Ahmedabad A 34-page letter written by the outgoing director of IIM-Ahmedabad arguing why the institution’s iconic red-brick campus needs to be redeveloped has sparked a controversy with several experts and the influential alumni association opposing him and his proposal to tear down dorms and other buildings.
In the letter — titled Conception, Creation and Corporeality, written by Errol D’Souza the day he stepped down as IIM-Ahmedabad director on January 31 — the former director quoted Arjuna and Krishna from the Mahabharata, and the Jain theory of Anekantavada to point gaps in legendary American architect Louis Kahn’s work, and argued that continued intervention was necessary to keep the integrity of buildings.
The letter has sparked a row with a group of 30 IIM-A alumni across batches and programmes saying that structural safety was a trojan horse for the eradication of Louis Kahn’s masterpiece.
D’Souza, who headed the top management institution for five years, will be replaced by Bharat Bhasker with effect from March 1, 2023. In the interim, the institute has appointed Prof Arindam Banerjee as the director-in-charge from February 1 to 28, 2023. HT has seen a copy of the letter, which was sent to his colleagues and alumni. The director’s tenure was dogged by controversies, especially over his decision to redo the institute’s logo and an initial proposal to demolish 14 student dormitories (out of 18) and reuse the land for building new structures for student residences. The move came as a surprise to many.
A section in the letter focuses on Arjuna’s dilemma when he has to wage a war against his own teachers, cousins and extended family, and Krishna’s advice in the Mahabharata. “It examines the choice before a decision maker confronted with the issues of the Louis Kahn complex at IIM Ahmedabad that has similar dilemma to Arjun,” the letter in English read.
D’Souza wrote that the plan to raze Kahn’s buildings was due to safety reasons.
“Should she (the decision maker) privilege the connections that generations have had with the poetry of light and shade that is constituted by the architecture of the Kahn designed buildings and restore, or should she be giving weight instead to the safety of the current and future users of the buildings given that the residual life of the buildings is over and reconstruct? What is the right thing to do? Is the reconstruction of the buildings in the spirit that Kahn intended better than restoration of the existing structure?” the letter read.
The letter concluded that theoretically, it is possible to restore and/or even strengthen the buildings. However, considering the ground realities, such an exercise will be technically inadvisable, impractical and prohibitively expensive, it added.
In December 2020, the IIM-A governing council proposed to renovate the dorms and other buildings but a global outcry from experts and former students forced the institute to put its decision on hold. At the time, the move was opposed by several top architects, including Pritzker Prize and Padma Bhushan laureate BV Doshi, who died recently.
A decision on the final fate of the iconic buildings is pending before the IIM governing council, a senior official aware of developments said a plan was being prepared to redevelop these structures, replacing the old ones, including the dorms.
Alumni have begun protesting the decision using various social media platforms.
“IIM-A’s tender in 2020 was worryingly focused on expansion of student rooms, and on facilities rather than ethos, conveying no appreciation of the role of architecture in pedagogy. The former director in his letter has appreciated the design by Kahn hence we recommend IIM-A save precious resources and get a top-class civil engineering firm to replicate or restore the world class Louis Kahn design in a structurally safe way, if that is indeed an issue,” said Meenakshi Nath, an IIM-A 1987 batch student.
S Viswanathan, president of the IIM-A Alumni Association Bengaluru chapter, which has 1,700 members, said the IIM-A governing council had no realisation of the extent to which the alumni were upset about the decision to demolish Kahn’s work. “One would have expected that in the matter of razing of the dorms and buildings, at least the institute would have solicited our views. Alumni here have spoken of frightening visions of the hallowed portals and Harvard steps being erased literally and figuratively from their memories forever,” he said. They are in the process of conveying this to the IIM-A board.
Laurent Fournier, a Kolkata-based architect, said, “Prof. D’Souza should have taken advice from professionals, because when he writes that one wall (of the library) is unsafe for earthquake, what that actually means is extremely reassuring: Only one wall in one building of the entire campus is not as per the latest seismic norms. Not bad for buildings designed 50 years ago!”
Prem Chandavarkar, a Bengaluru-based architectural practitioner and theorist, said, “The letter uses unnecessarily abstract philosophical arguments as a belated justification of what they had already decided to do earlier. There is no doubt that there are structural concerns including corrosion in brick-work, which needs consideration. What is also important is the value in the spirit of the original Louis Kahn campus, which uses a poetry of light and shade to construct a transcendental aura, is sacred.”
Kahn, at the invitation of scientist Vikram Sarabhai and industrialist Kasturbhai Lalbhai, began work on the campus for IIM-A in 1962 with Indian architects BV Doshi and Anant Raje. The project, realised in brick masonry, was nearly complete when Kahn died in 1974.
In November 2022, the IIM-A governing council decided that restoration work at the heritage campus will cease altogether. While the Louis Kahn design with brick façade was to be replicated for a few of the outer dorms, the majority of the residential dorms was slated to be redeveloped based on new designs by commissioned architects.
An IIM-A official said D’Souza’s term was over and that his views were personal, not reflecting the opinion of the institute. Also, D’Souza has gone on a long leave and is not reachable for comment, he added.
“A decision on the future course of action for the heritage buildings will be taken in March once the full-time director joins and the council meeting is held,” he added.
