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Charles Correa 1
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IDEAS AND
BUILDINGS
by Sherban Cantacuzino| Ideas and Buildings
tects in India able to influence change
‘more than architects in the West, Charles
Correa said after a lecture in London they
‘were not, but that did not stop them from
trying. A friend of his maintained that what
‘was nice about living in a Third World
country was being able to take a position
and shoot on twenty different problems
which ate none of one’s business, This friend,
an Indian, now lived in Switzerland, where
he had no opinion on anything, because the
Swiss had no problems. In the twenties and
thirties architects might well have been
‘wrong in their ideas, but what was wonder-
fal was what they tried 0 do! The story
reveals two aspects of the man, the lateral
thinker and the pioneer. The architect
pioneers of the twenties and thirties in the
‘West, under whose inlence Correa grew
up, were intent on influencing change, but
their method of thoughe, cast in an analytical,
and experimental mould, never matched
theie vision. They would have recognised the
‘guru siting under a banyan tree as 2 symbol
‘of enlightenment, but they would not have
related his presence thereto schoo! buildings,
or reached wide-ranging conclusions about
man's relationship with built form in a hot
climate.
Correa's aptitude for epigrammatic state
ments stems from the carly architect
pioncersand their manifestos, The content of
these statements, however, is entirely of
today. They are acceptable to the dis
enchanted Western mind precisely because
they are not manifestos but insights, often of |
the most startling kind. They are acceptable
too, because they reveal a new kind of
pioneer who is concerned about people. “To
find how, where, and when he can be usefil
is the only way the architect can stretch the
boundaries of his vision beyond the suc
cession of middle and upper income com-
missions that encapsulate the profesion in
I: an answer to the question, ate archi-
Asia." Correa can make poetry out of the
most prostic of subjects, only to bring one
back to earth with 2 jolt. Thus
highly copical and prossic heading.
he writes: "To crossa desert and enter a house
around courtyard isa pleasure beyond mere
‘photogenic image-making: itis the quality of
light, and the ambience of moving air, that
forms the esence of our experience, Archi-
tecture as a mechanism for dealing with the
elements ..." Even in his beautiful inter=
pretation of che Gothic Cathedral he can't
resise the bathos. After examining the effect
‘of climate on architecture and concluding
that cold climates have produced the closed
box, generally to the detriment of architee-
ture, he makes an exception for the Gothic
Cathedral. Why, he asks, does this version of
the box move one so profoundly. “Pethaps
because Gothic architecture deals with light
falling from great heights — the same feeling
you get in the narrow canyons of the
American West, or in the pine forests of
Scandinavia. There about
Tooking up and seeing light —I chink the tle
‘of your head awakens some primordial
instinct. Perhaps it was he fear of Jove
Inurling down thunderbolt (or it might be
just someone hitting you)..."?
‘Though Correa and his practice never
imitate the pas, itis essential to understand
the traditional architecture of India in order
‘co understand their work. Ieisan architecture
of recession, of indoor and outdoor spaces
that merge into one another, the use of whieh
is determined by the climate or the seasons,
and not by the activity within cher, Tee ar
chitecture of horizontal planes — of roofs and
platforms, open colonnades, verandahs and
‘courtyards with fountains. Perhaps because of
hhis American training, Correa has rarely been
tempted to import Western ideas into India
Like most architects of his generation he has
‘been influenced by Le Corbusier, but by Le
Corbusier's response to the Mediterranean
is. something
sum with his “greae sculprural decisions (the
foverchangs, the double-beights), placed
facing the elements" In contrast he believes
that Le Corbusier's influence in the colder
climates has nar been beneficial because “these
heroic gestures had to withdraw into defen
sible space, into the mechanically heated (and
cooled) interiors of the building’
the outcome of this tendency in the new
shopping malls and hotel
credible lobbies, despite the spatial pyro-
technics, the ambience is somewhat artificial,
contrived, stilbom. And for a simple reason:
they do not connect with the kind of open=
to-sky space which could quicken them to
lite"
In his essay in this book Correa remarks
thae in a warm climate people have a very
differene relationship to buile form. He
singles out the ctr, an overhead canopy and
a traditional Indian form, as an example of
the minimal protection required by the
climate. He makes use ofthis form in several
fis buildings, including what i perhaps his
most distinguished early work, the memorial
‘museum of Mahatma Gandhi at Ahmedabad.
