serve the interests of both conservators and the working 
poor residents with living memories of the the site.
11
5
M
A
P
P
IN
G
 A
G
R
A
Access Access Sub Access Sub Garden
Plan Axis Boundary Architecture
Plan Axis Boundary Architecture
Access Access Solid Void
Itamad ud Daulah 
Often promoted as the “Baby Taj,” this mausoleum is cladded in highly ornate 
marble and semi-precious stone work. Along with the Chini ka Rauza and Taj 
Mahal, the building adheres to the classical geometries, axes, and building 
syntax of of Mughal architecture in India.
Mehtab Bagh
Built as a garden at the northern edge of the Taj Mahal complex, Mehtab 
Bagh is now isolated when compared with transport options on the left bank 
of the Yamuna, requiring thirty minutes travel by car. If the river once again 
gained primacy for experiencing and passenger movement through Agra, it 
would be much easier for visitors to engage with other monuments, gardens, 
and intangible cultural heritage in the city, since they would become an ever-
present backdrop.
11
6
Plan Axis Boundary Architecture
Plan Axis BoundaryArchitecture
VoidAccess Access Main Garden
Access Main Garden Architecture Architecture
defi es understanding. Who would 
disagree with the goal of creating 
a prosperous city here, based on 
good health and living standards, 
modern infrastructure, pride in local 
history, economic opportunity, and 
appeal for domestic and international 
tourists? Yet without consensus 
and collaboration among all parties 
wielding infl uence here, could any of 
these goals really be achieved?
The idea of fi nding “win-win” 
strategies for Agra’s diverse 
constituencies is implicit in the 
design challenges that Professor 
Rahul Mehrotra framed for a group 
of Harvard students and Loeb 
Fellows in the spring of 2015. 
Immersing us in the city’s complex 
realities, he challenged each of us 
to imagine fresh solutions not only 
to the preservation of stressed 
monuments, but also to economy 
and employment, access to clean 
water, sanitary infrastructure, green 
space, health care, and more. Each of 
us responded with ideas that might, 
with all due humility, be called minor 
pieces of a grand puzzle. 
I arrived in India on my own a day 
later than the rest of the group, and 
a meditative four-hour taxi ride from 
Delhi to Agra may have shaped my 
impressions as signifi cantly as what I 
later witnessed in the city. Speeding 
down the new superhighway 
connecting the current and ancient 
capitals, I studied a fl at, hazy beige 
landscape dotted with smoke-
spewing brick chimneys extending 
to the horizon – contributors to 
the truly awful air quality I had 
experienced since landing in Delhi 
in the wee morning hours. Little 
more than halfway through the ride, 
almost undetectably at fi rst, I found 
myself breathing more freely. Fewer 
chimneys appeared in the fi elds, 
none of them smoking; the varied 
greens of planted fi elds became 
more pronounced. We had entered 
and were feeling the effects of the 
much maligned TTZ; the rest of my 
experience in Agra was tempered by 
this very visceral memory.
It was this region’s benign climate, 
after all, that brought the fi rst Mughal 
emperor here from the steppes of 
central Asia by way of mountainous 
Kabul. Babur established his imperial 
capital at Agra in consideration of 
the site’s moderate weather, fertile 
landscape, and abundant clean (in 
those days) water. Compared to the 
severity of the Mughal ancestral 
lands, Agra must have seemed 
paradise on earth. Indeed, the famous 
gardens created by later emperors 
and nobles – those very monuments 
whose preservation concerns us 
today – were, with their geometrically 
ordered plantings, canals, pools, 
terraces, and pavilions, nothing less 
than paradisiacal microcosms of 
nature. For their creators, invisible 
sensations (the sound of running 
water, the air-cooling effect of 
fountains, the scent of jasmine and 
R
E
S
E
A
R
C
H
 S
E
M
IN
A
R
 /
 S
T
U
D
IO
 C
O
N
T
E
N
T Tourism Employment Pyramid
Agra, with a total work participation rate of 25.5%, is the lowest of cities with 
a population over 1 million residents. Agra’s male work participation rate, at 
42.1%, is also the lowest within this category.
12
1
M
A
P
P
IN
G
 A
G
R
A
Sources: Detailed Project for Taj Ganj for Taj Trapezium Zone, Cities Alliance Population Census 
2011,india,http://www.census2011.co.in/census/district/517-agra.html, 
http://agra.nic.in/industries.html
Agriculture 
Wheat 
Mustard 
Paddy
Industry 
Small 
Manufactory 
Handicrafts 
Production
Local food
Tertiary Sector 
Tourism 
Local Commercial 
Supply
89% Tertiary Sector
25.5%
12
2
Street 
Vendors
Small Craft 
Producers
Restaurant 
Service
Transport
Service
Hotel
Service
Infrastructure 
Owners
Tourism 
Operator
Major Craft 
Producers
Major Players
Photographers Tour
Guides
Monument 
Maintenance
Monument 
Service
Professional Bodies
Craftspeople & Traders
Basic Service Providers
CONFETTI48 domus 66 October 2017
fruit trees) were as essential as the 
gardens’ visual delights in creating an 
idealised human environment.
The conditions of Agra’s urban core 
today – particularly the fi lth and odor 
associated with water and waste 
infrastructure stressed far beyond 
capacity by uncontrolled urbanisation 
and population growth – stand 
in stark contrast to the sensual 
pleasures we ascribe to the gardens 
of Agra’s legendary past. But if one 
is to fi nd a positive message in the 
Supreme Court’s decimation of the 
city’s industrial base, it is the reminder 
that clean air, clean water, and a 
clean environment are, and always 
have been, essential for all human 
life. Years from now, we may see 
the region’s economic decline in the 
early 21st century as a temporary 
setback; at the same time, the current 
crisis provides Agra a chance to 
reconnect with its foundational values 
(healthy living with nature) that could 
breathe new life into the city. With 
the TTZ fi rmly in place, Agra should 
seize the opportunity to establish 
(and believe in) a new identity as 
a health-oriented city; a parallel 
commitment to strict emissions 
control within the city and radical 
improvements to water and sanitation 
infrastructure* would complete the 
city’s transformation into one of 
the most desirable places to live in 
India, attracting professionals and 
middle-class families, and forming 
the basis of a new post-industrial 
economy. Building the city’s middle 
class and envisioning a larger role for 
it in urban life will create the demand 
for more diversifi ed commercial 
activities, cultural offerings, and 
artistic production, and allow citizens 
to direct their gaze forward as well as 
back on the Mughal past. To achieve 
any of the steps outlined here would 
require breaking down barriers and 
establishing the kind of inclusive, 
collaborative approach to problem-
solving that so far has eluded the 
rival interests determining Agra’s 
future; yet this is probably the city’s 
best hope for improvement.
* We saw hopeful glimpses of such 
infrastructural improvements taking 
place at a grassroots level in the 
urban village of Kachhpura during 
our visit.
CONSERVATION OF URBAN 
INDIAN VILLAGES
Andrew Howard
Indian Urban Villages in Agra and 
Delhi are unique mixtures of urban 
and rural having the potential to be 
models for sustainable development. 
Narrow streets provide housing 
for both farmers and city dwellers 
within close walkable proximity to 
fi elds, schools, markets, places of 
worship and home based industry. 
They provide respite from the city’s 
autos and other motorised transport. 
Kachhpura, adjacent to the 
Mehtab Bagh is an example of an 
Urban Village taking measures 
toward sustainability.
Most notable is the DEWAT natural 
waste water treatment facility that 
the village is prototyping to clean 
a small percentage of black water 
before it reaches the Yamuna River. 
This has increased the livability of 
the Village and demand for housing 
there. Many other technology leaps 
also exist there, such as methane 
generators for cow manure, rooftop 
solar panels, greywater irrigation 
and conservation of agriculture 
land. Maintaining cultural traditions, 
such as caring for cows or producing 
cow patties, is important for 
modernisation. The introduction 
of methane digesters could retain 
cultural heritage and improve air 
quality, cooking safety and effi ciency, 
and provide street lighting.
Urban Villages are not on the radar 
screens of Indian politicians and 
administrators, yet they represent 
ideal locations for technological 
investments for improving the quality 
of life for residents, cleaning riverine 
environments, stabilising agriculture 
production, and increasing the 
number of World HeritageSites in 
Agra. The best way to incite interest 
in these urban villages is to tie 
them to Agra’s tourist experience. A 
three-month seasonal walkway could 
connect Agra Fort to the Taj Mahal, 
Mehtab Bagh, and to Kachhpura. 
The river’s edge could be activated 
like the settlements of the Kumbh 
Mela, and the village could transform 
temporarily with pop-up shops to 
highlight local crafts, art, and culture.
Villages are sustainable; they have 
been since beginning of civilisation. 
Bringing them into the 21st century 
can start with shedding light on them 
with temporary installations and 
events to bring new visitors and thus 
investment into them. Investments 
in further technological sustainability 
and conservation of village life will 
be more accepted if leaders and 
visitors are exposed to them. Hope 
for a sustainable India that has clean 
rivers, breathable air, healthy food 
and continued cultural pride begins in 
its Villages. 
PLANNING FOR CONSERVATION
Rahul Mehrotra, Vineet Diwadkar, 
José Mayoral Moratilla
Within the South Asian context, 
Conservation practices are often 
employed to preserve heritage 
assets within a single, often nostalgic 
narrative of how contemporary 
society might interpret and engage 
with these sites. Such attitudes 
towards heritage aim to slow down 
the programmatic appropriation 
and weathering of sites and to limit 
interventions to physical restorations 
rather than dealing with their 
changing signifi cance in a dynamic 
context of incredible fl ux.
Instead ‘Planning for Conservation’ 
as an approach, address the need 
to manipulate and manage the rate 
of change over time within the built 
environment, while yet facilitating 
richer dialogues between citizens, 
what remains of their collective 
memory, and their aspirations. The 
case of Agra further exemplifi es 
the idea that often this heritage 
is something unique yet alienated 
from the rhythms of everyday life. 
Preservationists consider the Taj 
Mahal, isolated its urban reality, as a 
place with a static identity. However, 
the identity of a place is never static 
but expressive of a continuous state 
of change. It became clear in Agra 
that design and urban planning must 
be reinjected into the imagination of 
what Agra might be in order to bring 
about economic growth through 
conservation of the city’s physical and 
intangible cultural heritage.
Participants in the 2014-2015 
Planning for Conservation Research 
Seminar and Extreme Urbanism III 
Options Studio investigated Agra 
between these two conditions. 
Left: a spread from 
the book shows the 
fractured and distributed 
governance structure 
of the Yamuna River 
as it flows through the 
different states of India
Yamuna River 
Basin
366,223 km2
10.7% of the Indian landmass10.7701 7111 777
3
1 7% of th
3
oofff th%% of f71 77711 7
Yamuu
BaBas
366,
B
6
YYaaY mY mmumYammummY m
aBBBaBas
666
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
River
23 km2
Indian
una Rive
asin
n
asi
26,22
he I I
a en Riv rRR eeveRRann rR v ra vea v rRn eaa vvva
sinna nisiini
2 33332 m3
dIIe nane I an landmassn landan la asanndl ssala masnn laaa sa d ssa ma mannnnanaanaaaa
uuuuuuu
aaasssssssssssssss
nnanaaananaaananaaannanaaahhhhhh
uu
asss
uu
ass
u
s
u
assas
u
as
666,666,66,33333
h
3
h
33
hhh
HaaHH thinikhitthhh kkhinith nikund BarBBaBBaarBardd Bn raggaagge eeeee
Uttar PrPrata PPrtU a radesh hhheesad
HaryrryHHaHHaarryH ryar anaa a
DelhiD lllllhieelD
RajasRaa aasajjaaj thanna
AgrAAAgAAA a
G
R
O
U
N
D
W
A
T
E
R
 R
E
C
H
A
R
G
E
: 
A
 N
E
W
 R
E
L
A
T
IO
N
S
H
IP
 W
IT
H
 W
A
T
E
R
 F
O
R
 A
G
R
A Fractured Governance
Yamuna Standing Committee
Upper Yamuna River Board 
Yamuna River Development Authority
Central Water Commission
National River Conservation Directorate
Water Quality Assessment Authority 
Central Ground Water Board
Supreme Court - High Powered Committees
State Surface Water Agencies
UP State Ground Water Agency
Uttarakhand State Ground Water Agency
Rajasthan State Ground Water Agency
Madhya Pradesh State Ground Water Agency
Haryana State Ground Water Agency 
Central Pollution Control Board
State Pollution Control Boards
UP Jal Nigam 
UP Jal Santhan 
Ganga Action Parivar 
2
8
7
S
P
E
C
U
L
A
T
IO
N
S
Segmentation, Extraction, Interrupted Flow 
Himalayan Segment
172 km
Upper Segment
224 km
Delhi Segment
22 km
Eutrophicated 
Segment
224 km
Diluted Segment
428 km
Agra 
phicatrop tephphhiEu a
tteeg enme te
222222 m4
g
4 
AA aAgr
tedD eu mmeSe gmu mu
8
md
m4
te
kmm
i
228
eg
mmmm2 k
Se
m
ed
Uttarakhand
2
8
8
CONFETTI 49domus 66 October 2017
N
E
G
O
T
IA
T
IN
G
 H
IS
T
O
R
IC
 A
N
D
 C
O
N
T
E
M
P
O
R
A
R
Y
 E
D
G
E
S
Site Plan 
1. Civic Center
Settlement + Industrial +Expressway
2. Street Market & Visitor Center
Monument + Industrial + Expressway
3. Community Renovation
Nursery + Settlement + Monument + 
River
4. Market / Shops
Monument + Nursery + Settlement 
1
2
3
4
4
0
7
S
P
E
C
U
L
A
T
IO
N
S
Community Renovation 
Nursery + Settlement + Monument + 
River
Markets / Shops 
Monument + Nursery + Settlement
Street Market & Visitor Center 
Monument + Industrial + Expressway
Agriculture + Road
Settlement + Industrial + Road
Settlement + Monument + River
Monument + Road
Settlement + Agriculture
Civic Center 
Settlement + Industrial + Expressway
Settlement + Monument + Agriculture + Industrial
Settlement +Industrial + Agriculture
Edge Opportunities
4
0
8
And the results of the Studio work, 
brings together various approaches 
for speculating about roles for the 
past in building Agra’s future. These 
projects contain ideas to conserve 
and to propose as well as document 
and speculate simultaneously. 
Students explored questions of 
managing the rate of change, the 
potential integration of infrastructural 
up gradation, and economic benefi ts 
for communities from adjacent 
heritage assets. Students developed 
a variety of itineraries to lengthen 
tourism visits and to integrate 
facilities for tourism within schematic 
proposals for much-needed facilities 
to be used by the Agra’s working 
poor. In short the students all 
engaged with conservation strategies 
that squarely dealt with resituating 
the heritage assets of Agra in the 
context of Agra’s reality.
