Sen Kapadia, architect, planner, educator, and Founding Director of the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture (KRVIA) in Mumbai, passed away yesterday.
Born in 1936, Kapadia received his diploma in Architecture from Sir J.J. College of Architecture, Mumbai, in 1962. Rather than pursue his postgraduate degree abroad, he chose to work directly under the American architect Louis Kahn in Philadelphia, an experience that shaped his commitment to what he called “purity of thoughts and value-based architecture.” He subsequently returned to India in 1980 to establish Sen Kapadia Architect (SKA) in Mumbai.
SKA became one of India’s earliest and most consistent advocates of passive solar architecture. His own studio in Andheri was designed to function entirely on natural light during daylight hours. “Orientation, use of local materials for construction, local flora to create appropriate micro climate for physical comfort and visual validity. This ideology gives us dignified architecture,” he elaborated. His practice spanned corporate offices, educational institutions, housing, sports clubs, and commercial complexes, each negotiating between international technique and local environmental sensibility.
Among his most significant works were the Water and Land Management Institution (WALMI), Bhopal (1983–87), a low-rise institutional campus and the NID Post-Graduate Campus at Gandhinagar, won through a national open competition, that became one of his defining achievements, a campus designed as an eco-sustainable environment with in-between spaces that invited gathering, light, and informal learning, the Computer Management Corporation, Hyderabad, Bhavsar House in Ahmedabad, Rukkad Guest House, Madhya Pradesh, and Banker’s House in Ahmedabad—the list presents the wide varied range across building types. But the built works weren’t his only milestones, which are seen in some of his unbuilt works, like the design for a museum of contemporary art for Helsinki, Finland.
As Founding Director of KRVIA, Kapadia shaped generations of architects through a pedagogy rooted in conceptual rigour and ecological responsibility. He authored over 50 theoretical articles, lectured widely at institutions in India and abroad, and served on the juries of several national architectural competitions. The book “In Conversation: On Contours of Contemporary Indian Architecture”, published by Macmillan India Ltd in 2007, features a dialogue between him and his long-time friend, (late) B.V. Doshi. In 2022, published his monograph Sen Kapadia: In Pursuance of Meanings through CEPT University Press. A Fellow of the Indian Institute of Architects, he was the recipient of several awards across his career.
We at ArchitectureLive! deeply mourn the passing of Sen Kapadia. Our heartfelt condolences go out to his family, students, colleagues, and all those whose understanding of architecture was shaped by his life and work.