‘The unit isa pyramidal tiled roof supported
‘on brick piers. Some units are omitted to
form courtyards open to the sky; others with
exibitsneeding protection are enclosed with
panels or louvres. Ie isan architecture of deep
recession and of extreme contrasts of light
and shade. “One steps out ofthe ‘box’ to find
oneself... ina verandah, from which one
moves into a courtyard, and then under a
tree, and beyond on to a terrace covered by
4 bamboo pergola, and then perhaps back
into a room and out on to a baleony ..."*
‘The Gandhi Memorial Museum i a deeply
‘aditional architecture which wears is pastas
easily as 2 woman drapes her sat
‘A more obvious use of the chat i in the
even earlier Handloom Pavilion forthe Inter~
national Exhibition in Delhi. Here the roof is
4 wooden structure in the form of inverted
He sees
“In these ineSse in Uap
‘An upcounry bungatow.
Arye illge in Mays Prd,
‘umbrellas covered in translucent handloom
cloth, More interesting, however, is the
relationship ofthis lighe roof structure to the
rest of the building. It is a relationship of
‘which architects in cold climates dream, For
it entails almost complete separation, the
coluumns supporting the roof seractute rising
froin the floor of the building buc otherwise
making no contact whatever with the heavy
brick and mud substructure. The climate
makes it posible to leave a gap above the
walls so thar the roof appears to float on air.
The
Pavilion is a stepped platform contained by
walls, Over the platform there is controlled
processional movement, and we find many
‘examples in Correa’s work of platforms and
steps used to generate such movement. It is
‘once again part ofthe Indian cradition. The
‘monumental Hindu temples of South India,
“are experienced not just as a collection of
gopurams and shrines, but asa pedestrian pach
(a pilgrimage!) through che sacred spaces
that lie between”? Correa reminds us that
religious ceremonies in Asia have always
‘emphasised movement through open-to-sky
spaces and that,
Europe ate all variations of the closed-box
model, the great Iamic mosques in Delhi
and Lahore ate at the other end of the
spectrum, consisting mainly of large areas of
open space surrounded by just enowgh buile
form co make one feel ‘inside’ a piece of
substructure of the Handloom
while the cathedrals of
architecture,
(Other examples in Correa's work of the
platform eheme are the Kasturba Samadhi in
Poona, the unbuilt India Pavilion for Expo
"70at Osaka and the Crafts Museum in Delhi,
In all these the principle of the chatri is
jettioned and instead the architeewure
becomes that of a built hill of steps and
platforms, which are cut open to admie light
tothele
which is in the open countryside, Correa
achieves a topographical architecture in
which the buile form of horizontal planes and
Jong lines of seats and parapets plays a
twuly complementary part to the landscape.
Movement, too, is here majestically por-
trayed in a long earth ramp which leads
to the terace over the museum and to a
commanding view of the sama ise.
‘Topographical form is also found in the
Kovalam Beach Resort at Kerala, where the
accommodation is built into the hill slopes
and the buildings themselves take on the
Shape of the hill. Every room has its own,
terrace cut into the artifical hill and open to
the sky. Indeed central to all Correa’s work
is the theme of what he calls open-to-sky
space. Ithas a number of variations but it is
nearly always present, In the Tara Apart
‘ments at Delhi the terraces project, because
in the hot, dry climate of North India deep-
sky radiation makes such open terraces the
coolest place to sleep out on warm suntmner
nights. In Bombay, on the other hand, the
high humidity, which causes dew to fill
sbelow. In the Kasturba Samadhi,
overnight, makes it necessary to have cover,
hence the comer terraces of the Kanchan-
junga Apartments, recessed within the
building, but 6 metres high in order to retain,
a feeling of opennes. In his low-income
housing in New Bombay Correa uses open=
to-sky space asa trade-off against the cost of
producing equivalent covered space, for
under Indian conditions courtyards have a
usability coefficient of about half that of a
room and verandahs about three-quarters,
n intelligent response to climate lies
at the root of all Correa’s work.
