Photo: Pratik Gajjar. Courtesy of del RIBA

Balkrishna Doshi

The Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, the profession’s most distinguished prize in the United Kingdom, fell upon Balkrishna Doshi, Pritzker winner in 2018, teacher of several generations of Indian practitioners, and belt drive between Europe’s modernity and his country’s. Born in Pune in 1928, he trained under Le Corbusier and also admired the architecture of Louis Kahn, extracting from both masters an at once energetic and pragmatic repertoire that translated into a style of his own, which in turn progressively turned toward a freer organicism alert to India’s material culture and socioeconomic conditions. This organicism, expressive but committed, produced works like the Aranya low-cost housing development in Indore (1989) and what critics deem key in his career, the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore (1977-1992). In his equally outstanding facet as an educator and institution builder, Doshi has founded and directed the Ahmedabad School of Architecture and School of Planning, among other entities.