Plans to make 14 of the 18 dormitories designed by architect Louis Kahn for the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, which has been shouted internationally, disappear were rolled back on Friday.
The school’s board of governors said in a letter on Friday that in response to feedback, it was withdrawing “the expression of interest” to demolish the dormitories, built in the 1960s and ’70s, and that its building committee would meet again. find a solution honoring the campus legacy while meeting the university’s future needs.
The student bedrooms in Ahmedabad illustrate Kahn’s ability to design buildings in ‘response to the cultures, climates and traditions of their respective places’, said historian William JR Curtis, who wrote the headlines for Architectural Record and The Architectural Review in support of the preservation of dormitories.
The World Monuments Fund in a statement on Wednesday called for the demolition to be reconsidered.
The director of the management institute, Errol D’Souza, earlier defended the plans in a letter of 23 December to alumni and called the structures ‘uninhabitable’ because, among other things, ‘concrete and slabs were falling off the roofs’; brick deterioration causing cracks and water infiltration; and structural problems following an earthquake in 2001.