PWD Architecture

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VEENA FRANCIS

3rd YEAR B.ARCH


 During the period of the British rule in this subcontinent, in
1786 a Military Board was set up to look after all public work
matters at that time.

Later on the Government decided to establish the Public


Works Department in the year 1854.
 At that time PWD was responsible for the construction of
roads, buildings, railways as well as flood control, irrigation
and military works.
 With the partitioning of India and Pakistan in 1947, the
responsibility of construction work for the Central
Government of Pakistan was vested in the Central PWD.
 The Communication and Building Directorate (C&B), which
existed at the time, was entrusted with all construction work
for the Provincial Government of the then East Pakistan.
 Until 1855, public works were conducted under the
Army engineers supervised by the Military Board.
 Military and civil designs were separated and an
autonomous department of Public Works established
under the Government of India.
 The hegemony of the military engineers however
continued with the appointment of Colonel W. E.
Baker by Lord Dalhousie to head the department.

 In the aftermath of 1857, the Bengal, Madras and


Bombay engineers were amalgamated into the Royal
Engineers.
 In 1862, the Public Works departments (PWDs) were
amalgamated with the Royal Engineers to form an All-
India service. What was attained was a ‘highly
centralized departmental system which prescribes the
form of all buildings.
 . Muncherjee Cowasjee Murzaban
 Dinshaw Dorabjee Mistri
 Hayavadana Rao
 Ramachandra Bullal MulyE
 Bhai Ram Singh
 Lockwood Kipling
 Dinshaw Dorabjee Mistri was designing classical building in
Bombay (e.g., Parsee Panchayat, 1871) in the 1870s.

 Muncherjee Cowasjee Murzaban (b. 1839), who studied


architecture informally in Bombay with T. Roger Smith (1830-1903),
Professor of Architecture at Kings college, London, was talented and
politically astute enough to rise through the ranks to become the first
Indian executive engineer of the Bombay Municipal Corporation in
1892.

 In Mysore, Hayavadana Rao was designing buildings in a


‘Modern American Renaissance’ style.
 Ramachandra Bullal Mulye, a local engineer, was active as an
architect during the period 1890 to 1910. It is also clear that many
buildings ascribed to British architects were really designed by their
underlings.
 Most of Lahore’s nineteenth century Indo-Saracenic work was devised
by Bhai Ram Singh working on his own or in conjunction with
Lockwood Kipling. Nevertheless, British architects tended to
dominate the field when it came to the design of public Buildings.
OLD BUILDING

NEW BUILDING
 During the period architects were beginning to be
hired as consultant to the Government of India.
 In 1863, the first to be appointed was Waller B.
Granville (1819-74), architect to the East Bengal
Railway (Yalland 1994).
 Consultant architects were also appointed to the
presidencies and the princely states and these roles
continued until Independence.
 More casually, architects were asked to be consultants
to the PWDs on individual buildings. For instance,
Roger Smith, when visiting Bombay in 1864, was
invited to participate in a competition for a hospital
and he also submitted a design for a major exhibition
hall.
 The career of Rovert Fellowes Chisholm (1840-1915) is not a typical of late
nineteenth- century British architect who made their career in India.

 He worked briefly for the Bengal Public Work Department before he was
appointed head of the school of industrial arts in Madras in the 1850s.

 When he won the competition for the design of Presidency College in the
city, he was appointed by Lord Napier, the Governor, as consulting architect to
the Government of Madras (1865-80).

 He moved to Baroda (Vadodara now) in 1889 as consulting architect to the


Maharaja after the death of Charles Mant (1840-80), working there until his
return to England in 1902.

 Chisholm took some of the ideas developed in India to England; his design for
the never constructed Indian Museum, London, was in an ‘Indic’ style.

