The first three decades after Independence were marked by an extraordinary burst of building. Driven by imperatives of urbanisation, industrialisation, and institution building, Modernist architecture became the idiom of a forward-looking democracy. The promise that Modernist architecture would lead us to a modern world permeated in popular culture. Movies like Hum Hindustani (1960) and Satyakaam (1969) used massive infrastructure and engineering projects to invoke an idea of a modern India that was forward looking and open to new ideas. On the other hand, Arati, the protagonist of Satyajit Ray’s Mahanagar (1963), moves between the traditional domesticity of a middle-class home and the glass partitioned offices of Calcutta with their expansive volumes, natural light, and structural honesty, serving as a visual metaphor for the emancipation of Indian women through modernity’s new freedoms.
Entire cities were planned from this imagination, Chandigarh and Gandhinagar being the best-known examples. Public institutions were reimagined (IIM Ahmedabad, IIT Kanpur, the Hall of Nations in Delhi, among others) and private homes began to reflect a modern way of living. Largely characterised by the honest expression of exposed concrete and brick, the architecture was also a site of comprehensive technological ambition with new structural systems, new approaches to daylight and ventilation, and new ideas about what public place and public building would feel like. Cumulatively, Modern architecture provided a blueprint that determined the building culture of India, one in which Indian architects used tropes of Modernism not to imitate the West, but to shed colonial idioms and search for a new Indian identity.
Most of these buildings are now over 60 years old and are often assumed to be nearing the end of their useful lives. Yet many remain remarkably viable. Whether continuing in their original function or accommodating adaptive changes within, a surprising number have retained their design integrity. Thoughtful upgrades to materials and interiors have addressed contemporary needs without compromising architectural character, even though historic authenticity is weak. Most Modernist buildings of India are robust buildings with strong structural bones, and with the right investment can remain relevant to India’s urban fabric for decades to come. There are two challenges: thermal comfort and weather-wear. Here, we will talk about thermal comfort, against the backdrop of heat extremes that are becoming increasingly common.
When these buildings were designed, urban microclimates were still largely hospitable to natural ventilation. Occupants could manage comfort simply by opening windows and running ceiling fans — a deliberate design position, embedded in the building’s orientation, shading, and spatial organisation. Today, intensified urban heat island effects, ambient noise, and atmospheric pollution have made natural ventilation largely untenable in most Indian cities. Mechanical air conditioning has become a functional necessity.
Buildings that were not designed with it must now accommodate it. This is harder than it sounds. Retrofitting air conditioning into buildings never designed for it presents a serious structural as well as aesthetic challenge. The result is then that such buildings are neither honestly updated nor faithfully preserved.
Modernism was founded, in part, on the principle that buildings should not hide what they are made of or how they work. Applying the same ethic to contemporary interventions would mean treating new mechanical systems not as intrusions to be disguised, but as additions to be thoughtfully designed. Precedents exist through architects working on heritage buildings who have successfully integrated new infrastructure by treating it as a distinct but complementary layer. They have chosen contemporary materials and detailing that are clearly of their own time rather than poor imitations of the original.
This work requires architects, engineers, material scientists, energy and comfort experts, and conservation architects to collaborate from the very beginning, not sequentially, but together, treating each building as a cultural artefact and a living institution with real performance requirements. The current state of engineering and technology needs to evolve to meet this unique challenge of adaptation. For iconic Modernist buildings to have an extended life, the need is to expand conventional approaches to heritage conservation beyond surface or structural repair and to look towards engineering and mechanical systems.
Rajan Rawal is a professor of technology and Jigna Desai is a professor of architecture, CEPT University, Ahmedabad. The views expressed are personal