The response often demonstrates 2
subtle and sophisticated understanding of
climatic problems which is derived, one
suspects, mainly from observation, since the
published scientific literature on the subject is
patchy, to say the least
observation is of an historical kind. In che
administrative offices of the new State
Assembly for the Government of Madhya
Pradesh at Bhopal he reverts t0 an old co-
lonial radition of verandahs overlooking
courtyards as the means of circulation and
access to the offices (making waiting to
cet a goverament official a pleasant experi-
cence), instead of the standard double-loaded
internal corridor. More often it is observa-
tion in the empirical sense — the way the
section of a building may control air
movements, for instance. In the Kanchan-
junga Apartments and inthe Previ Projector
Lima, Peru (1969-73) each unit is shaped so
Sometimes. thisShading the elements fom the sn
The Bald Fst, Bomb, bln he 1920
Tae Palas, Bombo.
that the prevailing breeze, which enters at
‘one end, is drawn through the house with the
help of double-height volumes. In the Previ
Project this draft is increased by means of a
louvred airscoop over the double-height
volume; and in the Tube Housing at
Ahmedabad (1961-62) each house is in
addition given a sloping ceiling to help the
hhot air rise and escape through a vent at the
top. In the Tube Housing and in several other
examples doors are always omitted (eisual
privacy being achieved by the use of diferent
level) to avoid obstructing the air move-
iment, Yet another example of the section's
controlling the climace is the design for the
Cablenagar Township at Kota in Rajasthan,
(1967), of which the Parekh House at
Almmedabad (1966-68) is the buile model
Here the section is stepped, so reducing to a
‘minimum the amount of roof surface which
is exposed to the sun,
in these examples Correa is seen to cur
so mundane a factor as the movement of ait
to his advantage by creating spatial variety
and contrast within his buildings, he is alo
capable to emulating Le Corbusier in “his
great sculptural decisions (the overhangs, che
ddouble-heights ...)”, Several works designed
by his practice make use of a single giant
umbrella which protects the building set
‘within it, and defines and gives shade eo the
‘outdoor spaces below it Ie isa kind of urban
theatre — a stage for the whole city at city
scale. The New India Centre, designed for
Lutyens’ Connaught Circle in Delhi, is an
all-glass office block 45 metres high, which is
famed by a monumental “prosceniuan arch”
and protected by a pergola at the top. More
energy-conscious is the administrative com-
plex for the Bleceonics Corporation of India
(ECIL) at Hyderabad (1965-68) in which
Correa practices whathe preaches. "In a poor
country like India,” he has written, “we
simply cannot afford to squander the kind of
resources required to air-condition a glass
tower under a tropieal sun. And this, of
course, is an advantage, for it means chat
the building itself must, through its very
form, create the ‘controls’ the user needs."
‘The building creates its own micto-climate
‘without airconditioning. It consists of a
number of three-storey office units, grouped
round 4 courtyard and sheltered by a single
roof on giant columas which is partly slatted
and partly covered with 2 she
reflecting the sunlight back into the sky.
The amount of solid surface which absorbs
Iheat and transmits it t0 the space below is
therefore reduced to a minimum, the spaces
themselves consisting of garden courts and
balconies as well as indoor rooms. One
‘might add chat this kind of protection nocd
not be solely in the vertical dimension, and
Correa shows, in his analysis of colonial
of water
bungalows, how the verandah and utility
rooms gave the internal living and sleeping
areas 6Wo lines of defence, and how this prin=
ple could be applied (o modern apartment.
