Architecture Must Be Deeply Rooted In Humanity And In The Past Says DIDI Contractor

Didi Contractor, 88 year old self taught architect, famous for her sustainable, green buildings who still practices in the foothills of Himalayas in the Kangra Valley, a place she has fallen in love with, but now feels sad looking at the indiscriminate growth and real estate scattered where once beautiful trees grew up. “I have been fortunate to be able to live within the shadows of the Himalaya and look up to see the sunset and the sunrise on the slopes of the Himalaya so that one can liftones spirits just as the spirits of India are lifted by tradition and by the continent that we all inherited,” says Didi.

It was an amazing experience to hear her speak at WADe Asia 2017. SURFACES REPORTER presents some excerpts from her presentation at the event.

Didi Contractor was born in America, travelled across the US, lived in Mexico and finally settled in India after her marriage to Narayan Ramji, an Indian in a traditional Gujarati joint family in Nasik.

The surname ‘Contractor’ was added later since her father-in-law was a contractor for several influential buildings in Bombay. He would talk to her about the traditions of building in India and also taught her a lot about various Carpentry techniques.

Amongst those who played a crucial part in her intellectual heritage are her parents, especially her father and his works. He was an expressionist artists in those days when Didi was a child and she would often quietly sit in a corner and listen to her father talking to famous German artists, refugees in America, discussing on varied topics. At the same time, she would also learn about Art and immense arguments about the role of artists in the society from her parents. She remembers how her father, who was painting the remaining peasant civilisations of the world in Mexico at that time and was moved by the grace and simplicity in which people were integrated in their environment. She heard the arguments on how modernity was separating people from their roots but also exploring different ways of being mentally intrigued.

A moment which finally opened her to adobe and her love for spaces was when they went to live in Mexico when she was a teenager. “My father brought old wooden pieces from way up in the mountains, we bought a 200 year old house with thick Adobe walls and I helped my parents renovate it. At that point, I fell in love with Adobe and that love affair with Adobe has continued all my life as has all his influences,” fondly remembers Didi.