2/17/2021 Balkrishna Doshi’s Aranya

Balkrishna Doshi’s Aranya

Vikram Bhatt on a township built by its inhabitants

One cannot just be an architect. The idea is to become a sthapati as described in the
canonical texts.... “to be a yogi, to feel the vibrations of every element in the cosmos
including the materials and the user of that space.”1
—Balkrishna Doshi

Balkrishna Doshi. Miniature perspective painting of a lively street, Aranya Low Cost Housing, Indore, India,
1990. Minimum Cost Housing Group fonds, CCA. ARCH280274. © Balkrishna Doshi

Balkrishna Doshi began his formation as an architect working for Le Corbusier in Paris from
1951 to 1954, returning to India to supervise Le Corbusier’s influential projects in
Ahmedabad and establishing his own practice, Vastushilpa, also in Ahmedabad, in 1956.
From the beginning of his career Doshi was involved in designing housing projects, such as
the low-income housing for staff of the Ahmedabad Textile Industry Research Association
(ATIRA). In the early years of India’s independence, the government collaborated with
private enterprises to launch numerous national building projects such the Physical
Research Laboratory, the Gujarat State Fertilizer Corporation, the Indian Farmer’s Fertilizer
Company, and Madhya Pradesh Electricity. These companies were often situated in remote
locations for strategic reasons, including resource access, and were therefore required to
build housing for their staff. Doshi designed a series of company towns for these clients but,
unlike public or low-income housing projects in India that were often bleak, Doshi’s designs
were lively—his architecture allowed everyday life to go on and communities to thrive.
Amongst his vast body of work, it is through his housing projects that Doshi came closest to
realizing his vision of an expanded role of the architect based on the notion of the sthapati.

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Minimum Cost Housing Group and Vastushilpa Foundation. Street elevation based on study of Indore’s informal
settlements, Aranya Low Cost Housing, Indore, India, 1990. Minimum Cost Housing Group fonds, CCA. ARCH280278

Balkrishna Doshi, architect. Aranya Low Cost Housing, Indore, India, 1989. A multi-use platform, November 1995.
Photograph by Vikram Bhatt. Minimum Cost Housing Group fonds, CCA. ARCH280283

Such a role required designing with sensitivity to local conditions, both material and
climatic, which Doshi applied rigorously across his work. For example, the scarcity of
materials like steel and cement in India compelled Doshi to experiment with building
technologies and local materials such as brick and stone. In the ATIRA project for example,
he used bricks in the form of a simple and orderly system of load-bearing walls supporting a
vaulted roof structure. Likewise, given that most of India lies in the hot tropics and that the
cost of energy is especially high, climate-responsive design, particularly for natural
ventilation, is critical. Doshi tackled issues of climate at different scales, from the
community, to the individual building, to the material, to the devices; and in doing so he
made an immeasurable contribution to establishing models for tropical architecture
worldwide. Doshi’s housing projects varied considerably in size from accommodating
several hundred to a few thousand families, and yet he conceived of each as a coherent,
self-sufficient community in which common amenities and services were shared. Doshi
facilitated this idea by adding clusters of homes together to create low-rise (mostly two- or
three-story), high-density town-scapes.

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Minimum Cost Housing Group and Vastushilpa Foundation. Figure-ground plan, Aranya Low Cost Housing, Indore, India,
1990. Minimum Cost Housing Group fonds, CCA. ARCH280275

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Minimum Cost Housing Group and Vastushilpa

Foundation. Study of open spaces designed to
encourage economic activity around dwellings, Aranya
Low Cost Housing, Indore, India, 1990. Minimum Cost
Housing Group fonds, CCA. ARCH280276

Minimum Cost Housing Group and Vastushilpa

Foundation. Study of a typical collective service space,
Aranya Low Cost Housing, Indore, India, 1990.
Minimum Cost Housing Group fonds, CCA.
ARCH280277