Platforms for Integrated Planning
Several projects proposed platforms 
for integrated planning. They utilised 
larger-scaled imaginaries to subsume 
and integrate site-level conservation 
and up gradation activities along the 
river. Projects encouraged multi-
level engagement so central, state, 
district, municipal, and community 
interests might together deliberate 
on shared goals and interests 
within the Yamuna River Planning 
& Conservation Authority. ‘Planning 
for Conservation’ as an approach 
also integrated site-level goals with 
other strategic goals in city, such as 
decentralised economic development 
for multiple social classes, especially 
the poor; the equitable supply of 
networked infrastructures; and the 
stewardship of the Yamuna River 
as a perceptual and organising 
mechanism for the adjacent 45 
Mughal-era monuments and gardens.
Reclaiming and 
Upgrading Infrastructure
Agra’s networked infrastructures, 
including municipal roads, water supply, 
sanitation, drainage and electricity 
are visibly lacking in their capacity 
to serve the needs of the city’s 
residents and visitors. Additionally, 
the Yamuna’s interrupted and heavily 
pollutedfl ow severely inhibits the 
cultivation of desirable experiences 
along the river as it organises the city’s 
collection of 45 Mughal monuments 
and gardens. Student projects in 
the Studio rethink the Yamuna River 
corridor as a landscape infrastructure 
for cleansing solid waste and sewage 
from the riverbed while simultaneously 
layering sensitive landscape features 
and views for visitor and resident use. 
One proposal reclaims Agra’s nalas or 
open drains as civic infrastructures for 
treating drainage as it fl ows towards 
the Yamuna. And another project, 
in the same vein, proposes ideas 
for the restoration of groundwater 
recharge zones for replenishing the 
Yamuna’s fl ow and imagining the river 
as a connective vegetated landscape 
for pedestrians moving between 
monuments on both banks.
Structuring Growth: Urban Form 
Guidelines and Cultivating Edges
At the municipal scale, several projects 
propose connections between 
the monuments, the Yamuna, and 
the settlements and economies 
of adjacent communities. These 
connections are at times physical 
in nature — to upgrade facilities 
within settlements while demarcating 
enclosure for the banks and 
seasonal fl ooding of the river. Other 
connections are cultural, registering 
religious rituals and mystical 
experiences with the river by evoking 
the remnant geometries of garden 
and fragments of monuments. And 
yet other projects suggest stabilising 
and integrating gardens now used as 
commercial nurseries, through the, 
seemingly-invisible, grafting of public 
institutions alongside orchards and 
community facilities.
Community Benefits with 
Heritage Engagements
Not surprisingly, some projects 
engaged the intangible cultural 
heritage and informal economies 
of existing communities to propose 
the up gradation of community 
facilities, sanitation infrastructures, 
housing, and public spaces. These 
projects coupled these self-help 
interests with tourist infrastructures 
to extend public benefi ts. Such 
sites provide limitless opportunities 
for the transmission of intangible 
cultural heritage narratives in 
addition to the more formal Mughal 
empire narratives conveyed through 
monument sites.
Lengthening Visitor Itineraries
Spending more time in Agra equals 
spending more money in Agra. 
Lengthening Agra’s tourist itineraries 
from an average 0.8 days per visit 
to multiple full days will positively 
impact primary ticketing, transport 
and lodging economies, and also the 
secondary and tertiary economies 
of craftspeople, agricultural 
and masonry laborers, and their 
storytellers. Today, tourist itineraries 
move visitors between Delhi, Agra, 
and Jaipur with hardly enough 
time for bathroom breaks, meals, 
or extended site visits. Signifi cant 
design, planning and media 
interventions favouring the interests 
of the small trader, small local tourism 
operator, and municipal tourism 
bodies would be critical to break 
the hegemony of ‘Golden Triangle’ 
tour operators and offer a different, 
more textured and nuanced format 
to experience the rich heritage of 
Agra. These supplementary tourism 
practices would need a reinvention 
not only of tourism infrastructure 
and its disaggregation in the fabric 
of Agra, but also new institutional 
mechanisms for its implementation. 
The Studio is a fi rst move in this 
direction — to reimagine Agra 
and especially the Yamuna River 
as a cultural landscape with the 
incredible potential to be restored 
for the city and its economy. This 
imagination recognises the city and 
its wellbeing as being critical to the 
interpretation as well as conservation 
of its rich Mughal heritage and many 
monuments. And fi nally, the future of 
the heritage of Agra depends on the 
robustness of Agra as a sustainable 
urban system. 
Left: a spread from the 
book indicating the site 
plan of the edges of the 
urban village of Zahara 
Bagh in Agra. The project 
aims to redefine and 
stabilise the area via 
minimal architectural 
interventions, with 
the ambition of 
maintaining the historical 
value and benefitting the 
local communities 
The book Extreme Urbanism 3 — Planning for 
Conservation: Looking at Agra edited by Rahul 
Mehrotra, Vineet Diwadkar and José Mayoral 
Moratilla is published by the World Monuments 
Fund (2016). The volume features the research 
and speculations produced by Loeb Fellows 
and graduate students at the Harvard Graduate 
School of Design. All excerpts, texts, photographs, 
and drawings featured here are used with the 
permission of the editors and publishers. 
MONUMENTS, LANDSCAPES, CITIES
A discussion on two books: one that focuses on the world heritage 
monument of the Taj Mahal and the context of the city it sits in, and the 
other that highlights the contemporary condition of the city of Agra and 
the natural and historical landscapes it is composed of 
Text Kaiwan Mehta
Urbanisation is a more complex process 
today than the making, shaping, and 
management of cities. Cities that got 
conceptualised and imagined in another 
time or era are today undergoing an 
urbanisation. This is not the same 
as overgrowing cities, mismanaged 
development, or unplanned and 
unprecedented growth. Urbanisation 
is a phenomenon which is developing 
a unique form to itself at the present 
moment. India, at the economic and 
cultural juncture that it is today, and now, 
is actually a site for such urbanisation 
— one which imagines an amorphous 
region than a bounded shape; it 
imagines a networked set of migrations 
and economic exchanges than fi xed 
routes of exit and entry or geographical 
experiences, and is ambiguously linked 
and intergrated to its built and natural 
environment as well as historical 
imaginations. One could debate about 
places and cities at one point but 
those set of equations are probably 
inadequate today. Historical complexities 
in terms of feudal relationships reshape 
through the 20th century; systems 
of manufacture and productions of 
goods (often referred to as handmade 
or craft industries), monuments and 
natural environments are developing a 
complicated relationship, a struggle; and 
sometimes battle with these conceptual 
twists and turns in the idea shifting 
from city to urbanity. The discussion on 
mangroves, or the Ganges, the confl icts 
of reservation in parts of Gujarat 
and Rajasthan, or the developing of 
monumental parks in Uttar Pradesh and 
Calcutta, or a movie designer invited 
to design new cities in South India 
are indications of this very unfamiliar 
development in urbanisation which we 
are still trying to understand through 
the lens of a City.
In this context, two books published 
recently become important and required 
study and argument. We are talking 
here of Taj Mahal: Multiple Narratives, 
co-authored by Amita Baig and Rahul 
Mehrotra, and Extreme Urbanisn 3 — 
Planning for Conservation: Looking at 
Agra, edited by Rahul Mehrotra, Vineet 
Diwadkar and José Mayoral Moratilla.
The Taj Mahal as an architectural 
monument, and Agra as a city, share, 
and do not share a relationship. How 
does an island of historic monumentality 
exist as an island within an urban 
agglomeration that shows many signs 
of deteriorating living conditions? Or 
how do architectural objects exist in 
a landscape of disrepair, when those 
monuments are part of the historical 
city structure? As a monument of epic 
world repute, with tourists from across 
the globe, including national guests 
visiting — how does it not infl uence 
the state of being of Agra as an 
urban condition? A complex bundle of 
questions face not only planners but 
conservationists too. The key approach 
in both the books is bridging these 
divides and disrupted existences. 
The idea of ‘Extreme Urbanism’ is 
to precisely evaluate and generate 
templatesof survey and intervention 
in the emerging unfamiliar conditions 
of urban existence, developed over 
a series of alienating conditions. The 
Extreme Urbanism 3... book focuses on 
Agra as that site where an urbanisation 
of confl icting values is on its way while 
it is also the site of a world heritage 
monument and many others of lesser 
value on a particular scale. It is yet 
important to the structure and memory, 
as well as historic sense of the city. The 
location of high preservation, crucial 
conservation, and stressed urbanity is 
what Agra is, and the book precisely 
lays out the idea of preservation and 
urbanisation in a structure of mutual 
benefi t leading to conditions of living 
in dignity. In the whole rhetoric on 
value, tradition, and culture, we have 
perhaps forgotten the basic ethics of 
human dignity that places of habitation 
need to provide in our everyday lives. 
Why has human dignity not been the 
agenda in conversations of culture and 
tradition? History is often only valued at 
a symbolic level, and that too only when 
it is politically or economically (vis-á-vis 
tourism) convenient and profi table. But 
the merging of a historic fabric towards 
the betterment of other processes of 
living and built environment are rarely 
considered natural. In the book, this 
relationship is stretched to its maximum 
possible positive value — the sense of 
a symbiotic relation between historical 
preservation and conservation, and 
urbanisation, including the aspects of 
local trades and professions, and natural 
heritage and resources.
To take forward this argument we could 
now look at the next book focussing on 
the Taj Mahal. It is a structure that has 
been at the political centre very often, 
whether it is the debates on absence — 
presence of local genius and traditions 
of building in the writings such as those 
of E B Havell, or the recurrent and 
more recent perverse political rhetoric 
on mosques being built on sites of 
former temples — just as temples were 
built on former Buddhist shrines — and 
other such histories drawn out on either 
politically driven whims and fancies or 
purposely locating historic events out of 
a time context and misreading historical 
politics. The Taj Mahal is an iconic 
Mughal structure born out of the rich 
traditions of many confl uential cultures 
that often found home and ground, 
shape and form in India. Architecture 
needs to be read from its details and 
ornaments to the fabric of people and 
places it lives and breathes within, and 
this book gives a wealth of material and 
content, arguments and frameworks 
for that. It engages simultaneously 
the question of craft and beauty as 
well as urbanity and infrastructure. 
Approaching this range in the same 
book is something unique to the study 
of monuments. Monuments often stand 
out as objects of beauty in a larger 
environment, which is also often seen 
as detrimental to the beauty and survival 
of the monument. But this approach 
is ridden with problems, as separating 
the object form the environment and 
built landscape it belongs to, creates 
problems for the monument and the 
urban context that surrounds it. The 
conception of the Taj is not separate 
from the conception of urban gardens 
or riverfront cities in the Mughal 
imagination — and this study in the book 
is important to help us understand the 
integral value of the Taj not simply as 
a national and international object of 
heritage but also the Taj as a building 
in a larger urban context; especially 
since the urban context in focus. Agra, 
is in serious need of attention from 
urban decay and a development that 
is struggling between newer economic 
networks and older ties to traditions of 
culture, trade, and livelihood. To see the 
monumental building and its detailed 
dissection as a composition of craft and 
ornament, construction and geometry, 
form and ideological conception, as a 
possible way to understand its urban 
location — not just historically but also in 
the contemporary scenario — is a very 
useful and much needed framework.
The two books are interesting twins 
in their approach: one takes the world 
heritage monument, the object of 
fascination as its central subject and 
then importantly engages with the 
city of Agra, the site of urban stresses 
and struggles, the dirtiness of urban 
mismanagement and misunderstanding. 
The other book approaches the city 
as a site of extreme forces, intense 
dilapidation and haphazard, unfamiliar, 
diffi cult to discern urban realities but 
brings forth history, and the heritage 
of monuments as the possible way to 
recover an urban condition that is much 
needed in contemporary India. The most 
important aspect of both books is that 
they are addressing contemporary India 
as the site of context and complexity, 
often set out in binaries such as 
tradition and modernity, rural and urban, 
preservation and development. We 
realise fairly conclusively in the books 
that these binaries are not useful but 
harmful. The contemporary urban 
merges and navigates the rural without 
identifi able boundaries or peripheries; 
and history today is clearly not a distant 
past of politically confused purposely, 
but can actually be the site of recovery; 
of human culture as the location of 
human dignity for life, livelihood, and 
social exchanges of mutual benefi t 
and civilisational growth of the larger 
complex such as the nation. 
P
ho
to
 c
ou
rt
es
y:
 E
xt
re
m
e 
U
rb
an
is
n 
3 
—
 P
la
nn
in
g 
fo
r C
on
se
rv
at
io
n:
 L
oo
ki
ng
 a
t A
gr
a/
 D
in
es
h 
M
eh
ta
CONFETTI52 domus 66 October 2017
INDIA AND THE LIFE OF AN ARCHITECT
A review of the recently published book on a key fi gure in Modern architecture 
in India, A.P Kanvinde, dwells upon what we can learn about architecture and 
India through the biography of an architect
Text Kaiwan Mehta
The book AKAR documents and records the 
work and life of Achyut Kanvinde. a key fi gure 
in India’s history as a modern nation and society. 
The book, through elaborate visuals, sketches, 
archival photographs, drawings, and analyses, 
brings into public space the work of a prolifi c 
and important architect. This is accompanied by 
a series of interesting and perceptive essays 
by a range of scholars and thinkers and some 
who had the chance to closely observe him or 
be around him. Finally the book also contains 
some writing by Kanvinde himself. What the 
book would have surely, and further benefi tted 
from, is an overarching set of themes or ideas 
that would have contextualised the man and his 
work in a much broader cultural framework than 
simply the historical moment of India’s modernity 
and experiments in nation-building. What does a 
life such as this help us refl ect upon — vis-a-vis 
architecture, or India, in general? Biographies such 
as this one are special moments where the book 
has to engage with much broader questions than 
the documentation of a life in all its multifarious 
forms and experiences.
We have now developed a set of frameworks 
through which we have been looking at the history 
of architects and their roles in a modern and 
newly independent nation. These frameworks are 
indeed necessary and have helped us much in 
understanding the profession and the role it can 
play in a large project such as nation-building. 
However, the overuse of certain frameworks can 
slowly result in blinding us from seeing variations, 
nuances, and particularities. It is necessary that 
research and writing on architecture investigate 
CONFETTI 53domus 66 October 2017
the frameworks of reference and study we have 
used until now, and continue to use, without 
much change; and in fact, explore the nuances 
inbiographies, lives, and bodies of work that may 
actually shift our frames of reference and give us 
a newer or better understanding of certain cultural 
questions or the idea of architecture and its 
practice. A book like this one on Kanvinde is at the 
threshold where documentation and preliminary 
analysis can actually pave way for deeper thinking 
in the future.