 His career movements as much as the work he carried out is symbolic of
imperial enterprise.
NEW BUILDING

OLD BUILDING
 Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Hieram Sankey (1829-
1908) was the architect of the Anglican. All Saints’
Cathedral (1851) in Nagpur as well as a number of
buildings in Bangalore.
 In Madras, Colonel George Winscom designed
Memorial Hall (1858+).
 In Bombay, Colonel (later knighted) Henry St Clair
Wikins (1828-96) designed the Old Secretariat (1867-
74) and the Public Works Department Building
(1869-72), and Lieutenant-Colonel James Fuller (1828-
1902) the Law Courts (1871-6) and the Sassoon
Mechanics Institute (now a library).
 Lieutenant-colonel Sir Michael Filose was the architect
for the Gwalior Jai Vilas Palace in Vadora and
designed Mayo College near Ajmer.
 European classical buildings were designed throughout the period of the colonialism in
India
 . In the latter half of the nineteenth century it started to give way to the Neo-Gothic,
particularly in Bombay which was a mercantile city while the seat of the imperial
government was in Calcutta.
 General Post Office
 Indian Museum
 Senate Hall, Calcutta University (1864) designed by the PWD,
 exemplify Classical work in the city. The classical was clearly and a conscious choice for
the post office as Granville was equally adept at designing Neo-Gothic buildings as he
showed in the design of
 All Souls’ Memorial Church (1862-75) in Kanpur (Cawnpore then)
 High Court (1864-72) in Calcutta.
 The Small Claims Court (1878), designed by William H. White, is a French
Palladian structure but its Ionic columns have a local twist to them (Davies 1989).
 The Maghan David Synagogue on Biplabi Rash Bihari Road

 Many of the tombs of the era in the Park Street Cemetery are miniature Classical
buildings. The Young Men’s Christian Association building (1905), Bengal club
(1908) and the Dravidian Girls’ School (1922) are amongst the Classical buildings that
came later.
 Attara Kacheri (1862)
 Karnataka state administrative offices museum,
designed by Sir Richard Hieram Sankey, Chief
Engineer of the Government of Mysore
 High court (1864), designed as a government office
building also by Sankey.
 The High Court is a 250 meters-long arcaded, red
stucco building (Iengar 1987, daves 1989).
 Bangalore also has many lesser Classical buildings
such as the East Parade Church (1863).
 St paul’s Cathedral (1839) in Calcutta, designed by
Major W. Nairn Forbes, may be the earliest Gothic
church in India.
 It is considerably simpler than many that came later. St
John-in-the-Wilderness (1846) in National Uttar
Pradesh is another early Gothic church.
 St John the Baptist (Afgan Memorial) Church
(1847-58) in Colaba, Bombay, designed by Henry
Conybeare (later designer of St Patrick’s in
Kensington, London
 The Victory Tower (Mutiny Memorial, 1870) built on a
high point on the Northern Ridge of Delhi is a Gothic
Spire
 exemplar of the use of the Gothic in India by the
British. A flight of steps flanked by finely made
wrought-iron railings leads from the street of the
plinth on which the tower stands
 Colonel Henry St Clair Wilkins designed the Old
Secretariat (1867-74) in polychromatic local stone and
the Public Works Department Building (1869-72)
 Lieutenant-Colonel James Fuller the Law Courts
(1871-6) and the Sassoon Machanics Institute (now
Library).
 Sir George Gilbert Scott designed the University
Library and Convocation Hall (1869-74) and the
Rajabai Tower (1878) (Arnold 1991).
 Sir William Emerson designed the Crawford Market
and Fountain (1865-71) with decorative work
supervised by Lockwood Kipling,
 Frederick William Stevens (1848-1900) designed the
Victoria Terminus (1878-87; now Chhatrapati Shivaji
Terminus) along the lines of Sir George Gilbert scott’s
Midland Hotel and St Pancras in London, as well as
the Churchgate Terminus (1894-6).
CRAWFORD MARKET
VICTORIA TERMINUS
 Gothic was used whatever the British had settlements.
 Queens College (1847),
 Benares (now Varanasi), designed by Major markham Kitoe (1808-53) is
an early example.
 The High Court in Calcutta (1864-72), one of the Gothic buildings
designed by Walter Granville, stands in strong contrast to his classical
work in the city.
 Calcutta’s Central Municipal Building (1905), designed by Banks
Gwyther, also with a central tower, is considerably less robust a Gothic
building than the High Court or its Bombay counterparts.
 The Arts Building (c. 1890s) at Gujarat College in Ahmedabad is an
eclectic PWD building with Gothic, Tudor and local touches.
 The George V Hall (1910, designed by George Wittet; now Mahatma
Gandhi Hall) at the College is a much simpler, even austere, Gothic
building.
PRINCE OF WALES MUSEUM - BOMBAY

RASHTRAPATHI BHAVAN
KERALA SECRETARIAT
CENTAL RAILWAY STATION -
CHENNAI

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