Otto Koenigsberger Research Articles

Prefabrication and Transnational Building Materials in Modern India

This paper analyzes the introduction of European prefabrication building systems in India in the years immediately after independence from Britain in 1947, through the lens of two episodes. In each case, the analysis challenges the often-perceived notion of the local, in this case Indian, actors in the Global South as mere recipients of superior foreign technologies, positing them instead as critical assessors, evaluators and decision makers. In the first example of UK’s Alcrete House, well known as the reason for German architect Otto Koenigsberger’s infamous departure from India, the paper examines archival materials, discussed here for the first time, to shed light on the role of Indian players who demanded accountability from foreign experts. In the second lesser-known example of the Swiss lightweight concrete building product, Durisol, the analysis highlights the role of local architects like Shaukat Rai, who deployed his own transnational and intranational networks in the product’s bid to enter the Indian construction market in the early 1950s.

The Impact of Post-War Transnational Consultants in Housing and Planning Development Narratives: The Case of Otto Koenigsberger

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the progressive dismantling of previous power-nations and the independence of many countries have contributed to new political, economic, and technical processes and highly mobile flows of people and ideas. Yet, research has overlooked knowledge channels outside of mainstream geopolitical frameworks. In particular, the role and power of international aid organizations, their development assistance programs, and the impact of the emergent new actor of this phenomenon—the consultant—in housing and planning narratives deserve to be examined. This article proposes to do so by exploring the historical contribution of Otto Koenigsberger (1908–1999) as part of the first generation of CIAM-UN experts. His view of “housing as a problem of numbers” engaged him on a lifelong pedagogical and transnational political project of decolonizing architectural education and the redefinition of both the profession and the professional. By emphasizing the importance of (a new) training, it raises questions on what sort of knowledge housing may require, by whom knowledge competencies may be conveyed, and how that knowledge should be instrumentalized. The article draws on extensive archival research, findings on the protagonists and institutions involved, and the author’s interviews with key players that shed light on evolving conceptualizations of “development,” built environment, educational programs, and knowledge production. Ultimately, examining the terminology underlying the expertise delivered through consultancy reports vis à vis the education and skills needs contributes to a better understanding of the foundations of housing as a problematized field of architectural education.

Engaging the Archival Habitat

Abstract Drawing on experiences of researching India's architectural history, this article explores the affect generated by architectural archives as a source of knowledge. It traces the affective life of the archives and practices of a singular historical figure: Otto Koenigsberger, the chief architect and town planner of the princely state Mysore, the architect of Jamshedpur (a.k.a. Tatanagar, the “Steel City,” India's first planned industrial town), the first director of housing of the federal government of India, cofounder and director of the Department of Tropical Studies of the Architectural Association in London, and architecture and planning consultant at-large to the United Nations. Arguing that the affective archive has disruptive historiographical potential, the article posits that it exists fundamentally beyond the architectural object and archival documents themselves, and indeed fully in discourse with its users. The article argues for a more expansive and inclusive understanding of what constitutes an archive, designating the “archival habitat” as a place of active scholarly engagement.

Thermal comfort and climatic design in the tropics: an historical critique

This paper explores how climatic design for the tropics was socio-technically constructed at its moment of inception in the mid-twentieth century by two of its best known proponents: George Atkinson at the Tropical Building Division, Building Research Station and Otto Koenigsberger at the Department of Tropical Studies, the Architectural Association.I argue that undergirding Atkinson’s construction of climatic design for the tropics was a mechanistic and reductive understanding of thermal comfort based on the research done by the air-conditioning industry in the United States in the early twentieth century. Not only did the reductive understanding of thermal comfort ignore local cultural norms and social practices in maintaining comfort, it also indirectly helped to further metropolitan interests in the tropics. In the case of Koenigsberger’s construction of climatic design, I show that he was influenced by the mid-twentieth century researchers in hot-climate physiology. These researchers combined nineteenth-century colonial medical ideas of the tropics as a torrid zone with the early twentieth-century industrial physiologists’ understanding of the correlation between environmental conditions of thermal stress and low productivity. They assumed that labourers in the tropics worked under perpetual thermal stress and became easily fatigued, thus hindering the socio-economic development of the tropics.By foregrounding the entanglements between climate and economy, comfort and development, and nature and culture, this paper follows the Anthropocene thesis that invalidates the ontological distinction between human culture and nature. In doing so, this paper also complicates the recent call for a return to climatic design and its low-energy passive means of cooling.

