Sensitive Architecture

This is how award-winning architect,Christopher Benninger,chooses to begin his book,Letters to a Young Architect,slated to release on August 29. Benninger has been the creative force behind designs like the Mahindra United World College building,the Suzlon One Earth headquarters in Pune and also the National Ceremonial Plaza in Thimpu,Bhutan. The work on the book began following a visit to Spain four years back. “In Valencia I came across a book of notes in Spanish based on the talks of a Spanish painter. It inspired me to do the same thing. I can’t even remember who the painter was!,” he says. It was his partner,Ramprasad,who got down to collecting all the papers and articles that have been written by or about Benninger. “And then I began the tedious task of editing,re-writing and composing new letters,and that took about two years,” says Benninger.

The book,to be released at Bal Gandharva Rangmanch,makes mention of his interactions with architects Jose Luis Sert,Walter Gropius,Buckminster Fuller and Arnold Toynbee, who in Benninger’s own words,are his ‘gurus’. It deals with subjects like the importance of being modern and the basics of architecture. “The more I have delved into the subject,I have learnt about the importance of the whole guru- shishya tradition and how much importance it holds in modern times,” he says. “Things in India are changing so fast that we have to learn faster than we design. There is no end in all of this. And there are always new teachers emerging to inspire us,if only we choose to get inspired. All these factors form the crux of my book.” Benninger believes that even though architecture in general is changing, we need to go back in time and tradition. “The principles of basic design are still very important. Honesty of expression,human scale,harmony,proportion and integration with the terrain and the climate,working with craftsmen and respecting the client’s needs and limitations,all need to be taken into account. That is the beauty of the profession. Architecture is as old as the hills. It is changeless,and yet rapidly transforming all at once!”

In one section,’In search of the city’,he talks about the challenges that lie in building cities. “It is very important that we stop learning from the West. They have been on a self-destructive trajectory for well over a century,while we had all the right ideas 50 years ago. We need a model where nothing ever becomes obsolete and where we can reinvent things,using the same resources to transform into a new idea or concept. And I think it will be based on Gandhian thoughts. That is where,if India stops copying the West and starts to look at things in its own way,it could become the technological centre of the Universe.”