The Structure: Works of Mahendra Raj

by Vandini Mehta, Rohit Raj Mehrdiratta, Ariel Huber

The Structure explores the work of Mahendra Raj, India’s most significant structural engineer. Examining Raj’s sixty prolific years of practice, this volume looks at his unusually inventive and intuitive work and how he has offered pioneering engineering solutions for buildings in exposed concrete. As this book shows, many of his structures can be seen as monuments narrating the history of architecture in post-independence India.

The Structure features twenty-eight of Mahendra Raj’s buildings in detail through rich photographs and color reproductions of archival plans. Essays are contributed by Raj himself and by the architects Neelkanth Chhaya and Jaimini Mehta. Also included are interviews with Raj by the architect Sanjay Prakash and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, a conversation with the architect BV Doshi, as well as an illustrated complete list of Raj’s works.
 
 

Genres: Architecture

428 pages, Hardcover

Published October 15, 2016

Reviews

[Jay Rey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nicely edited with many original drawings of Mahendra's projects. Its is a well prepared monography of famous Indian engineer Mahendra Raj. I recommend it for structural engineers, students, architects.

[Jessie Vahrenkamp · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Structure celebrates the exquisite work of Mahendra Raj, one of India’s foremost structural engineers and, until now, unsung heroes. Raj is recognised as a master of structural art — a term that hadn’t even been coined when he began his career in newly independent India. An early project was Le Corbusier’s urban plan for Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab. Le Corbusier proved difficult and mistrusting of local engineers, and it was this early experience that brought Raj to fully understand the weighted importance of demonstrating mastery and sophistication — grace even — in his work. ‘Our common objective was to set up practices here, find our own roots and rise to the same stature that other countries had attained,’ he explains. ‘We sought an Indian idiom that expressed our ancient culture but was in tune with modern times.’

Raj went on to realise some of the most breathtaking concrete structures, each a staggering feat of engineering, to which readers are treated in this title full of personal writings, full-format images and hand-drawn plans. Many are now viewed as monuments, narrating post-independence, an energetic period of nation-building, through structural art.