Otto Koenigsberger and Modernist Historiography

Otto Koenigsberger’s (1908–1999) work in India (1939–1951) complicates the idea that tropical architecture was a strain of European modernism that was dispersed to the colonial tropics along the imperial networks of the British Empire in the 1950s and 1960s. Koenigsberger, a German émigré architect, arrived in India in 1939 in princely Mysore – a state under indirect British rule. As the state architect in Mysore (1939–1948), he designed numerous buildings – schools, hospitals, offices, police stations, palace extensions, pavilions, colleges, factories, and bus shelters. In 1951, he emigrated from India to London and, in 1954, established the department of tropical architecture at the Architectural Association School of Architecture. His treatise on tropical architecture, Manual of Tropical Housing and Building (1974) offers a critique of modernisation, which originated in Koenigsberger’s failed and successful projects in India. Yet, until recently the majority of his architectural work in India was unknown. This paper discusses the absence of Koenigsberger’s architectural oeuvre in South Asian architectural histories and argues that uncovering his work in India offers a missing link between colonial and post-colonial architectural cultures, and global networks of tropical architecture. His career illuminates how multiple actors outside the colonial state apparatus – such as the Maharajah’s regime with their sovereign ideals and independent entrepreneurial clients – shaped his ideas of modernism.

Negotiating Modernities: Otto Koenigsberger’s Works and Network in Exile (1933–1951)

Otto Koenigsberger (1908-1999) is best known for his pioneering work on architecture, housing and planning issues in places that, during his lifetime, were variously referred to as the colonies, the tropics, the Third World and the developing world. These contributions were made in his capacities as director of the Tropical Department at the Architectural Association (AA) in London and of the Development Planning Unit at the University College London, as well as in his positions as advisor to...

Otto Koenigsberger and the Development of Tropical Architecture in India, 1939–1951

Otto Koenigsberger and the Development of Tropical Architecture in India, 1939–1951

Otto Koenigsberger and the Course on Tropical Architecture at the Architectural Association, London. Some Notes on the Portuguese Context

Otto Koenigsberger is considered a pioneer in researching specific models and technical solutions for architecture and planning in the tropics. Educated within the core of the European Modern Movement, under the mentorship of Hans Poelzig, Bruno Taut and Ernst May, Koenigsberger moves away from the ideal and expressionist realm to the real and specific context whilst working in India. This non–western experience triggers an interest in developing countries, mainly tropical ones. In 1954, Koenigsberger conceives a new course on Tropical Architecture at the Architectural Association in London, followed by a great number of architects, such as the Portuguese Luís Possolo, António Seabra and Schiappa de Campos, who would apply their learning in the countries of “Portuguese Africa”, as it was formerly known.

Marg Magazine: A Tryst with Architectural Modernity

Founded in 1946 on the eve of independence, Marg was the first Indian magazine to address modern architecture and town planning. As well as surveying classical and contemporary Indian art, architecture, crafts, dance, and photography it reported on contemporary foreign art and architecture, especially that of the United States and Europe. Frank Lloyd Wright and Richard Neutra appear in its pages alongside Le Corbusier and Erich Mendelsohn. This paper focuses on the actors involved in the founding of the groundbreaking magazine – from cultural figures such as Mulk Raj Anand and Homi Bhabha to the architects of the Modern Architectural Research Group (marg) including Otto Koenigsberger and Minnette De Silva. It discusses the defense of modern architecture as the only appropriate style for an independent India published in the magazine’s inaugural issue in 1946 and examines the dominant role Le Corbusier played and the way the planning position for which he stood was presented in Marg between 1949 and 1961, that is before and during his involvement in designing the new Punjabi state capital of Chandigarh. In addition, the paper analyses Indian architectural projects by both foreign and native architects published in Marg and argues that Marg’s enthusiastic support of modern European and American architecture is a prominent example of the way in which during this period urban postcolonial intellectuals supported modern architecture in order to distinguish themselves from the former colonial power, who was seen as having less adventurous taste. In the case of Marg, this occurred within the context of comprehensive and proud coverage of the subcontinent’s indigenous art, which, however, in the case of architecture (unlike other media, such as dance), the editors viewed as no longer belonging to a living tradition upon which contemporaries should draw.

