IN CONVERSATION WITH NEELKANTH CHHAYA

The architect and educator reflects on his extensive oeuvre, illustrious mentors who shaped his design philosophy and how his praxis and pedagogy inform each other

- NAMRATA DEWANJEE

To teach design is to teach someone how to think, how to see, creating frameworks of perception and practice. One afternoon by the Bandra Bandstand, a friend from an architectural studio where we were both wide-eyed interns, asked me if I knew Chhaya sir. She proceeded to recount his words from a jury, “He asked me how water moves. And how wonderful it would be if the space could be designed to flow as waves or ripples.” In a simple statement, he offered a lens to view architecture, not as an object in isolation but in an intertwined relationship with the world around it.

Professor Neelkanth Chhaya, fondly known as Chhaya sir, grew up in Nairobi, Kenya and came to Ahmedabad to study architecture at CEPT University, where he would later return to teach in 1987. After more than two decades, he retired as the Dean of the Faculty of Architecture. He currently teaches at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology where he also holds the UNESCO Chair on Culture, Habitat and Sustainable Development. For his inquisitiveness as an educator, he was awarded the inaugural Balkrishna Doshi: Guru Ratna Award.

Three mentors shaped his formative years as a student, the first being Doshi. “He would walk into the classroom, he would talk to us and he was a great inspiration because he had an easy way of talking and teaching,” explains Professor Chhaya, adding, “He never made things complicated, never used difficult terms or words, but he was absolutely clear in what he was explaining.” The second mentor was Anant Raje who taught him in his second year of college. “He set his exercises very beautifully and then he would talk about what you had done in a way that you realised the larger implications of what you were doing,” he avers. The third was another teacher of his, Kurula Varkey with whom he later taught at the University of Nairobi.