Charles Correa – Kovalam Beach Resort

About the building:

• Accommodates 300 guests  , centers for massages and yoga,  water sport etc.
• The facilities had to be deployed in the manner which would create a critical mass for each activity and at a time open up several strategic  points  on the site so as to increase future growth  options.
• The master plan there fore does not concentrate all the facilities in one area , but generate a large number of potential growth points, thus allowing a more flexible response to future demands .
• The guest rooms come in 3 configurations-:

1. On the edge of the beach hidden under the palm trees . They are suits for longer stay with cooking facilities etc.
2. overlooking the beach there are 100 guests rooms. Here the facilities are such that every room gets its own private sundeck..
3. Between these two are private detach ho units .

• Construction is in traditional vernacular of Kerala-: plaster walls with red tiled roofs
• Other pavilion consists of little bamboo chhatries with coir matins on the floor and local Kerala handicrafts.

Charles Correa:

Education

• 1946-1948 inter-science. St. Xavier’s college, university of Bombay
• 1949-1955 B.Arch., University of Michigan.
• 1953-1955 M.Arch., Massachusetts institute of technology.

Professional Experience

• 1955-1958 partner with G.M. BHUTA associates
• 1958- to date in private practice.
• 1964-1965 prepared master plan proposing twin city across the harbor from Bombay.
• 1969-1971 invited by the govt. of Peru
• 1971-1975 chief architect to CIDCO
• 1975-1976 consultant to UN secretory-general for HABITAT
• 1975-1983 Chairman Housing Urban Renewal & Ecology Board
• 1985 chairman dharavavi palnning commision

About him:

• Born into a middle-class Catholic family in Bombay
• Became fascinated with the principles of design as a child
• At Michigan two professors who influenced him the most – Walter Salders and Buckminister Fuller.
• Kevin lynch , then in the process of developing his themes for image of the city triggered Correa’s interest in urban issues
• ‘India of those days was a different place, it was a brand-new country, there was so much hope; India stimulated me.’
• —Architect, planner, activist and theoretician, an international lecturer and traveler.
• —Correa’s work in India shows a careful development, understanding and adaptation of Modernism to a non-western culture. Correa’s early works attempt to explore a local vernacular within a modern environment. Correa’s land-use planning and community projects continually try to go beyond typical solutions to third world problems.
• —India’s first man of architecture has a very simple philosophy: “Unless you believe in what you do, it becomes … boring,”

AWARDS:

• 1961 Prize for low-income housing early
• 1972 Correa was awarded the PadmaShri by the President of India
• 1980 Correa was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Michigan
• 1984 He was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal          Institute of British Architects
• 1985 Prize for the Improvement in the Quality of Human
• Settlements from the International Union of Architects.
• 1986 Chicago Architecture Award.
• 1987 the Gold Medal of the Indian Institute of Architects
• 1990 the Gold Medal of the UIA (International Union of Architects)
• 1994 the Premium Imperial from Japan society of art.
• 1999 Aga khan award for vidhan sabha, bhopal

Diversity

• In Bombay – Salvacao Church at Dadar ; Kanchanjunga Apartments
• In Goa for the Cidade de Goa Hotel and the Kala Academy,
• In Ahmedabad – Gandhi Smarak Sangrahalaya ; Ramkrishna House
• Delhi – The LIC Centre; British Council Building
• Kerala – Kovalam Beach Resort Hotel
• Andamans – Bay Island Hotel in Port Blair

Architectural utility and grandeur spread over the subcontinent

Principles

• Few cardinal principles in his vast body of work;
• incrementality
• pluralism
• participation
• income generation
• equity
• open-to-sky space
• disaggregation.

Belapur housing being the one project where he has literally used these principals

Correa and Corbusier

Like most architects of his generation he has been influenced by Le Corbusier , but by his response to the Mediterranean sun with his grand sculptural decisions he believes that Corbusier’s  influence in the colder climates has not been beneficial because these heroic gestures had to withdraw into defensible space, into mechanically heated (and cooled) interiors of the building.

On way back to Bombay in 1955 – saw the Jaoul House (le Corbusier)  in Paris under construction

‘I was absolutely knocked out . It was a whole new world way beyond anything being taught in America at that time .then I saw Chandigarh and his buildings in Ahmedabad . They seemed the only way to build.”

Correa and Gandhi

• Gandhi’s goal for an independent India had been a village model, non-industrial, its architecture simple and traditional
• In these early works Correa demonstrates uncompromising execution of an idea as a powerful statement of form

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