Description:
Sanskar Kendra stands as one of Le Corbusier's lesser-known architectural achievements, a cultural center designed for post-independence Ahmedabad that now faces an uncertain future. This book examines Sanskar Kendra both as a physical artifact and as a site of broader cultural debates.
Review Quotes:
This volume of essays brings into critical focus the future of twentieth-century modern architecture in India. The essays illustrate the complex relationships between tangible and intangible realities that shape the spirit of our cities and inform our understanding of Indian urbanism.
Brinda Somaya, Principal Architect, Somaya Sampat; A.D. White Professor-at-Large Emerita, Cornell University; Founder Trustee: The HECAR Foundation
This book on Le Corbusier's Sanskar Kala Kendra, more generally known as the Museum of Knowledge, in Ahmedabad, India, is a rare set piece of the type of interdisciplinary scholarship that brings into conversation architecture's deeply situated nature.
Mark Jarzombek, Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture, MIT
Positioning Sanskar Kala Kendra metaphorically, the book expansively unpacks the disjunctures that aesthetic modernity as a proposition grappled with in a landscape where social and economic modernization remains an incomplete project--one now overrun by the tyranny of images circulating globally.
Rahul Mehrotra, John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization, Harvard University Graduate School of Design
A building as an indeterminate discourse, an architect as a provocateur, and a collection of essays thickening the brew, Building and Unbuilding the City Museum will become a critical compass in navigating the life of a civic building in shifting ideologies.
Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, Architect and architectural historian
A searing account of the complex process through which modern architecture is evolving into a form of archaeological knowledge. Sarosh Anklesaria and Lily Chi present a powerful framework that challenges us to reconsider whether--and how--this archaeological knowledge can be made relevant to the communities of the future.
Farhan Karim, Arizona State University