CONCRETISING INDIAN ARCHITECTURE'S IMAGINATION

The early 1970s were a very exciting time to begin one’s career as a young architect in India.

- RAJNISH WATTAS

Having finished my graduation from the Chandigarh College of Architecture, I had come to Delhi after securing a job with the prestigious firm of Joseph Allen Stein & Associates. The office at Sunder Nagar on Mathura Road, adjacent to Delhi’s Zoological Park or Chidiya Ghar, was very close to the ruins of the hoary Purana Quila. This lent to the surroundings a sense of timelessness and tranquillity and a reflective ambience. Stein was a man of immense imagination, a sense of history, and great respect for India’s cultural heritage. A born teacher, he had a lot of compassion and encouragement for young architects, and was thus the perfect mentor to begin one’s career with.

He would encourage the young architects of his office to wander through the city’s historic monuments and ruins, attend lectures and also visit new and upcoming projects in the city. Along with this discovery of India’s past, a new exciting churn in the present too was happening. To discover talent for prestigious new projects, big-banner architectural competitions were being held very often. The one to hit the headlines in a big way at the time was the design for the Hall of Nations and Halls of States project, won by architect Raj Rewal, to be built at Pragati Maidan for the International Trade Fair in 1972. During lunch hours, we young architects would often go there, to see the innovative architectural designs coming up. Inspirational, ground-breaking concepts for pavilions by bright, young Indian architects were taking shape. The Hall of Nations had a unique structural system of cast in situ concrete space frame, first-ever attempted in India. The huge 6,700 sq m area of a clear span hall, shaped like a giant truncated pyramid, was structurally designed by a brilliant engineer named Mahendra Raj, who too got great attention.