An eager crowd of architects, students and cultural practitioners were in for a delightful evening as renowned architect P T Krishnan — fondly known as PTK to his peers — shared insights on the profession and his life at Spaces, Besant Nagar recently, in an event hosted by the Chennai Architecture Foundation. A doyen among pioneering architects of the 1970s and 80s, P T Krishnan is an architecture graduate from the University of Madras, who also has a post-graduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley (1969).
He returned to India in 1971 after working with Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (New York City), and set up his own firm in 1983. He is the architect of many iconic buildings such as the SPIC House in Guindy, IIM Kozhikode, and several overseas projects such as the buildings at the University of Mauritius. Explaining why he was initially reluctant to talk about his work, Krishnan said, “Nowadays, architects are always talking about themselves and the projects they’ve done — but at the same time what is lacking is informed criticism from the peers. The values that need to be discussed aren’t the peripheral aspects but what was the architect’s intent when he designed a building.” The host urged Krishnan to enlighten the audience about his life and work, detailing the rigours of education and the time he spent learning under architect K N Iyengar.
“We went on a two-week tour to areas in and around Chennai and spent time making drawings of temples and buildings. It was less of theory and more practice,” he recalled. It also helped that he was good at solid geometry, the projection and drawing of complex shapes and figures. His was one of the earliest batches of architecture students (the sixth, in fact) to graduate from the university. “Architecture is a process of negotiation — between your values and those of your client, which tests your skills as a negotiator, communicator and a designer,” Krishnan explained.
“My perception about the profession was moulded at Berkley; it was a ‘radical’ school. It was one of the few schools of the time that emphasised less on design and more on sociological impact. It was about creating patterns that enabled man to create communities on his own. That pushed me to work more on squatter resettlement and affordable housing for my thesis.” Later on in his career, he worked with squatter communities on how to use the available space effectively in a city. In his career, Krishnan also worked on the SPIC Township, Thoothukudi and the ISRO Township at Sriharikota. “Satish Dhawan (chairman of ISRO) was very open-minded and he gave me a free reign to design the township,” he said. “The result is that the city is very pedestrian-oriented, and children can walk to school.
The market was very near the school; so parents could club both activities together, and the entire city was designed sector-wise for future expansion.” He also had the opportunity to design buildings in the University of Mauritius, in a French-colonial style after seeing the innate connection they had to that style of architecture. Through these examples, Krishnan stated that architecture is more about connecting the dots between several disciplines such as engineering, design, sociology and resettlement. “Ninety per cent of the buildings those days were built by engineers, not architects!” he said.
“That was because not everyone could afford a design like those of Corbusier or Correa, so we architects had to work cheap, and work smart vis-a-vis the choice of materials and design. Today, you are spoilt for choices and you do not know what will work, and where!” However, Krishnan enccouraged working architects to imbibe value engineering in their projects. “Altruism and ethics should govern an architect’s actions. Unfortunately, nowadays more often than not, developers dictate terms to architects,” he rued. “You should take your idealism to the market, not let the market invade your idealism! Profit-motive must always be tempered with altruism, and it is important for architects to take an ideological stand.”