Changing facades of the Garden City

Changing facades of the Garden City
"The dehumanising effect of modern civilisation has created dehumanised structures. Buildings should reflect their time, and should be ageless," finds out Perin Ilavia from two City architects, who are disgruntled by government apathy in planning construction.


Architecture is the science of building, raised to a fine art. Building styles have changed over the centuries. While houses were built in stone in the 12th century, the 13th century brought in timber frames with sloping roofs.

The Elizabethan stone houses, and the Queen Ann architecture of the 18th century, had relief work on stone.

The Victorian Gothic Revival in 1867, used brick and mortar, stone and terracotta, in straight patterning.

The colonisation of India, has left its stamp on the architectural monuments and buildings. Natural building material in abundance, cheap skilled craftsmen and zest for building, brought forth churches, public buildings, and houses in the then flamboyant baroque style.

Architects Virendra Girdhar and Sandeep Khosla of Khosla Associates, have seen the alarming changing facades of the garden city.

Clean history

After his Masters’ from MIT, Virendra worked for fourteen years in the US. After returning to Delhi and finding it too crowded, he came to Bangalore twenty-eight years back. He was able to establish his practice and did a lot of good work, without extending bribes, which he “still doesn’t”, but asserts that now a new architect cannot get established in the city, without bribing.

Focussing on function rather than fashion, giving space to people, in which they can be comfortable instead of in a scientific environment, he says, “I defer from that (fashion in architecture). Architects are being enslaved by outside images. Specialising deters creativity. It’s copying. When a client walks in, we implement methods to give his concept a unique look.

When I came to Bangalore I found they were using Western motifs. In comparison even those were 25-30 years old, and today we’re using these glass boxes, perceived as a global image. Unless we grow out of the tendency to copy the white man, I fear, vernacular architecture is on its way to extinction.”

Sandeep is also from Delhi. Having worked in New York, then as an associate in Bombay, with Charles Correah, he was among the first architects to make a statement in India, and came to Bangalore in 1995. Both architects assert, the buildings should reflect their time, and should be ageless. Neither believe in following old architectural styles.

No need for glass

Unlike Mumbai, conservation of old buildings is not the focus here. Rising land prices encourage people to rebuild than restore.

“Our houses are not trendy,” says Sandeep. ‘They have to be timeless, with continued innovation. Keeping the tropical sensibilities of this city in mind, my designing is influenced by content, exploiting natural resources, working with semi preamble transitory spaces.

We also do the interiors. Unlike the West, we don’t need glass enclosed centrally heated/cooled houses. I have sloping tiled roofs, verandahs functioning as outdoor living or dining spaces, water bodies and lots of natural building materials. My clients are programmed to the fact that I have a design that they must adhere to, and they’re always cool about that. I stay away from the segment of designs that don’t excite me.”

With their ongoing projects involving a school in Whitefield, with landscaping hotels in Bangalore and Maldives, an art complex at Doon School in Dehra Doon, 60-70% of their work is outside Bangalore.

Humanisation seems to be coming back, the world is into conservation of environment, and ecology, and both architects believe in its priority.

The dehumanising effect of modern civilisation has created dehumanised structures. There are no public buildings coming up, and speaking about the pathetic infrastructure and haphazard development they say, there has been no forethought, no concrete planning and execution.

Sandeep says, unlike other cities, we have no public spaces, our parks are pathetic, commercial establishments jamming residential spaces. The government should encourage private sectors to design outdoor spaces.

During Mr Krishna’s time, architects had an opportunity to beautify the city, while the last government did not even acknowledge the existence of the Bangalore Task Force, incepted by Kalpana Kaar. “The citizens are also guilty for this mess.

There’s no semblance of civic sense. If we can stop thinking of just ourselves, perhaps our children will not live in the closing spaces we are creating. It’s becoming a city without citizens,” asserts Virendra.

“With the building boom, the younger generation of architects are being flooded with work, that is more demand than supply. They are cashing in, swathed by trends, working blindly, without conceptualising issues as an architect—pressures of demand have increased greed,” is the take of the older generation.