Hasmukh Patel's architectural practice spanned the transformative latter decades of the 20th century. Patel navigated the political and economic changes of his time and brought his talents to bear equally on institutional, private and speculative development projects in a way that was rare amongst his contemporaries. He recognised that with every commission, regardless of budget, scale or type, came opportunities to further architecture's formal, civic and social agendas.
Patel rarely spoke about his approach to design. And yet, each of his projects is a built manifesto, an exploration of how architecture might enrich the lives of India's modernising citizens. His buildings are the result of profoundly practical deliberations combined with an intuitive appreciation for the power of form and space. They belong to a deep tradition of 20th-century modernist thinking, where the legibility of the architectural diagram is a primary concern.
Included here are 51 of Patel's buildings, many published for the first time. Each project has been meticulously redrawn from material in Patel's archive and is accompanied by photographs and text informed by his recollections from practice.
This book is both a tribute to Hasmukh Patel and a contribution to the ongoing documentation of modern Indian architecture, the gathering of a canon of works to inspire and inform the next generation.
Catherine Outram Desai received a Bachelor of Architecture with honours from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia. She has practised in Australia, India and the UK, working on both new and heritage listed buildings. Catherine first visited India to study the country's modern buildings in the early 1990s and has continued her research with frequent visits. Her knowledge of modern Indian architecture encompasses both well-known and less visited work, and she is an advocate for the preservation of India's modern architectural heritage.
Bimal Patel is an architect, urban planner and academic. He is President of CEPT University and heads HCP Design, Planning and Management Pvt. Ltd. Patel received a Diploma in Architecture from the School of Architecture, CEPT, Ahmedabad. He also received a dual Master's in City Planning and Architecture and a Doctorate in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include land-use planning and management, real estate markets and building regulations. His numerous architecture, urban design and planning projects have won many national and international awards.
When Hasmukh C. Patel returned to India from his postgraduate studies at Cornell in 1999 the architectural profession in the subcontinent was just establishing itself as a respected occupation. The educated public assumed only engineers designed buildings of any magnitude or importance. To many people architects were foreign artists who created public monuments, capitol complexes and large campuses. Architects were thought to be a whimsical tribe of people whom only princes, governments, and industrialists could afford to engage. In fact, in those days of newly independent India most buildings were indeed laid out and constructed by traditional craftsmen, and anything a bit complicated was given to a civil engineer, who could draft the plans, clear them with local authorities and see that the plans were used to construct buildings in a sturdy and waterproof manner. Famous foreign architects were, in fact, engaged to create iconic, public buildings and campuses.
In this milieu the newly set up, post-Independence architectural studios had a great deal of leeway as to how they would position and brand themselves. In large cities young architects were looking at the huge mercantile opportunities that building a new nation would offer, and some of the more flamboyant personalities saw a path toward being charismatic gurus, who knew the secret magic of creativity.
Perhaps it was the ethos of hardworking Charotar Patels that moulded Hasmukhbhai's character, or the demeanour of his engineer father. Chandubhai, who instilled working values into Hasmukhbhai as he visited his father's construction sites. Cornell University surely helped him put those values into an applicable pattern of thinking. While Cornell was an elite. Ivy League institution, its professional schools of medicine, engineering, hotel management and architecture were very pragmatic in their approaches to serving the public good. Instead of returning from abroad wanting to ape international models, Hasmukhbhai returned with a strong work ethic, a desire to evolve new professional standards and and a drive to employ rational working procedures.
Working with Atmaram Gajjar, an early practitioner of architecture in Ahmedabad, and then facing circumstances wherein he was forced to take over the firm at a young age, surely tempered his character further.
Hasmukhbhai clearly wanted to be a great architect, but he had a vision and a path toward that dream, that was steeped in professional principles and working processes. He saw the meaning of greatness as gifting the entire profession a role model of what an architect should be. He knew the word professional meant to profess values unique to the practice of architecture. Illustrating those values through work, writing down those professional processes, and practising them in a role that would become a model, seemed to be clear objectives that tempered his every move.
Studying his early work one sees threads of ideas and principles that evolved and matured into a sophisticated weave of distinct themes and agendas. It became clear that Hasmukhbhai was not trying to create high drama, attracting attention. It became clear that Hasmukhbhai was not out to establish off-the-shelf templates that could be employed as quick turnover commercial prototypes! On the other hand, he was surely cognisant of being original and of standing on his own feet financially.
Hasmukh Patel's architectural practice spanned four decades, from the early 1960s to the mid-2000s. During this period, he designed over 300 buildings of many types: private bungalows, theatres. speculative office buildings, apartments, banks, schools, religious buildings, factories and many others. Many of his buildings are well known and deeply admired, and Patel's architecture is widely acknowledged to have helped define modern architecture in post-Independence India.
This book presents 51 of Patel's most significant projects. The drawings, photographs, project descriptions, contextual information, essays and his own recollections are intended, first of all, to provide a record of this work. They also help elucidate his architectural style, situate his work in the social and economic context in which it was produced, and assist in interpreting its meanings and significance.
Patel did not often speak about his architectural philosophy. When he did speak, he preferred to focus on how his buildings pragmatically solved the practical problems that client requirements or the technicalities of building construction posed. Perhaps as a consequence of this, he is admired first and foremost as a conscientious and skilful professional, and his architecture is applauded for being deeply pragmatic and well constructed. As the projects presented here show, Patel relished exploring how the many programmatic and technological challenges that his widely differing projects posed to him could be creatively, deftly and economically tackled. In his designs he explored how, by providing the right facilities and appropriate layouts, traditional Gujarati families could be made comfortable in their new modern houses. In his banks and office buildings he explored how they could be functionally and logically organised, how the movement of people within them could be made most efficient and their layouts most coherent, and how the use of space could be best economised. When designing mixed-use developments for real estate developers, he explored how newly emergent needs for commercial and retail spaces could be met in a functional and commercially viable manner. In his row houses and apartments, he explored how developers could supply comfortable housing that met the aspirational needs of middle-class households at an affordable cost. In all his projects, he kept in mind how good construction, climatically correct building orientation, adequate natural light and ventilation and other such features could be used to make buildings comfortable and economical. Skillful resolution of practical problems was at the heart of Patel's architectural endeavour.
Patel rarely, if ever, discussed his aesthetic quest or his architectural style. Yet, his designs, besides being explorations in pragmatic problem solving, were also investigations in aesthetics and style. They explored how complex programmatic requirements could be cleverly met by plans that were strikingly clear, highly rational, aesthetically spare and geometrically elegant diagrams. They investigated how form, proportion, placement, colour and other such devices could be used to make the austere and abstract language of modern architecture intuitively understandable and aesthetically pleasing.
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