The winning design for the new building of the Bombay High Court Complex is rather farcical in its approach to an institutional building of such importance. Given that Hafeez Contractor is designing it, I would have imagined that this talented architect, early in his career and known for his innovative designs, would have come up with a design that does not try to imitate some 19th-century colonial building. Even Lutyens, when designing New Delhi, came up with a majesty that reflected imperial power.
The High Court building concept does neither, and to accept such a building almost 80 years after independence speaks of the poor taste of the present Mumbai city fathers.
The design itself is imposing enough, but for the architect to resort to Roman columns and pediments is so depressing that modern Indian architecture has taken many steps back. Here was the opportunity for an architect to design a special building that could encapsulate the elegance of Mumbai’s history and show the world the modern view of an institution that will dispense justice. It was a chance for the designer to come up with something that reflected the courts yet was able to provide a new façade to match many of Mumbai’s colonial ones.
Charles Correa, the great architect of India, would have been stunned by the banality of this design. His efforts at creating buildings like the Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal and the Jawahar Kendra for the Arts in Jaipur, where he tried to create a new language of design, have gone in vain.
The tragedy of following this neo-colonial style is that it is neither colonial nor neo; hence, the city is faced with the prospect of living with a building that is so boring it could be in Australia or South Africa.
Even the Australians, a few decades ago, built the Sydney Opera House, which is now considered one of the seminal buildings of its time. Is it not time to give architects a chance to design something relevant to our times?
This leaves us with the question: if this is the answer to a new high court, what is the future of Indian design itself? Where are Indian architects to turn to if they have to consider designing a modern building that is not a skyscraper?
They certainly cannot look to architects like Frank Gehry with his museum in Bilbao and Spain, or Zaha Hadid’s lavish buildings around the world. The Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium in Beijing, designed by architects Herzog and de Meuron collaborating with rebel artist Ai Weiwei, is an exciting example of architects and art working together.
It would be useful to know which buildings in India that have come up in the past two decades can compare with this important landmark. One of the buildings I have come across recently that addresses the idea of modern design is the new Ashram, designed by Mumbai architect Kapil Gupta (Serie Architects) and Christopher Lee. It combines a contemporary building with the functions of a traditional one. They have respected the old faith and yet been able to provide a visually new and exciting form.
Clad entirely in white marble, this building took 12 years to build but is a significant departure from institutional buildings. There may be others around India that have not been recognised, but architects who are trying to create a language of architecture that Charles Correa and others tried to show us seem to be few and far between in a country that has a history of the finest design.
It would be wonderful if the city of Mumbai could rethink this archaic design for the new high court and open the design to an international competition.