Constructing a Shared Vision: Otto Koenigsberger and Tata & Sons

Although Otto Koenigsberger (1908–1999) began working in India eight years before the country won independence, he was not part of the British Raj’s colonial enterprise. As Government Architect of the semi-autonomous Princely Mysore State and later as Federal Director of Housing, as well as through his private architecture and planning practice, Koenigsberger worked on building the independent Indian nation from within. In this paper, the author will argue that the high profile private commissions for Tata & Sons—a privately owned and hugely influential industrial corporation committed to nationalism and philanthropy—both forwarded Koenigsberger’s career and directly contributed to building the infrastructure of independent India.As the basis for their sustained and successful collaboration, the author will demonstrate that Koenigsberger’s notion of a locally rooted, research-based “scientific architecture,” overlapped with the Tata Group’s philosophy of advancing India through science and technology. Moreover she will shed light on the networks of India’s cultural elite, illustrating that connections in the international realm of physics were responsible for the initial contact between the refugee architect and the industrial concern. While showing that his work with the Tatas enabled Koenigsberger to realise his architectural and planning goals more fully than his work as a government architect, the author proposes that the vision shared by Koenigsberger and the Tatas, and the projects they undertook, played a role in the dissolution of the British empire in India.

Building a Colonial Technoscientifi c Network: tropical architecture, building science and the politics of decolonization

The past few years have seen the emergence of an interesting body of new research on tropical architecture. This scholarship focuses mainly on the work of British architects in Africa during the mid-twentieth century. It examines a broad range of social, political, and cultural issues in the production of tropical architecture and engages in important debates on themes such as (post)colonialism and the politics of (de)colonization, and internationalization versus regionalism.1 The emergence of tropical architecture was linked to key fi gures such as Maxwell Fry, Jane Drew, and Otto Koenigsberger, important metropolitan institutions such as the Department of Tropical Architecture at the Architectural Association, and also landmark events such as the 1953 Conference on Tropical Architecture. There is no doubt that the best of this scholarship situates the production of tropical architecture in the context of complex socio-political relations between the metropole and the colonies, the British Empire and the postcolonial nations. It is, however, largely silent on the technoscientifi c dimensions of tropical architecture. This oversight is signifi cant given the technical nature of most of the discourses on tropical architecture in the mid-twentieth century.2

In‐dependence: Otto Koenigsberger and modernist urban resettlement in India

This article investigates the universalist problematic in Modern Movement town planning predominantly through the Indian phase of the career of Otto Koenigsberger (1909–99). Educated in Germany during the Weimar Republic but subjected to Nazi persecution, Koenigsberger migrated via Egypt to Bangalore and employment by the Tata Dynasty in 1939. Upon independence, he was appointed to Director of Housing in charge of New Town Development across India, including the organization of the Chandigarh commission. Koenigsberger’s architecture and town planning, in particular for Jamshedpur, mobilized current transatlantic modernist practice. It was predicated on the potential of abstract aesthetic and functionalist form to embody radical socio‐political change that surmounted both pre‐colonial and imperial conventions. While accommodating some features of Indian architectural tradition, Koenigsberger espoused non‐sectarian and standard solution, especially for housing. This thinking was most evident in his partially realized scheme for pan‐regional prefabricated dwelling units. The failure of this enterprise and ensuing political controversy caused him to resign and move to London. It is argued here that Koenigsberger’s experience in India informed his inauguration in 1957 of the School of Tropical Architectures at the Architectural Association and the department of Development Planning at University College London in 1972; these teaching posts coincided with successive reconsideration of his concept of urban design that culminated in the locally conditioned concept of Action Planning. The analytic is discursive, reading shifts in design thought out of Koenigsberger’s photographic and textual archive as well as his architectural and urban design work in India.

Announcement: Otto Koenigsberger prize

Announcement: Otto Koenigsberger prize

Announcement: Otto Koenigsberger Prize

Announcement: Otto Koenigsberger Prize

Errata for: Announcement: the Otto Koenigsberger prize

Errata for: Announcement: the Otto Koenigsberger prize

Bhubaneshwar: From a Temple Town to a Capital City. By Ravi Kalia. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994. xx, 236 pp. $39.95 (cloth).

