Search For Identity Amidst International Anonymity

During the early post-Independence Nehruvian era when bright, young, foreign-trained Indian talent was engaged for building upcoming government funded institutions, campuses, housing, industrial townships or monuments – even a few cities like Chandigarh, Gandhinagar and Bhubaneshwar – there was an air of exciting idealism and challenge in building a new India.

- Rajnish Wattas

The reward for being architects of this Indian renaissance was not just monetary—driving around in BMWs or being part of the jet-setting, cocktail circuit hiring event managers or media advisers for carving out stardom—but to make genuine reputations, identity and usher in a truly Indian modernism. New talent got noticed through scrupulously managed design competitions, impeccable juries and getting published in a handful, but quality journals produced by a dedicated few. This momentum got further boost with the advent of events like the Asiad and the Indian Trade Fair at Pragati Maidan in the 1970s. This birthed the next wave of Indian architects and brilliant, innovative structural engineers who collaborated to go beyond the early influence of Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn’s great impact. The search for a truly Indian modernism began to show results by going back to the eternal principles of climate, play of light and shade, scale, detail and fusion of art and architecture as interpreted from the traditional architecture and transformed into Modernism. The construction and structural materials remained primarily brick, reinforced concrete and stone.

It was only in the 1990s that, with the opening of the economy to globalisation, new materials and technologies began to make an appearance.

Emergence of IT Parks: