Architect

Anant
Damoda
r Raje
(September 26
1929 - June 27,
2009)

Life & Times

Anant Raje was born in Mumbai, India. He studied
at the Sir J. J. College of Architecture

He worked with Louis Kahn in Philadelphia, where

he also taught at the University of Pennsylvania.
For over thirty years he has taught at the School of
Architecture Ahmedabad.
He also taught at the University of New Mexico,
in The United States of America, and was a visiting
professor at many universities in America and
Europe.

His well known works include the :

The Executive Management Centre at the Indian

Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, India
The Forest Management Institute in Bhopal, India
Farmers Training Institute, Palanpur, Gujarat, India
The Institute of Statistics, New Delhi.

Management
Development Centre,
Ahmedabad
The Management
development centre is the last
important element to be added
to Louis Kahn's campus for the
IIM left incomplete at his death.
Anant raje has shown due
respect for that powerful context
by assiduously employing Kahns
brick vocabulary.
He has taken Kahns ideas on
the order of the materials and
light further.
The play of light can be seen in
the elegant shaft that pierce the
central academic block of the
complex.

Interior court(junction of east wing and

central block)

Despite a
masterful
fidelity to the
formal language
of Kahn, this
intimate
introverted
composition is a
refreshing
exception to the
overbearing
weight and
masculinity of
the earlier
campus
buildings-a
landmark in its
self.

Guest room wing flanking upper and lower courts

Lower courts

Plan

Indian Institute of Forest

management
Anant Raje has conceived this large
govt. project with the combination of
Romanticism and Monumentality
unprecedented in recent Indian
architecture.
Contemporary images are secondary
and there influence of the design; the
primary inspiration is historical, and
comes from the ruined palace of
Mundu.
The plan is a palimpsest: a formal
base order half effaced by an overlay of
autonomous, sometimes colliding
geometries, like successive
archaeological deposits on a single site.

The dense
congregation
of structures
creates a
romantic
sequence of
semi enclosed
and open to
sky spaces
intimate
enough in
scale to be a
useful, sun
protected
extension of
the building.
Exterior view dormitory complex

Viaduct linking library and

teaching wing

Viaduct,

detail

the model ,academic

complex

FARMERS TRAINING INSTITUTE,

PALANPUR, GUJARAT

The campus
accomodates15-20
trainees, who, monk-like,
are encouraged in their
studies by the self
contained isolation of the
institute. Sleeping, eating,
instruction, social activity,
and all daily functions
revolve around the tiny
cloister.

This monastic analogy

extends to the architecture
in various respects; spatial
orientation is consistently
inward looking.

The curve sweep of the

east wall decisively seals
off the most public
exposure of the building. A
small gap is there to enter.

The dining loggia and casual activity spaces look in on the central quadrangle

In a manner reminiscent of monks cell in European charterhouses, the L-shaped

dormitories look in on semi contained verandas in lieu of direct views of rural
landscape.

CONSTRUCTION: It is simple and powerful. Rough dressed stone bearing walls with
clearly rendered slabs, arches and lintels in reinforced concrete.

All large spaces, such as the dining hall, are open to loggias which are in turn closed
owing to the perennial infiltration of hot winds and dust.

CONCLUSION

Anant raje plays of composition/light/form in a

truly unbelievable manner.

His deep veneration for Louis Kahn is

undisguised, but he has allowed himself
exceptional license to distort and enrich Kahns
idiom.