Habib rahman architect born

My father Habib Rahman started out with a degree in mechanical engineering from Calcutta University in He had designed his father’s house in Calcutta in the mids, but was not an architect. He first travelled to Delhi in to sit for an exam to work for the railway service, failing to qualify. He recalled Delhi as “a city of tonga’s (horse carriages) and monuments.” The British had built their imperial capital by then.

Southwards, Delhi was a barren landscape, littered with the ruins of earlier medieval cities.

Habib rahman architect born in london EN RU. Winterthur Portfolio. There was a degree of irony in this award, as my father was an atheist and greatly suspicious of all organized religions. Early life and education [ edit ].

The same year as his failed railway service examination, he was awarded a Bengal government scholarship directed at Muslim students to further his studies in engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There was a degree of irony in this award, as my father was an atheist and greatly suspicious of all organized religions.

Once at MIT, he switched to architecture, becoming the first Indian to complete both undergraduate and graduate degrees in architecture at an American university. His teachers at MIT were Lawrence Anderson, William Wurster and Walter Gropius, who taught next door at Harvard University.

Habib rahman architect born in germany Rahman was lucky in that he was assigned the project of designing the first memorial to Gandhi after his assassination in As it did not recognize American degrees, the Indian Institute of Architects, then dominated by British-trained professionals, denied him membership. He was born in in Calcutta. Hasnain Narendra Kumar B.

Rahman completed his bachelor’s in architecture in , finishing his master’s the following year. Though Gropius was at Harvard, Rahman attended his lectures and crits, becoming a personal friend. He would sometimes perform a so-called “Indian sword dance” at gatherings in Gropius’s home outside Cambridge. Gropius exerted a particular influence on Rahman’s nascent interest in mass housing.

Rahman always bemoaned the fact that the first generation of post-independence planners to which he belonged—many trained in the United States and Britain—lacked sufficient practical experience in their professions.

Delhi ended up being a large cantonment-like city, without a mixed commercial and living urban structure. He also wrote about how engineers continued to hold senior positions to architects in government service, hampering good design as the two professions were in constant conflict. As an associate architect he designed the Sheila Cinema (whose demolition is imminent), the Hindustan Times House and the American Centre.

Unlike some architects who entered private practice, Rahman remained in government service throughout his entire career.

Habib rahman architect born in israel All of these projects employed a locally inspired detail vocabulary deriving from his Rabindra Bhavan experience—a modernist language inflected by Indian references. Photos: Habib Rahman. Deodhar B. He designed the tomb of Zakir Husain, with its sloping walls inspired by Tughlaq tombs.

He believed he could have the greatest social and cultural impact as a government architect, and would be able to design on a scale that otherwise would be difficult. After suffering a debilitating spinal injury in , he became chief architect, retiring in That year he was appointed Secretary of the Delhi Urban Arts Commission (DUAC), with architect Achyut Kanvinde and theater director Ebrahim Alkazi as members and the politician Bhagwan Sahay as chairman.

Indira Gandhi had formed the commission to control design and development in Delhi, which many professionals felt was out of control and in imminent danger of destroying the character of the city.

That same year Rahman was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian award in the Republic of India; as with the Padma Shree, he was the first architect to receive this honor.1