In India, where often archives are diffi cult to 
access, a book that so generously presents and 
shares an archive is very important. The essays 
presented in the book also give a good set of 
entry points in understanding this compilation 
and collation of architectural works. It is in many 
ways a wonderfully presented archive and a set 
of thoughts on a body of work. The buildings 
are presented always through a detailed set of 
drawings besides photos of models and images 
of the project. However, understandably, for the 
sake of consistency, the drawings are redrawn to 
a contemporary logic. So visiting the section on 
Chronology and being able to see some of the 
original drawings makes it quite useful. Drawings 
are never simply the mode of representation, but 
they are indicative of how an architect thinks. 
Besides sketches, which have a personal fl air and 
language, architecture drawings can also indicate 
different ways in which an architect was thinking 
about a design or a project. The book is fi lled with 
beautiful drawings and sketches, as authored by 
Kanvinde, but more original drawings would surely 
have helped the book.
I close this brief note with a chance visit I had to 
the agriculture university that Kanvinde designed in 
Rahuri — a building that sits so beautiful in a near-
rural landscape. Modern and bold, yet responding 
to the land and nature around that building makes 
for a very beautiful set of interwoven walkways 
and inside-outside experiences. The building is 
not very well maintained and appears dilapidated 
in some parts, or overused, or misused in certain 
corners, but none of this really takes away from 
the structural logic and aesthetic composition of 
the original idea and form. In that sense it is truly 
a wonderful work of architecture. Then I realised 
that the book had this project featured, with a 
wonderful set of impressionist sketches of the 
entire campus, and early images during as well as 
after construction. Such projects which otherwise 
do not feature on the usual lists of projects we 
associate with iconic architects (or any artist or 
author) are crucial in opening up for us the broader 
landscape a life that would have engaged with, 
and wondering what infl uences and ideas crossed 
this landscape. Buildings are never standalone 
projects; they always have hangovers from other 
projects (of the same architect, and maybe some 
others as well), and buildings sometimes also 
hold the nascent ideas for newer projects to 
later emerge and see fruition. This journeys of 
architecture interest me, and a book like this one 
on Kanvinde provides a great quantum of content 
to take further as we develop newer ‘ways of 
seeing’ things, and architecture. 
This page: a sketch 
of the High Court and 
Legislative Assembly 
Building in Srinagar. 
The design concept 
has the four primary 
functions fronting a 
landscaped plaza. With 
the existing secretariat 
located on one side, the 
assembly and council 
hall are located in the 
centre, while the high 
court is sited at the 
other end
Opposite page, from 
top: the Nehru Science 
Centre in Mumbai; 
an image of the 
cover of the book; 
Kanvinde presenting 
the scheme for NCAER 
to Jawaharlal Nehru; 
Kanvinde flanked by 
Shaukat Rai and James 
Miller, presenting the 
UAS Bengaluru concept
CONFETTI54 domus 66 October 2017
68 69
1960–1970Achyut Kanvinde
1, 2 The multilevel walkways innervating the 
academic core.
1
2
This page, from top: 
a layout comprising 
a cutaway model of a 
typical cluster showing 
the structural system 
of the Nehru Science 
Centre in Mumbai, 
along with site and 
section plans; the 
Sher-e-Kashmir Indoor 
Stadium, Srinagar; 
the interiors of the 
stadium; the multilevel 
walkways innervating 
the academic core of 
the Indian Institute of 
Technology, Kanpur
CONFETTI 55domus 66 October 2017
In the year 1999, Kanvinde was approached by Shri Netai 
Basu, Sebait of Lake Kalibari, to design their temple complex.
The programme consists of the main temple with its sabha 
mandap along with a meeting hall, offices, and guest rooms. 
The challenge of planning on a tight, 1,200-square-metre 
urban site, just off a major city arterial and close to a city-
level green, resulted in the various functions being vertically 
stacked, with the main temple and its sabha mandap placed 
on the uppermost level.
An ornate torana marks the entrance from the street. A broad 
flight of steps, negotiating two floors, leads the devotee to the 
octagonal sabha mandap and the garbha griha, comprising 
three deity shrines with a colonnaded parikrama around them. 
The first floor accommodates a large meeting hall with the 
temple offices located on the lower ground floor. 
The guest rooms are incorporated in the form of a separate 
multi-level block linked to the temple structure. 
Since construction commenced only after Kanvinde’s demise, 
the initial sketches and model served as the basis for further 
design development. Several artists have provided design 
inputs over time, respecting the overall spirit of the project. 
The introduction of cultural motifs related to Bengal and 
the use of white marble cladding for external and internal 
surfaces are some of the changes effected during the course 
of construction. The temple structure, completed a few years 
ago, is now nearing the finishing stage.
Sree Sree 108 Karunamoyee 
Kalimata Mandir
Lake Kalibari, Kolkata 
1999–ongoing
106 107
1960–1970Achyut Kanvinde
The structural system relies on a combination of a reinforced concrete frame with 
slender columns concealed within load-bearing, exposed brick masonry walls. 
The visual expression is one of exposed brickwork in Flemish bond accentuated 
by exposed concrete, used sparingly. Innovations include sliding, folding wooden 
sash windows as well as sliding glazed doors with sliding, folding wood batten 
grill doors. Flyash was used in concrete, mortar, and plaster to effect economy 
and the roofs are insulated with foam concrete. These features are also seen in 
Kanvide’s subsequent residential projects as well. 
In 1985, an annexe was added by Kanvinde for his daughter’s family without 
compromising the outlook of the living areas of the original unit. Modifications 
have been incorporated over time without changing the spirit of the design.
1
2
1 The western facade with minimal openings.
2 View of south-western facade from the garden.
This page, from top: 
the Sree Sree 108 
Karunamoyee
Kalimata Mandir in 
Kolkata; the form of 
the shikharas visible 
through the framework 
of the Sabha Mandap 
roof, finished in white 
cement concrete, along 
with drawings of the 
structure of the temple; 
drawings and plans of 
the Tantra Museum in 
New Delhi and DCM 
Mandarin Hotel in New 
Delhi; the structural 
system of the Kanvinde 
Residence in New Delhi 
relies on a combination 
of a reinforced concrete 
frame with slender 
columns concealed 
within load-bearing, 
exposed brick masonry 
walls. The visual 
expression is one of 
exposed brickwork 
in Flemish bond 
accentuated by exposed 
concrete, used sparingly
348 349
1990–2002Achyut Kanvinde
1 Concept model.
2 Shikhara studies.
1
2
1
2
1 Form of the shikharas visible through the 
framework of the Sabha Mandap roof, 
finished in white cement concrete.
2 Aerial view of the structure under construction.
CONFETTI56domus 66 October 2017
The MPKV campus was initiated by the government of 
Maharashtra as a university for agricultural sciences on an 
undulating, 3,200-hectare site. The campus accommodates 
teaching facilities, and staff and student housing as also 
experimental research farms. Planned for 5,000 students, 
the campus comprises facilities for the agricultural sciences, 
agricultural engineering, agriculture technology, veterinary 
science, and home science. 
The intent of the master plan was to provide a physical setting 
that would foster interaction between the various disciplines, 
enable flexibility in response to changing academic demands, 
and establish a framework for future growth. The resultant built 
form, with its variety and contrast, creates an environment 
complementary to its natural setting.
The layout broadly divides the campus into two contiguous 
zones – the Academic Block and student housing on one side 
and staff housing on the other, both linked to a linear activity 
spine, off which functions such as the library, administration, 
a student centre, an open air theatre, and other community 
facilities are located.
The academic spine fronts onto a series of three-storey faculty 
clusters that house various disciplines. A covered two-level 
pedestrian corridor typically links the clusters through enclosed 
and semi-enclosed courts, with stilted areas on the ground floor 
serving as informal interaction spaces. The intimate scale of the 
courts is in response to the harsh climate of the region.
A reinforced concrete frame structure is adopted for the 
academic area, with exposed stone masonry walls on the 
ground floor and lighter plastered sand-faced brick walls for the 
upper floors. The splayed beam profile designed for carrying 
laboratory services is expressed as a consistent element on the 
facade of the academic area. Exposed concrete is limited to 
the structural elements of the main corridor.
Mahatma Phule Krishi Vidyapeeth
MPKV, Rahuri
1970–1975
166 167
1970–1980Achyut Kanvinde
The two-storey housing typology is planned as linear blocks off a 
pedestrian street, punctuated by courts. The hostel cluster is planned 
in the form of linear S-shaped blocks with singly loaded corridors and 
toilets located at either end, creating a series of linked, common 
courts between them. The structure of both hostels and housing is 
load-bearing random rubble masonry with balconies and sunshades in 
exposed concrete.
1 The Academic Block under construction.
2 Sketch showing the housing cluster with 
units bridging over the pedestrian street.
3 External facade of staff housing in 
random rubble masonry with exposed 
concrete sunshades and balconies.
4 The hostel cluster.
5 Dining Hall complex.
1
2
3
4
5
4
168 169
y
1 Splayed beam profiles define the 
character of the academic cluster.
2 Intimate, semi-enclosed courts in the cluster.
3 Library
4 Elevated walkway connecting various faculties.
1
2
4
3
Structure : Engineering Consultants India
 Phatak and Damle
Electrical : Lirio Lopez
 Kanwar Krishen Associates
Public health : S.G. Deolalikar
HVAC : N.C. Gupta
This page, from top: a 
layout of the Mahatma 
Phule Krishi Vidyapeeth, 
Rahuri, divides the 
campus into two 
continuous zones — the 
academic block and 
student housing on one 
side, and staff housing 
on the other, both linked 
to a linear activity spine; 
a spread from the book 
shows the various 
stages of construction 
of the MPKV in Rahuri; 
section and site plans of 
the structure 
Opposite page: the 
campus of the MPKV 
comprises splayed beam 
profiles that define the
character of the 
academic cluster, 
intimate, semi-enclosed 
courts in the cluster, 
and elevated walkways 
connecting the 
various faculties
CONFETTI 57domus 66 October 2017
A
ll 
P
ho
to
gr
ap
hs
 o
n 
th
is
 p
ag
e 
by
 P
ra
tik
 P
er
an
e
CONFETTI58 domus 66 October 2017
CONSTRUCTING A LANGUAGE OF THE MODERN
A recent exhibition curated by Ram Rahman aptly documents the 
creation of iconic architectural spaces during the era of the Nehruvian 
State — which began when India was at the threshold of development 
and modernisation — reflecting upon their unique structural logic and 
the close ties between architecture and nation-building projects
Text Ram Rahman, Vishal K Dar
Delhi: Building the Modern 
showcases key architects and 
buildings which defined modern 
architecture in Delhi in the Nehruvian 
years (1950-1975), Habib Rahman, 
Achyut Kanvinde, Joseph Stein, Raj 
Rewal, Kuldip Singh, JK Chowdhury, 
and engineer Mahendra Raj feature 
in it. The exhibit was assembled 
around the existing collection in the 
Kiran Nadar Museum of Art’s modern 
architecture photographs of Delhi 
by Madan Mahatta. Those had been 
acquired from an earlier show I had 
curated at Photoink Gallery.
I built the exhibit around those 
photographs by getting original 
models from the architects of those 
buildings in the photographs — Raj 
Rewal, Kuldip Singh and Kanvinde, 
Rai and Chowdhury. Mahendra Raj 
had been consulting engineer for 
almost all those buildings, and I 
was able to get many engineering 
drawings of those projects. My 
intention was to show the creation of 
the buildings from inside the gut — as 
it were. Most of the models and none 
of the drawings had been shown in 
public before.
I added many photographs of his 
own buildings by the architect 
Habib Rahman, particularly of early 
buildings and housing from the 
1950s and early 1960s. Issues 
of Design magazine have been 
displayed in vitrines showing the 
remarkable range of design and 
criticism which was an important 
part of the discourse in the period. 
Design published critiques of many 
of the buildings on display along with 
essays on textile, industrial, furniture 
design, as well as art criticism. 
Wall murals done by MF Husain and 
Satish Gujral were an important part 
of these buildings and connect the 
opening architecture section with 
the galleries which follow, especially 
of Husain’s paintings and drawings 
from the1950s. The architecture 
section expands the history of 
Indian modernism and folds into the 
developed analysis of modern art in 
India, architecture never having been 
a part of the received history.
Ram Rahman
CONFETTI 59domus 66 October 2017
This spread: The exhibition 
Delhi: Building the Modern 
brings together a corpus of 
pioneering spaces designed 
and engineered by seminal 
architects which defined 
modern architecture in the 
capital city, highlighing the 
processes behind these 
projects and their detailed 
manual renderings
CONFETTI60 domus 66 October 2017
A LANGUAGE SPOKEN IN WHISPERS
Among the key issues that the makers of the 
Constitution of India had to deal with was India’s 
feudal set-up, which had severely affected the 
country’s social fabric. The Indian Government 
introduced many land reforms, and among these, 
the Zamindari Abolition Act (1951) became the 
first major agrarian reform. 
In the opening section of Stretched Terrains, 
Ram Rahman (co-curator) lays out, in capsules, a 
playground of photographs, architectural models, 
and engineering drawings, as a diorama of 
wonders, with an Future-of-the-World Expo-like 
feel. The title of his section is Delhi: Building the 
Modern, showcasing key architects and their built 
works which defined Delhi’s modern architecture 
during the Nehruvian years.
Gazing at the miniature field of drawings, models 
and photographs, it felt like I was back in my 
architecture school. At the very beginning of the 
exhibition, I found myself face to face with a scale-
model of architect Raj Rewal’s The State Trading 
Corporation built of solid wood, a materialthat is 
no longer in use for professional model-making. 
This ‘mini-box’ of wonders, with lift-off roof sections 
gives you a peek into the interior labyrinthine 
spaces. Surrounding it were an array information 
panels, tracing early Modern Architecture in Delhi. 
Ram builds a concise introduction with a handful 
of projects from the 1950s to make visible the 
beginning of the first generation of architects of 
Modern India. Both Achyut Kanvinde and Habib 
Rahman, who were taught by Walter Gropius, built 
projects that have the Bauhaus influence with 
regional twists. I would also like to mention here 
that almost all projects in this exhibition are public 
buildings and the entire array suggests that in this 
period of Delhi’s development, the government was 
the biggest builder with a vision.
