Arun Khopkar’s new film gets to the foundation of Charles Correa’s architecture, says Rachel Lopez.
From the street, Kanchanjunga Apartments, the 28-storey Peddar Road building designed by Charles Correa, resembles a half-finished game of Jenga. Giant rectangular blocks seem to have been removed from the corners and sides, leaving two-storey-high verandahs for the apartments inside. Though playful, the design serves a serious function: it protects the inner living areas from the blazing heat and traffic fumes while allowing inhabitants to take in sea breezes and views of the city and the coast.
The intelligent design of Kanchanjunga and other Correa buildings is the focus of Volume Zero, Arun Khopkar’s documentary on the architect’s work that will be screened at the NCPA this fortnight. The film isn’t intended to be a catalogue of the renowned architect’s body of work, but to discover what triggered his imagination. “Shots of the artist eating golguppas and bhel are not my kind of film,” said Khopkar. “I wanted people to understand Correa through his buildings.”
Volume Zero covers the best-known of those buildings, from his first assignments for low-cost housing in Ahmedabad and Belapur to critically acclaimed projects like Ahmedabad’s Gandhi Museum, Panjim’s Kala Academy, Jaipur’s Jawahar Kala Kendra and an upcoming research centre in Lisbon. There’s no architectural jargon here. Instead, Khopkar interprets Correa’s design ideas using pencil sketches, blueprints, digital animation and actual site shots. The architect’s preoccupation with creating navigable structures, we discover, stems from his childhood fascination with railway tracks. His mandala grid-like design at Jaipur’s Kala Kendra highlights his keen sense of history, while murals that play with perspective at the Cidade de Goa hotel bring outdoor scenes into the indoor lobby.
However, the most thought-provoking moment in Volume Zero doesn’t come from Khopkar’s footage but from a scene borrowed from City on the Water, a 1976 film made by Correa himself. It shows a Mumbai desperately trying to accommodate its exploding population, forcing inhabitants into smaller and smaller spaces even as squatters start making their homes on its pavements. “Do we really have to live this way?” asks the architect.
That concern is perhaps the best insight into Correa’s aesthetic, which incorporates the same regard for local culture, heritage, climate and functionality into Bhopal’s state assembly house as it does into Dadar’s Salvation Church and a township in Bagalkot. It’s what spawned radical ideas like planning New Bombay, proposing an east-west bridge between Mumbai and Alibaug to house the expanding city in the late 1960s and carving verandahs out of high-rises in Peddar Road. It’s also what has consistently put him ahead of the herd, focusing on environmentally-sensitive design decades before the global warming threat and choosing local materials before politically correct consumption made the headlines.
Khopkar’s documentary addresses these themes only briefly, keeping its focus primarily on Correa’s design ethic. Sankalp Meshram, the film’s associate director, explains that the film’s endeavour was to shoot the buildings keeping the architect’s vision in mind. “Correa strives to be simple without being simplistic,” he said. “Even when he draws on our cultural heritage, his work is not revivalist. It’s a modern rendition. We wanted to capture that.”
Volume Zero, which takes its title from the need to question truisms and rethink one’s origins, amply captures Correa’s vision for the audience. Did the architect approve? Meshram thinks he did. “When Charles doesn’t come back with a sharp rejoinder, you know you’ve passed,” he said.
See Fri Sept 5 in Events for details.
Tall storeys
Correa buildings in Mumbai
Institute of Hotel Management, Catering and Applied Nutrition (1963) Veer Savarkar Marg, Dadar (W).
Jeevan Bima Nagar (1969)
Kanchenjunga Apartments (1970) Peddar Road, near Vama. Our Lady of Salvation Church, Dadar (1974) SK Bole Road, Dadar (W).
SNDT University Campus (1967) Juhu Road, Santa Cruz (W).
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