Sanskar Kendra, Ahmedabad
For me, perhaps the only edification of going to the Diwan Ballubhai Madhyamik Shala (Diwan Ballubhai Middle School) in Ahmedabad was its location. It was right across Sanskar Kendra, a city museum designed by the great Le Corbusier.
It is a tribute to Corbusier that I looked forward much more to what I saw outside my classroom window—Sanskar Kendra—than what I heard inside—often drivel from insipid teachers.
Yesterday, in a remarkable surge fond memories of Sanskar Kendra came bursting out from the early 1970s when I went to this school for a few years. Naturally, I had to paint the building. I could have kept a photograph as a reference but instead decided to paint blind because that is how I remembered it and thought it would make an interesting impressionistic piece.
As a schoolboy I visited the the building quite often since it was just a hop across the road. The most enduring memory was the play of light in the building. Ahmedabad’s light can be pretty blinding during summers. It bleaches everything out. However, inside Sanskar Kendra, especially on the ground floor, the way Corbusier designed it, the light became so inviting. The use of the unfinished reinforced concrete to get around the scarcity of wood in the area works wonderfully well.
Since the building in the early 1970s—the days of my schooling—was still relatively new (It was commissioned in 1951 and partly completed in 1954), the reinforced concrete was still free from wear and tear. Its roof gardens were an extraordinary visual in the city then. It was only later that I discovered that Corbusier had used his signature pilotis that makes the ground level rather open. For me that was the attraction.
Ahmedabad has the distinction of Corbusier having designed a few individual homes and other institutional buildings. I have visited many of them and if there is a unifying feature to them, it is their openness. Despite the use of the heavy concrete, his buildings still feel rather light inside. That has everything to do with the way he used the flow of light.
Sanskar Kendra these days is in a state of disrepair which is a pity because it has the potential of becoming a world-class cultural center and museum. The famous architect resident of the city, Balkrishna Doshi, who worked with Corbusier on many Indian projects, including this one, has tried to restore some of its glory through his Vastu Shilpa Foundation but it still has not received the attention it so eminently deserves.
The best I can do personally is paint it.