With heavy heart 3D Power pays condolences to India's greatest proponent of modern architecture - that's what best describes Charles Correa who breathed his last following a brief illness at his Mumbai residence late on 16 June 2015. He was 84.
With the death of Charles Correa, India has lost one of the greatest contemporary architects. He was more than an architect. He invested his legacy in great buildings and projects such as Gandhi Smarak Sangrahalaya, Gujarat; Navi Mumbai, the satellite city across Mumbai’s harbour; and Kala Academy, Goa. Correa penned articles on architecture and urbanisation, and was often critical about contemporary urban planning in the country. It's time to look at some of his timeless masterpieces to refresh our memories.
As news of Correa's demise went public, architects the world over joined in to mourn the death of a genius who, incidentally, was born in Secunderabad in 1930.Though soon thereafter, he moved to erstwhile Bombay, Correa's connection with the City of Pearls continued and lasted till until recently. On his final trip in 2008, Correa's hosts in the city recount, he visited IT offices, heritage sites and finally made a brief stopover at his father's grave in Secunderabad - a place he happened to discover on that last journey.
In the years in between, the Padma Shri awardee created magic both at home and abroad with futuristic concepts and designs. As an ardent crusader of the open-to-sky style, Correa consistently incorporated courtyards into his projects apart from paying added attention to landscaping.
His pieces of brilliance dot cities such as Ahmedabad, which houses the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial, Mumbai, Pune, Jaipur and Hyderabad. In fact, the Kanchanjunga Apartment in Mumbai - a first of its kind - is hailed as the beginning of a new chapter in the designing of modern residential towers. It was conceptualized way back in the 1980s by Correa, also known as the curator of Navi Mumbai.
On foreign shores too, where the India-born maestro went to study - first at the University of Michigan and later at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -Correa left his distinct mark. The Ismaili Centre in Toronto and the Champalimaud Foundation Centre in Lisbon, counted among his last few works, are just a few of them.
Back in Hyderabad, the nuances of the great architect are visible both at the Electronics Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL) building near Moula Ali and Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Banking & Finance office in Gachibowli. While the former was designed by Correa in the early 1970s, the latter came roughly two decades later.
"It (ECIL) is a landmark project that first saw the use of `pergola' (a sun shading concept), which helped in reducing the direct impact of the sun on the glass of the building," said city architect and academician, Yeshwant Ramamurthy, also a former student of Correa's at the JJ College of Architecture, Mumbai.
"Even today, we have students from city colleges coming to visit our premises to study Correa's style.He still offers tremendous inspiration to aspiring architects," said Pradeep Kumar, assistant general manager, ECIL. He added: "What sets the administrative building here apart from other structures is the use of the natural terrain of the ground that the acclaimed architect so carefully preserved."
