Calico dome: Crumbling crown of architecture

Ahmedabad boasts of an architectural legacy that spans the vernacular and the modern, from sultanates to the contemporary. It is the set of modern edifices that has put Ahmedabad on the world map of architecture.

Arguably the only city in the world to have four exquisite creations of Swiss-born French maestro and modernist Le Corbusier (the villa Sarabhai, villa Shodhan, the mill owners’ association building and Sanskar Kendra), the city has the creation of yet another internationally acclaimed architect, the Indian Institute of Management campus designed by the American Louis Kahn.

It is thanks to the enterprising outlook of the residents of Ahmedabad that drew legendary American architect Frank Lloyd Wright to sketch his footprint on the city’s landscape. This would surely have made Ahmedabad the Mecca of modern architecture. Alas, it missed Wright’s creation by a whisker. Gautam and Gita Sarabhai, who trained with Wright, invited him to design the administration building for Calico Mills.

The architect readily obliged and made a sketch proposal for the building, which arguably would have been one of the first high-rises in Ahmedabad, with terraces and a podium. However, the project could not be realised, one of the many reasons for this being that the two-storey basement for parking and other facilities did not find Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation approval.

This architectural miss, however, was not to become a total loss. Gautam Sarabhai, a mathematician by training by with a spirit to experiment, endeavoured to build the unique structure for the Calico showroom-cum-shop.

Engineering wizard Buck Minister Fuller was known for his large-span lightweight structural marvels in steel geodesic domes. The critical points in the assembly of geodesic structures are the junctions, which receive six to eight elements connected to a point. Inspired by Fuller’s structures, Sarabhai - while adopting the basic structural philosophy - altered, adapted and customised the joints by way of overlapping and connecting several laminate sheets together with a single nut and bolt at each intersection.

This nearly 12-metre-wide structure formed a segmental dome, anchored at the edges, crowning over the steel tube space frame over the part-buried mill shop. Built in 1962, the structure remained the epitome of the glory of textile mills and echoed the progressive outlook of the city for more than three-and-a-half decades.

With Calico Mills closing down and the lockout of its establishments, the once-trendy shop became a ready tent for security personnel. Unattended and abused, in a sheer state of neglect, the structure lost its dignity. Disgusted by the sense of indifference of its citizens and insulted by the attitudes of its authorities, the structure collapsed under its own weight some years ago.

As they say, united we stand and divided we fall. In a geodesic structure, each element participates effectively in sharing the load. The decay of the paper-like laminate panels, vulnerable to weathering, without maintenance crumbled with a cry. It had always hurt the sensitive eyes to see the magnificent structure decay over the past few years. It hurts more to know that even this nostalgic reminder of a glorious time is no more today. And, it hurts the soul even more to think that this may be only the first of the falling ramparts of the modern architectural bastion of the city.

As it is said, what we learn from history is that we have learnt nothing from history. We have archaic laws on heritage and antiquity. Objects and structures hundreds of years old fall under the definition of antiquity. While we have not been able to protect and conserve structures centuries of years old, it is a far cry to think that structures of the recent past would be bale to find their place in heritage listing. While, relatively younger countries value their heritage far more than an ancient civilization like ours, where every stone may be millennia old.

The US has far more stringent norms and elaborate parameters to include even buildings a few decades old as heritage structures. These are chosen not by the time span of their existence, but for their representative value making them worthwhile to preserve for posterity. However, even England, rich with age-old heritage structures — whose one of the best contributions in India has been archaeology — has listed buildings merely two decades old as heritage structure as they remain unique examples of the time and context they represent. Can we learn from these examples before it is too late?

Chinubhai Baronet’s Haveli, even the Corbusier buildings have barely survived the axe in the past, and the absence of any legal provisions even in the present do not provide any assurance saving their disappearance from city’s skyline even in future.