Women architects in India, Contemporary and Early women architects, their works, projects, biography, status

1. WOMEN
ARCHITECTS IN
INDIA
PERIN JAMSHEDJI MISTRI
URMILA EULIE CHOWDHURY
PRAVINA MEHTA
HEMA PATEL
CANNA PATEL
CHITRAVISHWANATH
ANUPAMA KUNDOO
BRINDA SOMAYA

2. EARLY NARRATIVES

3. PERIN
JAMSHEDJI
MISTRI

4. About
• Birth: Born in Mumbai in 1913 in a progressive Parsi family.
• Her father Jamsetjee Mistri was a renowned architect.
• Education: Having had her early education in a Gujarati school in
Mumbai, young Mistri entered as a boarder in Miss Kimmin’s High
School in Panchagani. At the age of ten she went to England and
completed her education from the Croydon High School.
• Degree: Joined the Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy (J. J.) School of Art. Joined
her father’s firm M/s. Ditchburn, Mistri and Bhedwar in 1937 which was
started in 1891 and had opened a branch in Karachi in 1916.
• She is believed to be the first woman architect to be professionally
qualified in India.

5. SHELTER FOR SALVATION ARMY IN AHMEDNAGAR
St. Stephen’s CathedralChurch, Mumbai St. Stephen’s CathedralChurch, Mumbai

6. URMILA EULIE
CHOWDHURY

7. About
• Urmila Eulie Chowdhury (1923-1995) was India's
first qualified woman architect, a teacher, and a
writer. Some historians believe that she was
Asia's first qualified female architect.
• She graduated from the University of Sydney
with Bachelor of Architecture in 1947. In addition,
she learned singing and piano at the
Conservatory of Music of the Julian Ashborn
School of Art, Sydney, Australia, and also
obtained a diploma in Ceramics in New Jersey,
USA.

8. About
• She worked for a brief period in United States and returned
to India in 1951 to join the team of Le Corbusier, Pierre
Jeanneret, Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew for designing of the
Capital City of Chandigarh.
• From 1951 to 1981 Eulie Chowdhury broadly remained in
Chandigarh and worked on different positions except for
1963 to 1965 when she was entrusted the assignment of
Director, School of Planning andArchitecture, New Delhi.
• She worked as Chief Architect of Haryana from 1971 to 1976
and Chief Architect of Punjab from May 21, 1976 to October
31, 1981. In 1983, she established the Alliance Française de
Chandigarh.

9. WORKS
• Eulie Chowdhury's architecture bear
the footprints of more of Pierre
Jeanneret and less of Le Corbusier.
• Her architecture had the ingredients
of purity, simplicity, truthfulness,
humbleness, minimalism, and
economy.
• An overview of her buildings proves
the above discourse true. She was
more fascinated by the use of brick
on external surfaces, occasionally
punctuated by plastered and white-
washed surfaces. Unlike Le Corbusier,
she very rarely designed buildings in
exposed concrete.
Women Polytechnic College, Sector 10, Chandigarh
Government Housing, Sector-35, Chandigarh
Government Model Senior Secondary School,
Sector-37, Chandigarh

10. PRAVINA MEHTA

11. About
 Pravina Mehta of Mumbai was a leading Indian architect,
planner and also a political activists. During the Indian
independence movement, she was inspired by Sarojini
Naidu, a freedom fighter and participated in the street
protests against the British raj before she started her
study of architecture at the Sir j.j.
 She was involved in the conceptualization and proposal of
the new Bombay plan in 1964 in collaboration with
Charles Correa and Shirish Patel, which involved
extension of the island city located to the east on the
mainland.

12. • Mehta was involved in the design of houses, factories, schools, and
institutions, but her structures no longer exist.
• She also aimed at establishing a link between architecture and other art
forms. It was her view that traditional Indian art forms, which are rhythmic
in style, could be translated to "the language of concrete and mortar“

13. J.B. Advani Oerlikon
Electrodes Factory
• It was built in 1963 with labour intensive on site
fabrication .
• Ventilation and lightning were provided by rhythmic
arrangements of windows.
• Her main preoccupation was with re-establishing a link
between art and architecture and with Indian values
which she felt was missing from the contemporary
Indian buildings of that time.

