Achyut Kanvinde Akar

Back of the Book Achyut Kanvinde - Akár is a monograph on the life and works of Achyut Kanvinde, one of the pioneers of Modern Architecture in India with a professional career spanning five decades. Celebrated as the father of campus planning in India, some of Kanvinde's better-known projects include the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur; National Dairy Development Board Campus, Anand; National Institute of Bank Management and National Insurance Academy, Pune; Nehru Science Centre, Mumbai; and National Science Centre and the ISKCON Temple in Delhi.

Of the large number of projects designed under the aegis of Kanvinde Rai & Chowdhury, this book deals primarily with 45 selected works that the authors felt best represent the firms oeuvre. A compilation of unrealised projects, research studies, competitions, working drawings, and an exhaustive chronology complete the monograph.

Conceived and edited by Tanuja and Sanjay Kanvinde, Akär contains several articles written by Achyut Kanvinde in addition to essays by professionals and academicians - Ashok Lall, Narendra Dengle, Miki Desai, and Sanjay Kanvinde. The Foreword for the book has been written by renowned architect and Kanvinde's contemporary Dr B.V. Doshi. The design concept and layout for the monograph has been developed by Sunita Kanvinde.

This major publication deals, in depth, with the works of Kanvinde and is primarily aimed as a resource for students, research scholars, and the architectural fraternity at large.

Foreword I can never forget my first meeting with Kanvinde, in 1951, when my teacher, Waman Gore, at the J.J. College of Architecture asked me to join him and meet Kanvinde, whom he greatly admired. Kanvinde had just returned from Harvard and was then a consulting architect at the National Chemical Laboratory in Pune. I had decided to go to London to appear for the Royal Institute of British Architects' examinations. Not knowing much about architecture, I was apprehensive, but no sooner I met a quiet, soft-spoken, and kind gentleman in Kanvinde and I was relieved. Realising that I was from Pune strengthened our bond and he gave me an introductory letter addressed to Mr Lubetkin, an architect in London. He then narrated the concerns of social housing as well as the avant-garde trends pursued by Lubetkin's office and the CIAM group.

When I returned from Paris in 1954, Karvinde heard about my going to Ahmedabad to supervise Corbusier's buildings. He then offered me to join him and prepare an alternative scheme for the Atomic Energy Complex competition. So many young architects, searching for a career support, found similar offers from him. Such encouraging gestures of generosity are rare in our profession, something unheard of in present times.

Preface Achyut Kanvinde remains one of the unsung heroes of the Modern Movement in India. He never believed in promoting his own work; his projects speak for themselves, inspiring several generations of architects. The need for this long overdue book has been two-fold -no comprehensive document on Kanvinde or his work is available; and also because the work executed by the firm Kanvinde Rai & Chowdhury is an important part of post-Independence India's architectural history. Since he designed several temples in his later years. students are under the impression that he was a bellever of "Vastu. Nothing could be further from the truth; his rationalist approach could not accommodate such a line of thought.

This monograph on Achyut Kanvinde has been in the making for a long time. It has seen many false starts. In 1996, when Kazi Ashraf and James Belluardo were curating the exhibition An Architecture of Independence: The Making of Modern South Asia. Belluardo spent considerable time with the reticent Kanvinde for selecting the exhibits while also analysing his work. To understand Kanvinde's psyche, several people had requested him to pen his story - a task that he initiated, starting with his formative years, the setting up of his practice, and his recollections of interactions with several known personalities, culminating with an assessment of his work. These notes somehow remained neglected, and although Kanvinde would have liked to see his work published, this was never explicitly expressed. While going through his papers for the monograph, we were delighted to come across these articles, which we decided to reproduce with minimal corrections while retaining their essence.

**Contents and Sample Pages**