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In Pursuit of
Excellence
One of India’s most highly decorated and respected architects, Christopher
Charles Benninger studied urban planning at MIT and architecture at Harvard
where he later taught. He settled in India in 1971, and has since then founded
a studio that only works on projects involving study, analysis and exploration
of visual, spatial, formal, social and technological ideas, and concepts related to
architecture, urbanism and human settlements. All his projects address
the complex issues of design, context, climate, materials, sustainability, and
technology, amid the client’s programmatic needs.

One of the six recipients of the Great Master Architect Award presented every
three years, Prof. Benninger recently released his award-winning book Letters
To A Young Architect. The master architect pens this special piece for Insite,
revealing how his childhood influenced his design philosophy, his love for
architecture, and his journey as a master designer.

Photos COURTESY: Christopher Charles Benninger Architects

My mother and father were with Doshi as a youth, and we can design a new culture that
of French and Czech origin shared a common urge to start a respects and builds on all
respectively. My father held a school of planning. communities and on the fragile
Ph D in economics and pursued a eco-system.
career as a university professor. As a boy I spent my spare time
I suppose this led me to focus on hiking, cycling and camping, How did I discover that the
studies and teaching. Apart from bringing me close to nature. profession of design was my calling?
working in studios, I pursued Thus, there is a thread weaving As a boy, my aunt presented me
postgraduate degrees and began my life into a fabric and giving with a copy of The Natural House
my career teaching in Harvard’s me meaning in what I do. I feel by Frank Lloyd Wright. From the
Graduate School of Design at my childhood engaged me with moment I picked that book up, I
about the age of 26. I became a a love for nature and imbibed was lured by Wright’s truth. I read
tenured Assistant Professor by 28; many idealistic and utopian it cover-to-cover in one sitting,
that was when B.V. Doshi asked concepts into my thinking. I grew turning pages through the night,
me to come back to India, to up believing each one of us can until the early morning. I suppose,
initiate the School of Planning. “design ourselves,” and that, I have never put that book down,
I had been a Fulbright Fellow together, right-thinking people not even today.
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Ross Allen’s reptile park interested

The Beginning
us in nature. We boys explored
I completed an undergraduate great swamps in canoes and
Too many degree in architecture at the walked through vast forests where
designers start University of Florida, where we camped in tents we carried on
their thinking with my father was also teaching our backs. We spent summers at
economics and accounting Free Acres, our ancestral house
a predetermined
systems. Gainesville was a small in the Watchung Mountains just
shape, style or utopian settlement with a huge 50km out of Manhattan, or in our
iconic form. library and university at its “Uncle’s” 42nd-floor apartment on
centre, laced with ponds, lakes, top of the Waldorf Astoria when
This leads to
gardens, forests, with avenues he was Ambassador to the United
confusion and bad and boulevards stretching out Nations. New York immersed
architecture. into the wilderness full of exotic me in a global way of thinking,
birds, colourful flowers, alligators, with the likes of Adlai Stevenson,
snakes and beautiful insects. Life Barbara Ward, Sir Robert Jackson,
was idyllic and contemplative. Marietta Tree, and so many other
Many artists like Jerry Uelsmann, luminaries. I think the idea of
the famous photographer; Robert living in a foreign country got into
Frost, the poet laureate of America; my head, sitting and listening
and thinkers like Howard Odum, to my elders talk about world
the environmentalist; lived and development and social change.
walked under the trees of this
small community. Gainesville in Architecture was always very
winter was heaven for the finer romantic and sensuous for me.
things of the mind! There were I found my studies very inspiring,
painters working on canvases in though demanding. I had
their garages, and writers peering wonderful teachers at Harvard
over their typewriters out of their and MIT like Jose Luis Sert,
windows. Archie Carr carried out Kevin Lynch, Herbert Gans, John
1 his famous “turtle studies,” and Kenneth Gailbratih, Gerhard

