We try harder.” This marketing campaign from the 1960s for Avis, a US car rental company, comes to mind when we look at the emerging architectural creativity in India’s smaller towns and cities. The campaign capitalized on a fact most communicators may have tried to hide—that Avis was not the market leader (Hertz was). Is small town architecture too “trying harder”?
Demand for design
Brinda and Parth Shah’s office in Rajkot looks unusually home-like. Himanshu Burte
Take Brinda and Parth Shah, who practise in Rajkot. After studying architecture in Ahmedabad, Britain and the Netherlands, they decided to move to Parth’s hometown in 2005. Four years down the line, they feel their move has worked.
Says Parth, “In a small place, there are not too many people with your skills, so there is a greater chance of being heard.” They have also discovered that there is a tremendous hunger for good design in rural areas. “We have already worked in 70 villages on a project involving the design of schools,” says Parth. They also had the luxury of being able to choose the projects they work on—something their seniors in big cities can only dream of even after a decade of practice.
The Shahs’ first project, their own office, served as a demonstration of their ideas. They were helped by an indulgent family that gave them a plot to build a modern office which looks like a village house. At the same time, they began meeting officials to discuss what they could do for the city. After all, private practice and public projects mix well in architecture.
Praveen Bavadekar of Belgaum is another person who returned to his small town roots. “We tend to underrate the clientele in smaller places. But these are people like us—qualified professionals who have returned from the big cities and are keen to explore new ideas at home.”
International sensibility
Bavadekar, who studied architecture in Bangalore and at the famous Architectural Association in London, saw big architects famous for conceptual work (plans, model designs), such as Pritzker Prize winner Zaha Hadid, struggling for actual projects. In India, too, he found that in places such as Bangalore and Pune, the big firms got all the plum projects, while those starting out had to struggle for significant commissions. But there was a lot of work and openness to new ideas in a place such as Belgaum, with the cosmopolitan influence of two cultures (Kannada and Marathi).
Making a mark: The Deshpande Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Hubli, by Thirdspace Architecture Studio of Belgaum, takes an innovative form that hints at its intended function and occupants. Courtesy Thirdspace Architecture Studio
Since he began practising in Belgaum in 2002, Bavadekar has built a number of institutional and residential projects that are injecting an international sensibility into this small town setting. With opportunities increasing, he is trying to bring in talented architects from other cities to keep the bar high.