block. Such a protective belt also has impor
architectural implications,
implies the recession and the deep shadow
which is every architec’s dream and which
is so much more difficult to achieve in cold
climates,
Te will be apparent from what has already
been said that for Cortea the house is part
of the much bigger problem of housing and,
in Correa's particular case, of housing in
the Third World. In addition to the projects
already mentioned and among a good many
others, he has designed and built large
hhousing schemes for the Life Insurance
Corporation of India in Bombay (1969-72)
and in Bangalore (1972-74). In a suburb of
Bombay a é~acte ste was developed with
terraced apartments up to fivestoreys high,
but in Bangalore row houses, providing
accommodation which was more appropriate
to the local climate and life-style, were pre-
ferred. In cis context itis interesting to note
that for the previously cited low-income
hhousing at Ahmedabad the brief required
four-storey walk-up apartments, but row
hhouses to the same density and with larger
living spaces were in fact provided. Correa
hhasindeed pointed out repeatedly the need toA view crs the water t he apres oa Mab Hil one € Ban's igh income ar
identify the most economic and efficient
pattems of housing. These, he maintains, carn
‘out to be mostly low-rise high-density con-
figurationsin Third World cities. They make
extensive use of terraces, verandahs and
courtyards, forin a warm climate space itself
js a resource. He identifies a hierarchy of
spaces, from the enclosed privacy of the
hhouse itself, through che threshold of the
house where contact is established with the
outside world, co the communal water tap
and maidan of the whole city. He comes
to che allimportant conclusion that this is
the kind of habitat which people have always
built, and can continue to build, for them-
selves — that its the peopl, in other words,
who are the greatest resource ofall. "Further-
more,” he continues,
relevance to employment. For while money
invested in high-rise steel and concrete
buildings goes into the hands of the few
contracts who ¢an build such structures and
the banks which can finance them, thi low=
rise pattern of housing is built by small
‘masons and contractors — which of course
.generatesa far greater number of jobs exactly
‘where they should be generated: in che bazaar
sector of the economy, where
‘migrants are looking for work."
‘Ac Belapur, a housing sector of New
Bombay, Correa has built cluster housing on
the banks of a small stream, which observes
it is of decisive
the rural
the hierarchy of spaces to which reference has
already been made. The basic une isa cluster
fof seven houses grouped around a small
courtyard. Three of these clusters (21 houses)
are then arranged around a larger open space.
Next comes the community space, and
finally the neighbourhood space where the
primary school and other communal services
are located. The houses are designed so that
they can be enlarged when required, exch
house being fieo-standing with its own inde=
pendent load-bearing walls, in some of
which for the sake of privacy, however,
window openings are proscribed. Putting
into practice his principle of equity, Correa
hhas achieved a variation in plot size which is
quite small considering the wide range of
income groups for which che houses are
designed. House plans are merely indicative
and construction is traditional and of the
simplest kind — rendered brick walls timber
HHoor and roof structures, and pitched roots
covered with tiles — so that it can be under
taken by local masons and mists, with the
help of the people themselves. The result is
like a scaled-down version of Kotachi Wadi
in Bombay, 2 charming residential quarter of
two-storey houses with wooden verandahs
and outside staircases built inthe 19th century
by East Indians and still inbabited by chem,
At Belapur, however, the absence of veran-
dahs and the relatively small roof projections
leave the walls of the houses rather more
exposed to the sun,
Just as Correa ses the house as part of the
larger problem of housing, so he regards
housing as an integral part of town-planning,
He has written concisely but eloquenely
about New Bombay, (pages 46-51) a city
which he among others conceived, and for
which he was Chief Architect from 1971 to
1974, From 1975 to 1978 he was also Con-
sulting Architect to the Government of
Karnataka, working on the structural plan
for the city of Bangalore. In all his thinking
about town-planning he quickly gets down
to the fundamentals. The magnitude of the
migration to the cities and, in the case of
Bombay, with its industrial and financial
centre in the southernmost tip of the island,
its strangulating effect; the consequent need
to increase Bombay's holding capacity by
opening up new growth centres across the
harbour; public ownership of land; low-rise
high-density housing om a linear pattern; and
mass transport system to get people to thei
place of work in the shortest time possible,
‘The intention is that che new growth centres
across the harbour showld restructure the
Whole city, o that the existing north-south
linear structure of the island would become
a circular poly-centred one. The idea of New