CONFETTI 61domus 66 October 2017
This spread: The 
scenography of the 
exhibition includes 
wide-shot photographs 
illustrating the making 
of, as well as the 
majestic interiors of the 
New Delhi Municipal 
Council Building and 
the now-demolished 
Hall of Nations along 
with their corresponding 
architectural models and 
engineering drawings
CONFETTI62 domus 66 October 2017
Now looking at the placement of The State 
Trading Corporation scale-model (sitting in the 
centre of the room) I was interested in knowing 
how its own grid had a connect with the larger 
grid of the national imagination (suggested by 
this brief infographic timeline). The project that 
immediately caught my attention was a short note 
on Nehru’s International Exhibition on Low-Cost 
Housing (1954). Nehru wanted India to free itself 
from the imperial influence and move towards the 
egalitarian, and this was a major step forward for a 
country with a residue of imperial buildings and no 
housing projects post independence. 
From the panel:
“One of Habib Rahman’s first responsibilities at 
the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) 
after moving to Delhi was managing this ambitious 
exhibition which brought in architects and 
engineers from across India and other nations. 
This showcased the importance of cheap utilitarian 
mass housing which Nehru was determined to 
project. The site next to Purana Qila became the 
permanent exhibition grounds for trade 
and industry.”
The image of the International Exhibition on 
Low-Cost Housing triggered a memory (from 
my teenage years) — the very last frames of Raj 
Kapoor’s film Shree 420 (1955) where he and 
Nargis star as the leading pair, with the sorry fate 
of society as the backdrop (cinephile moment#1).
Kapoor plays his Chaplin-esque character of a 
young jobless man, who comes to the city with a 
Bachelor’s degree and a positive attitude, only to 
be corrupted by the greed of the wealthy and their 
Ponzi housing scheme — Janta Ghar. In the last 
reels of the film, Kapoor delivers a monologue to 
his fellow street dwellers, who had invested their 
savings in order to have a roof over their heads.
“ab aap apne aap ko bhi dekh leejiye
kyon kehta hai ki aap gareeb hein,
bekaar aur beghar hein,
aaj aap mein se har ek ke pass ek crore satter lakh 
rupia hai 
wahi rupia jo maine aap ko janta ghar ka kwaab 
dikha ke jama kiya tha
mein apko dhoka dena nahin chahta
aap logon ko ekkhta karna chahta hoon
agar aap chahen to apna sau sau rupia wapis le 
sakte hein
CONFETTI 63domus 66 October 2017
Trishul (1978) Dir. Yash Chopra / Trimurti Films
Zee Classic / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1lvY0SpTd4
This spread: Images from 
the exhibition showcasing 
photographs by Madan 
Mahatta as well as models 
and detailed drawings of 
iconic buildings that defined 
modern architecture in Delhi 
during the Nehruvian years 
(1950-1975)
This page, below: screen grabs 
from the film Trishul (1978)
CONFETTI64 domus 66 October 2017
magar meri maniye toh apni daulat ko yoon 
lootaiye nahin
apni taquat ko ghataiye nahin
sau sau rupye mein kabhi kisi ka ghar nahin ban 
sakta
magar dedh crore rupye mein lakhon ghar ban 
sakte hein
agar aap apni goverment se ja ke ye kahen
ki yeh raha dedh crore rupia 
aur hum lakhon aadmi ki himmat aur mazdoori hai
hume zameen do hum apne ghar khud banayenge”
The closing scene of the fi lm has a low-cost public 
housing in its background as a promise of the good 
times to come.
With that somewhat happy memory I move onto 
the most defi ned segment in the exhibition, and 
one must say the most striking — the Hall of 
Nations (born in 1972; demolished in 2017). 
“a visionary conceptual and technical masterwork...
literally handcrafted in reinforced concrete by 
workers using very simple tools.”
Ram delicately stitches together Madan Mahatta’s 
photographs, never-seen-before engineering 
drawings by Mahendra Raj and an exquisite space 
frame model of the now-demolished structure by 
architect Raj Rewal. Along with these visionary 
drawings, Mahatta’s photo-documents vary in both 
form and personality. Some show how the 
space-frame structure was produced in-situ 
and others suggest a more cinematic emotion 
of a grand dream of imagining our own Modern. 
Mahatta must have been commissioned by the 
architect’s offi ce to photo-document the entire 
construction process of the largest in-situ space-
frame in the world. 
Ram collages some of these pictures with 
Mahendra Raj’s exquisite drawings that speak a 
language of technical mastery in both conceptual 
and mathematical understanding of structure, as 
well as architectural draftsmanship. The layout 
of Mahendra Raj’s drawings and Madan Mahatta 
photo-documents is very organic. It was 
interesting to note that these documents could 
speak about the building in the absence of 
architectural drawing(s).
While looking at the photographs, the climax 
of Yash Chopra multi-starrer Trishul (1978), 
which was shot in the interiors of this structure, 
immediately comes to my mind (cinephile 
moment#2). The night-time scene starts with 
somewhat expressionist lighting, casting ominous 
shadows, and moves into a full-blown action 
sequence with cars driving through entrance 
glass panels, fi st-fi ghting, and gun-slinging. And 
in this mise-en-scene, the deep dramatic voices 
of Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjeev Kumar make 
roaring echoes of two rival builders of New Delhi. 
Architectural photography, in my view, is all about 
scalar and volumetric emotions of both the building 
and its site. When Ram lays out the project, he 
does so in a storyboard format. You see the wide 
shots along with the majestic interiors of the Hall 
of Nations, which moves into silhouettes of the 
space-frame in progress with reinforcements 
bars being bent into position all the way to a cast 
concrete module, possibly produced for structural 
testing. These photographs can no longer be 
viewed in the same context as opposed to when 
they were fi rst commissioned. 
Ram also layers his scenography by blowing up 
some of these photographs to large-scale prints, 
strategically placing them so that they can speak 
of the grand visions that they had once captured, 
as well as become an extension to the exhibition’s 
landscape; corners open up into the city grids. 
Further into the exhibition, there is a photograph 
of Architect Joseph Allen Stein’s Escorts Factory 
(1964). It’s a marvelous moment. A perfect frame 
Shree 420 (1955) Dir. Raj Kapoor/RK Films
Shemaroo Entertainment LTD / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPLr46wm5Jc
This page, clockwise 
from left: an excerpt from 
the opening remarks by 
Jawaharlal Nehru at the 
International Exhibition on 
Low-Cost Housing, New 
Delhi (1954); screen grabs 
from the film Shree 420 
(1955); an archival image 
of a model village at the 
International Exhibition on 
Low-Cost Housing
CONFETTI 65domus 66 October 2017
This page, clockwise 
from top-left: Inside 
the Escorts FactoryIII (1965), architect: 
Joseph Allen Stein; 
Shriram Centre 
(1968), architect: Shiv 
Nath Prasad; Inside 
the Escorts Factory 
I (1964), architect: 
Joseph Allen Stein
C
ou
rt
es
y:
 M
ad
an
 M
ah
at
ta
 A
rc
hi
ve
s 
an
d 
P
H
O
TO
IN
K
C
ou
rt
es
y:
 M
ad
an
 M
ah
at
ta
 A
rc
hi
ve
s 
an
d 
P
H
O
TO
IN
K
C
ou
rt
es
y:
 M
ad
an
 M
ah
at
ta
 A
rc
hi
ve
s 
an
d 
P
H
O
TO
IN
K
CONFETTI66 domus 66 October 2017
of a bright new factory space without its workforce. 
A space so pristine that it somehow becomes 
place-less. Had it not been for the caption, I could 
have mistaken it for a space from the glorious days 
of industrial Detroit. Somehow this photograph 
reminded me that Architecture is a language 
spoken in whispers. 
My most favorite photograph in the exhibition of 
the India International Centre’s stairwell. Mahatta 
shoots top-down, with Architect J.A. Stein in mid-
frame, ascending the concrete folded steps and 
with the hint of the photographer’s shoes caught 
in the foreground. The picture looks like it’s a shot 
straight out of a Hitchcock film. 
Norman Forster : I’m curious Zaha, I mean how 
do you view drawing as such, sketching. Is that 
important to you?
Zaha Hadid : I find that very important. I do.
Norman Forster : Are you critical that newer 
generations of architects are perhaps less 
dependent or more...
Zaha Hadid : They can’t do it anymore. in the same 
way that they can’t write (pause) a sentence. They 
can’t do it.
[From the panel discussion Zaha Hadid: Beyond 
Boundaries, Art and Design (https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=6rtMRwj0DPI)]
Interestingly, this exhibition does not include a 
single architectural drawing, and only brings to 
focus through the presentation of engineering 
drawing the coded language shared within a 
closed group of practitioners. Engineering and 
structural drawings are like X-rays of buildings 
made before they are built. They are mathematical 
diagrams of how to make that which constantly 
defies gravity. Most viewers will look at these 
engineering drawings as complex computational 
diagrams. You see, when architects draw lines, 
those lines have a very specific code. They speak 
of material, depth, dimension, and a shift in levels. 
They speak of a textural skin. The weight of a 
line has meaning and this meaning is only visible 
to those eye that have studied this language of 
representation. It’s a code that not everyone 
can decipher. 
Mahendra Raj’s engineering drawings continue to 
expand the imagery of ever-evolving architecture 
of ideas. These exquisite drawings hint at the 
constructability of the unbuildable. They also gently 
hint at the vanishing techniques of draftsmanship 
and the memory of places gone forever. While 
stepping out, I thought to myself ‘this really exists 
and it has already happened’. 
This page, top: 
Hotel for NDMC at 
Chanakyapuri (Akbar 
Hotel), Drawing no. 
31.DH.18A: Framing 
Plan at ele. +14’- 
4”& +17’-4” (Tower 
portion),1967; bottom: 
Ministry of Foreign 
Trade (Hall of Nations), 
Drawing no. 101.ITF.65: 
Reinf. layout at lvl 7&8, 
1971/1972 
Opposite page, 
clockwise from top: 
Hotel for NDMC at 
C
ol
le
ct
io
n 
an
d 
en
gi
ne
er
in
g 
dr
aw
in
g:
 M
ah
en
dr
a 
R
aj
Chanakyapuri (Akbar 
Hotel), Drawing no. 
31.DH.20: Details of 
elev +14’-4” & +17’-
4”, (Tower portion) 
- 2, 1967; Images of 
the Hall of Nations 
— engineered by 
Mahendra Raj — 
while it was being 
built; Ministry of 
Foreign Trade (Hall 
of Nations), Drawing 
no. 101.ITF.193, Reinf. 
details, typ. 9 member 
joint, 1972C
ol
le
ct
io
n 
an
d 
en
gi
ne
er
in
g 
dr
aw
in
g:
 M
ah
en
dr
a 
R
aj
CONFETTI 67domus 66 October 2017
The exhibition Delhi: Building the Modern held at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, from February 3 - July 31, 2017 — curated by 
artist and photographer Ram Rahman — comprised a rare collection of original models and engineering drawings along with photographs 
from the last five decades of the 20th century. Featuring Habib Rahman, Achyut Kanvinde, Joseph Stein, Raj Rewal, Kuldip Singh, JK 
Chowdhury, and engineer Mahendra Raj, the exhibit also contextualised the modern cultural moment with a display of original copies of 
Design magazine published by Patwant Singh, and the public murals on government buildings done by MF Husain and Satish Gujral. This 
connects to the adjoining display of a rare large collection of works by Husain from the1950s. 
Delhi: Building the Modern was a segment within the exhibition Stretched Terrains curated by the Museum’s Director Roobina Karode.
C
ol
le
ct
io
n 
an
d 
en
gi
ne
er
in
g 
dr
aw
in
g:
 M
ah
en
dr
a 
R
aj
C
ol
le
ct
io
n 
an
d 
en
gi
ne
er
in
g 
dr
aw
in
g:
 M
ah
en
dr
a 
R
aj
P
ho
to
gr
ap
h 
by
 H
el
la
ns
 In
du
st
ria
l &
 P
ic
to
ria
l P
ho
to
gr
ap
he
rs
P
ho
to
gr
ap
h 
by
 H
el
la
ns
 In
du
st
ria
l &
 P
ic
to
ria
l P
ho
to
gr
ap
he
rs
CONFETTI68 domus 66 October 2017
SPACES OF BELONGING
A selection of photographs of a house nestled in an Art Deco-style 
building in a leafy by-lane in Mumbai brings forth the vividly tactile 
and spatial qualities that go beyond a vacuous built environment and 
focuses instead on the life that inhabits the space
Text Kaiwan Mehta, Samira Rathod 
Photos Pankaj Anand 
Kaiwan Mehta: What led you to this 
photographic exploration of your own house, 
designed a while ago?
Samira Rathod: Photographs are an extension 
of our real experiences, lived at some moment, 
and these moments then preserved in print to 
reminiscence that time in space. When pictures of 
homes are presented without people, they seem 
like empty carcasses; hollow and lifeless, as if 
the space’s only objective was to be showcased, 
the space itself objectified. With this photo 
essay, I have reversed the narrative, which whilst 
makes the space its subject, but not without the 
suggestion of life inhabiting it. 
Homes are a reflection of the owners’ personality, 
and its paraphernalia creates the backdrop for its 
characters and the performance of daily routine. 
Design enhances this performance, transforming 
its banality into the extraordinary of the ordinary, in 
some sort of a hyperbolic metaphor. 
Showing pictures without people is like looking 
at a stage set at the beginning of play, when the 
curtains are just being drawn up and the lights 
have come on, the cacophony of the audience 
slowly hushing down to that weighed silence of 
CONFETTI 69domus 66 October 2017
anticipation, waiting for the act to begin but 
instead that’s where the play ends; as if, that itself 
was the act! 
I didn’t want the house to be merely seen as an 
outside act, of objects arranged for a still life 
painting, but instead a museum of memories; a 
collection of small stories, of our home and the 
way we have nestled into it and the way it cocoons 
us all — cuddled like a baby in grandma’s all-
encompassing cradled lap.
Every act is a conversation, the speaker and the 
listener constantly switching roles. As architects, 
we often tend to forget that our buildings and its 
occupants have a life and a voice of their own, 
and that we are always in conversation with them. 
Making houses is like raising a child who, with 
time, begins to breathe its own life, and fill all our 
living moments. 
The house is a dynamic, always-changing fluid 
composition that enables life itself. 
 
KM: The photos produce a spatial journeythrough the house — was this a review of your 
own design ideas?
SR: Yes. My design processes do not begin with 
This spread: Located on 
the ground floor, and 
overlooking a garden 
surrounded by trees, the 
house is not merely a 
space that holds objects 
but that which captures 
the beauty and thrum of 
the quotidian 
CONFETTI70 domus 66 October 2017
CONFETTI 71domus 66 October 2017
a set of loose adjectives that describe its various 
objects, but rather like a dreamy act of being within 
it, a haiku; an imagination of desires transferred to 
an inception.
