Otto Koenigsberger and Modernist Historiography

Abstract

Otto Koenigsberger’s (1908–1999) work in India (1939–1951) complicates the idea that tropical architecture was a strain of European modernism that was dispersed to the colonial tropics along the imperial networks of the British Empire in the 1950s and 1960s. Koenigsberger, a German émigré architect, arrived in India in 1939 in princely Mysore – a state under indirect British rule. As the state architect in Mysore (1939–1948), he designed numerous buildings – schools, hospitals, offices, police stations, palace extensions, pavilions, colleges, factories, and bus shelters. In 1951, he emigrated from India to London and, in 1954, established the department of tropical architecture at the Architectural Association School of Architecture. His treatise on tropical architecture, Manual of Tropical Housing and Building (1974) offers a critique of modernisation, which originated in Koenigsberger’s failed and successful projects in India. Yet, until recently the majority of his architectural work in India was unknown. This paper discusses the absence of Koenigsberger’s architectural oeuvre in South Asian architectural histories and argues that uncovering his work in India offers a missing link between colonial and post-colonial architectural cultures, and global networks of tropical architecture. His career illuminates how multiple actors outside the colonial state apparatus – such as the Maharajah’s regime with their sovereign ideals and independent entrepreneurial clients – shaped his ideas of modernism.

Notes

1. Duanfang Lu, “Travelling Urban form: The Neighbourhood Unit in China,” Planning Perspectives 21, no. 4 (2006): 369–392; Vikramaditya Prakash, Chandigarh's Le Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002); and Sanjeev Vidyarthi, One Idea, Many Plans an American City Design Concept in Independent India (New York: Routledge, 2015).

2. Abidin Kusno, "Tropics of Discourse: Notes on the Re-Invention of Architectural Regionalism in Southeast Asia in the 1980s," Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand 19, no. 2 (2010): 58–81.

3. Prakash, Chandigarh's Le Corbusier, 3–30.

4. Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 1–14.

5. Duanfang Lu, Third World Modernism: Architecture, Development and Identity (New York, Routledge, 2011).

6. See Jeffrey Turnbull and Peter Naveretti, The Griffins in Australia and India: The Complete Works and Projects of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 1998); Jon T. Lang, Madhavi Desai and Miki Desai, Architecture and Independence: The Search for Identity – India 1880 to 1980 (Delhi & New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 60–224; Reto Niggl, Eckart Muthesius, Indian/India 1930–1939: Architektur/Architecture Design. Photography/Fotografie (Munich: Goethe-Institute, 1999).

7. Jon T. Lang, A Concise History of Modern Architecture in India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2002), 7–30.

8. Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe, “In-Dependence: Otto Koenigsberger and Modernist Urban Resettlement in India,” Planning Perspectives 21, no. 2 (2006): 157–178.

9. Tile von Damm, Anne-Katrin Fenk, Rachel Lee, and M. O. D. Institute. Otto Koenigsberger: Architecture and Urban Visions in India (Liverpool, UK: TAG Press; Bengaluru: MOD Institute, 2015).

10. Vandana Baweja, A Pre-History of Green Architecture: Otto Koenigsberger and Tropical Architecture, from Princely Mysore to Post-Colonial London (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI, 2008).

11. Mark Crinson proposes that the tropical architecture as climatic design at the AA was based on Bauhaus climatic design principles. See Mark Crinson, Modern Architecture and the End of Empire (Aldershot; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 134–135.

12. Hannah Le Roux first argued for examinig networks as a useful trope to examine the circulation of tropical architecture, which she defines as a metropolitan discourse. See Hannah Le Roux, “The Networks of Tropical Architecture,” Journal of Architecture 8, no. 3 (2003): 337–354.

13. Otto H. Koenigsberger, T. G. Ingersoll, Alan Mayhew, and S. V. Szokolay, Manual of Tropical Housing and Building (London: Longman, 1974).

14. Andreas Huyssen, "Geographies of Modernism in a Globalizing World," New German Critique 100 (Winter, 2007): 189–207.

15. Anoma Pieris, "South and Southeast Asia: 'The Postcolonial Legacy'," Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand 19, no. 2 (2010): 6–33.

16. Kazi K. Ashraf, J. Belluardo, and Architectural League of New York, An Architecture of Independence: The Making of Modern South Asia: Charles Correa, Balkrishna Doshi, Muzharul Islam, Achyut Kanvinde (New York: Architectural League of New York, 1998); Lang, Desai and Desai, Architecture and Independence,160–224.

