If I were to say that there was a 3D Studio Max software in Bangalore during the 80s, no one would believe it, but there was one in the studios of Shilpa Sindoor. Installed in the brain of Shankar Kanade was an unbelievable capacity to imagine the design of complexity, fusion of geometry, play of light, conjuring up a mental model that would become a real building.
Along with his younger brother Navnath Kanade, who trained under Paolo Soleri of Arcosanti fame, joining him upon his return to India, they could sketch beyond any software, until recently. Their last project, the Lalghar in their native village, Nagaj in Sangli, is a testimony to the two brothers. Now, they are memories with only built theories on the ground. Navnath sir passed away on November 23, 2024, and Shankar sir followed on December 6, 2025 (months after receiving the JK Cements Great Masters Award).
There have been many like me who were transformed from being ordinary students of architecture into above ordinary, thanks to the philosopher’s touchstone qualities of Shankar. Having seen him sleep on a loft above his discussion room in his two-room office during the late 70s, to sharing a room in Lalghar for a day and night with both the brothers a few years ago, my walk with Shankar has partly led me to where I am today. People say Kanade’s could do what they did because they both stayed outside of conventional marriages, completely wedded to architecture, both in academics and consultancy. Not really so, it is their passion that drove their building designs, not them being bachelors.
Navnath would often quote Louis Kahn about a teacher under a tree who did not know he was a teacher, and people around him who did not know they were students. Likewise, Shankar sir never knew that he was mentoring me, nor did I know that I was a mentee, until the mid-90’s, a few years into my teaching job at B.I.T, and my own office, Sathya Consultants, both in Bangalore.
Even though Corbusier was more famous in India, Kahn was a greater inspiration for Kanades. They brought the ideologies of these two masters into their designs, but, in no time, graduated beyond them both, creating what could be called Kanade Architecture. The film Kanade by Teepoi ably documents this ideology.
Unscheduled semesters and examinations at the college of architecture were a blessing for me, letting me work with Shilpa Sindoor, the firm led by the brothers, during many gap months and years of student days. Shankar was then developing ideas for the I.I.Sc. housing, a forerunner to many of his later master pieces. I would make models with my staff colleague Geetha, making drawings, when Shankar would walk in, peep into the models and ask us, “This would be good, no?” Not being sure if it was a question to be answered, I would stay silent, wondering about his humility in asking such a profound query to a student.
Many years later, one realised it was in his nature to be so humble, never commanding the young, but co-working with them.
Life can take paradigm shifts if someone can create the shift. One such occasion for me was during the B.Arch final year thesis project. With a certain inferiority complex of not being a good student, during 1982-83, I was considering the contextual controversies around the Hampi Bazaar as a field study-based explorative thesis. Working with George Mitchell and John Fritz on their Hampi Documentation Project had given some data, but my college did not accept the topic, asking for a design project, where architecture becomes only a solution to a problem.
Stuck in a crisis halfway through, it was Shankar who explained how reading the context, realising the issues, and the related process of thesis is more important than thesis as a product. He suggested I adopt the alternate ideas developed at ASTRA, I.I.Sc., to give a design demonstration for a resettlement village, which helped me pass the jury by Sharad Padalkar, another thinking architect of those days. Even to date, our office continues those local and natural modes of designing.
A few years into our own office practice, sometimes in the mid-90s, we had the Kanade brothers with us to critique our architecture, where we were attempting a fusion of two or three materials – mainly stone, bricks and mud blocks.
Shankar said, “You see, Sathya Prakash, we should not use too many materials in one building. Look at Taj Mahal, IIM, White House, Dhaka Assembly – single materials create the strongest expression and it is very difficult to design so. Imagine creating great music with one instrument, so challenging no, compared to using half a dozen of them”.
Well, our office projects continued to mix materials, but our ‘Varanashi House’ adopted his principles with all hollow clay block walls, all red oxide floors, all wood work in brown colour and the minimal plastered surfaces painted with crème colour.
If Kanade architecture was so unique to Bangalore, why did it not become a trend? He was extremely cost-conscious and climate-conscious, just like Laurie Baker was. My reading of these two masters identifies one major difference between them – Baker let the owner’s lifestyle stay, but Kanade was too deep into architectonics, such that not everyone felt his designs could be their home. To appreciate his designs demanded a higher sense of architectural appreciation. Possibly, it is this realisation that made our office explore all three – cost, culture, climate – in our designs. Needless to say, Kanade architecture continues in our projects, in a state of fusion with many other inspirations and our own explorations.
Kanade brothers were masters of light, with Shankar’s advice not to mix light from skylight and windows; sequencing bright and low light spaces; sourcing light from multiple directions and so on still guiding our office projects. He knew working with stone, playing with varied roof heights, diagonal planning and creating sculpturesque walls with a single material. Though my actual period of working at Shilpa Sindoor was short, the long association I had with them, meeting and talking with or without drinks, for days equivalent, has immeasurably influenced us. Of course, we have deviated from many of his principles today, which he would always suggest, to find our own design directions.
Shankar could talk on varied topics, from profession to politics, tradition to modernity, scale to suspense, from sound to silence – now he is silent. When he completely went blind, I asked him how it felt to see only darkness. Amazingly, he responded that he can still see and visualise everything. In his compact village house in Nagaj, everything was organised by him the way he could live without the biological vision, taking and making mobile calls, listening to the radio, taking a few personal medicines, using the bathroom and of course non-stop thinking and talking. Possibly, the loss of outer vision might have deepened his inner vision.
Anecdotes from the past can go on for hundreds, most of which the present generation may not be able to appreciate. Memoirs tend to be very personal, and narrating our inspirations may not inspire others. Yet, if I were to proudly say how I used to drive Shankar around to meet Doshi or to a few seminars, doesn’t that excite? It surely does.
Inspirers may come with an expiry date, but inspiration lasts our lifetime. Mentors may depart one day, but the mentees live on. Shankar Kanade has left, but I am still left behind to walk the remaining path shown by him.
