Soon to turn 90, BV Doshi is only getting started with a major new retrospective

Jul 10, 2017 - By Tora Agarwala

If you think BV Doshi’s upcoming exhibition in Shanghai—curated by his granddaughter Khushnu Panthaki Hoof—is the culmination of a 70-year career, you’re wrong.

A few months short of his 90th birthday, when I first speak to Balkrishna Doshi, I ask him what a typical day in his life entails. I’m curious: What does an almost-nonagenarian—one of the greatest architects India has ever produced, and a recipient of the country’s highest civilian honour (the Padma Shri)—do every day? “I lead a normal life!” Doshi dismisses my question over a phone call from Ahmedabad, where he is based. But as much as he wants to believe that, or wants us to believe that, there is nothing ordinary about the life of BV Doshi.

At 24, he moved to Paris, trained under, and later collaborated with, the legendary Le Corbusier. At 35, he founded the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT), the holy grail of architectural education in India. At 68, he received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, for his work on the Aranya Community Housing project—a low-cost housing settlement in the city of Indore. And this July, at 89, he will travel to China for his biggest solo exhibition overseas.

At 24, he moved to Paris, trained under, and later collaborated with, the legendary Le Corbusier. At 35, he founded the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT), the holy grail of architectural education in India. At 68, he received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, for his work on the Aranya Community Housing project—a low-cost housing settlement in the city of Indore. And this July, at 89, he will travel to China for his biggest solo exhibition overseas.

To be held at The Power Station of Art in Shanghai, “Celebrating Habitat: The Real, The Virtual & The Imaginary”—a version of which was earlier seen in New Delhi in 2014— has been curated by his architect-granddaughter, Khushnu Panthaki Hoof. She remembers trips she took with her grandfather in her childhood. Around the temples of Madurai and through the arched gateways of Fatehpur Sikri, they travelled, learning about the beauty of life and versatility of marble with equal consideration. “He instilled in us the urge to learn,” she says.

For Hoof, this is what drives her to do her best every day. “The pressure was, of course, tremendous,” she says of her experience. “Architecture by its very nature is deeply contextual and nothing can replicate the entire experience it embodies.” So full-scale mock-up installations—including Doshi’s own home in Ahmedabad and the cavernous insides of the Amdavad ni Gufa art gallery—have been designed and set to music. Apart from that, there will be a series of miniatures Doshi painted in the 1980s. The remainder has models, sketches and photographs of the hundreds of other things the architect conceptualized in his career. However, nothing is placed chronologically, nothing follows a sequence. “We didn’t need to,” says Hoof. “My grandfather’s pieces are timeless.”

How does a kind of architecture fashioned on and for the country in which it was developed adapt to an international context? Or does it have to at all? “Architecture that raises fundamental questions doesn’t need to be adapted.” Doshi has the final say. That his is a life worth celebrating is incontestable—and the retrospective attempts to do just that. Doshi, however, has other ideas. “This isn’t an exhibition to showcase my glory—but a tool through which people can ask questions.” He began asking questions, he recalls, right from the start. And his quest led him to become not only a world renowned urban planner, but an astute thinker who places human emotion at the core of his architectural practice.

Celebrating Habitat: The Real, The Virtual & The Imaginary will be on from July 29 to October 29.

Source: https://www.architecturaldigest.in/content/soon-turn-90-bv-doshi-getting-started-major-new-retrospective-china/