14. HEMA PATEL

15. About
• Hema Patel studied architecture in Maharaja
Sayajirao University (MSU), Baroda, in 1959-64. Her
father was a civil engineer involved in building
construction, and her elder brother Hasmukh Patel is
a well-known architect.
• She was greatly inspired by Pingleji’s aesthetical
values in architecture. Patel was design conscious
from the beginning and has been interested in
gardening as well as designing jewellery and clothes
since her early teens.

16. • In 1967, she began her professional career working for a
large architectural firm for six months before joining Louis
Kahn’s practise for two and half years in East Coast.
• There were several projects that Patel worked on while at
Louis Kahn’s office.
• The experience of practising made her aware of the
patriarchal attitudes of the society towards women. Since
her return to India she has continued to be active in her
profession. She headed the School of Interior Design at the
Institute of Environmental Design,VallabhVidyanagar from
1990 to 1997; she also started a five year architecture
programme at SardarValabhbhai Institute ofTechnology at
Vasad,Gujarat.
The KimbellArt Museum in Dallas
The Convention hall inVenice

17. CONTEMPORARY
PRACTICES

18. CANNA PATEL

19. About
• Canna Patel is an Architect and Interior Designer with over 28 years of
professional experience.
• Education: Bachelors in Architecture at CEPT, Ahmedabad
she did her Masters at U.C. Berkeley.
• Professional Pracice:She is the Chairperson HCP Interior Design Pvt. Ltd.
(HCPID), widely regarded as a reputable and professionally managed firm.
• Career: Her early career focused on Interior Design projects, in which she has
established a nationwide reputation, renowned for her signature style of
designed interiors that complement and indeed, seamlessly blend with the
Architectural forms and spaces. Focus on detailing and integration of art in her
interiors and architecture are trademarks of her work.
• More recently, she has executed Architectural commissions that reflect a fine
sensitivity to Indian climate, social norms, cultural values and aspirations.

20. • With time, lifestyle and technology changes and the way
people use space gets changed too. As a designer we got to
redesign same space for same family but different time with
different generation.
•
Redefining spaces not just by material colour but changing the
experience of using the same space in a different way was our
inspiration for this project.
•
The client had sentimental values attached to the house and
religious, we had to be careful with our design moves and
sensitive towards it.To give them a feeling of a brand new
house without doing much civil changes was the biggest
challenge.
• By using minimum materials we achieved timelessness in our
projects

22. BHAVIN &
RUPAL
VADGAMA’S
WEEKEND
HOME

23. CHITRA
VISHWANATH

24. About
• Principal architect & managing director at Biome Environmental
Solutions, Bengaluru
• Nigerian national diploma
• Bachelor of architecture, CEPT Ahmedabad
• 1990-2008, Founder ChitraVishwanath Architects
• Advisor to kilikili www.kilikili.org
• Co-ordinator in:ch – an indo-swiss sustainability education
initiative

25. BIOME environmental solutions
Has designed and
implemented hundreds of
real estate developments –
residences, institutions and
resorts – guided by
ecological principles,
integrating sound water,
energy and land-use thinking
into design.
01
Design is a highly personal
process, and provide great
emphasis on client
interactions to ensure the
final project incorporates the
vision of sustainability with
the client’s aspirations for
aesthetics, functionality, and
budget.
02
The ecologically and socially
sensitive nature of our work,
along with the commitment
to spreading sustainable
living practices far and wide,
has led to our involvement in
many non-profit projects to
benefit the natural
environment and
disadvantaged populations.
03
Established the Biome
Environmental Trust to
facilitate the continued
efforts in these activities.
04

26. PROJECT-
THE ATELIER
BANGALORE

27. PROJECT-THE
ATELIER
BANGALORE
• The Atelier is designed as a temporary structure in response to
site limitations. This entails that it can be dismantled and the
materials and land recovered in entirety. Conforming to the
education system, the spaces are designed in a permeable
sense.
• Eight branching columns support a sloping roof which effects
a gentle change in scale.The interior is visually liberating,
being perceived entirely as one volume.
• Walls of varying heights enclose curvilinear spaces, blurring
volumetric definition
• The external envelope is a pattern of pervious, opaque and
transparent surfaces, lighting and ventilating the space.
• Dotted with skylights, the roof has an insulating bamboo
plywood false ceiling which contrasts pleasantly with the
metallic frame.
• Construction techniques such as chappadi stone foundation,
paver block floor, paper tube partition walls and a bolted
steel structure make it transposable.

