For CU preservationists, designers -- a passage to (and from) India

Ahba Narain Lambah, right, a conservation architect, gives Michael Tomlan, director of the Cornell College of Architecture, Art and Planning's Historic Preservation Planning Program, a street tour of Mumbai, describing the need for preservation in the city's mill district. Mary Woods

By Elizabeth Kim and Linda Myers

India is dotted with ancient shrines, temples and palaces that still retain some of their original magnificence. Surprisingly, however, the preservation of more recent historically important structures is still a nascent practice in India, less than a decade old, with only a handful of practitioners.

In 1999 a few of those practitioners established ties with Cornell's College of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP) and asked for their help and advice in rescuing the ornate 19th century wooden and brick mill structures and workers' houses, or "chawls," in Mumbai (the former Bombay) and incorporating them into the city's redevelopment. These were the places where many of the brightly colored, elaborately printed cotton fabrics long associated with India were made from the 19th century until close to the present. The cotton mills were first erected in the 1850s, expanding in size and number, to about 36 by the 1870s. More than a century later, the mills were confiscated by the government for back taxes following the labor strife of the 1980s. Close to two-thirds are now abandoned and deteriorating, badly damaged by rain and pollution.

Since the initial contact with the Indian preservationist group, AAP Dean Porus Olpadwala, who grew up in India, and faculty from the college have made three trips there to set up an exchange program, most recently in January and April of this year. They hope to engage Cornell students in the urban and architectural redevelopment in the city and help the Mumbai preservationists find funding to preserve the mill structures while making them socially useful to 21st-century India.

"Cornell has powerful intellectual resources to contribute to developing nations like India," said Olpadwala, "and I believe this should be a part of the mission of our college."

In Mumbai, Rahul Mehrotra and Nondita Correa, a couple who are architects, urban designers and preservation advocates, gave an overview of recent architectural and urban developments in the community. Mehrotra is the director of the Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI), a nonprofit organization that sponsors conferences and produces a wide range of publications on urban questions. Correa, one of the most well known women in her field in India, is the daughter of world renowned architect Charles Correa. Their colleague Ahba Narain Lambah, a conservation architect who led the first "Main Street" facade rehabilitation program in Mumbai, offered the Cornell visitors on-the-street guidance.

Professor Michael Tomlan, director of AAP's graduate program in Historic Preservation Planning, noted that the challenges the India urban planners face are enormous in a country that is vast, culturally and architecturally complex and burdened by economic problems, overpopulation and limited resources. He also said that the task of integrating the abandoned mill complexes into Mumbai life was "a little like integrating Lowell, Massachusetts, into a place like New York City." But raising awareness in the business community can play an important role in developing historic preservation practices in India, said Tomlan, who was pleased that Mehrotra introduced the Cornell group to business leaders active in Mumbai preservation. Among the most prominent was Ratan Tata (B.Arch. '62), chairman of the Tata Group and an industrial leader in South Asia.

Tomlan, who gave talks to the preservationists in Mumbai on how to attract private funding, noted: "In India, there is very little money available from the central government to invest in the rehabilitation of inner cities. In the United States we have the ability to assemble capital better than any other place in the world for the saving of buildings." Citing such incentives as corporate tax deductions for donations, he said, "Part of our investigation in India is to learn what will work in that environment."

The exchange program will begin next fall, when Professor Werner Goehner plans to offer an urban design studio on Mumbai for graduate students in the Department of Architecture's urban design program. The students will propose viable ways to restore and create new uses for the historic mill structures in the Mumbai mill area, after reviewing videos of the area taken by Goehner during a visit and photographs and documents collected by Manisha Agarwal, a graduate student from Mumbai in the program. Mehrotra and Correa, who will be visitors at the college in the fall, will serve as guest critics, discussing the problems inherent in Mumbai and reviewing and critiquing the students' proposals. In fall 2002, the couple will be in residence at Cornell, offering coursework in cooperation with the South Asia Program and the Center for International Studies.

At Cornell, Tomlan envisions spin-off courses from the India exchange, on such topics as urban development in India; balancing housing, real estate and preservation needs in Mumbai's mill district (the mills are situated on some of the highest valued land in India); and women in the design professions in India.

"In India, a series of seminars might be launched for preservation students in a variety of disciplinesarchitecture, planning, and archaeology, to name a few," Tomlan suggested. "Alternatively, courses could be directed at mid-career professionals on site," similar to one that HPP offered in China in the 1980s.

Mary Woods, an associate professor of architectural history who also was part of two of the delegations to India, is equally excited by the potential for future collaboration. "This is shaping up to be a project that can involve all three departments in the college and other parts of the university like the South Asia Program," she said. "It will be wonderful for our students to work with people like the Mehrotra, Correa and Narain."

During her visits, Woods interviewed prominent women in the design professions, including Brinda Somaya, a leading Mumbai architect whose practice incorporates urban and interior design, preservation and landscape architecture. Said Woods: "I was very impressed with how many of the Indian architects and academics, Brinda among them, integrate architecture, urban design, history, and preservation in their professional and intellectual work. They have much to teach us in that regard."