The Architecture of Hasmukh C. Patel

Patel navigated the political and economic changes of his time and brought his talents to bear equally on institutional, private and speculative development projects in a way that was rare amongst his contemporaries. He recognised that with every commission, regardless of budget, scale or type, came opportunities to further architecture’s formal, civic and social agendas.

Patel rarely spoke about his approach to design. And yet, each of his projects is a built manifesto, an exploration of how architecture might enrich the lives of India’s modernising citizens. His buildings are the result of profoundly practical deliberations combined with an intuitive appreciation for the power of form and space. They belong to a deep tradition of 20th-century modernist thinking, where the legibility of the architectural diagram is a primary concern. Included here are 51 of Patel’s buildings, many published for the first time. Each project has been meticulously redrawn from material in Patel’s archive and is accompanied by photographs and text informed by his recollections from practice.

This book is both a tribute to Hasmukh Patel and a contribution to the ongoing documentation of modern Indian architecture, the gathering of a canon of works to inspire and inform the next generation.