Q 1 - Draw neat sketch of plan and sectional elevation of Westminster Abbey, London and describe

the same.
Q 2 - write short note with neat sketches on any one of the below -

1. Flying Buttresses –

2. Rib Vaults –
Q 3 - What is Renaissance? Elaborate on Architectural Changes that took place during this period.
Q 4 - Explain the Architectural features of French renaissance with suitable example. Draw
appropriate sketches.
or

Q 4 - Explain with suitable example architectural features of Italian Renaissance. Draw appropriate
sketches.
Q 5 - Explain briefly the impact of industrial revolution on town planning.
Q 6 - Explain with neat sketches, Crystal palace, London 1851 CE
Q 7 - Explain briefly How RCC helped in realizing new concepts of pioneer architects.
Q 8 - Write detailed note explaining the works and contributions by ( any 2) of the following
architects -

1. Hasan Fathy

Answer –
Hassan Fathy (March 23, 1900 – November 30, 1989) was a noted Egyptian architect who
pioneered appropriate technology for building in Egypt, especially by working to reestablish
the use of adobe and traditional mud construction as opposed to western building designs,
material configurations, and lay-outs. Fathy was recognized with the Aga Khan Chairman's
Award for Architecture in 1980. In 2017, Google celebrated Fathy with a Google Doodle for
"pioneering new methods [in architecture], respecting tradition [Egyptian heritage and
tradition], and valuing all walks of life".
Fathy has been called Egypt's best-known architect since Imhotep.
Fathy's New Gourna project was applauded in a popular British weekly in 1947 and soon after
in a British professional journal, further articles were published in Spanish, French and in
Dutch.Later, Fathy would author a book on the New Gourna project, initially published by
Cairo's Ministry of Culture in a limited edition in 1969, entitled Gourna: A Tale of Two
Villages. In 1973 it was republished by the University of Chicago as Architecture for the
Poor: An Experiment in Rural Egypt.

A full appreciation of the importance of Fathy's contribution to world architecture became

clear only as the twentieth century waned. Climatic conditions, public health considerations,
and ancient craft skills also affected his design decisions. Based on the structural massing of
ancient buildings, Fathy incorporated dense brick walls and traditional courtyard forms to
provide passive cooling. Fathy is also renowned for having revived the traditional Nubian
vault.

National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview with Hassan Fathy in 1986 for its
Architects Lives' collection held by the British Library.

Hassan Fathy made use of windcatchers and other passive cooling and passive ventilation
methods from traditional architecture. He wrote a book on them.
Fathy is featured in the documentary Il ne suffit pas que dieu soit avec les pauvres (1978) by
Borhane Alaouié and Lotfi Thabet.
2. Louis Sullivan
3. Buckminster Fuller –
4. Geoffery Bawa
Q 9 - Explain briefly contribution by international architects in development of Indian cities and
architecture after independence.
Q 10 - Write detailed note explaining the works and contributions by ( any 1) of the following
architects -
1. Raj Rewal
 2. Anupama Kundoo

Ar Anupama Kundoo born in Pune and currently practicing in Australia is an internationally

renowned architect, author, and researcher who started her architecture practice in 1990 with
a strong focus on material research with the view of reducing the environmental impact
of building technologies. She truly believes that current methods of construction are causing
more problems than they can solve. Her innovative approach to architecture is supported by
intensive research and experimentation from the development of building technologies and
the integration of energy and water-efficient infrastructure solutions to building prototypes
that are environmentally sound and socio-economically beneficial. Anupama Kundoo’s
architectural journey started at Sir J. J. College of Architecture, University of Bombay, and
received her degree in 1989. She was awarded the Vastu Shilpa Foundation Fellowship in
1996 for her thesis on “Urban Eco-Community: Design and Analysis for Sustainability“. She
got her doctoral degree from the Technical University of Berlin in 2008. She established
herself as an architect in Auroville in 1990 where she designed and built many buildings with
“energy and water-efficient infrastructure” adaptations. She worked here from the middle of
1990 till 2002. Anupama Kundoo taught at the Technical University, Berlin, and Darmstadt in
Hesse during 2005. She worked as an Assistant Professor at Parsons the New School for
Design, New York until 2011 then moving to Australia as a senior lecturer at the University
of Queensland. In 2014, she shifted to Europe and began working at the European School of
Architecture and Technology at the Universidad Camilo José Cela in Madrid. Here are her 15
remarkable projects that everyone should know.