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Kallmann, Jane Drew, and so many famous musicians like Aaron
others. But my studio life started at Copland just ahead of one in the
Sert’s studio with Joseph Zalewski checkout line to pay for milk, or
as my mentor. Here we worked Julia Child living next door, while
hard and Sert spared little time for we watched her on television
smiles and laughs. This was serious teaching cooking. My career was
work with six boys bent over six really hard work, but it was the
drafting boards, on a row on long ambience of intellectualism, and
drafting tables, in ten aisles. We the milieu of great people all
had seniors like Lindemulder around that inspired me to do
and Kruger, watching us sliding something different and hopefully
1 Samundra Institute of Maritime
our Mayline parallel bars up and better. Studies, Lonavla.
down our drafting boards, and 2 Bajaj Science Centre, Wardha.
3 Kochi Refineries’ Headquarters.
sharpening our pencils as
Philosophy and Influences 4 CDSA, Pune.
they dulled! 5 Mahindra United World College, Pune.
My philosophy grew out of the
Our studio was over a coffee shop practice of architecture and
where Joan Biaz first sang for needing “beginning points” to
nothing just around the corner catalyse my thinking. I believe the
from where Gropius and his teams “truth of architecture” lies in a few
worked. At lunchtime we’d cross “beginning points.”These are: (1)
him on the narrow brick sidewalks, the site and its context; (2) the
and in the studio, he would make client’s Brief; (3) the local geo-
surprise visits and give us a free climatic conditions; and (4) the
portion of his imagination. In this technological situation (materials
tiny village, Geodesics was run available, skills of craftsmen,
by Buckminster Fuller, the Arrow and appropriate technologies).
Street Group with Kevin Lynch The way craftsmen assemble the
and pioneering urbanists began materials into my shapes and
setting urban standards, and the forms are crucial, as one has to
Harvard Coop, with thousands of change for them, and not the
new books on its shelves, inspired other way around! I think one has
us as we browsed for hours among to begin thinking after analysing
colourful books and magazines. these beginning points. Then
These were heady times with in realising that these “truths” 3

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are places to start thinking, Phillip Johnson, Paolo Solari,

one can begin building options Margaret Mead, Buckminster
and analysing them. Too many Fuller, and so many others set a
designers start their thinking with clear bar of achievement that one
a predetermined shape, style or must reach. My life was really
iconic form. This leads to confusion all about people! It was people
and bad architecture. who inspired me and set me on a
path. It was people who made me
Frank Lloyd Wright taught me question things, and who made
about organic architecture that me think. It was my teachers who
flows from nature; he taught me gave me a mission in life, and
about honesty of expression and who pushed me out into the vast
the expression of materials in unknown to fly on my own. As I
their true forms and colours. Sert have always said,“The best luck in
invented the field Urban Design, life is to have great teachers.”
when he founded the first urban
6 Bajaj Science Centre, Wardha.
7, 8 Suzlon Headquarters, Pune. design course in 1956 at Harvard
CCBA and its Journey
9 India House, Pune. and his sensitivity of the urban
10 CDSA, Pune.
11 Samundra Institute of
fabric affected all of us around him. In 1996, Ramprasad and I set up
Maritime Studies, Lonavla. Meeting Charles and Ray Eames, Christopher Charles Benninger
Architects in a small apartment
called Melody. By 2000, we shifted
into a small cottage, and, by 2007,
we were here in India House,
our own complex. The beginning
years were like a family, there
were financial constraints and our
projects were relatively smaller. We
had time to mull over options and
solutions, and it was a beautiful,
creative time. I supposed those
slower years prepared us for the
big challenges ahead that came in
the form of the Capitol of Bhutan,
Samundra Institute of Maritime
6 Studies,

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the Indian Institute of “art form,” and we based our work
Management, Calcutta, and in theory and within values.
Suzlon One Earth. These Today, I fear modern architecture
large projects helped us set up in India has fallen hook, line
procedures to handle still larger and sinker for copying what
projects like the Indian Institute the rest of the world does, good
of Technology in Hyderabad, the or bad. Global architecture is
Forbes Marshall Industrial Park, a formula built on very smart
the Azim Premji University and structural systems and mechanical
the Lodha township in Pune. Each equipment engagements. This is It was my teachers
has been a learning stage to build where we can learn. But the firms who gave me
the succeeding stage! in the West do very little study
and are mainly engaged in “façade a mission in life…
When I began my formal practice architecture”, packaging and As I have always
16 years ago, India was still not cladding systems that just hide a said, “The best luck
within the mainstream of global dark box within. There is no art in
in life is to have
practices. Foreign firms were this. It is just decoration!
not interested in India, because great teachers.”
there was no money here. Those Architecture has become the art of
practicing architecture saw it as an the mundane! One needs a lot of

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theoretical words to describe and to I would like to advise upcoming

justify what is happening, because designers to always search for
there is no putative logic or beauty honest “beginning points” that
in what is happening. There are truly catalyse appropriate
some wonderful exceptions to this solutions, and seek the kernels of
in the work of Sir Norman Foster truth in those key areas of analysis.
and Renzo Piano. A beginning point is not a shape
or a form; nor a colour or a new
kind of cladding. The beginning
I would like to Looking Back
point will find a truth between the
advise upcoming I look back at my career as site, the structural system, the
designers to always a trajectory of learning and self- functions and the form of the
understanding. I see it as a long building. At some point in one’s
search for honest journey filled with wonderful search, these forces all become one
“beginning points” friends, great ideas and the and the artists knows he has
that truly catalyse realisation of intriguing structures. reached a conclusion. •
appropriate
solutions.

12 Mahindra United World College, Pune.

13 Suzlon Headquarters, Pune. 12

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