CHARLES CORREA

1930 - 2015
Content :

• Introduction
• Mapping of Charles correa’s work
• Timeline of works
• Design principles
• Essay: Blessings of the sky
• Planning for Bombay
• Case study:
• Jawahar kala kendra
• Gandhi ashram
• Tube house
• Analysis of housing projects
INTRODUCTION:

• Charles Correa, in full Charles Mark Correa ,born in , Secunderabad

Hyderabad,(Telangana ,India).
• Indian architect and urban planner.
• Correa's work in India shows a careful development, understanding and adaptation of
Modernism to a non-western culture.
• In the realm of urban planning, he is particularly noted for his sensitivity to the needs of
the urban poor and for his use of traditional methods , materials , local climates and
building styles.
• This is beneficial especially when building in low-income areas, as eradicating the need
to import goods lowers overall building costs which focuses on the needs of local people
with regards to social needs and weather conditions, and the use of locally-sourced
produce and craftsmanship.
• Correa’s work combined traditional architectural values with the Modernist use of
materials exemplified by figures such as Le Corbusier. Louis I Kahn and Buckminster
Fuller.
• Most significant aspect about Correa’s work is its stark honesty and devotion to the
elements, the climate, the materials, the function and the importance of keeping these
in harmony in the simplest possible way.
• He stressed the importance of social issues and the need for quality low-income
housing, his builds range from institutional to public, urban planning to memorials and
housing projects.
Education:
• 1946-1948 Inter-science. St. Xavier's college, university of Bombay
• 1949-1953 B.Arch., University of Michigan.
• 1953-1955 M.Arch., Massachusetts institute of technology.
• In 1958 he established his own Bombay-based professional practice

Professional Experience:
• 1955-1958 partner with G.M. BHUTA associates
• 1958- to date in private practice.
• 1964-1965 prepared master plan proposing twin city across the harbor from Bombay.
• 1969-1971 invited by the govt. of Peru
• 1971-1975 chief architect to CIDCO
• 1975-1976 consultant to UN secretory-general for HABITAT
• 1975-1983 Chairman Housing Urban Renewal & Ecology Board
• 1985 chairman dharavavi planning commission

Awards:
• 1972 PadmaShri
• 1984 Gold Medal- Royal Institute of British Architects
• 1986 Chicago Architecture Award.
• 1987 Gold Medal- Indian Institute of Architects
• 1990 Gold Medal (International Union of Architects)
• 1999 Aga khan award for vidhan sabha, Bhopal
• 2006 Padma Vibushan and more.
WORKS OF CHARLES CORREA
WORKS OF CHARLES CORREA
Timeline:
Timeline:
Timeline:
Timeline:
PRINCIPLES FOR HOUSING:
Incrementality
• Housing unit should be able to grow with the family’s requirements and earning capacity.
• Thus even if they start with only one room, there is the possibility of growth-a political imperative in most of the
third world.
Identity
• The units themselves must be malleable-so that they can be “colonized” by the occupants, and modified to their
particular social/cultural/religious needs.
Pluralism
• If the above two principles are followed ,then the habitat will have great variety, reflecting the myriad elements
that make up society itself.
Income generation
• High rise buildings usually involve only the few construction companies who can build them.In contrast, the same
amount of finance invested in low-rise built form generates jobs for hundreds of masons, carpenters etc.
Equity
• The poorest family needs at least 25 to 50 sq. M of land.At the same time . A very elegant townhouse for the very
rich can be built on a plot of 100sq m.
• The high rise buildings of bombay lock us into inequality.(“Tell me how much urban space you command and i’ll
tell you who you are”)
• The poorest will live under a tree, with a goat at the corner and lean to roof against the wall, while the more well
to do will build a house of up to 150 sq. M-or with a dozen neighbors, construct a high rise.
Open-to-sky space
• Open to sky space is invaluable in a warm climate, for it means vitally-needed additional living spaces-particularly
for the poorest families.
Disaggregation
• We need to avoid housing patterns that necessitate the intervention of large centralized agencies, which has
ruined the cities.
• We need to find a way of taking the mind-boggling overall numbers for demand and breaking them down into
many small disaggregated responses for supply.
 ESSAY:BLESSINGS FROM THE SKY
concept: open to sky spaces
• In India, the sky has profoundly affected our relationship to built form, and to open
space.
• For in a warm climate, the best place to be in the late evenings and in the early
mornings, is outdoors, under the open sky.
• Such spaces have number of variations: one steps out of a room. . . into a verandah. . .
And then on to a terrace from which one proceeds to an open courtyard, perhaps
shaded by a tree . . . or by a large pergola overhead.
• At each moment, changes in the quality of light and air generate feelings within us
which are central to our beings.
• Influenced by Mughal architecture at its abstract-the ying-yang relationship. (open to
sky spaces surrounded by solid built forms and vice-versa)

COMPONENTS:
• Courtyards and terraces
• Urbanization
• The machine for living
• Metaphors
• Workspaces
• The ritualistic pathway
• Leisure
 COURTYARDS AND TERRACES
• Can make a decisive difference between livable
habitat and confined place.
• Particularly for the lowest income group even
in dense housing, individual terraces can be
given
• These principles are viable also in high rises
where the issue is compounded by hot and
humid climate. Low income housing: Gujarat Kanchenjunga
housing board

 URBANIZATION
• Open-to-sky spaces are of crucial importance
to the poorest inhabitants. Obviously there is
an appalling mismatch between the way our
cities have been built and the way we use
them today

Squatter housing Belapur

 THE MACHINE FOR LIVING
• Another equally critical parameter: Architects
depend more on the mechanical engineering to
provide light and air within the building.
Tube house

• While, some building are designed such which can

bring light and air by itself.