1. The Wall House, Auroville | Anupama Kundoo

The architect’s residence is situated outside the planned city limits of Auroville, in Auromodele and a
replica was reconstructed inside the Arsenale at the Venice Architecture Biennale. This building
serves as an example of contemporary architecture that solves the international socio-economic need
whilst maintaining a low impact on the environment. The ongoing development of technologies that
can be produced by unskilled workers acts as a prototype to understand how resources and spaces can
be optimized.
2. Residence For Pierre Tran, Auroville | Anupama Kundoo

Designed for climatic comfort based on Southeast orientation, vaulted roofs, cavity walls, and Ferro
cement fins regulate the glare and yet allow natural ventilation. The roof is composed of hollow
terracotta roofing tubes, specially made for the purpose, assembled into catenary vaults. This
eliminates the use of structural steel or concrete while providing insulation.

3. Main Residence Spirit Sense

The house is located at the edge of a canyon that is a very sensitive area. The house, in an organic
form, has at its center, a catenary dome that accommodates the dining area, the heart of the house.
Around it, all the other functions are located in a spirally expanding movement, like a shell. It
encloses several courtyards of different characters, to allow the landscape to penetrate the structure.
The walls are leaning and resemble the forms of eroded earth of the canyon, and blend into the
beautiful landscape so as to have a very low impact even seen from the other side.
The dome was built in the fired house technology and all the product bricks fired in that space are
used to build the rest of the house. Ray Meeker was the technical consultant for this project and
introduced a further new aspect. To avoid the use of valuable wood to fire the structure as in the
previous cases, coal dust was introduced into the clay mixture itself, with which the bricks were made.
One had to only light the fire and then the mass: structure and products, burnt from within with their
own fuel till all the coal dust in it was spent.

Unbound, The Library Of Lost Books

‘The Library of Lost Books’ is a bookless library designed by Kundoo with a live program of reading.
The focus is on the content of the book and the act of reading. ‘Unbound’, a term that relates to the
description of books, also expresses liberty and the idea of plenty, of limitlessness.
The theme ‘liberty’ is expressed through creating a place that celebrates ‘reading’, a place that
symbolizes an expression of freedom, as a place where knowledge is free. Knowledge is
empowerment, and knowledge will lead to progress and freedom. This is appropriately expressed as
an ‘outdoor’ place under the ‘shade of trees’ where everybody has a good memory of having read a
good book in the sense of freedom, free from the confines of walls of buildings. Obsolete’ books will
be recycled as a construction material, to build a canopy that will give shade to those who engage in
‘reading’ and ‘listening to stories told aloud’ or those engaged in ‘freely exchanging’ books without
exchanging money. After dismantling, the books used to construct the canopy will be available to the
public as a souvenir commemorating the event.
Three canopy structures of different sizes and of varying heights, called ‘trees’, shade the existing
square of Salvador Seguí through central supports like trunks. The technical design is a reflection of
the symbolic intention of using knowledge to ‘liberate’ the structure from its weight and express
lightness and effortlessness.

Volontariat Home For Homeless Children | Anupama Kundoo

These homes are designed by Anupama Kundoo and planned to accommodate 15 children and 5
foster parents. This project was built using a rare technology pioneered by Ray Meeker of Golden
Bridge Pottery, which consists of baking a mud house in-situ, after constructing it. A fired house or a
fire-established mud house is in principle a mud house built with mud bricks and mud mortar that is
cooked after building as a whole to achieve the strength of brick. The interior space of the structure is
stuffed with further mud bricks or other ceramic products such as tiles and fired as if it were a kiln.
Typically kiln walls absorb about 40% of the heat generated. In this technology, the house is the kiln,
and the ‘heat loss’ is directed towards firing the house and stabilizing it from water damage. The fuel
cost is largely accountable for the products inside. The strength of brick in principle would be
achieved for the piece of mud. Further, the cement in the mortar mix would become unnecessary. This
technology involves almost only labor, with very little spent of ‘purchased’ materials. Thus the money
spent remains in the local economy and it enriches it. The house becomes a producer of sustainable
building materials instead of being a consumer. The house takes 3 – 4 days to burn.

