GOLCONDE

PORTFOLIO 2 INDIA’S FIRST MODERNIST BUILDING Golconde in Pondicherry was completed in 1945. It was built as a dormitory for members—ashramites, as they are called—of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. It might be easily overlooked from the street, but walk through the singular discreet wooden door with a lotus engraving on it, and it stands tall as if in silent contemplation. This modernist beauty, the first reinforced-concrete structure in India, predating Chandigarh’s and Ahmedabad’s modern architecture, was designed by American architect Antonin Raymond and later completed by George Nakashima, who also became a member of the ashram. Nakashima’s fine wood furniture is in use throughout the rooms. For our craftsmanship issue, AD invites Pankaj Vir Gupta and Christine Mueller to share a few pages out of their monograph on Golconde. The AD100 architects have authored ‘Golconde: The Introduction of Modernism in India’, an in-depth study of the building, the second edition of which releases this September. In this portfolio, the architects share gorgeous details, archival images and an essay recalling their discovery of this modernist icon.

- PANKAJ VIR GUPTA & CHRISTINE MUELLER

Cold stone floors, gnarly banyan trees, lily ponds, black earthen pottery used as vessels for water, and the entire length of the building fitted with hundreds of louvers that, when opened, expose the interiors to the breeze, to rain, to the atmosphere outside, as if there is no building, only a suggestion of it—an experience of lightness quite unexpected in a concrete structure.

Golconde is essentially two long wings, three floors, with rows of rooms on one side and an uninterrupted gallery on the other, separated by sliding teak doors. The floor plan hinges in the middle at a stairwell. During its making, brass utensils were collected in the ashram and melted in a local foundry to cast the hardware.