I like to think about how one will sleep; what is the 
first thing one sees when they wake up; what will 
the floor feel like to the bare feet; is the 
room quietening, or does it seek my constant 
attention; and so on with the many metaphors 
and poetic phrases of cinematic quality forming 
vignettes that are then melded seamlessly to make 
the built environment. 
The house must fit me and all of us, like we would 
in our Sunday dress; casual, candid, unpretentious 
and easy. I like to think of it like writing a script, 
for every act, every frame defined, and made into 
a beautiful painting… such that the now-ness of 
routine moments is the primary agenda and all that 
should matter.
 
KM: There is a poetic and sensual approach in 
capturing the breadth and pulse of the spaces 
and the elements that articulate those spaces. 
Is this, in any way, a reflection on, or mirroring 
of, or reviewing your own design process?
SR: I believe that I have the birthright to enjoy all 
things beautiful, and that all things must only be 
beautiful. Here, ‘beautiful’ is that which is done 
well with efficacy and care. The programme and 
the proper operation that it facilitates is certainly 
a given. When we are able to add to it, that which 
invokes a higher experience, and engages our 
mind into another dialogue of interpretation, it is 
called design. 
As an office we are committed to the idea of 
beauty, and strive and struggle to create beautiful 
experiences through the design of buildings, the 
spaces and the objects they will hold — to be 
used as a sensual experience — of touch, of light 
and dark, of sounds and smells; a composition of 
textural spatiality that is fluid and dynamic... 
A building is not architecture without poesy, and its 
primary programme is one to enunciate 
delight, to invoke and celebrate emotion, even if 
it is in melancholy. These pictures were taken to 
reiterate that idea, and communicate that process 
of design. The way we advocate living delightfully 
— as vivid compositions, like an unflinching sharp 
note of the crescendo that rises, resonates and 
reverberates, as if savouring taste of old wine. 
This spread: Special 
care was taken in the 
detailing of every aspect 
of the home — including 
drawers, door knoobs 
and handles, and the 
edges and corners of the 
furniture — designed by 
The Big Piano
CONFETTI72 domus 66 October 2017
KM: What is the journey of design — from 
the design process to a post-occupancy 
exploration of the design?
SR: Design is like creating a jazz composition. 
A lot of instruments, several small phrases, 
sound experiments that slowly get strung, often 
unconventional, and set to an abstract metre that 
often has no predictable rhythm. The process, as 
the final experience of the design, is never linear, 
leading to a climax, but that which moves laterally, 
circumscribing perimeters of the spaces with an 
ability to revisit and recall both in process and 
experience. This involves rigorous drawing and 
redrawing, inspecting elements, measuring and 
qualifying every possible performance in the space, 
and adding that cinematic quality of the perfect 
scene in every possible use of the space. 
Our work is infused with details, often one that 
may be judged as redundant if one was using 
optimum functionality and efficiency as the 
measuring yardstick, but not from that which we 
set ourselves to achieve — create delight in 
routine acts.
We hope to to create memories, to sediment layers 
of engagement over the palimpsest of ideas. We 
work to evolve in its final experience, not one 
simplistic discernible entity but a complex context 
that allows a sense of nostalgia. 
This spread: The 
photographs capture 
the play of light and 
shadows within the 
space, almost creating 
vignettes that meld 
seamlessly to make the 
built environment
CONFETTI 73domus 66 October 2017
CONFETTI74 domus 66 October 2017
IN THIS ROOM, THE POEMS COME AND GO
This section is inspired by the knowledge that poetry and architecture have never 
been far apart. Poets have responded to the elegance of architecture; architects to 
the cadence of poetry. The word ‘stanza’ lies at the heart of both disciplines: a basic 
unit for organising a poem, it is the Italian for ‘room’. This month, we present a suite 
of poems from Tishani Doshi’s new book, Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods. These 
poems are replete with the sensual experience of the coast, that osmotic membrane 
between land and sea. As she invites us into the textures of beach, wind and tide, 
Doshi also unfolds the human drama of being on the cusp, at the edge, at large, at bay.
Section curated by Ranjit Hoskote
Poems by Tishani Doshi
Summer in Madras
Everyone in the house is dying. 
Mother in an air-conditioned room
cannot hear as rivers break their dams
against her nerves. Father stalks verandas,
offering pieces of his skin to the rows of lurid
gulmohars. Husband tries to still the advancing
armies of the past by stuffing his ears with desiccated 
mango husks. And brother? Brother is most lackadaisical of all.
He opens the door. Takes death’s umbrella. Taps it this way and that. Sings.
Rain at Three
Rain at three splits the bed in half, 
cracks at windows like horsemen blistering 
through a century of hibernation. 
The washing’s on the line. 
There are pillows in the grass.
All the weeds we pulled up yesterday
lie in clotted heaps, dying slowly.
We sleep with pumiced, wooden 
bodies — mud-caked, mud-brown, 
listening to the fan-whir sea-heave 
of our muscled Tamil Nadu nights. 
We turn inwards 
announce how patiently
we’ve waited for this uprooting. 
Now that damaged petals of hibiscus 
drown the terrace stones, 
we must kneel together and gather. 
This is how desire works: 
splintering first, then joining.
CONFETTI 75domus 66 October 2017
Fear Management
Say it is dawn on the beach 
and you are without the dogs.
Up ahead, a row of fishermen.
Legs like pins, tomb-sized chests,
leaning back on their heels to haul. 
Say they are making noises at you.
A sideways kind of sound designed
to entice a small, brainless creature
into a corner before smashing it 
underfoot. And above their noise,
the rattle of boats thudding across water,
bee-eaters, the despair of an early 
morning dream, where you relinquished 
your life as if it were of no consequence. 
All you can see is the sun, orange and whole,
rising like a guillotine into the sky. Beneath,
an ocean’s regurgitations —
 orphaned slippers,
 styrofoam, fossil of crab, 
and the fishermen dragging their nets
against the lip of all this 
with their ceaseless, cooing threats.
When so much can be vanished
so silently into the dark teeth of sleep,
tell me, wouldn’t you fear for your life?
What it is. What it might become. 
Abandon
There must be a word for a person 
who longs to run into the eye 
of a storm, a word for every tree
that lies slaughtered on the streets
after a cyclone. A word like lachrymose
or pulmonary. A word for they have left
you alone to face your doom. In Aleppo. 
In Aleppo. I cannot speak of Aleppo. 
Only that it is the opposite of breath. 
There must be a word for the walk 
home at night. Your belongings in two bags,
feet in mud. Fora family thinking they will return.
Maybe the house still stands. Maybe the sea. 
The dead leave no clues about what lies beyond.
We call it eternal. We call it now. 
This page: ‘Riverbank 
I’ by Ravi Agarwal, 
photographic inkjet 
print, 60 x 40 inches, 
2007; opposite page: 
‘Flowers on the 
riverbank’ by Ravi 
Agarwal, from the series 
Have you seen the 
flowers on the river? 
photographic inkjet 
print, 11 x 16 inches 
(each), 2007
CONFETTI76 domus 66 October 2017
Coastal Life 
It takes years of coastal living to understand 
that you are the lifeless Malacca snake 
discarded from the fisherman’s net, 
buried in sand. That you are connected 
to the million ephemera wings, clogging 
the balcony drains. That seasons will bring
rotting carapace of turtle, decapitated
tree frogs, acres of slain mosquitoes.
All night the electricity surges and stops, 
smothering wires and fuses, while lizards
plop. The resident mouse leaves imprints
of his teeth in banana skins, knowing 
that soon, quite soon, he will succumb
to the poisoned biscuits we lay out for him.
Underground — roots of bougainvillea 
delicately throttle the water pipes, 
and as if sensing this menace, the dogs, 
uneasy in sleep, move their frantic legs 
against concrete in pursuit of a chicken. 
Even the doorjambs, plump with rain, 
know that something is coming to prise 
open our caskets, unhinge us with salt. 
We can latch all the windows and doors 
but the sea still hears us, moves towards
our bodies, our beds — hoarsely, 
under guidance of the moon, with green
and white frothy arms to garland us,
with pins to mount the beasts of our lives
against a filigreed blanket of rust. 
Portrait of the Poet as a Reclining God
Don’t make much of the fact that recline
rhymes with decline. Do it anyway. 
Stretch out sideways. Think Titian’s
Venus, but with clothes. Better still,
think Hindu gods. Press mound
of palm up to lake of ear. Imagine 
legs of blue, legs of Vishnu,
serpent skin susurrating against
your back. Belly? Could there be any
doubt? Ganesha. Breasts or no breasts,
that is the question. Ardhanarishvara.
Grow serious as we sweep towards
the eyes. Focus inwards, Avalokiteshvara. 
Cradle that palm against your ear as if 
it were a telephone. Whisper into the velvet
air: Hello heart! You still there? 
These poems appear in Tishani Doshi’s latest book, 
released last month, Girls Are Coming Out of the 
Woods (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2017) 
All photographs by Ravi Agarwal, published here 
with the permission of the artist. 
Below: ‘Salt Pan’ 
by Ravi Agarwal, 
photographic inkjet 
print, 36 x 103 
inches, 2016
 PROJECTS
PROJECTS78 domus 66 October 2017
PROJECTS 79domus 66 October 2017
Conceived in multiple shredded layers, the Shadow House in Alibaug unravels 
myriad spaces, each rendered in a different intonation of light. These layers of the 
contemporary architectural envelope articulate the structure’s tectonic vocabulary 
— both for its design and landscape. Re-establishing a relation with the immediate 
outdoors, the living experience is designed to be gentle, dark, and quiet, with its 
hierarchy of volumes and spatial textures
Text Sonal Sundararajan 
Photos Edmund Sumner 
TRACES AND PRESENCES
IN THE HOUSE OF SHADOWS
Samira Rathod Design Associates
PROJECTS80 domus 66 October 2017
Previous spread: 
The architecture of 
the space does not 
rigidly confine itself 
to strict, well-defined 
geometries but 
comprises several 
interstices and 
overlapping layers
This spread: Sited 
between two 
trees on a plot 
at the foothills 
of Sahangaon, 
Alibaug, the house 
has an overarching 
low-slung roof and 
living spaces that 
surround a half-
bound courtyard 
Below: landscape 
plan of the plot
LANDSCAPE PLAN
PROJECTS 81domus 66 October 2017
Our homes in the city, efficient 
and hygienic, are spaces of 
transparency and light — 
exorcised of dust and darkness 
— and of mystery. As a counter 
to this, the ‘weekend home’ on 
the outskirts is a retreat from 
the functional time of the city 
and as its primary programme, 
it has the encounter between the 
body and the space of nature. 
There is an inherent opposition 
between architecture and nature, 
as architecture in its first impulse 
is the ordering of nature to its 
own demands. They also embody 
two opposing senses of time 
and space. One contrives to be 
unchanging and solid, while the 
other is characterised by growth 
and change. The house of shadows 
by SRDA, is configured around 
a tension, between the order of 
an architectural type and its 
encounter with the landscape. 
It is a mixed space, gathering 
into itself, traces of encounters 
between the landscape and the 
body that takes pleasure in it. 
On her blog, Samira describes 
her visits to the site. “By habit, I 
always go around the site when 
under construction, and find my 
quiet happy moments, after the 
haul of a gusty site meeting. This 
time, with the camera at hand, the 
building began to offer moments. A 
delightful serendipity of callously 
arranged objects, mostly building 
materials, soaked in the afternoon 
light, abstractions of stillness.” 
Perhaps the photograph can 
be used as a metaphor for the 
receptivity of the spaces and 
surfaces of the house to absorb 
incidental traces as memories of 
encounters with the landscape.
The photograph is always a 
memory object, always denoting 
a lost moment and a presence. 
“It is the order of the natural 
world that imprints itself on 
the photographic emulsion…..
it is nothing but a presence (one 
must continually keep in mind 
the magical character of the 
photographic image). Its reality is 
that of having-been-there, because 
in all photographs is the amazing 
evidence this took place in this 
PROJECTS82 domus 66 October 2017
PROJECTS 83domus 66 October 2017
way.” Photographs, like footprints, 
scratches, have a presence of the 
real, unlike other kinds of images. 
They are impressions of light, 
captured over surfaces, marking 
the existence of real objects, 
moments, presences or absences. 
In this way, they are similar to 
shadows, as impressions of objects, 
as light upon surfaces. The blurred 
shapes of shadows also shift with 
the light, marking the passage of 
time, the movement of the sun — a 
cosmic time and space. 
The house uses light and shadow 
to form spaces, becoming a filter 
through which space is carved out 
as a play of light and darkness. 
It attempts to incorporate the 
pleasures of the chance encounter, 
of the play of associations that 
shadows generate, into the spatial 
experience of the house. Although 
the logistics of construction do not 
permit the processes of making to 
be as itinerant as transitory as a 
walk through the landscape or a 
moment of encounter, the design 
process deploys a rigorous and 
immersive process of layering to 
turn these into spatial experiences 
within the house. It uses the 
imprints of site, of atmosphere, of 
future inhabitations to infuse the 
space of dwelling with memory 
and desire. The light that suffuses 
the house, the marks over floors, 
walls, are like a double exposure. 
They imprint the memory of the 
atmosphere and textures on site, 
and mix them up with its time 
and space. The solidity of material 
overlaid is with the wavering, 
ephemeral patterns of light, 
colour, and texture. The marks, 
like the traces of inhabitation, of 
weathering in architectural ruins, 
create a space of reverie 
and contemplation. 
The house is organised around 
the filtering of the harsh light, 
a sheltering from the barren 
unforgiving landscape, in a 
series of layers that surround a 
courtyard. This courtyard, divides 
neatly the rectangular plan into 
a U-shaped configuration, with 
the kitchenas a long finger the 
extends to the pool on the eastern 
corner, the bar containing the 
bedrooms and corridor to the 
south and the living room facing 
the hills to the west. Despite 
the simplicity of the plan, 
the variations in volume and 
proportions of each space, the 
opacity and transparency of skins 
between them, break up the house 
into spaces that offer different 
experiences, of volume and of 
the landscape. 
On its southern edge, the thick 
concrete wall forms the first 
layer. You approach its blankness 
through a path that bisects the 
expanse of tall grass that fronts it, 
past the tree that casts its shadow 
across it. 
