Indian Institute of Management, Ahmadabad, India

Related people

Abul Quasem Abdullah (was created by)
Louis Isidore Kahn (was created by)

Date

1962-1974

Description

In a city where Le Corbusier had already three built works, the Sarabhai family commissioned architect Louis Kahn to design a school of business based on the Harvard model, to be known as the Indian Institute of Management. "Kahn's first overall plan, remarkably maintained through the course of design, addressed both the monastery precedent and the local climate by placing the classrooms, library, dining hall and faculty offices in the main building - with the dormitories arrayed in diagonal linear structures set along two sides of the main building - and the faculty housing forming an L-shape edge across a lake from the dormitories - all shaded from the sun and ventilated by the prevailing breezes" (McCarter, 235). "Kahn's formal language of archaic, unfinished brick building mass with visible concrete piers reflects the combination of tradition and modernity, of western and eastern mentalities. Brick is India's simplest and cheapest building material. Kahn celebrates it in a most careful way using proportion and geometry" (Gast, 94). Above selections from: McCarter, R. (2005). Louis I Kahn. New York: Phaidon Press; and Gast, K. P. (1999). Louis I Kahn. Basel: Birkhauser.

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