17. Chandigarh (Le Corbusier, 1950–1984); New Towns (Otto Koenigsberger, 1948–1951); Sher-e-Bangla Nagar (Louis Kahn, 1963–1964), and the Sri Lankan Parliament (Geoffrey Bawa, 1979–1982). Lang, Desai and Desai, Architecture and Independence,160–224; Lawrence J. Vale, Architecture, Power, and National Identity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 121–145, 226–247 and 279–320.

18. Alan Colquhoun, Modern Architecture (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); William J. R. Curtis, Modern Architecture since 1900 (London: Phaidon, 1996).

19. Colquhoun, Modern Architecture; Curtis, Modern Architecture since 1900; Frampton, Modern Architecture.

20. Le Corbusier also completed projects in Ahmadabad including the Shodhan house (1954), the Sarabhai House (1955), the Millowner’s association Building (1954), and Sanskar Kendra (1957). Louis Kahn designed the Indian Institute for Management (1962–1974) in Ahmadabad; Sher-e-Banglanagar National Capital (1963–1964) in Dhaka; and the site plan for the Estate of the president (1963–1965) in Pakistan.

21. Colquhoun, Modern Architecture, 214.

22. Curtis, Modern Architecture since 1900, 277.

23. In her analysis of Spiro Kostof's textbook A History of Architecture (1985), Panayiota Pyla points out the asymmetrical comparative descriptions of “non-western” architecture, which is only rendered knowable through familiar “western” architectural examples. Panayiota Pyla, “Historicizing Pedagogy: A Critique of Kostof's A History of Architecture,” Journal of Architectural Education 52, no. 4 (1999): 216–225.

24. Atreyee Gupta, "In a Postcolonial Diction: Postwar Abstraction and the Aesthetics of Modernization," Art Journal 72, no. 3 (2014): 30–46.

25. Lang, Desai and Desai, Architecture and Independence, 208.

26. Gautam Bhatia, Laurie Baker: Life, Works, and Writings (New Delhi: Viking/Hudco, 1981); Stephen White and Joseph Allen Stein, Building in the Garden: The Architecture of Joseph Allen Stein in India and California (Delhi & New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

27. Marco Cenzatti, Lisa Findley and Abidin Kusno, "Introduction: Changing Asia: Perspectives on Difference," Journal of Architectural Education 63, no. 2 (2010): 6–7.

28. Sibel Bozdogan, "Architectural History in Professional Education: Reflections on Postcolonial Challenges to the Modern Survey," Journal of Architectural Education 52, no. 4 (1999): 207–215; Gülsüm Baydar Nalbantoḡlu, "Toward Postcolonial Openings: Rereading Sir Banister Fletcher's ‘History of Architecture’," Assemblage 35 (1998): 7–17; Gülsüm Baydar Nalbantoglu and Chong Thai Wong, Postcolonial Space(S) (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997); Panayiota Pyla, “Historicizing Pedagogy.”

29. For revisionist histories see: Rebecca M. Brown, "The Cemeteries and the Suburbs: Patna’s Challenges to the Colonial City in South Asia," Journal of Urban History 29, no. 2 (2003): 151–172; Jyoti Hosagrahar, Indigenous Modernities: Negotiating Architecture and Urbanism (London: Routledge, 2005); Vikramaditya Prakash and Peter Scriver (eds.), Colonial Modernities: Building, Dwelling and Architecture in British India and Ceylon (London; New York: Routledge, 2007).

30. Pieris, "South and Southeast Asia."

31. Birendra Nath Ghosh, A Treatise on Hygiene and Public Health, with Special Reference to the Tropics (Calcutta: Hilton, 1924); A.E. Grant, The Indian Manual of Hygiene: Being the King's Manual of Hygeine vol. 1 (Madras [now called Chennai]: Higginbotham and Co., 1894); J. A. Jones, A Manual of Hygiene, Sanitation and Sanitary Engineering: With Special References to Indian Conditions (Madras: Government Press, 1896); and William James Sir Moore, A Manual of Family Medicine for India (London: J. & A. Churchill, 1883).

32. J. McKay Spence, “The New Role of the Architect in the Tropics,” Architectural Association Journal 71 (July–August 1955): 56–50.

33. Architectural Association, School of Architecture: Department of Tropical Architecture Prospectus (London: Architectural Association 1955).

34. Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe, “Modernism in Late Imperial British West Africa: The Work of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, 1946–56,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 65, no. 2 (2006): 188–215.

35. Le Roux, “The Networks of Tropical Architecture.”

36. Editor, “Biographical Notes on O.H. Koenigsberger,” Habitat International 7, nos. 5–6 (1983): 7–16.

37. David Toppin, “Koenigsberger: Early Days Abroad (Otto Koenigsberger in a Biographical Interview with David Toppin),” Architect's Journal 176, nos. 27–34 (July–August 1982): 36–37.

38. See Otto. H. Koenigsberger, Jamshedpur Development Plan (Bombay, Tata Iron and Steel Company, 1945); Amita Sinha, and Jatinder Singh, “Jamshedpur: Planning an Ideal Steel City in India,” Journal of Planning History 10, no. 4 (2011): 263–281.

39. Christopher Silver, "Neighborhood Planning in Historical Perspective," Journal of the American Planning Association 51, no.2 (1985): 161–174.

40. See Otto H. Koenigsberger, “Master Plan for the New Capital of Orissa at Bhubaneswar,” (Bhubaneswar: Government of Orissa, 1948) and Ravi Kalia, Bhubaneswar: From A temple Town to a Capital City (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994).

41. “Samasya Par Samasya (One Problem after Another),” Hindustan July 19, 1949.

42. Koenigsberger et al., Manual of Tropical Housing and Building.

43. Koenigsberger et al., Manual of Tropical Housing and Building, xvi.

44. E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).

45. The nineteenth-century histories often end in the early twentieth century. See Narayani Gupta, Delhi between Two Empires, 1803–1931: Society, Government and Urban Growth (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981); Anthony D. King, The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture (London & Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984); Thomas R. Metcalf, An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain's Raj (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Venna T. Oldenburg, The Making of Colonial Lucknow, 1856–1877 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).

46. See Swati Chattopadhyay, Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism, and the Colonial Uncanny (London; New York: Routledge, 2005); Preeti Chopra, A Joint Enterprise: Indian Elites and the Making of British Bombay (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011).

47. Metcalf, An Imperial Vision, 55–140; Vikramaditya Prakash, “Between Copying and Creating: The Jeypore Portfolio of Architectural Details,” in Prakash and Scriver, Colonial Modernities, 115–126; G. H. R. Tillotson, “Vincent J. Esch and the Architecture of Hyderabad, 1914–36,” South Asian Studies 9, no. 1 (1993): 29–46; G. H. R. Tillotson, “George S.T. Harris: An Architect in Gwalior,” South Asian Studies 20, no. 1 (2004): 9–24.

48. Metcalf, An Imperial Vision, 55–104.

49. See Sharda Dwivedi, Rahul Mehrotra and Noshir Gobhai, Bombay Deco (Mumbai: Eminence Designs, 2008); Amin Jaffer, “Indo-Deco,” in Art Deco 1910–1939, eds. Charlotte Benton, Tim Benton and Ghislaine Wood (Boston, MA: Bulfinch Press/AOL Time Warner Book Group, 2003), 382–395; Navin Ramani and Laura Cerwinske, Bombay Art Deco Architecture: A Visual Journey, 1930–1953 (New Delhi: Lustre Press, Roli Books, 2007).

50. Lang, Desai and Desai, Architecture and Independence.

51. Ashraf, Belluardo, and Architectural League of New York, An Architecture of Independence.

52. M. Fazlul Hasan, Bangalore through the Centuries (Bangalore: Historical Publications, 1970); T. P. Issar and Bangalore Urban Arts Commission, The City Beautiful: A Celebration of the Architectural Heritage and City-Aesthetics of Bangalore (Bangalore: Bangalore Urban Arts Commission, 1988); T. P. Issar, Mysore, the Royal City (Bangalore: Marketing Consultants & Agencies, 1991); Janet Pott, Elizabeth Staley and Romola Chatterjee, Old Bungalows in Bangalore, South India (London: Pott, 1977).

53. James Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture (London: J. Murray, 1876). For an analysis of the impact of colonial history writing on the architectural culture see Metcalf, An Imperial Vision, 24–54; and Peter Scriver, “Stones and Texts: The Architectural Historiography of Colonial India and its Colonial-Modern Contexts,” in Prakash and Sciver, Colonial Modernities, 69–92.