Bombay arose in 1964 when the population
was about four million. Today it is nine
million and by the year 2000 i will be 15
‘million. Money and the politicians prefer ©
extend Old Bombay by building higher, so
that New Bombay has not progressed as
‘much as it might have. In addition to the
two-part holding action which Correa
advocates during che next two decades (page
46), holding action which involves simula=
ting the economy of existing villages, small
towns and middle-size towns, he suggests
clsewhere that these should be “new centres
of growth, neither rural nor urban, bat kinds
of quasirural areas in which you havedensities high enough to have a bus service
and a school system, but low enough so that
people can keep a buifilo and therefore have
another source of incom
sees a role for the Third World architect in
formulating the programme and design for
such centtes. The new National Commission
fon Urbanisation, of which he is the Chair=
rman, is now actively promoting this idea
0m particular he
‘Correa has heen questioned on a number
cof occasions about the propriety of building
tower blocks in a country ke India. He ime
self has been criticised for his Kanehanjunga
Apartments in Bombay, which is just such a
tower block, 28 storeys high. His reply is
engagingly feank and revealing, and relates
to fundamental planning issues. "Tall build
ings he says, “reflec high land values... ta
the developer, the optimal buile form is a
decisive trade-off between the cost of land
and the cost of construction. As a building
goes higher, the construction component
goes up, but the land component diminishes
But if instead of looking 2t just a particular
site, the developer is responsible for the
whole neighbourhood, then this point of
tradeoff would be diferent; and if here we
Jook atthe city asa whole, then the point of
trade-off would change again — because
then land would have to be provided not
only for that particular building but for all
the schools and open spaces that go with it
Unforuunately: we live in a society where
decisions are made by people looking only at
the smallest contex: Le, the individual site
They are perfectly logical in what they do,
but the resale is myopic. Ie was only when I
worked on New Bombay that I began to sce
that one had to have an overview of the
whole thing to understand what should be
done”. For Correa architecture, and by
implication, town-planning can be agen of
change, indeed must bein a place like India,
At great disasters are to be averted, This is not
nnecesarily a matter of inventing new idea,
ancanjnga apartments in Boebay, unde conaraction,
and he gives Mao Zedong and Gandhi as
examples of people who did not mind
whether an idea was old or new. What
rattered was whether it could be made to
work in the context of theie own country.
Mao's Communism derives from a German
Jew who lived a century earlier and much of
Gandhi's stems from Emerson and Thoreau.
The genius of both these men,” Correa
concludes, “was that they could stiteh these
ideas ineo an old social fabric and produce a
seamless wonder, New ideas making the past
work, (And vice versal)"
Ithough Correa has lived and
worked most of his life in Bombay,
he isan Indian ftom Goa, hat small
but rich country where 2 Latin European
culture stands superimposed on an Oriental
fone, and where people today, according, to
the author ofa guide book on Goa, are never
ina hurry and always ready to give thei time
to a stranger,!? a characteristic which cet
«ainly applies to him, He as recently built a
hotel there in che shape ofa small town and
completed the auditorium of the Kala
Akademi, both of which reveal his natural
wit and high-spirited sense of humour, as
well as a more unexpected fascination with
decoration as a means of extending and
deepening 2 chosen imagery. In the case of
the hotel, the Cidade de Goa, the reality is
itself unreal and insubstantial like a stage set,
an ephemeral guality which is not inappro-
priate, it could be argued, to its ephemeral
function, The flatness of smooth, painted
wall planes is emphasised by bands of com-
trasting colours to openings and edges. The
extension to this reality in the form of three
figures in the round, monochrome and
sghost-like, of Vaseo da Gama and his friends,
and of tompe Foeil wall paintings of an
arcaded seeet and various openings, in one of
which stands the dark silhouette of a man,
straight out ofa painting
by De Chirico. This is not so much illusion
in the Barroque sense — the actual and the
virtual are both too unreal for illusion co
‘work — as an extension of the architecture
through decoration,
Brian Brace Taylor has suggested per~
ceptively chat Cortea's use of paint here
derives from the clasic relationship of Feeseo
to built form, going back to Florence or to
Ajanea. "The walls forming open and closed
becomes surreal
spaces,” he writes, “have been used as a
support, a series of virtual sereens, for ewo-
dimensional pictorial statements which
‘counter-point and balance the reality of theae so ang
"ion and rein, Kala Akademi, Gon
actual three-dimensional sequence created by
the architecture itself" Ambiguities
abound. Isica city or just the image ofa city?