Fulfill Homes, Auroville

In response to the growing homelessness and concerns about affordability, not only in economic but
also in environmental terms, FulFill Homes designed by Anupama Kundoo are envisioned as speedy
and affordable housing units that have a low environmental impact, using a combination of
sophisticated and low-tech. Built using specially designed modules of prefabricated Ferro cement
hollow block units, full-fill homes can be assembled on the site in 6 days including foundation. The
voids created inside the blocks are designed to efficiently accommodate all storage needs of the
resident, from clothes to books to kitchen utensils, even the kitchen sink itself, and other personal
belongings so that all furniture becomes redundant. The void of the house can remain empty of
furniture, and therefore achieve more space while saving the additional cost and time involved in
furnishing homes.

Auroville Town Hall Complex | Anupama Kundoo

The challenge was to create an urban feeling with only three buildings that would attract the further
development of this area, contributing to the character of the city to come. The attempt was to
demonstrate the language of the interconnecting elements between the buildings in such a way that the
urban character would be compact built spaces interspersed with service areas and public
circulation. Public space is created between The Center for Urban Research and The Multi-Media
overlooking the cafeteria that further enlivens it. Walkways, bridges, and ramps provide the links as
well as define the building language so that further buildings are easy to add. Projected as a
Sustainable Building Infrastructure, rainwater is harvested from the roof and treated to drinking
standards, and supplied in the cafeteria. 100% of the wastewater from toilets is treated and reused for
irrigation. Principally planned as a daylight building, all computers are designed to run on solar
photovoltaics to be realized in the next phase.

