The award was announced Wednesday by Tom Pritzker of the Chicago-based Hyatt Foundation.
Ahmedabad-based architect and educator, Balkrishna V Doshi has become the first Indian to win the Pritzker Prize — regarded as the profession’s highest honour — in its 40-year history. One of the most influential architects of post-Independent India, Doshi has been best known for his innovative work of designing low-cost housing, in a career spanning over seven decades.
The award was announced Wednesday by Tom Pritzker of the Chicago-based Hyatt Foundation.
“In our country, we don’t think of architecture as integral to a city, we see it as real estate…I hope this award will give eminence to architecture, which is a neglected profession. We should think of the quality of life not the quantity. That’s what our old cities were about — enterprise, ethics, community — what we call our Indian culture,” the 90-year-old architect said.
Pune-born Doshi worked closely with Le Corbusier, a pioneer in modern architecture, in Paris in the early 50s. He oversaw the urban planning for Chandigarh city and also worked on Mill Owner’s Association Building and Shodhan House in Ahmedabad.
Aranya Community Housing won Doshi the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
He has also worked with American architect Louis Kahn on the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. One of his well-known collaborations is with M F Husain on the Amdavad-ni-Gufa, a cavernous undulating gallery, where he experimented with volume and material.
One of his first projects in Indore, Aranya Community Housing, won him the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1995. Padma Shri awardee Doshi was the Founder-Director of the School of Architecture in Ahmedabad, which stands as the CEPT University today.
He established the Vastu-Shilpa Foundation for Studies and Researcher in Environmental Design in 1955. His studio Sanganth was designed at the peak of his career in 1980, where he broke all the rules, moving away from rigid geometry to create vaults submerged underground.
A citation accompanying the award reads: “The Pritzker Prize jury recognizes Doshi’s exceptional architecture as reflected in over a hundred buildings he has realised, his commitment and his dedication to his country and the communities he has served, his influence as a teacher, and the outstanding example he has set for professionals and students around the world throughout his long career.”
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