AHMEDABAD: The Council of Architecture (COA), a government of India statutory body, has taken strong objection to the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad’s (IIM-A) recent proposal to demolish most of the dormitories at the campus designed by legendary American architect Louis Kahn. The council has suggested that the institute continue with their earlier plans for restoration, in which they had already found success in one dormitory.
“Such a huge outcry and protest from organizations, architects, historians, academicians, corporate leaders and several others from all across the globe is unprecedented in the history of modern architecture in India,” said Habeeb Khan, president of the council in an interview with TOI. The council plans to hold a round table discussion involving architects, experts and other stakeholders including decision-makers at IIM-A to positively pursue the restoration process and see that the decision to demolish the structures is reversed, Khan said.
He said any right minded architect will not heed the institute’ expression of interest (EOI) published on their website in the first week of December to raza and rebuild the dormitories.
Khan said architectural works such as the Auroville project in Pondicherry by French architect Roger Anger, the city of Chandigarh whose masterplan was prepared by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier or Kahn’s IIM-A, they are all significant in terms of modern architecture and its evolution in the country.
“Like rare fragments of ancient texts, or artefacts protected in museums, the unique inner city of Ahmedabad and its stepwells, IIM-A too represents a significant moment in the history of human habitation,” the COA president wrote to the IIM-A management on December 31.
It represents a moment in history, when the founding fathers and patrons at IIM-A, thinking of the long term, invited Kahn to concretize their vision. Thus your initial decision to restore the campus, respects that rare founding vision, and hence reinforces the need to sustain, conserve, renew and reinforce its beginnings. “Today, several eminent institutions, around the globe hope to emulate the restoration and renewal programme initiated by IIM-A,” he wrote.
The institute, in 2014, had announced a competition for the restoration and updating of all of Kahn’s buildings on the campus. A Mumbai-based firm, Somaya and Kalappa (S&K) Consultants, with a record of restoration, won the challenge to preserve Kahn’s architecture while updating the functionality of the interiors.
The renovation of the Vikram Sarabhai Library at IIM-A carried out by the firm received the award of distinction at the Unesco Asia Pacific Award for Cultural Heritage and became a model for conservation projects.