3. Christopher Charles Benninger -

1. Early Life and Education Christopher Benninger was born to a professor of economics,
Laurence Benninger, who devoted his life to analytical research, writing and teaching, bringing
Christopher into the milieu of an academic community at an early age. Born in Hamilton, Ohio, in
1942, he grew up in Gainesville, Florida, surrounded by books and music and artists and the
intellectual community. As a little boy, he would often skip school to feed his appetite for
adventure by cycling around, playing on Florida’s beaches, venturing into jungles, riding out into
springs and canoeing in lakes. His mother, heir of the French family de Guibert, a gentile family
of artists, dramatists and writers introducing him to modern dance, painting, creative writing and
statecraft, with an ‘uncle’, Adlai Stevenson, the Governor of Illinois, Democratic Party candidate
for President twice, and United States Ambassador to the United Nations. At the Embassy in
New York, Christopher met many ‘thought leaders’ of the time, like Sir Robert Jackson, Chairman
of the United Nations Refugee Relief Commission, who introduced him to the Ekistics Movement,
gifting him a lifetime subscription to the Ekistics Journal. The family had homes in Free Acres (an
artists’ colony in the Watchung Mountains near New York City), Gainesville, Florida (where
Christopher completed his first degree in architecture) and Medellin, Colombia (where his father
created a college) and Christopher was introduced to abject poverty in the barrios of the city.
2. Early Life and Education He was an active participant, along with his sister, in the American civil
rights movement in his youth and chose many friends from amongst the South Asian student
community, like Meer Mobasher Ali, his roommate, who became the first Bangladeshi Dean of
Architecture in BUET in Dhaka. Benninger studied his bachelors in architecture in the University
of Florida, College of Architecture and Fine Arts (1961-1966) where he did his dissertation on
Museum Prototypes. He continued with his masters in urban planning at Harvard (1966-1967)
wherein he did his dissertation on Low Cost Housing In Latin America and where he later taught.
Following that he pursued a second master’s degree on City and Regional Planning at MIT
(1967-1971) and there his dissertation topic was Growth and Transformation of Ahmedabad.
Winning a Fulbright Fellowship in 1968 brought Christopher on a round-the-world adventure from
Cambridge to San Francisco, to Tokyo, Nara, Hong Kong, on to Phnom Penh, Bangkok and then
to India, onward through Russia and the United Kingdom.
3. Early Life and Education At Harvard, he came in close contact with Fumihiko Maki, Jersey
Soltan, Dolf Schnebli, Yona Freidman, Shadrack Woods, Louis Mumford and Barbara Ward, who
considered Christopher her protégé, taking him to the Delos Symposium in Greece in 1967, and
to the annual Athens Ekistics Week thereafter, where he befriended Constantinos Doxiadis,
Arnold Toynbee the historian, Buckminster Fuller the technologist, Margret Mead the
anthropologist and Jackie Tyrwhitt, editor of the Ekistics journal, in which Christopher’s early
writings appear. Adventure was always Christopher’s true love. His travels to Medellin, for
example, have given him a tremendous viewpoint that, very often, there is another life apart from
 one that affluent people enjoy living in the ‘first city’. Instead of flying to Athens to attend the
Delos Symposium, he landed in London, crossed the English Channel by boat, buying a Peugeot
bicycle in Paris, and then cycling 1,500 miles over land to Athens.
4. Journey into architecture His journey began with The Natural House, a book by Frank Lloyd
Wright, gifted to him on Christmas day in 1956. He was finally inspired. When he turned the last
page, he knew he was destined to become an architect. One Christmas morning he woke up to
an unusual gift and it was FL Wright’s book, The Natural House. But unlike the others this gift
turned out to be a talisman of his future. To him it was a magic book that would change his life
forever. As he read the first words, sentences, paragraphs and pages of Frank Lloyd Wright’s
The Natural House, he discovered who he was, and what he wanted to be. He gained his first
insight into the nature of my life’s meaning and search. Reading the pages he felt like a
reincarnated person discovering who he had been in previous lives, and what he would be in the
future. Then he got into college and found a clear path through a young teacher called Harry
Merritt who inspired him further through his wonderful designs and thoughtful questions. He
advised Benninger to leave Florida and go to Harvard. From then on good fortune introduced him
to a chain of true gurus. In the days that followed after he read Wright’s book he ‘saw’ things he
had never comprehended before. Wherever he went detailed elements like Finely carved
balustrades and Sculptured stone gargoyles caught his attention and got him excited. He noticed
that one wood was different from another in its color, grain, density and use. He was drawn to
‘feel wood’ and to slide his fingers across it, appreciating its inner soul. Stained glass windows,
fine brass handles, and well thought-out paving patterns were his companions.
5. Journey into architecture He began to argue with sloppy workmanship and clumsy details.
Unnatural, synthetic and artificial finishes fired a sense of anger in him. He developed a self-
