Chandavarkar and Thacker

The first architectural firm in Bangalore, founded in 1947 by Narayan Chandavarkar, Chandavarkar and Thacker is currently under the directorship of Prem Chandavarkar and Sai Shankar Bharatan. Continuing the collaborative nature of the practice during its many reorganisations over the years, Prem Chandavarkar has also given the firm a new intellectual edge by confronting Bangalore's new urbanity, and as such is a role model for many younger-generation architects. The practice's current work represents thoughtful and reflective responses as architecture finds itself at a critical juncture in this city of a euphoric present.With the practice's 60-year history, Chandavarkar is particularly aware of the humility and ‘backgroundness’ that once characterised the culture of the city in contrast to the present voluble environment. He has written (including in his essay in this issue) about the nature of practice and production, and has argued why a critical and self-reflexive practice needs to be the order of the day. Chandavarkar and Thacker speak of an ‘aesthetics of absorption’ and a ‘negotiated practice’, both of which should inform a much needed criticality of the exuberant conditions today. ‘A building does not convey meaning as much as it slowly absorbs it,’ declares the practice, and so the test of a building is not the initial impression of its spectacular presentation, but the accrued experiences and memories of its everyday inhabitation. In their understanding of culture as an active and ongoing phenomenon, and hence one not yet susceptible to definition, the architects bring an open-endedness to their own practice. The result is an avoidance of a predetermined language of expression, and thus the variety of spatial, volumetric, site and technofunctional responses, in their array of works. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.