The first time I met Balkrishna Doshi, we sat on the floor of his living room in Kamala House in Ahmedabad. He was narrating a story from his childhood when he had had an accident and was bedridden for six months or so in his grandfather’s home in Pune. It wasn’t a grim conversation at all. It was fascinating actually. He talked about how he observed light, the sounds, how he watched the people move around him; during the day he would wait for the silence of night, and at night he would wait for sunrise. He spoke of it as if it had just happened yesterday. As we spoke, his wife, Kamala, was practicing Hindustani classical music in another room—I still remember.
Our conversation drifted in no particular order. We spoke of daydreams and impressions he’d had when bedridden, peacocks visiting his garden there in Kamala House, making up myths and stories of “a giant sleeping tortoise” to persuade M.F. Husain to paint at Amdavad ni Gufa, and about finding himself “as a matter of chance” in the atelier of Le Corbusier in Paris.
It is a rare experience to be in the presence of someone who bears such humility, an imagination not limited by time, life, or circumstances, and who lives every day with a faithful, pure love and awe for life and nature. That day, while leaving, I asked him to sign a copy of his book Paths Uncharted for me. He made a small error while writing the date. So to correct it, he just doodled around it so it started looking like a little donkey. It was the sweetest moment, as he pointed it out to me and laughed aloud, amused by his little trick.
Everyone who might have known or met Professor Doshi at some point will have some such memory of him, a moment that will last a lifetime. This legend in the field of architecture was also the sweetest, gentlest, wisest, most generous and humble man, who will be dearly missed.
Balkrishna Doshi was born in Pune on August 26th, 1927. He moved to Mumbai in 1947 and enrolled in the architecture course at the Sir J.J. College of Architecture. In 1950, he left on a ship for London and after a few months there, he moved to Paris to work under Le Corbusier. He returned to India in 1954 to oversee Le Corbusier’s projects in Chandigarh and Ahmedabad. He eventually established his own firm, Vastushilpa Consultants, in Ahmedabad in 1955 and the Vastushilpa Foundation for Studies and Research in Environmental Design in 1978. In 2018, he won the Pritzker Prize, the first person from India awarded architecture’s highest honor.
His legacy is tied intrinsically with India's modern history. His contribution, along with his peers like Achyut Kanvinde and Charles Correa, to name a few, has been immense. While his body of work is vast, a simple anecdote will remind us of how Doshi used to think. In the 1960s, he began to work on townships. The government agencies had laid rules to create different sets of homes in these towns, depending on the economic status of the residents to whom these homes would be allocated. “When I got a chance to do Life Insurance Corporation housing, they said, ‘We have three categories of policy holders. There are the well to do, the middle income, and the low income. So can you give us three groups of housing with separate blocks?’” Doshi didn’t want to have that kind of segregation. He spent two years trying to convince the authorities to mix up the houses. “If you give low-income families two bedrooms and another income group three bedrooms, at some point, they will all want to expand to more rooms. I mixed it up and gave options of balconies, break-out spaces, and terraces that could be enclosed when the need arose. Because in India, as families expand, houses also expand organically. For us, a house we build or buy is not a temporary place, people put down their roots there. At least, traditionally, that’s how we live,” he had said in an interview.
“A society of human beings is very similar to nature. It is diverse, with each growing at its own pace. I said, ‘Why don’t we make a forest, in the form of buildings?’” In his complex plan, Doshi had a talent for simplicity and a joyous celebration of life.
Beyond an architect, Doshi was an institution builder. His contributied to academia as founder-director of the School of Architecture, Ahmedabad (1962-72) and the School of Planning in Ahmedabad (1972-79). He built campuses around the country, including the CEPT University in Ahmedabad, NIFT in New Delhi, and IIM in Bangalore. In short, Doshi was a natural teacher.
It will be entirely insufficient to list the achievements of this man, without mentioning the sea of love he has inspired in people over his lifetime. At the peak of the pandemic, on his 93rd birthday in August of 2020, the editorial team of Architectural Digest India decided to throw him a “virtual” birthday party. Barely having to ask, wishes poured in from around the world, including from Tadao Ando, Shigeru Ban, and Fumihiko Maki who sent handwritten letters; Frank Gehry, Martha Thorne, Moshe Safdie, Gurjit Matharoo, and Jatin Das sent video notes. The enthusiasm was contagious, bewildering, and truly inspiring.
Of course, the creative spark of such a man rarely depletes, even during a pandemic. During days of lockdown, he was busy painting, making sculptures, and drawings. Vadehra Art Gallery showed them at Art Basel and later his granddaughter, Khushnu Panthaki Hoof, showed a selection of his newer works at Bikaner House in Delhi. “One of the most important lessons I have learnt from him is to be open, curious, and childlike. Being open to learning, growing, and sharing is what kept him young,” his granddaughter Khushnu Panthaki Hoof wrote in an essay in AD’s July-August 2018 issue dedicated entirely to B.V. Doshi, the year he won the Pritzker Prize.
“My grandfather never ceases to surprise me. In every interview he gives, the minute you think you know what his answer will be, he will say something completely different—and yet, the meaning and his underlying concerns remain the same. It constantly reminds me that there is so much to learn,” she wrote. “We might think we know, but in reality we know nothing. As a constant reminder to stay grounded, reinvent, and work hard, he often recalls Le Corbusier’s quip from a conversation they once had: ‘Every morning, I am born in the skin of a donkey!’ The stories he tells us never end—they twist and turn and take us on beautiful and meaningful journeys, filled with laughter and lessons for life. He is my constant inspiration, my guru, my guiding light, my friend, my confidant, and my dada.”
In an echo to Khushnu’s sentiment, you will always be remembered, dear Professor Doshi, and the scribble you made on the opening page of your book will be my most treasured gift.
Some quotes of B.V. Doshi are excerpted from a previous interview by the same author for “Apartmento Magazine” in March 2018.
