Where are the trees and the cottages?

“We just go about our business, and nobody knows anybody,” said legendary architect BV Doshi, 83, famous for having, early in his career, assisted Le Corbusier in the building of the city of Chandigarh.

Doshi, also responsible for the design of the Indian Institutes of Management in Ahmedabad and Bangalore, and founder of the Vastu Shilpa Foundation in Ahmedabad which aims to understand and address issues facing Indian cities, was addressing a large audience in the auditorium of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Palace Road.

Overwhelmed by the numbers of people who had turned up for the lecture, which was part of the CoLab-Goethe series on practices in Contemporary Art & Architecture, the Padma Shri award winner underlined how spaces were incomplete without cultural moorings. “Where did the trees from Bangalore go? Now that the houses are gone, the bungalows are gone, and the small cottages have been replaced by big buildings, what can we think of as ‘belonging’ to Bangalore?” the architect asked the audience.

To Doshi, buildings are means of sustaining communities. No building would be complete without that intangible element, the culture and heritage that it also represents. Most importantly, spaces create communities, Doshi held. “Today’s cities are anonymous,’ the renowned architect rued.

An architectural practice, to Doshi, is rooted in a social conscience. “By involving various communities, at the centre and the periphery, we could bridge the gap between the privileged and the deprived. By giving communities at the periphery an opportunity to contribute to the design and the development of the city, we give them a sense of ownership and belonging, a life of dignity,” Doshi said, urging architects to come forward as a community and beat the lobby represented by developers and politicians.