righteous sense of the right and wrong uses of materials; good and bad expressions of functions,
and revulsion toward exaggerated applications of expensive finishes. Monumentalism annoyed
him. Motifs crafted in Plaster of Paris to look like marble carvings repulsed him. He divided the
world of artifacts into those of honest expression and those of lies. There were the master
architects, and there were the others whose work he considered cheap and worthless. He
realized that his ‘holier-than-thou’ attitudes were verging on fundamentalism. But he loved the
order, the devotion and the balance these thoughts brought him. A new passion had entered his
soul and fired his spirit. After The Natural House, he read A Testament, An American
Architecture and anything else by Wright that he could lay his hands on. Broadacre City, An
Autobiography and The Story of a Tower were consumed in rapid succession. Wright ignited an
energy within him that burns until this day. Decades later, his designs and his ideas follow him.
6. Journey to India Benninger came to India in a Fulbright scholarship in 1968. When BV Doshi
first visited America on a Graham Foundation scholarship in 1959 he turned to Le Corbusier to
introduce him to a guide in an unknown land who then wrote to Jose Lluís Sert, Dean at Harvard,
who graciously accepted the task. Several years later Sert introduced Doshi to a young Charles
Benninger in his mid-twenties who was coming to India on a Fulbright Fellowship. Doshi
suggested that he be with him in Ahmedabad at the School of Architecture. Without any
questions Benninger went to work with him as a teacher in 1968, at the age of twenty-five. In
Ahmedabad where he spent a year, he began his teaching career, at what is now CEPT
University. While there he came under the spell of Balkrishna Doshi, who shared his insightful
stories, zest for life and deep analysis of Indian culture. He taught his first course in town
planning there, and a studio that included students like Shishir Beri, Madhvi Desai, Miki Desai,
Kersi Daroga and Ameeta Parikh (later Raje) Anand Raje, Piraji Sagrara and Hasmukh Patel
who become his lifelong friends. While in Ahmedabad he envisioned the need for a post
graduate programme in urban studies and planning, and drafted a proposal to create a school of
planning. Designing slum upgradation shelters in Vadodara, as a volunteer for the social worker
Sanatbhai Mehta, led to a lifetime friendship, with Sanatbhai publishing ‘Letters to a Young
Architect’ in Gujarati in 2014.
7. Journey to India After his fellowship ended Doshi asked him to stay on with an Indian salary
and to his pleasant surprise Benninger stayed. While in Ahmedabad he worked with Doshi on his
idea to start a new school of planning. On returning to America, Christopher continued his urban
and regional planning studies at MIT, writing his thesis on the urban structure of Ahmedabad,
authoring ‘Models of Habitat Mobility in Transitional Societies’ that became a classic in the
literature of human settlements. After, in Cambridge, Christopher was offered a teaching position
 at Harvard, first as an instructor, and later as a tenured assistant professor. At Harvard and MIT
he had a wide range of inspiring teachers, learning economics from John Kenneth Galbraith,
teaching in studios with Roger Montgomery Jane Drew and Gerhard Kallmann, and working in
Jose Luis Sert’s studio. India was the backdrop to his life in Cambridge, with a large Pichwai
painting dominating his living room, and a sign at his front door directing, ‘Remove Your Shoes
Before You Enter’. Many of Christopher’s teachers were also curious about the subcontinent
writing books like Barbara Ward’s ‘India and the West’, Jacqueline Tyrwhitt’s ‘Patrick Geddes in
India’, Erick Erickson’s ‘Gandhi’s Truth’, and John Kenneth Galbraith’s ‘An Ambassador’s
Journal’, all raising Christopher’s nostalgia for his life and friends in India.
8. Journey to India When he left to teach architecture at Harvard, Doshi assumed his tryst with
India was over. A year later, while with Kahn in Philadelphia, Doshi got a call from Christopher to
come up to Harvard and give a public lecture. Missing Ahmedabad in Cambridge, Christopher,
the brahmachārī, brought India to America, inviting Charles Correa, Achyut Kanvinde and
Balkrishna Doshi to give lectures at Harvard in the spring of 1970, enrolling Indian students at
MIT and Harvard like Praful Patel, Nimish Patel and Trilochan Chhaya, befriending South Asian
students with whom he still shares ideas. While in Cambridge they talked of utopian dreams and
about the future of India. Doshi obtained his promise that if he could ever initiate a school of
planning Benninger would come back to Ahmedabad and help me start it. As fate would have it
that project materialized sooner than Doshi ever imagined. But hopes for Christopher’s support
evaporated as this was around the time he had just been made a tenured Assistant Professor at
Harvard, and no one in the right sense of mind would leave such a coveted post so easily. In any
case Doshi wrote to him that he must come. But Benninger adored India and its traditions and
people and the chance to found a new institute at the age of 28 was too much to ignore so he
gave up everything in America and chose to come to India. After a month Doshi was surprised to
receive a letter from Benninger accepting the prior’s proposal. From then on they have been on a
long journey and founded the institute we know today as the Centre for Environmental Planning
