Ergate World

18/11/2025

16/05/2020

Couchsurfing is not dead, but it's dying. Apart from the global crisis, what do you think are the reasons behind this?

21/04/2020

The most prominent among those who fashioned the city’s post-independence landmarks — many especially commissioned by Nehru who wanted “the temples of modern India” to take the place of older, conventional ones — was Habib Rahman, the creator of several modernist buildings such as the , Office of the Auditor General of India, the Post and Telegraph building, , WHO headquarters, a hostel for in-transit diplomats, a warren of flats for junior to middle-level government servants, , the mazars of Maulana Azad & President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmad to name just a few.

~Source: Habib Rahman explains the details of the plans of Rabindra Bhavan & the Latet Kala Adademi buildings to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, 7 May 1961, New Delhi, India. Photo ©️ Ram Rahman/Sukanya Rahman.

28/12/2019

"~Nari Gandhi Architect - Apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright - Taliesin fellow

Nari Gandhi (1934–1993) was an Indian architect known for his highly innovative works in organic architecture.

Nari completed his schooling DDFF at St. Xavier's High School, Fort, Mumbai, and studied architecture at Sir J. J. College of Architecture, Mumbai for five years in the early 1950s. He travelled to US to apprentice with Frank Lloyd Wright at the Taliesin and spent five years there. After Wright's death in 1959, Nari left Taliesin and studied pottery at the Kent State University for two years.ari returned to India in the early 1960s. He taught at the M.S. University, Baroda and at the Academy of Architecture, Mumbai for a brief period. He passionately worked on as many as 30 projects over a period of as many years. While working in India, Nari continued to work on Wright's ideology of organic architecture and further developed his own unique style with a subtle influence of local climate and culture. He ceaselessly continued to work on Wright's idea of 'flowing space'. Nari worked without an office and rarely made any drawings for any of his projects. Nari spent a lot of time on his sites and worked closely with the craftsmen and often participated in the construction process himself."

25/12/2019

"~Images from Laurie Baker Centre for Habitat Studies Society https://www.lauriebakercentre.org


Laurie Baker was a very humble architect.On his way home from the war he was waiting for a boat in Bombay when a chance meeting with Gandhi changed the course of his life. Gandhi begged him to remain in India where low cost housing was of an appalling standard.
Laurie was practical: he could build and he had a great deal of common sense. He returned to England, packed up, and moved to India in 1945, where he devoted the rest of his life to building until his death in 2007. Most of Laurie’s work was in Kerala in South India. He was a prolific builder and the building site was always his office. He didn’t believe in building for classes. Instead he believed in building for people. He built houses, schools, institutes, hospitals, slum dwellings and government buildings — all with a restrained vocabulary of practical building materials. His love of bricks stemmed from something Gandhi had said to him – that buildings should be made from materials sourced within a five mile radius of the site. The onsite brick production method was a sustainable, low skilled, and low cost method of construction, and Laurie loved it."

24/12/2019

"The greatest architectural illusion is not Baroque fancy or Victorian flamboyant, but minimalism.
- Kevin McCloudv"

24/12/2019

"Architecture is not based on concrete and steel, and the elements of the soil. It's based on wonder.
- Daniel Libeskind"

23/12/2019

"~Kanvinde with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Credit: Achyut Kanvinde-Akar published by Niyogi Books

Achyut Kanvinde – one of the pioneers of Modern Architecture in India with a professional career spanning five decades. Kanvinde Sahab, as he was popularly called was the quintessential modernist.

The buildings he initially designed were typically straight-faced geometrical ones. This geometry was in stark contrast to the ornate Indian architecture which he trained in.
Though Kanvinde was a modernist since his days at J J, it was his study under Walter Gropius at Harvard which completely altered his thinking. As Kanvinde says in his writings, “It was Gropius who really exposed me to the power of technology on the one hand and the psychological dimensions of spatial concerns and realisations on the other.”
The Mother Dairy booth, symbolic of India’s milk revolution, that one sees across the country was designed by him. "

23/12/2019

As an architect you design for the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially unknown.”
– Norman Foster

22/12/2019

"Architecture is a visual art and the buildings speak for themselves."

22/12/2019

"~ Award Steering Committee, First Cycle, Boston 1978. Back row (from left): Hasan-Uddin Khan, William Porter, Dogan Kuban, Sir Hugh Cassan, Oleg Grabar, Garr Cambell, Nader Ardalan and Charles Correa. Front row (from left): Hassan Fathy, His Highness the Aga Khan, Renata Holod. Photo: Archnet

Charles Correa was a founding member of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, along with Hassan Fathy, Oleg Grabar and others, in 1980, and served as a member of the Steering Committee of the Award for five cycles. He was also on the Master Jury in 1989. He received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1998, for the Vidhan Bhavan in Bhopal, India. His significant contributions helped shape the Award and keep it relevant today.
Correa taught at several universities in India and abroad and received awards including (and not limited to) the Praemium Imperiale of Japan and the Royal Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), which billed him as ""India's greatest architect"

21/12/2019

Architecture is the thoughtful making of space.
~ Louis Kahn