While Louis
Kahn was
designing the National
Assembly Building in Bangladesh in 1962, he was
approached by an admiring Indian architect, Balkrishna Doshi, to design the 60 acre
campus for the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, India. Much like his project in Bangladesh, he was faced
with a culture enamored in tradition, as well as an arid desert climate.
For Kahn, the design of the institute was more than just efficient spatial
planning of the classrooms; he began to question the design of the educational infrastructure where
the classroom was just the first phase of learning for the students. In
1961, a visionary group of industrialists collaborated with the Harvard
Business School to create a new school focused on the advancement of specific
professions to advance India’s industry. Their main focus was to create a
new school of thought that incorporated a more western-style of teaching that
allowed students to participate in class discussions and debates in comparison
to the traditional style where students sat in lecture throughout the day.
It was Balkrishna Doshi
that believed Louis Kahn would be able to envision a new, modern school for
India’s best and brightest. Kahn’s inquisitive and even critical view at
the methods of the educational system influenced his design to no longer
singularly focus on the classroom as the center of academic thought. The
classroom was just the formal setting for the beginning of learning; the
hallways and Kahn’s Plaza became new centers for learning. The conceptual
rethinking of the educational practice transformed a school into an institute,
where education was a collaborative, cross-disciplinary effort occurring in and
out of the classroom.
In much of the same ways
that he approached the design of the National Assembly Building in Bangladesh,
he implemented the same techniques in the Indian Institute of Management such
that he incorporated local materials (brick and concrete) and large geometrical
façade extractions as homage to Indian vernacular architecture. It was
Kahn’s method of blending modern architecture and Indian tradition into an
architecture that could only be applied for the Indian Institute of
Management. The large façade omissions are abstracted patterns found
within the Indian culture that were positioned to act as light wells and a
natural cooling system protecting the interior from India’s harsh desert
climate. Even though the porous, geometric façade acts as filters for
sunlight and ventilation, the porosity allowed for the creation of new spaces
of gathering for the students and faculty to come together.
Together, Kahn’s
rethinking of the traditional principles of India’s educational system along
with a group of ambitious industrialists helped create one of the most sought
after, influential, and elite business schools in the world.
Unfortunately, Kahn was unable to see his design come to fruition as he had
died in New York City in 1974 before the project was finished. However,
there is no question whether or not his design had completely transformed the
way in which modern architecture establishes itself in one’s culture.
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