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Drawing[s] From Raje: The Patient Search for Architecture
An Exhibition of Architectural Drawings/Sketches
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Artist & Speakers
September 17 – 25 | Sunday – Monday | 11am to 8pm | Exhibition on show
September 19 | Tuesday | 6:30 to 8 pm | Lecture accompanying the exhibition by Shubhra Raje and a conversation with Soumitro Ghosh
The architecture of Late Anant Raje (1929-2009) has been described as exhibiting integrity between purpose and expression, building and landscape, part and whole, and the ultimate quality of all good architecture through time – a sense of repose. If the disciplines of the mind, and a humanistic concern, are the underpinnings of all his work, it is his understanding of the elements of building, and the laws of construct, that give it a sense of ordered presence.
In a practice spanning more than fifty years of thinking, teaching, drawing and constructing, Raje engrossed himself in an engagement with the spirit of a personal architectural life. Drawings, along with models and photography, were his tools in the sustained self examination that made his a truly critical practice. As Gautam Bhatia notes in the introduction to Raje’s monograph: his pencil rarely fluctuated, his mind never wavered…built or unbuilt, the project was the testing ground, a vigorous, imaginative world he created for himself out of real situations. The drama lay as much in testing those ideas in the studio as on the construction site. The tireless chipping away, testing, redrawing and correcting were part of a temperament that refused to settle with partial resolutions.
The exhibition presents six projects, from an oeuvre of over sixty, focusing on the development of these elements of meeting, of connection. Selections of development sketches, construction drawings and Raje’s contact sheets with his notes together provide clues to the many fundamental problems and situations he constantly wrestled with. A series of relevant sketches, sifted through fifty years of sketchbooks, provide a backdrop and a milieu for the more specific explorations.
The drawings and sketches in this exhibition are defined both by what is being studied and by the relationship between its being a hand drawing and an act of exploration where thinking does not happen for the sketch to be made; the sketch is thinking in process. With regards to the architectural practice, it reminds us that design is what occurs between the mind and drawing – not what merely happens in the mind to be then put in a drawing. This is, then, an exhibition of an architect at work, rather than merely a presentation of his work.
An exhibition of architectural drawings and sketches curated by Shubhra Raje and the Anant Raje Foundation.
Presented by Anant Raje Foundation and MAD Salon
Artist & Speakers
Late Anant Raje
An architect and a dedicated teacher of post-independence India, the architecture of Late Anant Raje (1929-2009) has been described as exhibiting integrity between purpose and expression, building and landscape, part and whole, and the ultimate quality of all good architecture through time – a sense of repose. If the disciplines of the mind, and a humanistic concern, are the underpinnings of all his work, it is his understanding of the elements of building, and the laws of construct, that give it a sense of ordered presence.
In a practice spanning more than fifty years of thinking, teaching, drawing and constructing, Raje engrossed himself in an engagement with the spirit of a personal architectural life. Drawings, along with models and photography, were his tools in the sustained self examination that made his a truly critical practice.
Shubhra Raje
Shubhra’s practice involves designing buildings and teaching architecture. With graduate and postgraduate degrees in architecture and a minor in theory and criticism from Cornell and CEPT Universities, she founded shubhra raje_built environments, an architecture and design studio that concerns itself with relevant design, architectural economy and spatial ecology.
Shubhra is a visiting professor of Architecture at the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT) in Ahmedabad (India) and the Denver and Boulder campuses of the University of Colorado. In addition, she has taught at her graduate alma-mater Cornell University. She has been a visiting critic at university across the globe, lectures where invited and serves on the boards of various community arts organisations in India and Colorado. She is a founding member of the Anant Raje Foundation, created as an archive as well as a platform to support cross-disciplinary initiatives in the fields of art, architecture and the built environment.
Her encounters with Raje’s work began as a toddler on his drafting table at the IIMA, and have continued through her student years and present research into his work, practice and teaching methodologies.
Soumitro Ghosh
Soumitro joined as partner ‘Mathew and Ghosh Architects,’ a partnership founded by Nisha Mathew in 1995.
Educated at the School of Architecture CEPT Ahmedabad Soumitro Ghosh has earlier on worked with Pritzker Laureate B.V. Doshi, R.J. Vasavada, Neelkanth Chaaya, K B Jain, Jaswant Singh, and others before beginning this collaborative multidirectional practice.
The practice with Nisha Mathew covers urban/ people parks and memorials, a museum, hospitality, conservation, industrial facilities, corporate offices, religious and residential buildings as well as exhibition design, interiors, furniture, jewelry, art, and installations. Some of their noticeable projects in Bengaluru (Bengaluru) are the Museum of Art and Photography 2022, National Military Memorial, Freedom Park, Byg Brewski (Hennur) and Bob’s Bar (Indiranagar + Koramangala) etc.
He has taught at the Bengal Institute, Dhaka, and other places. He has been the Charles Correa Design Chair, and been a juror at various forums. He is presently part of the Academic Council of Kamala Raheja Institute for of Architecture, Mumbai. He began his journey of teaching with Kumar Vyas, founding member of NID which he has continued over two plus decades now.
He has personal interest lies in politics, philosophy, culture, and history to understand the society we live in and design for.