and Technology (CEPT), Ahmedabad.
9. “India, like America, is a land of individuals. Like America, its composite parts are diverse. India
is composed of a billion initiatives of a billion people. These are sometimes in conflict and
sometimes in alignment. Living in India is a huge challenge demanding understanding, patience
and perseverance. This vast complexity of personalities, multiple visions, values and ways of
doing things is a continuous source of inspiration and motivation. The very name of the country
sparks my imagination and my curiosity even after living more than half a century amongst its
wonderful people. The search here is to find the common thread that weaves all of these strands
into one cloth. That is the fun of it all. What is amazing is that within all of this diversity there are
so many threads that tie everything together into a stable pattern; always in flux, always in
transition, always changing, yet dependable and unified. Somehow I have always felt most at
home in India; more so even than in America or Europe. I love the chaos, the dynamic synergy
and the way things settle into their own unique order. I love the warmth of the people, expressed
through smiles and laughter. I love the variety of characters and the complexity of the society. I
love the smell of rain on parched earth, wafted on the breeze from the distant mountains as the
monsoon approaches. I love the sounds of insects at dusk and the songs of birds at dawn, when
the sun peeks over the horizon onto verdant fields.” “I’d say as an Indian architect; my career
began here when my eyes were opened to objective reality, as opposed to the dreamy
romanticism of the West. as a young man, in the early 70s, I matured, dealing with a wide variety
of people when I founded the School of Planning at the Centre for Environmental Planning and
Technology University (CEPT), Ahmedabad. Later, designing institutional buildings and very
large human settlements, I learned a great deal, becoming a man. Fortunately, an Indian man! In
fact, as an old man, I feel young architects can learn much more about architecture right here in
India from the Chola temple complexes, the Mughal campuses, and from everyday domestic
architecture than they can in Ivy League schools in America or in the classrooms of London or
Paris.”
10. Life as a Brahmachari in ashrams “To know what the truth is, though we must also search it.
Through my travels such questions and propositions began to haunt me. While I travel a great
deal (and indeed am on a journey in Australia even as I write this piece) I have always settled
into different kinds of ashrams, or retreats. Perhaps they mirror my stages of life from that of a
Brahmachari to that of a Rishi?” “There have been four figurative ashrams in my life that I would
 like to mention, as each had presiding gharanas, or schools of thought, nurturing them. They all
had gurus and clear credos. There were my years in Cambridge, Massachusetts; my years in
Ahmedabad, India; two decades at the Centre for Development Studies and Activities (CDSA) in
Pune; and my present life at India House in Pune. In my previous ashrams I was an object of the
gharanas, and in the present one I am the subject and the verb; that is to say that I have become
more formative and deterministic as I grew older. That, in fact, is the anomaly of being an
architect; as one is embattled by age, one becomes stronger; as one retreats, one becomes
more engaged, making a greater impact on one’s context.”
11. Cambridge ashram In Cambridge he studied urban planning at MIT and architecture at
Harvard, where he later taught. He also worked in Jose Lluís Sert’s studio. He was his mentor
and his teacher at the Graduate School of Design. At Sert’s personal studio he worked on the
Harvard Science Center and on the details of his new studio coming up. This was an ashram
where modern meant ‘progress’. They believed that history was a continuous path of
improvement and problem solving. All diseases would be vanquished; poverty would be
eradicated, borders between countries would dissolve, and the world would become one
fellowship. They were ‘thinker-doers’ charged by the urge to create a better world. Being an
architect he studied economics under John Kenneth Galbraith and became Barbara Ward’s
protégé, traveling with her to Greece to attend the Delos Symposium on Doxiadis’ yacht. There
he came to know Edmund Bacon, Margaret Mead, Arnold Toynbee and Buckminster Fuller.
Gradually, Greece became a rest stop on his way between America and India. Sparoza,
Jaqueline Tyrwhitt’s house in Attica, was his true retreat. And there he taught studios with
Gerhard Kallmann, Jane Drew and Roger Montgomery. Dolf Schnebli became a friend. Fumihiko
Maki became a lifelong mentor. During his many retreats at Gloucester Place in London, where
Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry lived, he was exposed to their wide circle of philosophers, authors
and artists. There were lunches with Freddie Ayer and Stephen Spender, evenings at the Albert
and Victoria Museum and functions at the Architectural Association of which Jane was the
President. He learned of Chandigarh, heard Jane’s stories of affairs between great people and
heard first-hand stories of modern architecture in the making. When he was twenty-six years old
he was promoted as a tenured Assistant Professor at Harvard, and became a Member of the
Faculty Senate. That’s when his mentors cautioned him to move on or he would get too
