Himanshu Burte  |  New Delhi  Last Updated at January 20, 2013 01:18 IST

Raj Rewal combines traditional and modernist in his architecture, and does it more effectively than most, says Himanshu Burte.

Over the 1960s and 1970s Indian architects like Raj Rewal discovered the lessons that everyday traditional environments could offer. Rewal, born in 1934 in Hoshiarpur, Punjab, designed the Asian Games Village in New Delhi, built to house athletes participating in the 1982 Games. It was later turned into public housing and is considered a classic of Indian modernism. So are some of his larger structures, like the Hall of Nations and Hall of States at the Pragati Maidan expo complex in New Delhi.

Rewal’s designs have some things in common with those of his contemporaries Charles Correa, Balkrishna V Doshi and Achyut Kanvinde — such as broken-up forms, open courtyards and sociable living or working environments. But Rewal’s work has its own range and grammar. Unlike the other architects, and like Joseph Allen Stein also in New Delhi, Rewal has built largely in one place and climate — Delhi, and hot, dry north India.

Structural innovation Rewal’s oeuvre encompasses megastructures and microspaces. He is interested in structural innovation in big buildings, as well as in small, nurturing spaces for everyday living. One comes from his 1950s training in, mainly, London and Paris, and the other from his memories of life in older settlements.

Rewal’s commitment to structural innovation was unusual for the 1970s in India. Engineering was believed to serve the vision of the architect. To a large extent it is so even today. But buildings like the State Trading Corporation tower (1976) in the heart of New Delhi turned that process around. Here Rewal used a structural concept as the basis of the architectural form.

In a typical building, each floor rests on beams running underneath the floor slab. Walls simply enclose space between one slab and the next. At the STC building, Rewal has turned the external wall of alternate floors into a special beam with holes in its sides, called a Vierendeel girder. Windows are placed in the little holes that this beam allows. The wall-cum-girder covers a large span between massive hollow columns that carry building services like elevators.

Liveable spaces Important as his structural innovations are, Rewal’s housing and institutional complexes have had a greater impact on Indian modernism. The Asian Games Village, and before that the Sheikh Sarai housing in New Delhi, have given architects a useful way of designing low-rise housing.

At the Asian Games Village, Rewal stacked apartments so that the upper floor footprint was shifted by a module or two with respect to the lower floor. This has given the upper floors their own terraces. It has also created ‘gateways’ over the pedestrian spaces around which the buildings are gathered. Car parking is kept to the periphery, creating a safe and attractive outdoor space for residents. This model has been replicated in Vasant Kunj by the Delhi Development Authority from the mid-1980s onward.

Grammar of form Rewal has helped transform a modernism learnt from the West, quietly, into its very opposite. The continuities with Modernism in his best work balance some relatively radical departures from Modernist dogma. Rewal has developed a distinctive grammar of his own.

This grammar reflects two apparently opposed value systems: the traditional one of the hot and dry parts of India, with its taste for pattern and ornament, and the Western Modernist one of abstract expression. Rewal has been able to combine the possibilities that each one offers with the least discord.

Rewal’s grammar uses some of the principles of traditional architecture in Rajasthan — upper floors project outwards to shade lower walls, jalis cut glare or improve a façade. He uses the same material — sandstone — often, but as cladding for RCC (reinforced cement concrete) and masonry structures rather than structural work. In effect, Rewal reinterprets traditional stone architecture in modern brick and RCC.

Reconciling opposites Much of the time, Rewal’s way of resolving these contradictions is what decides the success of his work. At CIET, for example, Rewal manages to sustain a delicate balance between the slenderness of the circular RCC columns and the visual weight of the red sandstone-clad walls. Massiveness and delicacy are held in fine counterpoint.

At the STC building, however, the horizontal red sandstone bands interrupt the verticality of the columns. This curtails the building’s visual power. Thus the traditional affinity for breaking up large surfaces with pattern weakens the power of Modernist concept and scale.

Work abroad Sometimes, of course, traditional notions inspire contemporary innovations. Rewal’s Lisbon Ismaili Centre in Lisbon (2000) is an example.

He won this project in a competition, mainly because his design promised the innovative use of a natural material like stone in a very modern structural system. It was possible to design and build this because of the power of contemporary software. Here, large glazed jalis of stone and steel hold up masonry domes which, together with a lattice of stainless steel, make up the roof.

The arrangement of spaces was, as usual, inspired by tradition — specifically, by the Alhambra fort-palace in Granada, Spain, and Fatehpur Sikri near Agra.

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