remembering balkrishna doshi's architectural legacy

balkrishna doshi: remembering the indian visionary

Over the past seven decades, 2018 Pritzker laureate Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi (1927 -2023) created a body of work lauded for its poetics, purpose, and deep appreciation of material context. From affordable social housing to public space, Doshi’s works are influenced as much by India’s vernacular architecture and environment as they are by his early tutelage under Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn — mentors he describes as his guru and yogi, respectively. In 2022, he formally received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal for Achitecture to honor his outstanding contributions to architecture.

Balkrishna Doshi was born in 1927 in Pune, India. Growing up, he was close to following in his family’s footsteps as furniture makers, but his interest in architecture eventually alchemized into a passion. In 1947, he graduated from the JJ School of Architecture in Bombay and worked with Le Corbusier for four years as a senior designer in Paris (1951-54) and four more years in India to supervise projects in Ahmedabad. He then worked with Louis Kahn as an associate to build the Indian Institute of Management in that very same city, and they continued to collaborate for over a decade.

Doshi eventually established his own practice, Vastu-Shilpa, in 1956, alongside two architects. Now known as Vastushilpa Consultants, the multi-disciplinary practice has evolved to ﬁve partners spanning three generations and sixty employees, with a portfolio of over 100 built projects — each having influenced the architectural landscape of India and its adjacent regions. Doshi ultimately settled with his wife Kamala in Ahmedabad, building their house in 1963 and later on his studio, Sangath, in 1981.

Balkrishna Doshi in his Sangath studio, 2018 | image © Iwan Baan

delving into the architect’s seven-decade long career

Beyond this early Western influence, Balkrishna Doshi developed a design philosophy that merges industrialism and primitivism, as well as modern architecture and traditional form. His practice integrates environmentally sustainable and climate-conscious ideals and roots architecture within the larger context of the surrounding culture and its social, ethical, and religious beliefs.

A deeply humanitarian outlook also completes his compassionate approach to design. Indeed, Doshi perceives architecture as an extension of the body, steeped in its own essence and value. ‘So this has been my philosophy, asking the question, What is the essence of architecture? A building is a living organism. A building is alive. It’s not a product, it’s a process in which things happen. It’s a reflection of life and architecture is a backdrop to life,’ the architect shared during a talk with RIBA President Simon Allford back in 2022.

Life Insurance Corporation Housing, Ahmedabad, India, 1973 | image © Vastu-Shilpa Consultants

As well as a practicing architect and urban planner, Doshi was a highly regarded educator who shared his teachings at universities and through his Vastushilpa Foundation, dedicated to bettering vernacular design and planning in India. Exemplifying his passion for education, Doshi established and founded The School of Architecture in Ahmedabad in 1966. Boasting a dramatic brick and concrete shell, the structure reveals strong influences from Le Corbusier’s 20th-century modernist traits. The architect also carefully considered India’s climate by featuring slanted skylights, sliding doors, and tree-shaded recessed plazas. The complex was later expanded to accommodate the School of Planning (1970), the Visual Arts Centre (1978), and the School of Interior Design (1982) — and was renamed CEPT University in 2002.

In 1992, Doshi expanded his passion for education by completing the Indian Institute of Management (1977 – 1992), a business school brought to life by interconnected courtyards, lofty corridors, and a series of shrines and temples to provide pauses for personal and social activities. ‘The diverse landscapes in the courtyards and pergolas, with their changing color and light, add a sense of time. Similarly, the external stone walls are covered with creepers,’ notes Sangath Studio, Doshi’s practice.

Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, 1977-92 | image © Vinay Panjwani, courtesy Vastu-Shilpa Foundation

Another notable project of his is the Aranya Low-Cost Housing (1989), designed as a minimalist township for economically weaker sections (EWS) in Indore. The master plan reveals clusters of 10 EWS households huddled around a central courtyard; each unit is allotted a 30 sq.m plot with a brick plinth, a built toilet, water, and electricity. ‘With the possibility of further growth as new alternatives, these typologies would find means to improve the quality of life for each respective family. In thirty years, the entire fully developed township harmonizes the virtues of choice, freedom, and social togetherness. As envisaged, the EWS groups emulate maximizing multiple uses of space with minimal effort,’ writes Sangath Studio.

In the same spirit, Doshi completed the Life Insurance Corporation Housing (1973) in Ahmedabad. It was described as ‘an experiment to combine three income groups on three floors of a pyramidal-shaped housing block that is approached through a common staircase.’

A few years later, Balkrishna Doshi ventured into the world of arts with the Amdavad Ni Gufa gallery in Ahmedabad (1994). Designed as an underground space, the center takes on a cavernous quality, with warped columns resembling geological formations and walls covered in artworks nodding to imprints of early civilizations. Here, visitors enjoy a cool climate while learning about each featured artist.

Indian Institute of Management | image © Vinay Panjwani, courtesy Vastu-Shilpa Foundation

Other famous works include Shreyas Comprehensive School Campus (1958-63), Ahmedabad, India; the Institute of Indology (1962), Ahmedabad, a building to house rare documents; Tagore Hall & Memorial Theater (1967), a 700-seat brutalist auditorium in Ahmedabad; Premabhai Hall (1976), Ahmedabad, India; Sangath (1981), the studio for his architecture practice, Vastu Shilpa; Ompuri Temple (1998), Matar, sporting an eye-like shape; the Center for Science and Environment (2005), New Delhi; the Flame University (2007), Pune, envisioned as a bazaar-like complex.

More recently, in 2019, the Vitra Design Museum presented the first international Balkrishna Doshi retrospective outside Asia. The exhibition featured numerous significant projects realized by the architect between 1958 and 2014. This assemblage of works ranged in scale from urban planning projects to academic and cultural institutions, private residences, and interiors. Not only did it introduce his works to a global audience, but the retrospective also reflected on its underlying ideals and social context — further demonstrating the revolutionary footprint that Doshi has left on Indian architecture.

Sangath Studio, Ahmedabad, India, 1980 | image courtesy VSF & the Pritzker Architecture Prize