Parikh’s objective in applying for the Khan Fellowship is to expand his knowledge of new trends and approached in low-cost, mas housing and, in particular, to the computer methodologies that are being evolved to deal with their planning and design.
Himanshu Parikh
Jury
Thomas Beeby
Lynn S Beedle
David Billington
Mark Fintel
Gerald Horne
I was born in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania in April 1951, of parents of Indian origin. After doing the primary schooling there, the secondary education was completed in London. In 1969, I joined Cambridge University, UK, to study engineering Sciences and graduated in 1972. I fell in love with the town of Cambridge and decided to start my professional life there.
In 1972, I joined Peter Dann & Partners, a firm of consulting structural engineers. Until my departure from England in 1982, I stayed with the same firm except for interludes of practical experience in site construction and soil investigations. From 1978 to 1982, I was given the charge of setting up and running a new branch office for the same practice in Bristol, UK.
In Peter Dann, I found an unusually sensitive structural engineering and sympathetic teacher. He taught me to see structural design not as an isolated component of a building design but as a symbiotic process with other professionals which took into account issues of aesthetics and function. He taught me to approach each problem freshly and be guided by my own past experience but not be shackled by it. These attitudes necessitated a very close working relationship with the architects and the users.
During my stay in the UK, I worked on several hundred large and small projects, almost always in the company of architects. This gave me an exposure to many architects—some doyens in their field while others, perhaps not so well known, but no less creative. The work covered a wide range of residential, institutional, commercial, industrial, and agricultural buildings.
I developed a special liking for quite buildings, which blend sympathetically with their environment and exude warmth and welcome. Obviously, it is not necessary that these buildings call for a greater structural challenge, but they certainly evoke a deeper sense of fulfillment.
During my stay in the UK, I became increasingly aware that the need for technical expertise and professional know-how was more pressingly required in a country such as India, which is poised on a technological awakening. For reasons both personal and professional, I decided to go back to India, the country of my origin. Professionally, the idea of being in the midst of this metamorphism in which one could influence events rather than follow the stream was most appealing. On arrival in India, I started a structural consultancy in Ahmedabad.
In the early days of my practice in India it became clear that professionally the most rewarding area for a structural engineer was to work on mass housing, particularly at the low-cost end of the spectrum. This area is most neglected by the professional architects and engineers. I felt that this task need not be “pedestrian” and that there was room to introduce the most advanced design methods and technologies of the West, albeit, altered to suit the contextual scene. However, to effectively attain the goal, it was imperative to break out from the normal mold of a structural engineer and be involved in the wider issues of site planning, infrastructure design, materials and technologies, affordability, and the social and cultural requirements.
The opportunity to work on the suitable projects came from Professor B. V. Doshi who, as an architect-planner, consciously embraced the field of low-cost mass housing. He offered me the chance to be in charge of a new township in Indore for the economically weaker section of the society which he had been invited to design. The project involved the provision of basic core-housing and infrastructure for a population of 65,000 and was funded by the World Bank.
Another World Bank project I was recently involved with entailed the formulation of an upgradation program for 100,000 slum dwellings in Ahmedabad comprising structural improvements, sanitary and health facilities, physical infrastructure such as roads, water, drainage, electricity, and landscaping and, no less important, the setting up of a legal and management structure for realizing the work.
The mainstream structural practice is also generating interesting work, particularly in the design of community facilities such as schools and hospitals.
What is emerging from these experiences is that the need for rational and quantitative approach in mass housing is even more relevant in a developing nation where the resource constraints are more acute. To create economies of significant scale without compromising in the aesthetic or functional standards, state-of-the-art planning and design methods have to be used. This is in tune with the new awareness in India that the age of the computer has at least dawned in the country.
An interesting aspect of habitat planning is that whilst each subdiscipline can be optimized, the synthesis of such decisions may not necessarily emerge as the most optimal solution. The numerous permutations of the interconnected disciplines lead to levels of analysis beyond those possible by mere experience or intuition and require the assistance of computer methods.
My objective in applying for the Fellowship is to acquaint myself with the new trends and approaches in low-cost mass housing and, in particular, to the computer methodologies evolved to deal with their planning and design. This science is yet in its infancy, and I wish to develop it further so that it has meaningful application in India and other countries at the similar development stage.
I am not entirely a novice to the use of computers and have developed a full range of structural analysis and design software for a leading computer company in the US. The transition to the development of a more complex model which takes into account the structural and architectural aspects, land pricing, infrastructure design, population densities and mix, cost and affordabilities, cross-subsidies, interest repayments, etc. is, therefore, a natural progression.
If awarded the Fellowship, the three broad activities proposed are as follows:
Of course, the full program I intend to pursue will take several years. The Fellowship can at least give an opportunity for collecting the initial data for program formulation. In addition, the regimen of the Fellowship will help me detach myself from the day to fay rigors of my practice. The precise itinerary of the travel may have to be altered to suit the budgetary constraints of the Fellowship and can only be worked out in detail once there is a response from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
Himanshu Parikh
was born in Dar-es-Salaam in 1951 of parents of Indian origin. After primary education in Tanzania, he completed his secondary and university education in England, receiving both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Engineering Sciences with honors from Cambridge University. From 1972 until 1982, he was associated with the Consulting Engineering firm of Peter Dann & Partners in Cambridge and Bristol, and since 1982, has had his own Civil and Structural Consultancy practice in Ahmedabad, India. Mr. Parikh’s work with Peter Dann taught him to see structural engineering not as an isolated discipline, but as an interactive process with other design professionals and developed his sensibility to environmental and aesthetic issues. Recognizing that technical expertise and professional know-how are particularly needed to developing countries, he returned to India and has devoted his structural practice to applying advanced design methods to the area of much needed, low-cost mass housing.