A large percentage of urban populations in India are comprised of labourers and new
migrants—the “other half”—who lack housing options in the city and thus often live in
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informal settlements. To address such challenges of housing access, Doshi established the
Vastushilpa Foundation in 1978 in parallel with his design practice. The organization
operates as a link between academics and professionals to develop research into methods
of improving the environmental quality of human settlements in India, particularly those of
the poor. For example, from the late 1970s to late 1980s the Foundation collaborated on
various projects with the Minimum Cost Housing Group at McGill University, established in
1971 with a commitment to the research and design of low-cost and sustainable building in
developing countries. Together they carried out an extensive study of informal settlements
in the city of Indore, in central India, that meticulously documented how the communities
operated and how the “other half” was already building. Notably, it was under the auspices
of the Vastushilpa Foundation rather than his design practice that Doshi chose to develop
the commission for the Aranya Low Cost Housing project in the early 1980s, and Minimum
Cost Housing Group researchers participated in and recorded all different stages of its
development.

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Doshi’s approach to Aranya embodied the spirit of the architect-sthapati because his design
responded to the needs and capacities of its users in the most humble and empathetic
manner possible. Located just outside Indore, Aranya was conceived of as a township rather
than simply a housing project that could help reduce the acute shortage of dwellings
available in the city, especially among those living in informal settlements. Of the 6,500
plots planned for development, 65 percent were reserved for what the Indian government
categorized as the Economically Weaker Section of society—at the time, these plots were
thirty-five square metres and allocated to those earning thirty-five dollars per month—while
the remainder incorporated market housing for higher income residents. In order to offer
such a high proportion of low-income plots while maintaining an economically viable
development, Doshi adopted a sites-and-services planning approach that ensured high-
quality basic infrastructure upon which residents built their own dwellings and could add to
them over time. The initial architecture provided was service cores with plumbing, water
supply, electricity, and road access, as well as occasional platforms and kitchens which
residents could expand and consolidate over time as resources became available. Having
been developed for a projected population of 70,000 inhabitants, Aranya has since grown to
accommodate approximately 80,000, demonstrating Doshi’s forethought in planning for the
future growth of individual dwellings and the neighbourhood, and by extension the
settlement as a whole.

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Minimum Cost Housing Group and Vastushilpa Foundation. Study of dwelling facades and street character, Aranya Low
Cost Housing, Indore, India, 1988. Minimum Cost Housing Group fonds, CCA. ARCH280281

Balkrishna Doshi, architect. Aranya Low Cost Housing, Indore, India, 1989. A row houses with roof terrases and ground
floor commerce,1988. Photograph by Vikram Bhatt. Minimum Cost Housing Group fonds, CCA. ARCH280279

Though almost one square kilometre in area, Aranya was designed for the human scale: the
urban plan, based on six sectors grouped around a town centre, gave residents access to
schools, commerce, employment, and other services within walking distance. The clustered
housing layouts further provided easily accessible spaces for work and each housing block
culminated with spaces set aside for local commerce and community gatherings. The
hierarchy of streets separated pedestrian and vehicular routes and a sequence of passages
and open spaces, with lush planting and shade-giving trees, allowed residents to go about
their daily activities and develop a livelihood around their dwellings. Over time, a wide
range of domestic enterprises and small commercial activities emerged and thrived within
the community. Doshi designed with compassion for and a forensic awareness of traditions
and daily patterns of life such that today, Aranya has grown into an ideal place for living.

The Aranya project materials, including fieldwork sketches, design drawings, and several thousand photographs, track all
stages of development through site identification, implementation of the infrastructure, roads, and service-cores, occupation
and gradual transformation by residents, and post-occupancy documentation. This collection is part of the Minimum Cost
Housing Group fonds. This text is published on the occasion of Balkrishna Doshi receiving the 2018 Pritzker Architecture Prize.
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1 Sanskrit, the word sthapati is a combination of two words: stha, meaning space, and pati, meaning master or
lord. When used together, stha and pati mean a “chief judge” or an “arbitrator” of space—someone
responsible for producing temples or great buildings. 

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