Architect

Anant

Damoda

r Raje (September 26

1929 - June 27,

2009)

Life & Times

Anant Raje was born in Mumbai, India. He studied at the Sir J. J. College of Architecture

He worked with Louis Kahn in Philadelphia, where he also taught at the University of Pennsylvania.

For over thirty years he has taught at the School of Architecture Ahmedabad.

He also taught at the University of New Mexico, in The United States of America, and was a visiting

professor at many universities in America and

Europe.

His well known works include the :

The Executive Management Centre at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, India

The Forest Management Institute in Bhopal, India

Farmers Training Institute, Palanpur, Gujarat, India

The Institute of Statistics, New Delhi.

Management

Development Centre,

Ahmedabad

The Management development centre is the last

important element to be added

to Louis Kahn's campus for the

IIM left incomplete at his death.

Anant raje has shown due respect for that powerful context

by assiduously employing Kahns

brick vocabulary.

He has taken Kahns ideas on the order of the materials and

light further.

The play of light can be seen in the elegant shaft that pierce the

central academic block of the

complex.Interior court(junction of east wing and

central block)

Despite a masterful

fidelity to the

formal language

of Kahn, this

intimate

introverted

composition is a

refreshing

exception to the

overbearing

weight and

masculinity of

the earlier

campus

buildings-a

landmark in its

self.

Guest room wing flanking upper and lower courts

Lower courts

Plan

Indian Institute of Forest

management

Anant Raje has conceived this large govt. project with the combination of

Romanticism and Monumentality

unprecedented in recent Indian

architecture.

Contemporary images are secondary and there influence of the design; the

primary inspiration is historical, and

comes from the ruined palace of

Mundu.

The plan is a palimpsest: a formal base order half effaced by an overlay of

autonomous, sometimes colliding

geometries, like successive

archaeological deposits on a single site.

The dense congregation

of structures

creates a

romantic

sequence of

semi enclosed

and open to

sky spaces

intimate

enough in

scale to be a

useful, sun

protected

extension of

the building.

Exterior view dormitory complex

Viaduct linking library and

teaching wing

Viaduct,

detail

the model ,academic

complex

FARMERS TRAINING INSTITUTE,

PALANPUR, GUJARAT

The campus accomodates15-20 trainees, who, monk-like, are encouraged in their studies by the self contained isolation of the institute. Sleeping, eating, instruction, social activity, and all daily functions revolve around the tiny cloister.

This monastic analogy extends to the architecture in various respects; spatial orientation is consistently inward looking.

The curve sweep of the east wall decisively seals off the most public exposure of the building. A small gap is there to enter.

The dining loggia and casual activity spaces look in on the central quadrangle

In a manner reminiscent of monks cell in European charterhouses, the L-shaped

dormitories look in on semi contained verandas in lieu of direct views of rural

landscape.

CONSTRUCTION: It is simple and powerful. Rough dressed stone bearing walls with

clearly rendered slabs, arches and lintels in reinforced concrete.

All large spaces, such as the dining hall, are open to loggias which are in turn closed

owing to the perennial infiltration of hot winds and dust.

CONCLUSION

Anant raje plays of composition/light/form in a

truly unbelievable manner.

His deep veneration for Louis Kahn is

undisguised, but he has allowed himself

exceptional license to distort and enrich Kahns

idiom.