Mustansir Dalvi
Tekton
Tekton: Volume 10, Issue 2, December 2023
pp. 66 – 71
Mustansir Dalvi is Professor of Architecture at Sir J.J. College of Architecture. His doctoral research, for which he received a PhD from the IIT-Bombay (IDC), examined Bombay’s Art Deco architecture from a semiotic perspective. He is the author of The Romance of Red Stone: An Appreciation of Ornament on Islamic Architecture in India (Super Book House), and The Past as Present: pedagogical practices in architecture at the Bombay School of Art (Sir JJ College of Architecture/UDRI). He is the editor of 20th Century Compulsions: Modern Indian Architecture from the MARG Archives (MARG) a collection of writings about early Indian modernist architecture. Over the years, Mustansir’s research has been published in New Architecture and Urbanism: Development of Indian Traditions (INTBAU), Buildings that shaped Bombay: The Architecture of G. B. Mhatre (UDRI), and Mulk Raj Anand: Shaping the Indian Modern (MARG). Dalvi is also an archivist, a curator and columnist, and a published poet.
mustansirdalvi@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
The passing of Balkrishna Doshi marks the end of an era of great modern Indian architects led by Habib Rahman, Achyut Kanvinde and Charles Correa. His prolific designs set the stage for an architecture of independent India. Doshi considered Le Corbusier as guru and Kahn a mentor, imbibing from them lessons on concrete and brick, learning to use both contextually and critically. His designs synthesized environment and context with the building’s specific relationship with the site. Doshi had a constant desire to animate interior space, and the spaces around his buildings. When he was conferred with the Pritzker in 2018, architecture’s greatest honour, the jury celebrated his work as one that embodied a deep sense of responsibility and a desire to contribute to his country and its people through high-quality, authentic architecture. Over a career spanning seven decades, Doshi was a modernist, a designer of settlements, an Aga Khan Award winning architect, a creator of low-cost housing and a teacher with generations of students whose lives he transformed.
KEY WORDS
B.V. Doshi, Indian Modern, Tribute
