B.V. Doshi 1927-2023 | Remembering India’s pioneering architect

Balkrishna Doshi portrait. Photo by Pratik Gajjar

Balkrishna Doshi (also known as B.V. Doshi), India’s pioneering architect, urban planner, and educator, passed away at the age of 95 on 24th January 2023. 

Across his 70-year career, he was awarded the 2018 Pritzker Architecture Prize and the 2022 RIBA Royal Gold Medal, and he was recognised for championing public architecture and low-cost housing. 

Renowned for his urban planning and social housing projects, as well as his academic work as a visiting professor at various universities worldwide, Doshi has designed some of the most iconic buildings in India. 

Kanoria Centre for Arts, Ahmedabad, India. Photo by Fabien Charuau © Vastushilpa Foundation

“We are saddened by the loss of Professor Balkrishna Doshi, 2018 Laureate and former Juror of the Pritzker Architecture Prize,” said a statement issued by the Pritzker Prize.

“Doshi was instrumental to shaping the discourse of architecture throughout India and internationally since the 1950s. Influenced by 20th-century masters, Le Corbusier, and Louis Kahn, he explored relationships between fundamental needs of human life, connectivity to self and culture, and social traditions.” 

“Through his ethical and personal approach to the built environment, and his legacy of over one hundred built works, he touched humanity in every socio-economic class of this native country,” continued the Pritzker Prize statement.

Shreyas Comprehensive School Campus, Ahmedabad, India. Photo by Vinay Panjwani © Vastushilpa Foundation

Born in Pune in 1927, Doshi studied architecture at the J J School of Architecture, in Bombay. Between 1951 and 1954, he worked under Le Corbusier in Paris and then for four more years in India, supervising projects in Ahmedabad. In 1956, Doshi founded his practice, Vāstu Shilpā, together with two other architects. 

Some of his key projects include Shreyas Comprehensive School Campus (1958-63); Atira Guest House (1958); Kanoria Centre for Arts (1984), and the Institute of Indology (1962), all located in Ahmedabad, India. Along with the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore(1977 – 1992), and Aranya Low Cost Housing (1989) in Indore, India. 

Indian Institute of Management Campus, Bangalore, India. Photo by Vinay Panjwani © Vastushilpa Foundation

Read the previous story covering the announcement of Balkrishna Doshi winning the RIBA Royal Gold Medal 2022, and find out more about Doshi’s architecture practice Vāstu Shilpā.

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