comfortable and settle down for lesser things. The Cambridge ashram was the center of the
modernist gharana and had, as its gurus-in-residence, Gropius, Sert, Mirko Basaldella and many
others.
12. Ahmedabad ashram In Ahmedabad, it was Doshi who inspired and encouraged him. He had
been there on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1968-69 and thereafter returned to teach in the summers.
Doshi called him back to start the School of Planning at CEPT in late 1971 and encouraged him
to run his own architectural studio. There he got his first design commissions: the Alliance
Française in Ahmedabad, Dr. Bhanuben Parekh’s House in Bhavnagar, low cost housing for
hundreds of families in Jamnagar, and the SOS Children’s Village outside Delhi and another in
Kolkata. In Ahmedabad for the first time he earned his own way and lived as a householder and
teacher. The Ahmedabad ashram integrated the modernist movement of the West into a search
for an ‘Indian tradition.’ Balkrishna Doshi, Hasmukh Patel and Anant Raje were his gurus.
Mentors like Charles Correa, Achyut Kanvinde and Laurie Baker guided him. But in Ahmedabad
he had to try being a Guru too. Doshi had asked him to start a School of Planning. He just said,
“Do it! Pick up on your Harvard teaching experience and run!” The Ford Foundation supported
their efforts through a grant of books, visiting professors and office equipment. Suddenly he had
to write a curriculum, hire professors and scout all over India to find good students. He had to
plan teaching schedules, make rules and try to bring a sense of order into natural chaos. The
School of Planning was an important experiment. It drew students from architecture, engineering,
social work, the liberal arts and technology, upsetting the accreditation committees of civil
engineers, geographers and architects from New Delhi. Students and teachers lived in villages,
rural towns and slums ‘learning from the people’ with whom they made plans for the future. They
all worked in multidisciplinary teams, where teachers were students and students were teachers.
His life in Cambridge, Massachusetts was in the ashram of truth, empiricism and progress. In
Ahmedabad it was the ashram of devotion, social change and passionate service to community.
‘From each according to his abilities and to each according to his need’ was their battle cry. In
 Ahmedabad the word ‘modern’ meant transformation, not progress. They wanted to create a
‘new man’ and design a ‘new culture’, a revolution.
13. CDSA ashram An administrator, Vasant Bawa unexpectedly entered to catalyze a new
ashram. He had taken Benninger’s advice on the new legislation creating the Hyderabad Urban
Development Authority (HUDA) and wanted him to design the HUDA’s very first project. It was
the new township for two thousand Class IV employees of the Government of Andhra Pradesh.
Twelve labor unions had formed a housing federation and within their limited means they wanted
shelter. Working closely with these people, they built a township of two thousand houses and
amenities at Yousufguda near Hyderabad. The fees from this project translated into his
opportunity to jump out of Doshi’s nest and fly. He wanted to start his own institute and this
project provided the finances for that. Thus, the Centre for Development Studies and Activities
(CDSA) in Pune was born. When Benninger shifted to Pune to start CDSA in 1976 he was thirty-
three years old. This was his second institution and was a place of intellectual research and
social action. The design of the new campus followed the lead of the Alliance Française in
Ahmedabad. At the peak of CDSA’s ascendance more than eighty young professionals worked
at offices in Pune, Bhutan, Goa, Almora in (then) Uttar Pradesh, and in Jaffna and Galle in Sri
Lanka. They prepared town plans, slum improvement programs, village, district and regional
plans. They pioneered micro-watershed planning, micro-level social services planning,
decentralized planning and participatory planning. His twenty years at CDSA were spent
inventing, enabling and facilitating programs, all to assist households to climb out of poverty. The
new School of Planning at CDSA was founded on didactic techniques initiated in Ahmedabad.
Students lived in slums and villages learning from those they would plan for. At CDSA ‘modern’
came to mean planned amelioration and facilitated change. It involved the civil society, NGOs,
governments and people. Toward the end of his time at CDSA a commission to design the
Mahindra United World College of India sparked his interest in architectural design again. It was
this commission from Harish Mahindra that lit a flame in him to confine myself to the ashram of a
simple studio, yet re-engage with society as a maker of artifacts. Thus, his academic life came to
an end and he left his life as a teacher and householder, entering a more inward and meditative
stage. At CDSA the ashram was both one of retreat and one of engagement; it was the place of
thinker-doers who explored more relevant ways of doing things with optimism to change the
world.
14. India House ashram According to Benninger perhaps India House is more of a real ashram
than either CDSA or CEPT were. It is even more of a retreat than Harvard Yard, or the Endless
Corridor at MIT. It is a self contained residence, guesthouse, art gallery, office, studio, and public
space for cultural events. One can even swim in the lap pool and thus pass weeks without ever
