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Anger’s Auroville
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Architect of Auroville, Roger Anger passed away recently
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There are few people who manage by their very existence to raise standards. Roger Anger (1923 – 2008) will be remembered as a person who set a high benchmark. An exceptional architect, he belonged to the avant-garde trend that was emerging in Paris around the mid-fifties.
The most spectacular highlight of his work was L’Ile Verte, Grenoble, then the highest inhabited residential buildings in Europe, and awarded the Brussels Premier Prix International d’Architecture in 1967.
Anger’s work integrated elements of modern and abstract ornamental art. Having graduated in 1947 from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, he was equally passionate about painting and sculpture. He lately worked with recycled plastic bottles and lids, egg crates, and other ‘waste’. He had said that this was where his research for beauty was being conducted.
In 1966, he was appointed Chief Architect of Auroville. Together with Pierre Braslawski and Mario Heymann he developed a concept for the city. Anger had kick-started the experimental spirit through his earliest projects and on a barren, eroded land, sowed the seeds of architectural experiments and research for years to come.
He produced proposals for other towns: Salem, Kudremukh, and Faridabad. His last project — Matrimandir is nearing completion. His responsibility was to ensure the urban form of Auroville, and his last efforts revolved around the creation of a suitable governance structure that would promote the development of a city rather than a short-sighted one suited for the day-to-day activities of a handful of people. Roger Anger was a member of Auroville’s Governing Board.
A refined, sophisticated, magnificent and heroic being, not-diplomatic but straight-forward and courageous, who led a disciplined balanced life, and rarely skipped his afternoon game of chess
ANUPAMA KUNDOO
(The writer is an architect who practiced in Auroville since 1990 and was closely associated with him)
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