Tradition reinterpreted
PREMA MANMADHAN
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A freewheeling chat with Sunand Prasad, the first Asian president-elect of the Royal Institute of British Architects.
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Sustainable architecture: Sunand Prasad.
THE wheel has come full circle. The feel-good factor among Indians in the United Kingdom has hit top spot. Sunand Prasad, a British architect of Indian origin, has been elected the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). He is the first Asian to be elected to this high profile job in the 200-year history of the prestigious architectural institution. The son of Indian parents who fought for Independence in their individualistic way, Sunand Prasad has very deep roots in India.
He describes his first brush with architecture thus: "At the age of four, I was given a small trowel to help paint the stone floor slabs of the art school that my father ran in a Gandhian community." His father, Devi Prasad, who studied art in Shantiniketan, later taught art at Sevagram. His mother, a Malayali from Palakkad (a member of the Panyampalli Wariam) wanted to be part of the independence movement and went to Sevagram as a teacher and nurse. And that's where the family lived a few years.
Environment-friendly
Sevagram aimed to be a self-sufficient community and many of its principles are those of Sunand's too, he says, like sustainable architecture. He is a champion of environment-friendly buildings, which the RIBA propagates. He will become president-elect of RIBA on September 1, 2006 and will succeed the present president, Jack Pringle, on September 1, 2007. In his tough fight for the coveted post, he trounced well-known names including a politician, a member of the British National Party, Peter Phillips
Prasad studied architecture at the University of Cambridge and the Architectural Association schools of architecture. He is a founding partner of Penoyre & Prasad LLP, a London-based architectural firm that has won many awards for well-designed buildings. Though Prasad has been in the U.K. since he was 12, he was in Delhi, in the 1980s, for his doctoral research on the typology of the north Indian haveli and the urban form that results from it. He also taught at the School of Planning and Architecture.
Sunand has researched on the value of design, North Indian urbanism and the work of Le Corbusier. And he practises what he preaches. The house he lives in is self-built and the plan is quite like a haveli, or a south Indian tharavad, "organised round a courtyard".
Explains Sunand, "In 1981, my wife, I and a group of friends designed and built the house to live in together. We grew older, had children and some went their separate ways. My family now occupies the house, which has undergone many changes over the years. The house is on the site of a derelict workshop, three of whose external walls were used."
Critical of trends
He is unhappy that Indian architecture has moved away from the traditional. "In 1985-86 when we were in Delhi, I was very critical of the way modern architecture in India had completely abandoned the traditional for western forms." Sunand says that this trend was obvious when he was in Delhi in the late 1980s. He is not against change but feels that "apart from a few insightful architects, the general view in the Indian architectural practice was that there was nothing to be learned from indigenous architecture that may be of relevance to the modern world."
History in this sense must encompass humble as well as monumental architecture. The present scene has hardly changed, Sunand points out. "Now, 20 years later, my view of the Indian scene is of a continuing struggle to find modern Indian architecture but the extraordinary pace of development makes this more difficult. There is less time or inclination for thought."
The answer may lie in the challenge of coping with climate change. The challenges of doing so may provide the answer, he believes. Sunand is optimistic when he says, "the more people ask `what is sustainable Indian architecture?' the more likely it is that genuinely innovative and exciting work will arise. Some of this will undoubtedly look again at the tharavad and haveli typologies, not to reproduce them but to reinterpret them."
And reinterpret, he surely has. His gold-and-silver sunshades on the Rich Mix Centre in East London, with coloured vertical framing behind, reminds you of the warp and weft of a sari border, which was the inspiration for the design, he reveals. Right in the middle of the Arches Centre in Belfast that he designed is a majestic tree in the spacious entrance.
As RIBA chief, he has big plans: "My overarching concern is change: how the RIBA can anticipate change; and know when and how to cause, or direct, or embrace or when needs be, to resist change. One will be campaigning for design because of the enormous difference it can make to people's lives. The other will be tackling the issue of climate change. Buildings account for almost 50 per cent of energy use," he states.
The ethnic minorities are enthused by this news of his election, but as Christopher Nasah, chairman of the Society of Black Architects in the U.K., said aptly, it is "long overdue ... but this isn't about race, it's about competence."
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