![House of Mango Shadows / Design i.O - Houses](https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/6630/0ad1/65cb/883b/c38d/aaf6/newsletter/house-of-mango-shadows-design-io_3.jpg?1714424547)
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Architects: Design i.O
- Area: 3800 ft²
- Year: 2023
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Manufacturers: ALCOI, Asian Paints, Jaguar, Kriglow, Legrand, +1
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Professionals: Rakhra Associates
The Victoria & Albert Museum is set to present an expansive exhibition focused on Tropical Modernism, an architectural movement that emerged in the late 1940s. British architects Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry were instrumental in developing this approach, combining modernism’s functional goals with local climate adaptations in warm and humid weather. This movement, which embodies Britain's unique contribution to international modernism, evolved against a backdrop of anti-colonial resistance, blending colonial architectural principles with local needs.
In 1950, the famous Le Corbusier was asked to design the new state capital of Chandigarh for Punjab following its separation and recent independence. The opportunity to create a new utopia was unparalleled- and is now seen as one of the greatest urban experiments in the history of planning and architecture. The city employed grid street patterns, European-style thoroughfares, and raw concrete buildings- the zenith of Corbusier’s ideals throughout his career. But what is lesser known about the ideation and realization of Chandigarh, was the woman who brought her experience of designing social housing across Africa to the project. For three years, working alongside Corbusier, and helping him design some of the best-known buildings in Chandigarh, was Jane Drew.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the lack of exhibitions and commissions, artists around the world started to struggle. The Artist Support Pledge, an initiative born in March of 2020 in response to this global crisis, seeks to support creative individuals, including architectural photographers. Founded by artist Matthew Burrows, the global movement connects communities in order to ensure “an equitable and sustainable economy for artists and makers of all countries, media, and ethnicities”.
Through its urban planning and civic buildings, Chandigarh represents an iconic fragment of Modernist architecture. This economic and administrative centre was meant to showcase the progressiveness of the 1950s' newly independent India.
On August 15, 1947, on the eve of India’s independence from the United Kingdom, came a directive which would transform the subcontinent for the next six decades. In order to safeguard the country’s Muslim population from the Hindu majority, the departing colonial leaders set aside the northwestern and eastern portions of the territory for their use. Many of the approximately 100 million Muslims living scattered throughout India were given little more than 73 days to relocate to these territories, the modern-day nations of Pakistan and Bangladesh. As the borders for the new countries were drawn by Sir Cyril Radcliffe (an Englishman whose ignorance of Indian history and culture was perceived, by the colonial government, as an assurance of his impartiality), the state of Punjab was bisected between India and Pakistan, the latter of which retained ownership of the state capital of Lahore.[1] It was in the wake of this loss that Punjab would found a new state capital: one which would not only serve the logistical requirements of the state, but make an unequivocal statement to the entire world that a new India—modernized, prosperous, and independent—had arrived.