Personal Journey or Tectonic Practice: Thick Descriptions of Curated Residential Interiors by Four Indian Architects

ABSTRACT

Among the handful of architectural histories charting the architectural development of the Indian Subcontinent after the decisive rupture of the 1950s, few have explored the modernist Indian interior. This paper examines the self-conscious curation of the modern domestic interior within the repertoire of four prolific and cross-culturally positioned Indian architects — Aditya Prakash (1924–2008), Balkrishna Doshi (1927–), Charles Correa (1930–2015), and Hasmukh Patel (1933–2018). Mining newly available archival insights as well as direct observation and experience of their interiors, the spatial choreographies performed within the living rooms of these architects’ family homes are reconstructed and explored. In serving as veritable repositories of life journeys and experiences, these intimate interiors marked event and discovery. In identifying the curated experiences of these interiors as spaces of encounter and dialogue between assemblies of things, we ask how such choices not only reinforced the spatial tectonics of their interior architectures but also enabled their curators to reflect upon the modes and means of their invention and inspiration as designers. Finally, we consider how these interiors, and their elements, may be comprehended as horological devices, marking the purported origin and transition points in time pertinent to the experimental journeys of their individual curators .

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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4. Supriya Agarwal and Urmil Talwar (eds.), Gender, History & Culture: Inside the Haveli (Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2009); and Jyoti P. Sharma, “Sociability in Eighteenth-Century Colonial India: The Nabob, the Nabobian Kothi, and the Pursuit of Leisure,” Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 31, no. 1 (2019): 7–24, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26952997.

5. James A. Jacobs, “Social and Spatial Change in the Post-war Family Room,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 13, no. 1 (2006): 70–85, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20355369.

6. Edward Hollis, “The House of Life and the Memory Palace – Some Thoughts on the Historiography of Interiors,” Interiors 1 (2010): 105–17, DOI: 10.2752/204191210791602267 ; and Anne Massey, “Interior Design, History and Development,” in Encyclopaedia of Interior Design, ed. Joanna Banham (London: Routledge, 1997), 609–12.

7. Vlad Ionescu, “The Interior as Interiority,” Palgrave Communications 4 (2018): 1–5.

8. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge MA: Belknap Press, 1999), 9.

9. Dolly Daou, D. J. Huppatz, and Dinh Quoc Phuong (eds.), Unbounded: On the Interior and Interiority (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publisher, 2015) .

10. Stanley Abercrombie, A Philosophy of Interior Design (New York: Harper and Row, 1990).

11. Abercrombie, A Philosophy of Interior Design, 1–3.

12. Christine McCarthy, “Towards a Definition of Interiority,” Space and Culture 8, no. 2 (2005): 112.

13. Balkrishna Doshi, Kamala House, Ahmedabad 1959 (Ahmedabad: Vastu Shilpa Foundation, 2006), 1.

14. Doshi, Kamala House, 1–2.

15. Catherine Desai and Bimal Patel, The Architecture of Hasmukh C. Patel, Selected Projects 1963–2003 (Ahmedabad: Mapin, 2017), 25–43.

16. Sunil Sethi, “Charles Correa’s legendary vision lives on in his Mumbai home,” AD Architectural Digest India, March 2016 issue – Print Issue/1 April 2016 online at https://www.architecturaldigest.in/magazine-story/charles-correas-stellar-vision-lives-on-in-his-mumbai-home/#s-cust0.

17. Sethi, “Charles Correa’s legendary vision lives on in his Mumbai home.”

18. Kenneth Frampton, Charles Correa (Bombay: Perennial Press, 1996), 132.

19. This residence is not documented in a recently published study of the life and work of Aditya Prakash. See Vikramaditya Prakash, One Continuous Line: Art, Architecture and Urbanism of Aditya Prakash (Ahmedabad: Mapin, 2020). The descriptions and perceptions of this residence discussed rely on the accounts of Aditya’s son, Vikramaditya Prakash, and the authors’ acquaintance with the present Chandigarh College of Architecture Principal and occupant of the residence.

20. Peter Scriver and Amit Srivastava, India: Modern Architectures in History (London: Reaktion Books, 2015).

21. The lack of “individual” privacy in such middle-class Indian households (with servants) complicates the idea of the “modern” house and, especially, its interior. Balkrishna Doshi, Architecture for the People (Weil am Rhein: Vitra Design Museum GmbH, 2019), 108–19.

22. Doshi, Architecture for the People, 108–19.

23. The undated photograph is available on HCP’s website, weblink https://hcp.co.in/early-projects/bhaktiben-hasmukhbhai-residence.

24. Desai and Patel, The Architecture of Hasmukh C. Patel, 36–37.

25. Susie Attiwill, “Towards an Interior History,” Idea Journal 5, no. 1 (2004): 1–8. https://doi.org/10.37113/ideaj.vi0.215.

26. Prakash, One Continuous Line, 149–221.

27. Doshi, Kamala House, 2–13.

28. Narendra Dengle, Dialogues with Indian Master Architects (Mumbai: The Marg Foundation, 2015), 137–39.

29. In another interview, Doshi also characterises his home and office (Sangath) as venues of constant satsang (translated as the “right association”) with craftsmen, academics, architects, and mahajans (community leaders). See Dengle, Dialogues with Indian Master Architects, 127–28.

30. Anasuya Basu, “When M. F. Husain annoyed legendary architect B. V. Doshi,” The Telegraph Online (dated 12.01.19), https://www.telegraphindia.com/culture/arts/when-m-f-husain-annoyed-legendary-architect-b-v-doshi/cid/1681570.

31. Anasuya Basu, “When M. F. Husain annoyed legendary architect B. V. Doshi.”

32. Anasuya Basu, “When M. F. Husain annoyed legendary architect B. V. Doshi.”

33. Doshi, Kamala House, 14–17, 20–21.

34. Photographs on Iwan Baan’s website, https://iwan.com/portfolio/kamala-house-bv-doshi/#21071.

35. Doshi, Architecture for the People, 108–19.

36. Hasmukh Patel’s concern for the “quality” of construction and its details comes up in his interview with Narendra Dengle. See Dengle, Dialogues with Indian Master Architects, 98–100. Also, Desai and Patel, The Architecture of Hasmukh C. Patel, 27.

37. Desai and Patel, The Architecture of Hasmukh C. Patel, 31.

38. Correa’s concern for the details of the interior as a filmic space of sorts comes up in one of his interviews with Narendra Dengle. See Dengle, Dialogues with Indian Master Architects, 199–204.

39. Sethi, “Charles Correa’s legendary vision lives on in his Mumbai home.”

40. Vikramaditya Prakash’s Zoom discussion with the authors on 7 June 2021. See also Prakash, One Continuous Line, 149–221; 271–285.

41. Prakash, One Continuous Line, 264–65.

42. Desai and Patel, The Architecture of Hasmukh C. Patel, 27.

43. Carol P. James, “Seriality and Narrativity in Calvino’s Le Città Invisibili,” in MLN, 97, no. 1, Italian Issue (January 1982): 144–61.