The layers organise zones of 
modulated light. The concrete 
boxes of the rooms are split apart 
This spread: The house 
is designed akin to a 
sieve, through which 
ample light is filtered 
and draped into its 
hollows and crevices, 
gradually unravelling the 
beauty of its spaces
PROJECTS84 domus 66 October 2017
A
A
A
18
17
16
15
12
19
14
13
B
A
B
6
510
2
4
11
3
98
7
B B
Entrance Foyer
Courtyard
Living Room
Dining Room
Kitchen and Extended Bar
Powder Room
Guest Bedroom
Guest Bathroom
Store Room
Swimming Pool
Verandah
Bridge
Master Bedroom
Master Bathroom
Study Alcove
Kids Bedroom
Kids Bathroom
Terrace 
Terrace 2
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
GROUND FLOOR
FIRST FLOOR
0 10M
0 2000
Project 
The Shadow House
Location 
Sahangaon, Alibaug
Client 
Dipak Gupta 
Architect 
Samira Rathod
Design team 
Samira Rathod Design 
Associates
Site Area 
1.2 acres
Project Area 
5000 ft2
Civil Contractors 
Rameshwar Bhadhwa,
Hasnain Kadiani
Carpenter 
Jeevaram Suthar
Landscape Contractor
Ariff Abdulla
Project Manager
Girish Bhadra
Structural Engineers
Rajiv Shah and Associates
Services:
Plumbing and Electrical Consultant –
Hydrotech Consultant 
HVAC –HTL Aircon Pvt Ltd. 
Swimming Pool Consultant –
Parapools & Spa
Site Supervision
Prasadrao
Model-maker
SRDA
Initiation of Project
2014
Completion of project
2017
Photographs
Edmund Sumner
1
PROJECTS 85domus 66 October 2017
2
12
18
5
19
9
311
1215
2 7
13
SECTION AA
SECTION BB
FRONT ELEVATION
0 2000
PROJECTS86 domus 66 October 2017
to make the courtyard and corridor 
to form layers of opacities and 
filtered light.
The bar of the corridor acts as a 
sieve, cutting up light as it enters 
the home. Its wooden structure 
and the staircase railing scatters 
light, creating overlapped layers 
of forms and shadows as the light 
from the courtyard falls on 
various surfaces. 
The rooms are dark, cave-like 
spaces that you retreat into, 
concrete boxes that are oriented 
by large openings scaled to the 
views when you sit or lie down. 
The body enters into the boxes as 
gestures and attitudes, that mould 
spaces and surfaces to its scale, to 
its touch.
Architecture, in its making of 
space, is a solid, robust thing, 
whereas shadows and the 
movement of light constitute a 
fleeting, liquid presence. Openings 
in the roof, and walls, the filigree 
of structure create patterns of 
light and shadow over surfaces. 
Light enters shredding space and 
scattered by surfaces, carves out 
the dark interiors of the house. 
Surfaces are awash with the 
colours of the landscape: grey, red, 
brown. The pigmented concrete 
floors are coloured or stippled 
unevenly, and the roughened 
concrete walls seem as if they 
are gathering the landscape to 
themselves. The house turns 
from a grey wall to the south to a 
pigmented red concrete towards 
the north. Much like in a painting, 
layer after layer is laid upon each 
other; the walls and structure 
in varying densities of opacity, 
colours, texture, and light. 
The house invites the body to a 
tactile experience, the window a 
square of light marks the position 
for the pleasure of the view. Light 
bathes the body; in the bath 
where you wash yourself, water 
and light both flow over skin and 
surface. The order of the pattern 
over the floor that goes against 
the grid invites the eye to wander 
across its surface as you would 
in a meadow. Surfaces peel and 
mould themselves to gestures 
of the hands, inviting touch. In 
the filtered fleeting light, a space 
suffused with suggestion emerges. 
Spaces, forms, and surfaces are 
layered over with the narratives of 
encounters between the body that 
is to inhabit it and the land that 
has been. What emerges is a 
space that is suffused with traces 
of the body and land and the 
filtered light. 
Samira’s work often 
operationalises the pleasures of 
chance encounters, the narratives 
of desire and the play of the 
erotic. Like the experiments of the 
surrealists in art and literature, 
these tropes attempt to challenge 
and transgress the limits of the 
rational in architecture and 
to unearth the unconscious, 
repressed desires that haunt 
inhabitation. Here in the house 
of shadows, one can imagine 
that if the metaphor for clarity 
and rationality is light, and to 
architecture is given the task of 
laying out an order and casting 
light upon human lives, what lies 
outside this, in dream, in shifting 
memory and desire, may configure 
an architecture of shadows. 
This page: Images of 
the work-in-progress 
stages of the project 
Opposite page: The 
many iterations of the 
sketches and models 
of the structure 
Next spread: 
Architecturally the 
courtyard opens to a 
broad corridor that 
works like a woody 
bridge holding 
a study, under a 
sweeping corten 
steel roof, and ties 
the upper rooms 
into a single floor. 
Materials such as 
steel, concrete, 
and wood are 
choreographed to 
create shadows 
and intrigue
PROJECTS 87domus 66 October 2017
PROJECTS88 domus 66 October 2017
PROJECTS 89domus 66 October 2017
Marco Zanuso PRESS HOUSE, LYDENBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
In the 1970s the Milanese architect designed a house in South Africa. 
Recently rediscovered, it is still relevant with its sensitive yet radical approach. 
The design takes to an extreme Zanuso’s research into an idea of the home fixed 
thirty years ago in the pages of Domus and still valid 
 
Text Andrea Zamboni
Photos Dewald van Helsdingen 
PROJECTS92 domus 66 October 2017
The image was fi xed in August 1942, in Marco 
Zanuso’s fi rst text in response to the appeal 
launched by Domus entitled La casa e l’ideale 
(The house and the ideal). The principle was to 
have “a nucleus, like a cell, that can grow with 
the family; that can follow it as it develops. Life 
unfolds in large, bright spaces; in delimited, snug 
spaces. You sense the continuity throughout: 
in the vertical and the horizontal planes. The 
rooms are not limited environments but spaces 
that continue without interruption through a 
succession of different dimensions. The house 
is built on a single fl oor. The vertical structure, 
consisting of stone walls, anchors the roof, which 
is built as a bridge.”
Opportunity presented itself in 1969. The 
South African magnate Sydney Arnold Press 
(1919-1994) decided to establish with his wife 
Victoria, a model farm in Lydenburg – in the 
then Transvaal, today’s Gauteng – and wanted 
to build the main house in the heart of the huge 
Coromandel estate that he had recently bought. 
The couple, who loved outdoor pursuits, horse-
riding and the study of trees, saw pictures in 
the French weekly Realités of the twin houses 
in Arzachena in Sardinia that Zanuso had 
designed. Free of imitation or allusion, these 
comprised a basic nucleus of spaces set in rugged 
countryside. Zanuso was contacted and accepted 
the commission. He was then invited to an initial 
viewing at Coromandel, which he photographed 
extensivelyto help him choose the ideal position 
for the house. Archive materials include a radex 
map with an enlargement of a topographic chart 
and notes on the consistency of the ground. 
A cross marked in pen anticipates the act of 
founding the house and indicates the site chosen 
– an area of land dominating a plain in the 
slight incline foreshadowing the steeper slopes 
behind. The clients wanted a house divided into 
fi ve parts – a wing for the couple, one for the four 
boys, another for the three girls, a central area for 
receiving guests and rooms for the housekeeping 
staff. In July 1969, on his return from Africa, 
Zanuso prepared an initial design starting from 
the model for the buildings in Arzachena, but the 
size and the structure required by the project 
oriented it towards a long block extended east–
west. It included fi ve uninterrupted parallel 
walls, set at a regular distance of 3.7 metres 
and built from unchiselled basalt in a concrete 
structure. The wall system defi ned the individual 
wings of the building, which was structured by 
groups of rooms following one after the other. The 
central part included four aisles and established 
the nucleus of the structure. From this, spaces 
of decreasing size extended in the opposite 
©
 M
en
dr
is
io
, A
rc
hi
vi
o 
de
l M
od
er
no
, F
on
do
 M
ar
co
 Z
an
us
o
©
 M
en
dr
is
io
, A
rc
hi
vi
o 
de
l M
od
er
no
, F
on
do
 M
ar
co
 Z
an
us
o
©
 M
en
dr
is
io
, A
rc
hi
vi
o 
de
l M
od
er
no
, F
on
do
 M
ar
co
 Z
an
us
o
PROJECTS 93domus 66 October 2017
Previous spread: 
the house, today the 
guesthouse of the 
Coromandel Farmworkers 
Trust, owners of the 
property, is embedded 
in vegetation.
Opposite page, top: a 
plan of the definitive 
design of the house, 
identifying the areas 
intended for parents, 
children, guests and 
staff; centre: cover of 
Domus 176 (1942) with 
Zanuso’s design template 
for the ideal home, 
providing a typological, 
formal and structural 
frame of reference for 
Press House; bottom: 
front view of the newly 
directions, fi nally defi ning a single block 170 
metres long. In the same period, Zanuso designed 
two pavilions to house workshops and offi ces for 
the Swagershoek estate owned by Sydney and 
Victoria Press – these were also inspired by the 
buildings in Sardinia but were freed from the 
“block” form of the central plan. If Arzachena 
represents a minimal, rational organisation of 
four cells around a central space, Press House 
represents the evolution of a complex organism 
starting from that principle, inspired by the vast 
horizons of the veld and built using the modular 
unit system that Zanuso applied in his design for 
the Olivetti factories.
In February 1970, the design of the layout 
evolved and was consolidated into a series of 
large format drawings. The central part was 
structured, the service wing lengthened, the 
walls pushed out, and the routes further defi ned 
between the double walls and spaces of set 
height. The fi rst solution included an arbour 
with square punctures in the exterior wall on 
the north side of the house, corresponding to 
the central area. In the defi nitive version, this 
evolved into the form of semi-arched buttresses 
propped laterally against the external walls, 
connected to the roof with the spruce trunks 
used for pile driving in mining. There are no 
punctures not screened by buttresses along the 
more external walls. The interstitial spaces all 
around created areas where Zanuso responded 
to the heat, the glare of the sun and the dazzling 
light with “copious shade, coolness, greenery 
and water”. While the house appeared rough 
and inscrutable on the outside, the interior was 
comfortable and innovative, “painstakingly 
detailed, with furniture and accessories entirely 
designed by Zanuso [...] including features such 
as sliding electric doors and under-fl oor heating” 
(Edna Peres). The style and principles were the 
same that Zanuso had applied to the Black Box 
ST201 Brionvega television set that year and the 
TS 502 radio the previous year – an enigmatic 
casing hiding technological innovation inside. 
In a pen drawing Zanuso defi ned the principle 
structuring the walls and applied it to separate 
the rooms or to the differences in fl oor height 
caused by the adaptation of the house to the 
uneven ground. The spaces were literally 
modelled within and between the walls, as if 
excavated more deeply into them. For the smaller 
rooms, Zanuso defi ned a system of curving 
recesses contrasting with the roughness of 
the basalt walls, which embraced the intimate 
space like a hospitable shell that gives away 
nothing to the outside. Rooms adapted to the 
counterposing of convex and concave forms, like 
valves, defi ned the bedroom service areas, in a 
succession of spaces, like the wardrobe-dressing 
room-bathroom sequence in the master wing. The 
openings of these rooms, which are all turned 
towards the corridor-courtyard, created the effect 
of deeper recesses into the walls, fi nally carving 
into the exterior surface. While the design 
included local recesses, the structure as a whole 
was a block penetrated by corridors that lead 
towards the heart of the building. The parallel 
walls, extended well beyond the perimeter of 
the covered area, were pushed out towards the 
east and west, channelling views of the veld, 
embracing natural interstices or extending tanks 
of water. Just as the walls bend in the guise of 
bulwarks in Arzachena, here the ends of the walls 
were tilted forward, reinforcing the impression of 
the buttresses and of an interrupted but 
complete form. 
The works continued until 1975, when 
construction fi nished, recorded with an 
completed house and 
main elevation of an 
intermediate design, 
with embrasures in the 
masonry and without the 
pergola outside.
This page: the front with 
the semi-arches and the 
structure shadowing the 
external spaces of the 
central public zone
©
 A
rc
hi
vi
 D
om
us
©
 M
en
dr
is
io
, A
rc
hi
vi
o 
de
l M
od
er
no
, F
on
do
 M
ar
co
 Z
an
us
o
PROJECTS94 domus 66 October 2017
This page, centre, the 
house seen from 
above; bottom: the 
outdoor space at the 
rear with the secondary 
entrance porch. 
Opposite page, top: 
the blue line in the 
plan shows the design 
variant redefining the 
system of parallel walls 
in the service wing; right: 
the newly completed 
building displaying the 
structure of bare stone 
walls and buttresses; 
bottom from left: the 
water tank between two 
walls defines a cool, 
shady space, as well as 
a natural climate control 
system; cross sections
PROJECTS 95domus 66 October 2017
©
 M
en
dr
is
io
, A
rc
hi
vi
o 
de
l M
od
er
no
, F
on
do
 M
ar
co
 Z
an
us
o
©
 M
en
dr
is
io
, A
rc
hi
vi
o 
de
l M
od
er
no
, F
on
do
 M
ar
co
 Z
an
us
o
©
 M
en
dr
is
io
, A
rc
hi
vi
o 
de
l M
od
er
no
, 
Fo
nd
o 
M
ar
co
 Z
an
us
o
©
 M
en
dr
is
io
, A
rc
hi
vi
o 
de
l M
od
er
no
, F
on
do
 M
ar
co
 Z
an
us
o
inscription in the basalt. Aerial photographs 
from the building just after it was completed, 
before the vegetation reappropriated the 
construction, as Zanuso intended, show the 
form anchored in the ground, like a structure 
from a remote era, in which the original state of 
the construction and its later ruined state are 
combined. Entering is like descending into the 
ground, an impression reinforced by the black-
bronze colour of the walls. It is theprinciple 
used in the cemetery in Longarone in north-east 
Italy – in 1969 still being built – but while this is 
dug into the earth and the walls buttress against 
the pressure, Press House is turned outwards 
like an exoskeletal organism or a body distended 
in its osteological form. Press House derives 
from the thoughtful combination of factors of 
comfort and adaptation to the environment with 
sensible, low-technology solutions. The thick, 
uninterrupted walls, the extended, elongated 
form, and the construction of a single storey 
exploit the natural air-conditioning provided by 
the ground and the recirculation of air. The roof 
is fully grassed. It is covered with 70 centimetres 
of earth and an abundance of native plants, 
and exploits the same thermal inertia as the 
ground, the most economical and natural form 
of insulation, just as the water in the external 
tanks limits the thermal inversion, favouring 
the warming of the air in the interstitial spaces. 
