What do memorials really convey, and how much do we need them?

Memorials are, to put it succinctly, a form of making memories or emotions material and tangible through the creation of space

A cross two days the past fortnight, one of Mumbai's, in fact India's, best-known architects was celebrated through a recollection of his work - Charles M Correa. The setting in the serene NCPA precinct offered scope for recall and reflection of the impressive oeuvre of work he has left behind. Speaker after speaker heaped lavish praise on the architect - and the man- that Correa was, how he had responded to the impetus of his time when architecture was aligned with the Nehruvian purpose of nation-building, and how he had shown the nerve to take on the iconic Le Corbusier, the SwissFrench architect and urban planner, considered a pioneer of modern architecture, over his plan for Chandigarh.

Chandigarh, Bhubaneswar, and Gandhinagar are widely recognised as the first three planned and designed cities of independent India. Le Corbusier's influence on India's terrain, of course, went far beyond the then nascent city of Chandigarh. Correa, from what we know, joined issue with the master's plan for the city, critically examining it and pointing out lacunae. Years later, he was to collaborate with civil engineer Shirish Patel and architect Pravina Mehta to develop a plan for a new city across the Mumbai harbour today's Navi Mumbai. Bhubaneswar carried the stamp of the German architect Otto Konigsberger, less known than Le Corbusier, and Gandhinagar did not get made till decades later.

Correa, though, developed a relationship with Gujarat with Ahmedabad carrying many of his plans-designs from his early years of work, as one of the sessions in the conference detailed out. The one that ranks high among these was Correa's plan for the Gandhi Smarak or memorial in the Sabarmati Ashram - the latter now under the lens of redesign.