 METAPHORS Hindustan lever pavilion

• The relationship of architecture to the other arts is a

crucial one.
• Murals and sculpture are used to provide references
to local traditions and events, and really to bring back
into balance the spatial tensions generated by the
built form.
• Use of abstract color and realistic images, setting up a
dialectic between built form and visual imagery – a
complex interaction which can adds layers of
metaphorical and metaphysical dimensions to
architecture.
• These buildings possess not only an extraordinary
beauty of proportion, materials, etc., but they also
project, with astonishing force, polemic ideas about
ourselves and our relationship with the Non-manifest
World. Jawahar kala kendra
  WORK SPACES
• To deal with solar protection involved various
forms. this kind of concrete Louvre, while
providing powerful visual imagery for the built
form, can be counter-productive.
• The concrete heats up during the long hot day
and then acts as an enormous radiator in the
evening, rendering the rooms unbearable.
MRF headquarters, madras ECIL office, Hyderabad

 THE RITUAUSTIC PATHWAY  LEISURE

• A metaphor for the Indian street, taking Manipulating floor levels so as to create different
the visitor from village to temple to palace. domestic settings at the scale of the micro space.

Bharat Bhavan,bhopal Kovalam beach resort

 Planning for Bombay:
Like many other Indian cities, Bombay is under considerable pressure from distress migration coming from the rural areas.
The rising population and the physical shape of the city are the reason for escalation.

Construction workers living in hovels, Sharing a cup of tea in a

against the background of Bombay's drain pipe, despite appalling
high-rise towers(the mythic city they conditions.
can never afford)
Mobility and jobs Arranging the scenery
The system shows new Bombay site, Families living in the traditional towns and villages of India very often have
running between hills and water. no more than one or two rooms-but this is usually augmented by access to
open to sky space.
1.Courtyards and terraces-used by the family for private activites,such as
cooking an sleeping.
2.The front doorstep-where children play, people meet their neighbor.
3.Community places,e.g. the water tap or village well.
4.The principal urban area,e.e the maidans use by the whole city.

System of spaces
 Case Study
• Jawahar kala kendra, Jaipur,Rajasthan

• Gandhi smarak sangharalaya,Ahmedabad,Gujarat

 Jawahar Kala Kendra
• This cultural center for the city of Jaipur is dedicated to
Jaipur , Rajasthan the memory of India's great leader Jawaharlal Nehru,
built in 1986.
• Centre houses museums,theatres,library arts display
room,cafeteria,administration and studio.
• The center is analogue of the original city plan drawn
up by the maharaja Jaysingh ll , which was based on the
ancient Vedic mandala of 9 squares of 9 planets.
• One of the square is pivoted to recall the original city
plan and also to create an entrance.
• Each of the square is defined by 8m high wall and had 8
separate group corresponding to the myths represented
by the particular planet
• The astrological symbol of each planet is directly
expressed in a cutout opening along its external wall.
• The central square, as specified is a void representing
the nothing-which is everything.
• The flooring pattern in the square is a diagram of the
lotus representing the sun.

Volumetric module
30m* 30m* 8m
Google image
 Section

Nine square yantra

• The astrological symbol of each planet is directly

expressed in a cutout opening along its external
wall.

• Light shafts at corner of each

unit.
• Each have step profile with
marble capping.
• Arrangement of spaces and activities according to nav grah mandal
• Circulation :
Entrance Central court Small Openings

Steps at kund
Dome at admin section
Gandhi Smarak Sangrahalaya
Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad • Correa was asked to design a memorial museum
1958-63 and a study center in 1958 to house a treasure of
some 30,000 letters to and by Gandhi, photographs
and documents.
• In order to reflect the simplicity of Gandhi's life in
incremental nature of a living institution the architect
used modular units, 6 m* 6m of rcc, connecting
spaces, both open and covered, allowing eventual
expansion.
• The modular simplicity of the building is continued by
the use of basic materials..
• The units are grouped in a consciously asymmetric
manner to be analogous to Indian village with its
pathway and seemingly randomly placed building at its
meeting point.
• The modules creating a pathway along which the
visitors progresses towards the centrality of the water
court.

Material used:
• Tiled roof
• Brick wall
• Stone floor
• Wooden floor
• Light and ventilation by operable wooden louvers
Tube House
Ahmedabad • Project was for the Gujarat housing board.
• First prize winner in all India competition for low cost
1961 housing.
• Each unit in shaped so tat hot air rises and escapes from the
top, setting up a convection currents of natural ventilation.
• Inside the units there are almost no door; privacy being
created by various levels themselves and it patio is covered by
pergola ,which works as a security element for the house.
Housing Projects and Analysis:

• Correa has designed several houses with a variety of generation method.

• The forms are mostly basic and the generations can be grouped as linear generations,
grouped or clustered generations, and chainlike generations.
• In some settlements, only a single type of module is used while on the others various
modules (units with a variety of fields) can be seen
 References:

• CHARLES CORREA with an Essay by Kenneth Frampton

• PRO ARCHITECT CHARLES CORREACHARLES CORREA ARCHIVE
• CHARLES CORREA ARCHIVE
• Volume Zero (Documentary Charles correa)
History of Architecture – V
Dhwani Badani A-0213
Jalpa Bhatt B-3513