29. Brinda Somaya

30. About
• Brinda Somaya was born on 28 June 1949.
• Somaya completed her bachelor of architecture degree from
Mumbai university and her master of arts from smith college
in Northampton, United States.
• Her work includes corporate, industrial and institutional
campuses and extends to public spaces, which she has rebuilt
and sometimes reinvented as pavements, parks and plazas.
• Some of these campuses includeTata Consultancy Services,
Banyan Park, Mumbai; Nalanda International School,
Vadodara; and ZensarTechnologies, Pune.
• She is currently the Chairperson of Board of Governors for
School of Planning and Architecture, Vijayawada.

31. • Brinda Somaya started SNK in a garden shed in Mumbai founding what
would become one of the most diverse Indian practices internationally
recognized for its innovation and sensitivity in design.
• The buildings must respond to the land, go beyond concepts, geometry,
forms and symmetry, while incorporating continuity and change.

32. NALANDA INTERNATIONAL
SCHOOL,VADODARA,2010
The inspiration for the design of this project came to
the architect from ancient Nalanda university in Bihar.
The architect’s desire was to create a peaceful space
suitable for learning, one that would raise the spirit of
the students and would more than just reflect the
culture and heritage of India.

33. NALANDA INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL,
VADODARA,2010
• The brick buildings with their terracotta-
tiled roofs provide a cool atmosphere in
hot and dry climate inVadodara.
• Natural stone flooring contributes to the
cooling effect, while the China mosaic
used in the nursery school along with the
pattern and coloured cement lends a
sense of play for the young children.
• The architecture expresses the complex
interaction between the site, climate,
tradition, material and human spirit.

34. ANUPAMA
KUNDOO

35. About
• Anupama Kundoo was born in Pune, India in 1967. She graduated from Sir JJ
College of Architecture, University of Mumbai in 1989, and received her PhD
degree from theTU Berlin in 2008. In 2013 Kundoo received an honourable
mention in the ArcVision International Prize for Women in Architecture for ‘her
dedication when approaching the problem of affordability of construction and
sustainability in all aspects’.

36. PHILOSOPHY
• She demonstrates a strong focus on material research and
experimentation towards an architecture that has low
environmental impact and is appropriate to the socio-
economic context.
• She has worked extensively in India and has brought several
innovations in the projects she designed adopting
“sustainable building technologies and infrastructural
systems”. Her experiments across projects ranging from
baked mud houses to high rise buildings are worth archiving
as case studies for future references.
• She expresses her design approach clearly by stating: "My
designs are not driven by the worry that the world will end,
but by finding ways to make the most with what one has."

37. PROJECT- WALL HOUSE
• Wall house is having three main features:
1. Ecofriendly building materials alternative technology
2. An architecture that is energy efficient
3. Climatic responsive.
• This house is L-Shaped in plan, has a courtyard in the middle; while it is modern
in concept it adopts traditional "vernacular" use of materials such as
compressed earth, concrete and steel.
• The bathroom is set in open-to-sky design, with smooth merging with the
interior and external spaces and landscaped in manner which gives it both a
modern and a regional appearance.
• A full sized replica of herWall House was made by hand and exhibited at
theVenice Biennale ofArchitecture. NetYorkTimes called it as "a gem among
rubble".

38. WORKINGON LIGHT
MATTERS
• The ‘Light Matters’ investigation was about generating the
form of roofing systems based on crease patterns seen
frequently in origami, the Japanese art of paper folding.
• The idea is that such forms are very efficient and can allow
the use of much thinner elements. In this project the
structure was so light, the formwork being considered was
recycled corrugated cartons rather than wood or steel
formwork.This makes the structure very cost-efficient. She
used the knowledge of geometry and engineering to
significantly reduce the material consumption.
• Light Matters was therefore about using knowledge (light)
to achieve efficient light structures, not only in terms of
weight but also in terms of environmental impact.

39. thankyou
Presented By-
Shreyasee Thakral
Pallavi Wadhwa
Iksheta Tyagi
Kartik