|
Kanvinde, Achyut
(b Achara, Maharashtra, 9 Feb 1916). Indian architect, teacher and writer. He was educated under Walter Gropius at Harvard University, where he graduated with a master’s degree in architecture in 1947. After returning to India in 1948 he worked on the planning and design of several laboratories for the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. His early projects for the ATRIA (Ahmadabad Textiles Industries Research Association) and the headquarters for the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, New Delhi (both 1954), demonstrate the austere simplicity of the Bauhaus style. Kanvinde set up a private practice with the architect Shaukat Rai (b 1922) in 1955 and designed numerous institutional buildings, housing and industrial complexes for both the government and private clients. Most of these are facilities for education and research and include the Indian Institute of Technology (1960–65), Kanpur, the National Dairy Development Board (1974), Anand, the Nehru Science Centre (1982), Bombay, and the National Science Centre (1984), New Delhi. All Kanvinde’s buildings were conceived in a strict modernist vocabulary. The Nehru Science Centre, for example, has a concrete frame structure infilled with brick panels and plastered in a fine stone grit finish. The building accommodates a complex of workshops, library, lecture halls and observatory, and takes advantage of sloping terrain to isolate each function. Kanvinde served as a member of the Delhi Urban Arts Commission (1974–9) and was also President of the Indian Institute of Architects (1974–6). He guided the allocation of research funds as Chairman (1970–75) of the Scientific and Finance Section of the Central Building Research Institute, Roorkee, the government’s primary experimental building organization. He served on juries for national and international competitions and projects and lectured at the schools of architecture in New Delhi, Ahmadabad and Bombay. Kanvinde also co-authored Campus Design in India, which was sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In 1975 he received the Padma Shree, a national award for excellence, and in 1985 the Gold Medal of the Indian Institute of Architects.
|
|
There are more than 45,000 articles in The Grove Dictionary of Art.
To access the rest of this article, including the bibliography, subscribe to
www.groveart.com.
To find out more about this subject, click on a related article below and
subscribe to www.groveart.com
|
