EVENT: Balkrishna Doshi, Architecture for the People. Exhibition Opening at the Architekturzentrum Wien. Vienna, 25 March 2020

EVENT: Balkrishna Doshi, Architecture for the People. Vienna, 25 March 2020

Exhibition Opening at the Architekturzentrum Wien
The Indian architect, urbanist and teacher Balkrishna Doshi is among the key proponents of an Indian modernity although he has achieved world ranking and influence well beyond this. His visionary work in the low-cost housing and urban planning sectors as well as his strong commitment to education are central to his approach. In 2018, he became the first Indian architect to be awarded the prestigious Pritzker Prize, the Nobel Prize for architecture.
In over 60 years Balkrishna Doshi (*1927, Pune, India) has realised a wide variety of projects, including the well-known Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, the Aranya social housing estate and the architecture school he founded in Ahmedabad. Having worked with Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn in the 1950s, he has developed a vocabulary of his own that combines modern principles with traditional Indian techniques. By covering the spectrum from industrial to local craftsmanship, he adapts his architecture to suit local conditions. Doshi’s humanist approach is influenced as much by his Indian roots as by his Western education. The interdependence of the outdoor and indoor spaces, flexibility and openness are recurring motifs. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings, Doshi developed new approaches to social and experimental housing based on the participation of prospective residents and enabling adaptation to changing needs and requirements — keywords “growing house”. His ideas of sustainability, which integrate the social, ecological and economic dimensions of architecture, are highly topical.
The exhibition brings together a wealth of original material, such as architectural models, plans and drawings, as well as Doshi’s famous visualisations based on Indian miniatures. Recent photographs and films show how his architecture goes on living.
The exhibition will be open from 26 March 2020 to 29 June 2020 at the Architekturzentrum Wien, Museumsplatz 11070 Vienna. For more information, please visit the Architekturzentrum Wien webpage
Curator: Khushnu Panthaki Hoof
Curator for the Vitra Design Museum: Jolanthe Kugler
The exhibition is a project by the Vitra Design Museum and the Wüstenrot Stiftung in cooperation with the Vastushilpa Foundation.

Share this post

News from the field

New Voices in Expo Research

ISIE's 2024 Online Emerging Scholars Symposium 22 March 2024 ISIE invites abstracts for its 2024 online symposium New Voices in Expo Research Submission deadline: 19 December 2023 The 2024 symposium will bring emerging scholars and established experts together to...

Women designing and planning for social equality

ZHAW Institut Urban Landscape - Tössfeldstrasse 11, Winterthur Keynote Lecture: Dr. Iulia Stătică (University of Sheffield, UK) Descriptive accounts of the lack of evidence of women's participation and its material implications are no longer major trends in gender...

Writing Land into Architectural Histories

Overview This will be an in-person symposium. The Spring 2024 Symposium “Writing Land into Architectural Histories” organized by the doctoral students in Cornell University’s History of Architecture and Urbanism Society (HAUS), aims to explore the entangled histories...

rita_ 21

rita_ journal has opened The Call For Papers for its 21th issue 01 / 11 / 2023 - 11 / 01 / 2024 rita_ is an indexed journal of academic texts that publishes articles, essays and critical reviews, related to the project, theory and practice of architecture from its...