About this talk

Running time: 31 minutes

Doshi is a truly architectural architect, one of the best alive today.

He had worked with Le Corbusier on his Indian buildings before starting to practise in Ahmedabad 25 years ago, and learned from him how to use space, form and light. He extended his feeling for the interplay of these three ingredients of his art while working with Louis Kahn (see Buildings Know How They Should Be Built) on the Institute of Management in his city. But he has always striven to achieve more than that.

His search has been for a building form closer to Indian sensibility, reflecting the elusive synthesis of structure, form, space and symbolic value which make up the old Indian buildings he has tirelessly studied.

How he has succeeded can be seen in his work which uses traditional patterns of settlement and construction, to provide a language for his design, producing a flowing continuity of volumes and spaces.

In his role as founder and Dean of the Centre for Environmental Design and Technology in Ahmedabad, he attempts to further his concern for the everyday problems of architecture and planning, and the relevant skills of vernacular building.

Doshi was kind enough to speak to us again in 2012, on his work in Sangath in Sangath, India: Where Two Paths Converge.