Is the person standing there ral or an illusion?
‘And why should illusion not postess the
vibrant intensity of the real ching — poetic
rather than scientific truth?
In the case of the Kala Akademi audi
torium the side walls are divided into bays by
painted pilasters, between which are trompe
Fei boxes with people in them. Buc these are
even les illusionistic than the hotel trompe
Voeil. They are, first of all, in black and
white, and have a linear quality like draw-
ings. The academic technique of hatching
and crosshatching shadow recalls David
Hockney's sets for The Rake's Progrest but,
anlike Hockney, the Goan artist Mario de
‘Miranda who carried out this work, uses the
technique with irony. The people in the
boxes, moreover, are casicitures of eal
people. [¢ may be putting too serious an
interpretation on the work, but Miranda
and Correa seem to be saying “this is what
theatre used to be like and here are people of
today who would like it to remain as it
always has been, But things aren't actually
like this, and we don't want those people in
the boxes to be real". The purpose of earica-
tre, afterall, isto ridicule
In the Gymkhana Bar in Bombay there
is straight illusion and the wall is painted
to Took like windows through which a
panoramic view of a cricket match in fall
swing on the maidan, actually chere on the
other side of the wall, can be enjoyed. The
illusion of the real thing as well as the real
thing are both there, one behind the other.
"Quality in architeccure and planning,”
Correa has said, “is the result of under-
sanding constraints, not of ignoring, or
avoiding them. How well does a building fit
into its ste? How intelligently dacs it deal
‘with the hazards of climate? What materials
and technology does it use — and how
appropriate are they in terms of cast and local
availability? What is the scale and ambience
of the whole environment — and i
consonance with the sensibilities of the
people who live there?” These vital ques:
tions are a far cry from moder architecture
as we have known it, and icis a measure of
their recognition that Correa has been
awarded the Padma Shei by the President of
India, and in 1984 the Royal Gold Medal by
Queen Elizabeth I
Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn were
tuniversal architects, able to absorb a people's
culture and tradition to an extraordinary
degree, and above all able co give back what
they absorbed in the form of magnificent and
appropriate architecture. Correa thinks India
Gyan Ba, Bombay
was lucky to get Le Corbusier and Kahn
because they believed in architecture. Correa
himself i essentially an Indian architect who
is achieving an international reputation as
much through his ideas as through is
architecture
Correa’s interes in planning and housing
are symptomatic of his belief in the process
rather than in the product of architecture, He
is above all a strategist, always seeking to
establish the right structure, ask the right
questions, create conditions in which the
right things can happen. “The problem of
housing the vast majority of urban people,”
he states,
building materials or construction techno-
logis; itis primarily a matter of density, of|
re-establishing land-use allocations."*© "This
strategy gets to the root ofthe matter because
itis an essential step in achieving a more
equitable distribution of resources, and
because it isnot a drain, lke miracle building
materials and construction technologies, on
the economy of a country
This is not to say that Correa is unin=
terested in the product — in the specific
building which isthe resule of the process. His
interest, however, always appears t0 be
focused om the prototypical, on a particular
solution as a step in the development of an
jdea, and on the way the lessons leamt from
is not one of finding miracleew ad Bing
4 pursicular solution can be applied to a
general problem. This explains his ability 10
tackle a whole range of issues at almost any
scale, Even a small job like the beach houses
at Mandhwa, or a matter of detail like his
ingenious solution forthe house servants who
sleep on the pavements of Bombay may
illustrate a principle or form part of a wider
argument with implications at city or
regional scale. And even his visually most
seductive buildings, ike the
‘museum of Mahatma Gandhi at Ahmedabad,
for the Kala Akademi at Panaji in Goa, are
strongly conceptual — conceived inthe
‘mind and in the eye, an idea as much as an
image, albeit a memorable one
The same will surely be true of the State
Assembly for the Government of Madhya
Pradesh, which is now under construction in
the state capital Bhopal. The site, near a ine
group of Muslim monuments and on ehe
rest ofa hill, has inspired a mighty plan of
nine halls and courtyards contained within a
circular wall, above which a variety of domes
and other roof forms will emerge. Corres
likens i¢ to a city. At one level it is d
mandala, at another the deeply mythical
Round City of Baghdad which may have
provided the source. Esentally inward
‘uming, this “city” isthe complete reverse of,
Kahn’s sculprured monument at Dhaka — a
series of highly articulated cylinders and
cubes, grouped symmetrically around the
circular cocoon of the assembly chamber
Despite the overall circular form, Correa’s
solution is a loose fit and essentially anti-
monumental
If the Third World context in which
Correa works effectively denies him the
possibility of indulging in the high-
technology architecture of a Norman Foster
for in the finely wrought and personal
artefacts ofa James Stirling —in architecture
as high art and in product as an end in itself
— the traditionalist approach which r
Sebelp housing New Hornby.