A few openings, and only at the edges of the 
walls, reduce the accumulation or dispersal of 
heat, while the buttresses break up the shade 
on the walls. Its fortress-like appearance derives 
from the idea of an impenetrable barrier to 
temperature fl uctuations, generating natural, 
self-regulated climate control in the rooms. 
Press House is intrinsically innovative and 
extraordinarily modern, an example of a project 
developed under the overarching discipline of 
design, before technology and environmental 
design branched off from architecture. 
PROJECTS96 domus 66 October 2017
©
 M
en
dr
is
io
, A
rc
hi
vi
o 
de
l M
od
er
no
, F
on
do
 M
ar
co
 Z
an
us
o
©
 M
en
dr
is
io
, A
rc
hi
vi
o 
de
l M
od
er
no
, 
Fo
nd
o 
M
ar
co
 Z
an
us
o
PROJECTS 97domus 66 October 2017
Opposite page, top: 
details of the roof system 
with covering of soil, 
native ground-cover 
plants and the water 
drainage system; centre: 
the water tank in a photo 
from the seventies; 
bottom: one of the patios 
stretching between the 
walls of the house. In the 
foreground, the 
solid wood blinds; 
at bottom, the large 
aperture emphasising 
continuity between 
exterior and interiors.
This page, top: a detail of 
the service areas of the 
owner’s quarters, with 
the sequence of dresser, 
wardrobe, bathroom 
and shower room, each 
identified with a specific 
shape; left: the engraving 
in the basalt stone shows 
the date 1975 and a verse 
from Book IV of Virgil’s 
Aeneid: “hic terminus 
haeret”; bottom: one 
of the patios as it 
appears today
P
ho
to
 J
us
tin
 C
oe
tz
ee
©
 M
en
dr
is
io
, A
rc
hi
vi
o 
de
l M
od
er
no
, F
on
do
 M
ar
co
 Z
an
us
o
PROJECTS98 domus 66 October 2017
©
 M
en
dr
is
io
, A
rc
hi
vi
o 
de
l M
od
er
no
, F
on
do
 M
ar
co
 Z
an
us
o
©
 M
en
dr
is
io
, A
rc
hi
vi
o 
de
l M
od
er
no
, 
Fo
nd
o 
M
ar
co
 Z
an
us
o
PROJECTS 99domus 66 October 2017
Opposite page, top: a 
patio with rich vegetation; 
centre: Marco Zanuso 
at Coromandel Estate; 
bottom: studies of the 
system of walls at changes 
in level, service spaces 
and filter areas between 
interior and exterior.
This page: the prevalent 
feature of the interiors 
is the natural contrast 
between the stone of the 
walls and the wood of 
the floors, drop-ceilings 
and large sliding window 
frames. Next spread: 
Roberto Burle Marx 
passed through Pretoria 
in 1973 to a conference 
held by the Institute for 
Landscape Architecture 
in South Africa. He was 
invited to make a field 
trip to Coromandel, when 
work on the house was 
well advanced, together 
with Press, Zanuso and 
Patrick Watson, a young 
South African landscapist. 
It was Watson who 
completed the exterior 
with native flora
domus 66 October 2017FEEDBACK102
domus 66 October 2017 FEEDBACK 103
 
FEEDBACK
ZORAN ÐUKANOVIĆ’S
BELGRADE
C
ou
rt
es
y 
of
 th
e 
H
is
to
ric
al
 A
rc
hi
ve
s 
of
 th
e 
C
ity
 o
f B
el
gr
ad
e
domus 66 October 2017FEEDBACK104
Previous spread, left: The core of the 
city and the oldest part of Belgrade. 
View to the north above the intersection 
between Kralja Milana and Kneza 
Miloša; right: map of Belgrade by Jovan 
Bešlić, 1893. The map shows only the 
downtown area of today’s Belgrade. The 
map in the left bottom corner shows 
the entire territory covered by Belgrade 
today. The Sava and Danube rivers cut 
the city into three territorial parts. 
This page, top: The cityscape of 
Belgrade showing the Kosančićev 
Venac neighbourhood on the left and 
the tourist port, framed by Branko’s 
Bridge over the Sava river; bottom: the 
Belgrade Fortress above the confluence 
of the Sava and Danube rivers. 
Pobednik (“the victor”) is a monumental 
masterpiece by the Yugoslavian sculptor 
Ivan Meštrović, 1928
FEEDBACK 
ZORAN ÐUKANOVIĆ’S BELGRADE 042 BELGRADE
domus 66 October 2017 FEEDBACK 105
Zoran Ðukanović 
(Šabac, Serbia, 1962) is an 
architect. He teaches urban 
design, city history and 
public art at the University 
of Belgrade, Faculty of 
Architecture, where he 
leads the Public Art & Public 
Space programme.
All photos Aleksandar Kujucev
Whenever I think about Belgrade, I don’t think about any particular 
place there. I always imagine my city in its totality, as a big, 
complete image, filled and framed by the vivid dreams and fears 
of the people who reside there. In real life, Belgrade is fragmented 
by its geographical characteristics; by its wounds of the recent 
wars; by its ambivalent multicultural character – but deep in my 
mind, it’s actually indivisible. Because everything that divides the 
city integrates it into an entirety at the same time. Belgrade, “like 
dreams, is made of the desires and fears of its citizens, even if the 
thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their 
perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”1
Belgrade is the capital of Serbia, a small European country currently 
challenged by a comprehensive, multilevel transition from autocracy 
to democracy, from socialism to capitalism, from collectivism 
to individualism, from atheism to zealotism, from isolation to 
globalisation, from celebrated to scorned and vice versa. The city 
of Belgrade is set on the Northern edge of the Balkan Peninsula, 
between the East and the West, between “honey and blood”.2 
It is nested atop a hill, anchored at the confluence of the Danube 
and Sava rivers “in an exotic-feeling location, where the tectonic 
plates of Islam, Orthodox Christianity and Roman Catholicism, 
alongside socialism and capitalism, have all collided.”3
The logics of the axial West and the labyrinthine East (as well as 
the opposition between the richness of the North and the poverty of 
the South) not only collide, but actually coil around one another in a 
magnificent vortex, while sharing the same destiny at the same time 
in the same place. 
Belgrade is the city with a great number of symbolic names: Hill 
of the Battle and Glory, Hill for Contemplation, House of Wars, 
Egypt of Rumelia, House of Freedom, Gateway of the East, Gate 
of the West, Gateway to the Balkans, Gate to Central Europe and 
more. Such different names given to the same single place show 
Belgrade’s ability to cunningly resist various historical challenges 
and survive by playing a weird semiotic game, fleeing beyond 
meanings, aiming to become hidden and invisible under the cloak of 
the metaphor. 
Consequently, Belgrade simultaneously contains and actively 
reproduces all the faceted symbolsit has embodied over the centuries. 
The city is a specific amalgam, an alloy that contains the East and 
the West and the South and the North, at the same time in the 
same place. This is its unique particularity. Due to the city’s unique 
position, where cultures and civilisations meet, struggle, interact, 
interfere and relate, it has been an all-time attractive area for 
settlement and conquests. 
The first settlement in the wider area around the city of Belgrade 
was built by Vincha culture more than 5,000 years ago. The Celts 
built their first settlement on the ridge above the confluence more 
than 2,000 years ago.4
Since then, many cultures discovered and conquered this hill: 
Thraco-Dacians, Romans, Huns, Sarmatians, Ostrogoths, Franks, 
Gepids, Goths, Byzantines, Avars, Slavs, Crusaders, Hungarians, 
Bulgarians, Ottomans, Austrians and Germans. All were inspired to 
settle here and fight for it. As a result of these cultural frictions and 
struggles, there are very few cities in the history of the world that 
were destroyed to ashes and built up again as often as Belgrade. 
“Never calm and never knowing tranquillity or quiet, as if it never 
exists but is perpetually being created, built upon and recovered”.5
As a strategic location, a major crossroads between the West 
domus 66 October 2017FEEDBACK106
Previous page, left: Terazije Square, the 
central square of Belgrade, with Palace 
Albanija designed by Miladin Prljević 
and Ðorđe Lazarević in 1940 based on 
the 1938 project by Branko Bon and 
Milan Grakalić; right: calm city life in 
the centre. This page, left: Confluence 
of the Sava and Danube, framed by 
greenery. The horizon is marked by 
linked twin towers (tallest in photo) by 
Mihajlo Mitrović, 1977; right: sunset at 
the confluence of the Danube and Sava 
in the green heart of the city. 
Opposite page: Friendship Park in Novi 
Beograd, landscaped in 1961 to mark 
the first conference of the Non-Aligned 
Countries. In the background stands the 
tower of the Central Committee of the 
League of Communists of Yugoslavia by 
the architect Mihailo Janković, 1964
and the Orient, Belgrade witnessed 115 wars and was razed to 
the ground 44 times.6
It seems that “the density of the historical time here is so great that 
everyday life shouldn’t enter here anymore”.7
Nevertheless, it is not like this. Seen from the ground, Belgrade 
looks completely different – very fragmented and very personal. 
Details appear from everywhere: particular details of everyday 
life, people, textures, materials, forms, colours, smells, sounds, 
lights, movements, nature. Everything merges: Belgrade with 
Zemun and New Belgrade; the high-density city with the emptiness 
of the uninhabited Great War Island that is its natural green core; 
the solid cliff of the Belgrade ridge with the flickering surface of 
the rivers; modern high-rise buildings of glass with bombed ruins; 
classicism and art nouveau with traditional Ottoman houses; 
trendy and fashionable girls with homeless people; Sachertorte 
with baklava; kebab with Wiener schnitzel; disco with belly dance; 
cigarettes with hookahs; Porsches with horse-drawn carriages; noise 
with silence; glory with defeat; city with void; honey with blood. 
This is also apparent in the etymological roots of the names of some 
of the city areas. It is obvious too in the vocabulary of the Serbian 
language. Everything overlaps and superposes everything else, not 
only on a spatial level, but especially on a cultural and semiotic 
plane. All the things that look beautiful, perfect, logical, simple and 
understandable when seen “intellectually” from above show their 
true face deep down in the melting pot of real city life: imperfect, 
complex and mostly incomprehensible with seemingly very little 
logic. At street level, to speak with Calvino, the discourse begins to 
be secret, the rules become absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and 
everything conceals something else. Due to its complexity, Belgrade 
permanently and successfully avoids being experienced to the core. 
To understand Belgrade, it’s impossible to be a mere observer. 
Visitors desire to experience the city as much as the city wishes to 
open up to its visitors. 
Belgrade asks for a person to be fully permeated by it. One has to 
invest his whole self in a mutual process of reciprocal transfusion 
of dreams and fears, the desire to join and enjoy the contemplative 
togetherness of the city. It is how Belgrade’s ridge has become a 
stage for a “jam session” of exceptional personalities playing the city 
together. Throughout its history as well as today, Belgrade “has the 
capability of providing something for everybody, because it has been 
created by everybody”.8
This is why Belgrade is deep, introspective obsession of mine. 
1 Paraphrased from Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, 1972. 
2 The “Balkans” were mentioned for the first time in the 15th century by the Italian writer Philippus 
Callimachus (1437-1496), who wrote that the natives called their area Bolchanum (“quem incolae 
Bolchanum vocant”). One theory asserts that the word Balkan originates from two words from the Ottoman 
language: ball (honey) and khan (blood). This dialectical unity of opposites is food for thought.
3 From The Guardian: Travel, Eve-Ann Prentice, Why I love battered Belgrade, 10 August 2003.
4 The first fortress on this place was built by the Celts in the 4th century BC and was known by the Romans 
as Singidunum (the White City), named after the white wall of the fortress. Still now, the name Belgrade 
means White City, from the Slavic words beo (white) and grad (town).
5 Paraphrased from Ivo Andrić, the Yugoslav 1961 Nobel laureate in literature.
6 From The Independent, Robert Nurden, Belgrade has risen from the ashes to become the Balkans’ party city, 
22 March 2009. Using simple, cool-headed mathematics, the calculation 115 wars inside of 2000 years of 
history as a city means 1 war every 17 years.
7 From a speech by the poet Vladimir Pištalo held in the Kosančićev Venac neighbourhood of Belgrade on 
the bombed site where the National Library of Serbia once stood, 6 April 2010.
8 Paraphrase: “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, 
they are created by everybody,” Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961.
domus 66 October 2017 FEEDBACK 107
RASSEGNA108 domus 66 October 2017
 
 RASSEGNA
 ENVELOPES
P
ho
to
 ©
 S
pa
rt
ac
o 
P
ar
is
RASSEGNA 109domus 66 October 2017
Many analogies have been made between the cladding of a 
building and human skin, only seemingly obvious1. 
The one real difference is that human skin has no structural 
role whereas instead this can be the case with buildings. 
Like our epidermis, the skin of a building has two main 
functions: one is protection, stopping water getting in and 
fi ltering air coming from outside, the other is representative, 
concurring along with the body to defi ning the architectural 
expression of the building, just as skin characterises people’s 
outer appearance2. 
Like skin, the building envelope is also not immune to 
the effects of ageing. As architects of our time we know that 
in the coming years we increasingly have to address the use 
of existing buildings, redesigning them, taking care of them, 
renovating them and when it is inevitable, demolishing 
them and replacing them. It is likely that this will be 
the principal activity of architects over the course of the 
millennium we have recently begun.
The ‘modern’ architectural patrimony, built in the 20th 
century, was not initially conceived to be long-lasting. 
The myth of the machine à habiter led to interpreting parts 
of a building as industrial components, associated with 
short life cycles, imagining that later generations would 
have designed continually-evolvingways of living. In short, 
the modern machine-building was conceived to be replaced 
by another new one made from newer materials. But this 
‘substitution’ process did not fully take place and so the 
built patrimony of the 20th century has ended up rather 
inadequate in terms of meeting current needs for use, 
comfort, and safety.
The building envelope is a crucial part of this patrimony; 
here lie some of the major innovations of the modern 
building. As a result, the skin of buildings constructed from 
the last century – particularly delicate because it is thin, 
light or made with non-traditional materials – often ends 
up failing to meet new demands in terms of function and 
protection. If we accept the idea of the building-machine 
also for the fragile architecture built in the second half of 
the twentieth century, the best, easiest and most sustainable 
care would consist of continuous and low-cost programmed 
maintenance, just like we do with the automobiles that 
we use every day. The obsession with energy-saving has 
furthermore identifi ed in the building envelope one of the 
major places for therapeutic intervention on buildings, 
sometimes taking extraordinary measures. 
