Who'll save our modern heritage?

Disquiet had been simmering for a while at Ahmedabad's CEPT University but it took a unique protest by architecture students to bring it out in the open. The art installation, set up on the campus lawns in early April, comprised lengths and loops of red pipes that looked apparently random but, seen from a certain vantage, approximated the lines in red ink that teachers would draw to correct their drawings.

The students were protesting the alterations made to buildings designed by CEPT founder B.V. Doshi and considered his most landmark structures. The university, set up in 1962, is known for its creative, liberal and democratic pedagogy, an ethos reflected in the buildings as well. Which is why, alterations to the building, coming on top of other changes such as the hike in fees from Rs 8,000 to Rs 175,000, rankled.

The authorities, headed by Bimal Patel, who replaced Doshi as director in 2012, were not amused by the protest. They brought down the installation the next day, blaming the students for not getting prior permission.

Undeterred, the students put up a second installation — they had got permissions by then — titled 'Graveyard of dissonance' with crosses marking the death of democracy, wisdom, expression, etc.

In contrast, the protests in New Delhi over the proposed demolition of the iconic Hall of Nations and other buildings designed by Raj Rewal at the Pragati Maidan precinct were tame. Architect Arun Rewal put up a petition on Change.org and there were newspaper articles denouncing ITPO, which owns the building and wants it brought down to make way for a convention centre. The proposal, according to Rewal, now rests with the commerce ministry and higher-ups in government, which had scotched the proposal in 2012 after the Delhi Urban Arts Commission (DUAC), then headed by Raj Rewal, passed a resolution against it.

But present DUAC chairperson P.S.N. Rao seems unlikely to join the fight to save the structure, feted as much for its bold aesthetics as for being India's first space-frame construction in reinforced concrete. "It is a private building and the owner has every right to do as he wishes with it," Rao says.

In Chandigarh, Vikramaditya Prakash is fighting a similar battle against Tata Camelot, a proposed high-end residential complex with 27 towers of 12 to 36 storeys. The complex, says Prakash, who teaches architecture at the University of Washington, will ruin Le Corbusier's "design vision" for the city's Capitol Complex by disrupting the careful relationship the acclaimed French architect had worked out between the building and the Himalayas in the distance.

This balance was not just aesthetic but ecological too, says Prakash, who is the son of Aditya Prakash, a member of the architects' team that worked with Corbusier on Chandigarh. The site of the proposed complex is a riverbed and abuts a reserve forest, and Corbusier had been so careful of maintaining it that he had persuaded Jawaharlal Nehru to drop plans to build a military cantonment there.

Doshi's CEPT buildings, Rewal's Pragati Maidan structures and Chandigarh are today celebrated as landmarks of Indian modernity. In 2013, Rewal's work was showcased at Paris's Centre Pompidou in an exhibition called 'Plural Modernities' and NGMA hosted retrospectives of both Rewal and Doshi last year.

Ironically, there's no legal provision shielding these structures from alteration or demolition. The laws which protect our built heritage apply only to buildings over a hundred years old.

"I would like to see a preservation policy that is about managing change effectively. We have to be able to manage change by examining the design logic, that is, the DNA of the original design and adapting it to changing circumstances and needs in a constructive and critical manner. This can only be ensured by a Design Review Committee consisting of architectural history and preservation experts, design officials and practitioners.

Additionally, there needs to be a public review and citizen participation process as well," recommends Prakash.?

"What the state needs to understand is that if these modern structures are demolished, it will be a loss to our cultural memory. Heritage needs to be defined to include 'modern' too," says AGK Menon, INTACH convenor. To this end, in 2012 INTACH had submitted to the government a list of 69 distinctive modern buildings in the capital for inclusion in the heritage list, but nothing has come of it, says Menon.

But a list is at least a start - Ahmedabad, which has buildings by everyone from Doshi to Charles Correa, Louis Kahn to Le Corbusier, does not. "We've already lost some buildings by Claude Bately and Kanvinde. Last year, Roopalee cinema was demolished and along with it a mural by Satish Gujral. Thankfully, we were able to put a stop to plans to build a tower next to Corbusier's Sanskar Kendra building," says Chhaya.

Let's hope that the current fracas over the alterations to Doshi's CEPT campus will prod the architect community to band together to help preserve India's modern architectural heritage.