interprets the past as pastiche or collage is
‘equally alien to him. An architect is Medi-
terranean not because he wes tiled roofs but
because the spirit of the Mediterranean runs
in his blood, Aako and Le Corbusier were
Doth inspired by the past, but they never
imitated itor borrowed from it directly inthe
way the fashionable post-modemists do,
Correa’s admiration for Hasan Fathy in no
way blinds him to the dangers of reviving th
past or of clinging co tradition, “We mnst
hhe declares, “understand oar past well
enough to value it — and yer alo well
enough to know why (and how) ie must be
changed. Architecture is not just a rein
forcement of existing values. — social,
political, economic. On the contrary. It
should open new doors — to new aspira-
sions." He admonishes the American post-
‘modernists for looking at Palladio when they
should be emulating Frank Lloyd Wright
who “invented the future” with his Usonian
house, of which so much of American
suburbia — the ranch house, che split-level
hhouse, ete — isthe consequence.
artist, of course, is remembered
by his art, not by his ideas, An
architect must build beautiful and
memorable buildings. Buc there are perhaps
‘wo kinds of beauty in architecture, an inner
and an outer beauty. Inner beauty can come
from something asintangible asan idea, from
the organisation behind the plan and section,
from the inherent harmony of the whole,
Inner beauty tends to be hidden from the
uninitiated. It is not easily perceived except
by those who three
dimensional relationships. Outer beauty, on
the other hand, is superficial and has to do
with decoration and with the tactile qualities
of the surface. It encompasses exactly those
visual qualities which can endear a building
to the ordinary person, The Modern Move-
‘ment in architecture at its best has been strong
in the former at the expense of the latter
Correa’s architecture, t00, is. consistently
strong in inner beauty — which is perhaps
just as well, for in a country lke India, the
tasks are so gigantic, the sense of urgency so
great, that the few who understand the way
forward must make certain that they do the
firs chings first
can understand
"Afr he 1983 Thoma Cait Lees, °A Pas in he
Sit delivered by Chas Coren oo 31 Jamry and
publ inthe Jounal of the Repl Satya A
May 1
0p. cit. 1988 Thomas Cait Lecare
Sop. ae 1983 Thomas Cabie Lore
0p. ct. 1989 Thonss Cab Lest,
Op. 1988 Thome Caer Lace
Oper-toaky apc’ by Chas Core, Mima 1982
0p. ce 1989 Thomas Cabir Lea
0p. ct. 1989 Thomas Cabie Lert
‘ein an answer fo 4 gueion afer the 183 Thomas
‘tn an smower to guetion afer the WD Thomas
0p ot 1985 Thoma Cube Lete
G3 by JM. Richard, Londo, 18
‘Cores Cidade de Gos" by Brin Brace Tay,
Cones Conan rch), Bombs.
The Naw Landeage by Chars Cons, The Book
Society oft 1985
"The New Lande op.