For buildings that belong to relevant and recognised cultural 
heritage even today it is quite complex to balance needs 
for energy saving with those of cultural safeguard and this 
requires an awareness of public interest. From this point of 
view, the ‘modern’ building provides a great opportunity for 
intervening to lengthen the life of fragile buildings, in other 
words offer them a second life. It is not a case of working 
just on the maquillage of modern buildings, the results of 
which, as with plastic surgery, alter natural proportions and 
balance. Redesigning the modern construction requires a deep 
knowledge of what is wrong and a broad design culture that 
does not just succumb to the promises made by technology.
Spartaco Paris
Opposite page and 
above: detail of the 
workshop building of 
the Bauhaus, Dessau. 
Restoration project: Arge 
Bauhaus Brambach + 
Ebert Architekten Halle/
Saale Pfister Schiess 
Tropeano & Partner 
Architekten AG Zürich, 
1998-2006
1patrimonio architettonico, a c. di 
Bruno Reichlin e Bruno Pedretti, 
Silvana Editoriale, Mendrisio 
2011, pp. 45-53
2S. Contemporary architectonic 
envelope, between language 
and construction, RDesign 
Press, Roma 2008
P
ho
to
 ©
 S
pa
rt
ac
o 
P
ar
is
RASSEGNA110 domus 66 October 2017
VMZ COMPOSITE
VMZinc®
The new headquarters of Asset 
Banca build at Gualdicciolo (San 
Marino), designed by the practice 
archiNOW! and Antao is 
characterised by its highly-distinctive 
profile in a neutral, homogeneous 
colour and a façade articulated in a 
series of solids and voids, along with 
the variable alternation of glazing 
©
 J
ul
ie
n 
L
an
oo
RIVESTIMENTO CERAMICO
Agrob Buchtal
A structure dedicated to the 
rehabilitation of adults and children 
with conditions resulting from cerebral 
paralysis, Stiftung Vevendra was 
built in the late 1960s at Dielsdorf, 
a place not far from Zurich. In 2013, 
work began on the refurbishment 
of the façades, completed in 2016 
BLAST PROTECTIVE FACADE
Permasteelisa Group
The theme of transparency is very much 
at the forefront in the field contemporary 
architecture and current design trends 
focus on maximising the extent of 
glazed areas. Building envelopes 
designed in this way however must 
increasingly often ensure high levels 
of resistance and security in the event 
of natural disasters or terrorist attacks. 
To respond to both these demands, the 
Permasteelisa Group have focussed 
on the development of a construction 
technology known as Testudo®, that is 
able to provide cost-effective security 
without compromising architectural 
freedom. The strategy for improving the 
construction of the façade involves the 
use of dissipative connectors to allow 
large deflections without disengaging 
by the practice L3P Architekten. 
For the outer shell, the architects 
decided on the use of ceramic tiles 
supplied by Agrob, chosen for their 
proven qualities of durability, strength, 
sustainability and for the attractive 
appearance of the colour with its 
subtle effects of the play of light.
AGROB BUCHTAL
www.agrob-buchtal.de
P
ho
to
 G
io
va
nn
i D
e 
S
an
dr
e.
 C
op
yr
ig
ht
 a
rc
hi
no
w
and panels in zinc titanium, creating 
a syncopated rhythm. Used in the 
Anthra-Zinc finish, that is a dark slate-
grey colour, VMZinc®, zinc titanium 
was specified on account of the fact 
that it can be used to make large 
panels with a monolithic effect.
VMZINC®
www.vmzinc.com
SLIMTECH 
Lea Ceramiche
Extending over almost 5000 m2, 
Protoshop is the building that houses 
the prototyping department of 
Lamborghini. The architectural 
design is by the practice Prospazio 
in Modena who specified ultra-
thin, large-format Slimtech tiles 
for cladding the ventilated façade. 
Slimtech tiles in porcelain 
stoneware, laid horizontally with a 
visible fixing system, in a format 
3 x 1 metres and in a chrome finish 
nero Lamborghini, specially-created 
for the project, responds to aesthetic 
demands as well as functional and 
technical ones.
LEA CERAMICHE
www.ceramichelea.it
the panel. The Permasteelisa Group 
used numerical tools developed in-
house in order to support the design 
during the different phases of the 
project. All the major outcomes of their 
research have been therefore integrated 
into the proprietary software Testudo® 
for the unitised panels. In the photo: 
the office block at 99 Bishopsgate 
refurbished by GMW Architects has 
become a new contemporary landmark 
for London. The glazed covering of the 
building has been specially designed 
to resist shockwaves from any nearby 
explosions and can withstand a bomb 
blast of 8,000 Pa.
PERMASTEELISA GROUP 
www.permasteelisagroup.com
RASSEGNA 111domus 66 October 2017
COSTRUZIONI IN LEGNO 
LAMELLARE
Sistem Costruzioni
Located in Turin, in an area undergoing 
significant transformation next to the 
park by the Stura river, the new 
headquarters of Terna Rete Italia is a 
technologically-advanced building that 
is orientated towards environmental 
sustainability. It has been built using 
eco-sustainable materials and the 
services have been conceived in a 
fully-integrated manner to ensure low 
environmental impact. The structure 
MEG 
Abet Laminati
MEG (Material Exterior Grade) is a 
decorative, high-pressure laminate 
for exterior use, made up of layers of 
cellulose fibre impregnated with 
thermo-hardening phenolic resins 
and one or more surface layers of 
decorative paper impregnated with 
especially weather-resistant 
thermo-hardening resins. Strong, 
dense and hard-wearing, MEG 
has been specifically designed for 
exterior applications. 
The particular denseness of MEG 
ensures an excellent combination of 
mechanical characteristics such as 
resistance to bending and blows. 
The evenness and high density of 
the panels ensures high resistance 
to the extraction of fixing elements. 
MEG is used mainly for cladding 
façades (usually ventilated ones) 
and balconies, as well as making 
brise-soleil, street furniture and 
outdoor signage. In the photo: a 
residential building made up of 
private apartments in Bra (CN) 
that uses as a cladding MEG Wood 
(in the 604 Colony pattern) for all 
the external parts, except for the 
area of balcony that is made with 
Externa, a high-pressure laminate 
of superior quality. The Externa 
panels for balconies combine 
aesthetics with functionality, are 
highly resistant and do not 
require maintenance.
ABET LAMINATI
www.abetlaminati.com
is made from laminated timber, both 
for the elevationsand the floor slabs, 
enabling the elimination of columns 
from the workspaces and a savings on 
foundation works.
SISTEM COSTRUZIONI
www.sistem.it
FACCIATA VENTILATA 
Emilgroup
The theme of the ventilated façade has 
been developed by Emilgroup giving 
rise to the creation of two different 
systems: the ventilated façade and 
the ventilated outer layer – put into 
practice through a partnership with 
Isotec. The solution of the ventilated 
outer layer brings together in a single 
solution, continuous and homogeneous 
external insulation and a supporting 
structure for the external cladding 
that draws from the collections of the 
four Emilgroup brands – Provenza, 
Ergon, Emilceramica and Viva –, 
each of which is able to respond, with 
their own stylistic characteristics, to 
the particular aesthetic needs put 
forward by the designer. To improve 
interior comfort of the buildings, the 
engineering department at Emilgroup 
have developed a system with a 
ventilated air cavity that is positioned 
between the insulating panel and 
the façade cladding. This solution 
enables high levels of performance 
to be achieved, fully conforming to 
energy efficiency standards. For the 
housing development in Milan shown 
here, ceramic from the Ergon range 
was used. The ‘folded’ surface was 
chosen, able to reproduce the cut 
perpendicular to the sedimentation 
that highlights the directionality of 
the stone. The cladding is completed 
with an external ventilated insulation 
system by Isotec.
EMILGROUP
www.emilgroup.it
RASSEGNA112 domus 66 October 2017
MAXIMUM EXTRALITE®
Fiandre
Maximum, in the innovative 
300 x 150 cm format, is a material that 
combines the characteristics of 
porcelain stoneware with high levels 
of technical performance given by 
its extreme lightness and flexibility. 
The Maximum Extralite® range in fact 
combines total design freedom with 
remarkable flexibility: while on the 
one hand the maxi-tile reduces the 
number of interruptions in the design 
unit, on the other the extensive offer 
of sub-formats provides a response 
to every kind of need. Thanks to its 
considerable lightness, ease of laying 
and maintenance with respect to 
traditional ceramic tiles, Maximum 
is highly suitable for application to 
floor and walls in residential and 
commercial settings, both inside 
and outside. Used also in ventilated 
façades, using applications that exploit 
the morphological characteristics 
of the tiles in terms of lightness and 
dimensions and allow external walls 
to be redefined while ensuring proper 
thermal insulation.
GRANITI FIANDRE
www.granitifiandre.it 
INVOLUCRO A CELLULE
Focchi
The cladding for an office building at 6 Pancras 
Square has been designed in a way that weaves 
together clay and metal. The principal element 
consists of a ribbed structure in terracotta with 
projecting fins up to 34 m high. The cellular 
cladding system has enabled the perfect control 
of the production tolerances of these terracotta 
columns, with 55,000 specially-made extruded, 
corrugated tiles. The façade system has 
transformed a traditionally natural material like clay 
into a highly-sophisticated and unusual cladding.
FOCCHI
www.focchi.it
FIBREC
Rieder
Opened in London and designed by Sheppard Robson 
Architects, the new citizenM hotel features an external 
cladding in glass-fibre reinforced cement supplied by 
Reider. Despite the tight programme, a technically-
feasible and cost-efficient solution was successfully 
produced by the Austrian company for installing 
2,300 m2 of elements in concrete reinforced with 
glass-fibre that not only give the building its distinctive 
appearance but also play an important role with 
regards to the environmental certification of the 
building and its sustainability.
RIEDER
www.rieder.cc
RASSEGNA 113domus 66 October 2017
TECU® GOLD
KME
The first Bang & Olufsen shop to 
open in the Danish city of Herning 
epitomises the iconic brand of audio, 
televisual and telephonic products 
with a simple combination of golden 
copper alloy and glass. Design studio 
Arkitec A/S have created a slender, 
curved-edge box that is reminiscent 
of B&O’s minimalist products. 
MAXIMUM EXTRALITE®
Fiandre
Maximum, in the innovative 300 x 
150 cm format, is a material that 
combines the characteristics of 
porcelain stoneware with high levels of 
technical performance given by its 
extreme lightness and flexibility. The 
Maximum Extralite® range in fact 
combines total design freedom with 
remarkable flexibility: while on the one 
hand the maxi-tile reduces the number 
of interruptions in the design unit, on 
the other the extensive offer of sub-
formats provides a response to every 
kind of need. Thanks to its considerable 
lightness, ease of laying and 
maintenance with respect to traditional 
ceramic tiles, Maximum is highly 
suitable for application to floor and walls 
in residential and commercial settings, 
both inside and outside. Used also in 
ventilated facades, using applications 
that exploit the morphological 
characteristics of the tiles in terms of 
lightness and dimensions and allow 
external walls to be redefined while 
ensuring proper thermal insulation.
GRANITI FIANDRE
www.granitifiandre.it 
The cladding chosen was Tecu® 
Gold, selected for its sustainability 
and unique visual characteristics, 
that complement the warm brown 
brickwork prevalent in the urban 
context of the shop.
KME
www.kme.com
ISOTEC PARETE
Brianza Plastica
For a villa in the province of Udine, the 
upgrading of the facades resulted in a 
decision to use Abet High Pressure 
Laminate (HPL) with an underlying 
structure to suit the cladding and 
improve the insulation values of 
the walls. It was decided to build a 
ventilated façade using the Isotec 
Parete system of load-bearing 
insulation. Panels that are100 mm 
thick, and made up of an insulating 
core in polyurethane clad in a sheet of 
aluminium and an built-in metal nailing 
strip, pre-assembled in the factory 
were used with spacing suited to the 
dimensions of the cladding panel.
BRIANZA PLASTICA
www.brianzaplastica.it
 Term Issues Newsstand price (R)
Students subscribe at
(Discount)
 1 year 11 2200 R 1430 (35%)
2 years 22 4400 R 2640 (40%)
 Term Issues Newsstand price (R)
 Professionals subscribe 
at (Discount)
 1 year 11 2200 R 1650 (25%)
2 years 22 4400 R 3080 (30%)
 6 EASY WAYS TO SUBSCRIBE
1. CALL 022-2481 1010 (Mumbai), 011-4669 9999 (Delhi), 080 4161 8977 (Bengaluru),
 033 2473 5896 (Kolkata), 044 4218 8984 (Chennai)
2. ONLINE at www.spentamultimedia.com/subscription.html
3. POST Send the completed form to Spenta Multimedia Pvt Ltd –
 Subscription Department, Peninsula Spenta, Mathuradas Mill Compound,
 N.M. Joshi Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai–400 013
4. A digital version of is available on , 
 Readwhere.com and Rockstand.in
5. EMAIL domussubscription@spentamultimedia.com
6. Like us on at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Domus-India +91-7045220995
DON'T MISS A SINGLE ISSUE!
August
2017
Volume 06 / Issue 09
R200
INDIA LA CITTÀ DELL’ UOMO064
SUBSCRIBE 
NOW
I wish to subscribe to Domus India for 1 year 2 years
SUBSCRIPTION TYPE 
New Renewal Professional Student 
Subscription ID (for renewal subscribers only)
All fi elds including postal code and contact number/s are mandatory
NAME (Mr. / Mrs. /Ms.)
ADDRESS
 CITY STATE 
POSTAL CODE TEL. NO. (WITH STD CODE)
MOBILE EMAIL ID
 CHEQUE / DD / CASH / CARD CHEQUE / DD NO.
(payable to Spenta Multimedia Pvt Ltd) (add 50/- for non-Mumbai cheques) 
CHEQUE DATED
BANK NAME SUBSCRIBER’S SIGNATURE
TERMS & CONDITIONS: Cheques / DDs should be payableto Spenta Multimedia Pvt Ltd • Cheques / DDs must contain the code/address of the 
issuing branch. • Cash will not be accepted. • Please subscribe full name, address and signature on the reverse of the cheque/DD. • For multiple 
subscriptions, attach separate coupons (photocopies allowed) along with separate cheques/DDs. • Spenta Multimedia will not be responsible for 
postal or courier delays. • This off er is non-refundable, cannot be redeemed for cash and cannot be combined with any other off er. • issues 
are also available without this off er. • Subscription off er and rates are valid in India only.• Disputes, if any, will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction 
of competent courts in Mumbai only. • This off er is valid only till stocks last. • Terms and conditions are subject to change from time to time.
51,�180%(5�0$+(1*������������5HJG�1R��0&:������������������3RVWHG�DW�0XPEDL�3DWULND�&KDQQHO�6RUWLQJ�2I¿FH��
Mumbai-400001 on 26th & 27th of Previous Month, Published on 26th of the Previous Month
116