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Delhi's Architectural Face :The good,the bad,and the uglyBy Riti, Section News
On a recent drive on South Avenue towards Rashtrapati Bhavan, past the boxy white government housing on the broad road flanked by flame trees in full orange bloom, I marvelled at how utterly lovely Delhi can be.
On another drive, past the massive Akshardham Temple in East Delhi, I was reluctantly impressed by its grandeur, but opposite it, the two- and three-floor mostly beige homes of Pandav Nagar elbowed each other for room and were frankly depressing. Two snapshots of what is still largely the heart of Delhi. But the aerial approach to Indira Gandhi International Airport shows how much this city has grown from the rather sleepy official town it was as recently as the 1980s. Now, group housing towers stretch their concrete fists in all directions, and one wonders--with not a little foreboding--what Delhi will look like in 5, 10, or 20 years. Say the words `architecture' and `Delhi' in the same breath, and pat will come the response from most people--"Delhi is Lutyens's Delhi." Or "Delhi is Shahjahanabad." And "Don't forget, Humayun's Tomb." But it's been almost a century since the British imperial capital with its Roman-Mughal-Hindu-French stone monuments, its sweeping ceremonial avenues, and graceful white bungalows was conceived under the guidance of Edwin Lutyens. And it has been perhaps five times that since the Red Fort and the walled city around it with screen-windowed and balconied havelis and narrow alleys were created during the reign of Shahjahan.
Yet Delhi spans almost 1,500 square kilometres. Lutyens's Delhi accounts for about 43 square kilometres, while Old Delhi is perhaps smaller.
What of the rest of Delhi?
"When we say Lutyens's Delhi, it suddenly evokes an image. It is an image of wide streets, tree-lined avenues, houses which are set among deep parcels of land," says architect Ashok Dhawan. "What is the architecture of Delhi like today? This also is a true reflection of the society. It is a democracy. There is no one strong individual saying, `This is how architecture is going to be.' I'm at a loss to even say what the architecture of Delhi is today." "Delhi is a very complex and multilayered city," says architect Lakshmi Chand of Rahoul Singh Design Associates, who has been practising in Delhi for two years and refers to much of modern Delhi architecture as "cut and paste." "We're still a developing nation. I hate to say it in these terms, but in our aesthetics, we are still not very evolved. We'll copy anything that is not from this country." Even in the early years after Independence, Delhi's first, largely government buildings were influenced by a style of East-West fusion that was a legacy from our British imperial rulers. "The interest of the British in Oriental architecture gave rise to what has wrongly been called Indo-Saracenic architecture, in which there was a mixture of the traditional Indian styles and Gothic style," says K.T. Ravindran, head of the department of urban design at Delhi's School for Planning and Architecture, who notes the Mughals were not Saracens. "That style was inherited by the Central Public Works Department." The CPWD and its engineers were responsible for many of the post-British government buildings in the Lutyens zone, including the bhavans that dot Mandi House circle and Raisina Road. Usually massive concrete structures, painted pink or salmon in a nod to the sandstone hues of Rashtrapati Bhavan, they are clearly meant to convey the might of the Indian government. "The problem with the bhavans is they are too boorish, too heavy a presence," says Ravindran. Source:OutlookIndia.com 18thJune2008.
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