54. Hasan, Bangalore through the Centuries, 211–221.

55. Dr. Gualtherus H. Mees Mees, Demi-Official Letter from Dr. Gualtherus H. Mees, “Badri”, Vontikoppal, Mysore, to the Secretary to the Hon’ble the Resident in Mysore, Enemy Foreigners: (1) G.H. Krumbiegal; (2) Dr. O. H. Koenigsberger; (3) Otto Schmidt; (4) Captain Charles Chimani, September 22, 1939, File No. 66-40, S. No. 1-28, GOM War, KSA, Bangalore, Karnataka.

56. Letter to his mother, December 23, 1940, in Otto Koenigsberger Private Papers, Jewish Musem, Berlin.

57. Cement Marketing Company of India and Associated Cement Companies Limited, “Neat Reinforced Concrete Garages Attached to the Palace of H. H. The Maharajah of Mysore on Chamundi Hill,” The Indian Concrete Journal, April 15, 1940, 137.

58. Otto H. Koenigsberger, “The Common Dining Hall at the Indian Institute of Science,”The Architectural Forum 85 (June, 1946): 89; Otto H. Koenigsberger, “The Victory Hall at Bangalore,” Marg IV, no. 3 (1950): 25–26; Otto. H. Koenigsberger, “The New Studios of the Mysore Broadcasting House at Mysore,” Electrotechnics, 15 and 16 (September, 1943): 45–49.

59. Otto H. Koenigsberger’s architectural portfolio contains notes accompanying each project. His earlier projects document the addition of clock towers to several projects due to Mirza Ismail’s insistence. See Otto Koenigsberger’s portfolio at the Architectural Association Archives, London.

60. Vandana Baweja, “Messy Modernisms: Otto Koenigsberger’s Early Work in Princely Mysore 1939–1941,” South Asian Studies 31, no. 1 (2015): 1–26.

61. Otto H. Koenigsberger, “The Common Dining Hall at the Indian Institute of Science”; Otto H. Koenigsberger, “The Victory Hall at Bangalore”; Otto. H. Koenigsberger, “The New Studios of the Mysore Broadcasting House at Mysore.”

62. Koenigsberger, “The Victory Hall at Bangalore.”

63. Koenigsberger, “The Victory Hall at Bangalore.”

64. "Factory Produced Housing in India," Architect and Building News 197 (1950): 217–218.

65. "The Alcrete, Permanent, Prefabricated, Two-Storey House," Architect and Building News 190 (June 1947): 210–215.

66. "Factory Produced Housing in India."

67. Special Representative, "‘Prefab’ Factory Muddle: Legal Action Likely against UK Firm," The Hindustan Times, New Delhi Friday, February 23, 1951.

68. Editor, “Biographical Notes on O.H. Koenigsberger” and Toppin, “Koenigsberger: Early Days Abroad.”

69. He also served as consultant for Faridabad (1949) and Rajpura (1950). See Otto H. Koenigsberger, “New Towns in India,” The Town Planning Review 23, no. 2 (1952): 94–132.

70. See the UN housing mission reports Charles Abrams; Vladimir Bodiansky; Otto H Koenigsberger, Report on Housing in the Gold Coast (New York: United Nations Technical Assistance Administration, 1956); Otto. H. Koenigsberger and Charles Abrams, A Housing Program for Pakistan with Special Reference to Refugee Rehabilitation: Prepared for the Government of Pakistan (New York: United Nations Technical Assistance Administration, 1957); Charles Abrams and Otto. H. Koenigsberger, A Housing Program for the Philippine Islands (New York: United Nations Technical Assistance Administration, 1959; Charles Abrams, S. Kobe, and Otto. H. Koenigsberger, Growth and Urban Renewal in Singapore: Report Prepared for the Government of Singapore (New York United Nations 1963); and Otto. H. Koenigsberger, Metropolitan Lagos (New York: Commissioner for Technical Assistance, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 1964).

71. Lang, A Concise History of Modern Architecture in India, 26.

72. Le Roux, “The Networks of Tropical Architecture”; Hannah Le Roux, “Building on the Boundary – Modern Architecture in the Tropics,” Social Identities 10, no. 4 (2004): 439–453; Ola Uduku, “Modernist Architecture and ‘the Tropical’ in West Africa: The Tropical Architecture Movement in West Africa, 1948–1970,” Habitat International 30 ( 2006): 396–411.