leaving its limited compound walls. This is his self made true forest retreat. At India House about
fifty creative people work on a range of design and design management activities. Major new
projects have been initiated here and older ones completed: the Capital City Plan of Bhutan; the
Indian Institute of Management at Kolkata; the Samundra Institute of Maritime Studies near
Mumbai; the YMCA Retreat at Nilshi; the Suzlon One Earth at Pune; works at the College of
Engineering, Pune and many more. It is an ashram where young people gain their confidence
and work from ‘tired to tired.’ It is his retreat into his secret world of ideas, sketches, design
concepts and putting things into ‘buildable’ technology. It is a centre of art and architecture; a
place of self discovery and transcendence. At India House he found the solace to write his book,
Letters to A Young Architect. He found the peace to focus on a series of articles on urbanism
published by the Times of India group. There is a team of devoted architects contributing to a
fellowship of creativity. India House is a place of incessant creative activity. The clock never
stops.
15. Establishment of CCBA The firm started as a small proprietorship design firm in 1995 by the
Company Founder Chairman and Principal Architect Prof. Christopher Benninger along with
Founder Managing Director Mr. Ramprasad Akkisetti. With the changing economic liberalization,
and part of the expansion plan, Benninger Technical Services came into being in 1999 that
eventually morphed into Christopher Charles Benninger Architects Private Limited (shortened to
be addressed as CCBA) in 2000. CCBA is an Incorporated Company registered in 1999 under
the Companies act 1956. Engineer Rahul Sathe joined the company in 1996 and is a share
holder and a Director of the company managing issues regarding Finances, Contracts, Projects
related issues. Architect Daraius Choksi joined the company in 1999, is a share holder and a
 Director of the company overseeing all aspects of architectural design studio of the company. Ar.
Shivaji Karekar and Deepak Kaw are Senior Associates who have been with the design studio
since 2001 and have successfully completed several award winning projects of the firm leading
several architects on the process of design and drawings. Small teams mentored by senior
architects, such as Noel Jerald V and Bhushan Pise, Gaurav Inamdar, Sundar Bommazee,
Rahul Deshmukh develop projects in the studio. CCBA Designs Pvt. Ltd incorporated in 2016
under the companies act 2013 is a wholly owned subsidiary of CCBA Pvt. Ltd, shortened its
name in 2016. CCBA also operated under the name Benninger Techtonics USA registered in
Florida, USA briefly to operate its projects of overseas and United Nations. CCBA LOGO is
inspired from the idea of yin and yang or the merger of the indoors and the outdoors. The idea
generated from the Library building of the Mahindra United World College of India in Pune. The
design of the building takes the outdoor garden inside the library making it a unique idea of
bringing nature into the building. This has been a very important aspect and turning point in the
design philosophy of CCBA, where there has always been a deliberate attempt to bring nature
into the building.
16. Benninger’s architecture ● CCB’s Architecture has deep thoughts, which make him design the
structure which blends with modernity and the context simultaneously. ● Benninger in all his
designs has pinpointed into material use, nature care and blending with the context. This is what
makes his type of architecture different from others. ● Aspiration to create something
vernacularly unique has compelled Benninger to get into modernity with play of shapes and
spaces. ● Simple, Functional, Modern, Vernacular would be some aspects to describe the
buildings of Benninger. ● Another mention in his designs would be of Symmetry – His designs do
have symmetrical forms and facades. Benninger’s works ● Internationally known as “design
house” - Christopher Charles Benninger Architects, create products ranging from capital and new
towns, educational campuses and corporate headquarters, housing, estates and complexes,
hotels resorts and hospitals, down to the design of individual chairs and art works. ● He has
initiated many projects like – housing for poor families financed first time by government of India
under HUDCO and innovated concept of 'Site and Services' to provide houses via developed
small plots for poor people to construct homes to their needs.
17. Benninger’s works Allaince Francaise , Ahmadabad CDSA, Pune Mahindra UWC ,
Maharashtra Samundra Institute, Lonavala Suzlon One Earth, Pune
18. Awards ● 2000 - Top 10 Best Buildings of the World | The Business Week Architectural Record
Awards of American Institute of Architects, USA for Mahindra United World College of India ●
2001 - The Aga Khan Award for Architecture for Mahindra United World College of India as the
top 20 best projects of the world. ● 2002 - The World Architecture Awards, Berlin for Mahindra
United World College of India as a finalist. ● 2006 - Recognition for Excellence in Design, U.K. -
Lifetime achievement award. ● 2006 - Golden Architect Award for Lifetime Achievement by A+D
and Spectrum Foundation ● 2006 - IIA Award 2006 for excellence in Architecture. ● 2010 - World
Architecture Community, U.K. - Citation for Nabha House, Haryana Cultural Centre, New Delhi,
India. ● 2011 - Holcim Sustainability Awards, Switzerland for Lifecare Multi-specialty Hospital,
Udgir - Certificate of Appreciation.