Alumni of CEPT University, Ahmedabad celebrate life of late architect Balkrishna V. Doshi

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The CEPT Alumni Association of Americas in collaboration with the Indian Consulate in New York, held a commemorative event on March 17, 2023, to celebrate the life of renowned Indian architect Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi who died recently. Scores of members of the alumni association attended the event.

(CEPT stands for the Center for Environmental Planning and Technology, a university based in Ahmedabad)

Doshi was a Padma Vibhushan recipient; received the U.S.-based Pritzker Architecture Award in 2018, the first Indian to get it; he was the founder of CEPT university, and recipient of several other awards including an honorary doctorate from the Boston Architectural College in 2021.

India’s Consul General in New York Randhir Jaiswal, welcomed the gathering of architects from around U.S. and Canada, and spoke about India’s rapid economic growth and the massive need for building infrastructure and hence for architects to design housing and buildings, roads, ports, temples, churches, mosques etc. “Therefore, all of you are so important,” CG Jaiswal said.

Professor Emeritus at McGill University, Canada, Vikram Bhatt, a graduate of CEPT, and an internationally recognized expert in the field of minimum cost housing, affordable urban design, and urban agriculture, had high praise for Doshi. Bhatt noted how Doshi had set up an institution linking academics and professionals searching for design solutions to meet the needs of the poor under the Aranya housing project. “Together we studied informal settlements showing how the other half really lives,” Bhatt recalled, and talked about the how under the Aranya Housing Project, more than 60 percent of the beneficiaries those earning less than $35 a month, “the poorest of the poor,” he said.

Professor Maheesh Das of Boston Architectural College said he had been associated with Doshi over the last few years, “In 2021, we awarded him the honorary doctorate… and he honored us by accepting it, and engaging with us from that moment onwards.”