When Orissa was constituted as the eleventh province of British India in 1936, the need for a new capital was immediately evident. In explaining the political, economic, and religious reasons for constructing the new capital of the region at Bhubaneswar, Ravi Kalia notes the often conservative attitudes of the Oriyan people, who initially opposed the transformation of this revered site into a capital city. Before it became the capital of Orissa in 1948, Bhubaneswar had been a temple town and an important Hindu cultural and religious center to followers of Buddhism, Jainism, Shaivism, and Vaishnavism. The presence of so many different religions in fact gave the city its pluralistic character, one of the factors responsible for its eventual selection as the capital city.The German planner Otto Koenigsberger was hired to implement the design of the new capital city. As Kalia explains, Koenigsberger and the Oriyas disagreed broadly in concept, with Koenigsberger perceiving the development of New Bhubaneswar along secular lines. He saw a flourishing city with political autonomy, organized commercial relationships, and brave new architecture that could accommodate the requirements of modern life. In contrast, the Oriyas wanted the city to retain its close relationship to its religious past. As a result, the conflicting concepts of temple town and capital city struggled for dominance.In the end, even though Koenigsberger provided a master plan, the developments in Bhubaneswar were carried out by British-trained Indians eager to find their own identity. The final shape and style of Bhubaneswar, Kalia concludes, bear the imprint of Indian religion as much as that of Western rationalism.

Realistic planning and qualitative research

It is common to find in planning both by government and via private consultants ideologically-loaded abstractions dressed up as practicality. There are plans for the year 2000, to which no channels of implementation exist; ‘New Cities’ of monumental character; ‘policies’ which bear a strong resemblance to the joint communiqu& of governments which disagree and which are not willing to declare their disagreement. This is particularly true of planning in the developing countries or less-developed countries (LDCs), and nowhere more so than in the field of housing. Here calculations of ‘deficit’ based on bad data relating to poor categories may be joined with ‘programmes’ constituting at best very partial solutions to the existing problems and at worst exacerbating them via slum clearance. There is a tendency to interpret such ‘paper plans’ and ‘show projects’ as representing a lack of sophistication. But surely there is more behind it than that. Unrealistic planning has behind it a huge weight of institutional interests of groups which benefit from the expensive projects, and by governments which need to appear as committed to progress, and to present a set of actions benefiting the few as a commitment to high standards for everyone. Thus to press for realism in housing and urban planning in LDCs requires not merely an intellectual grasp of the working of cities, but energy, tenacity, and moral commitment. It is not surprising, therefore, that Otto Koenigsberger has been one of the important figures in a slow movement towards greater realism in the way that housing and urban planning are thought about in the developing countries. Realism is grounded in a concern for the lives of people, as well as in common sense; for many years Koenigsberger has exemplified both. I want here to call attention to some particular developments in planning for the cities of the Third World developments with which Koenigsberger has had a good deal to do and to suggest their relationship to research. This is the development of approaches to housing and settlement policy which are less building programmes than intervention programmes. I will briefly indicate the types of research which have supported these programmatic approaches, and then discuss the way a commitment to these newer approaches requires a new approach to research as well one which relies much more heavily on qualitative methods than in the past.

Perfected for needs: Vernacular architecture in education

Just 20 years ago I was combining my job of teaching art and history at the Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture with being editor of the Architectural Association Journal. The issue for April 1963 contained a report on a recent System Building Seminar by the American critic, Allan Temko. System building was ‘in’ at the time, and this was reflected in the main feature of the issue, a report on the Department of Tropical Studies. The front cover design illustrates the point (Fig. 1). Included in the report was a Cross-section of Recent Work’ and an opening address for the Annual Exhibition given by the Rt. Hon. Dennis Vosper, TD, MP. He spoke warmly of the Department and of its Head, Dr Otto Koenigsberger whose life, he suggested, was a ‘sandwich course’, half spent at the AA and half carrying out international assignments like “advising on how to transform Lagos into the Venice of Africa”. Among the 27 students who received their AA Certificate of Tropical Studies that year were many who were to make a mark on education in ‘tropical’, or later, ‘development’ studies. All of them had undertaken the First Term project for the ‘Design of School Building for Industrialised Production’. The project was one which presented problems in ‘three contrasting climatic, technological and economic conditions’ and different teams were formed to prepare the schemes. To ensure that students came fresh to the problem and without preconceptions they each worked on a location which was well removed from their home: thus, the ‘Baghdad’ team was of students from Pakistan, India and the UK; Iraqi students did the Lagos location, and so on. I liked this idea, but was less than enthusiastic about the requirement that “the CLASP School for the Milan Exhibition” should be used and adapted, which seemd to me to inhibit alternative approaches in both education and design. And I was concerned that the social, cultural and educational contexts in which the schools were to be situated were hardly implicit in the stated objective: “to acquire an understanding of the effects of climate and technological background on system building methods and to become acquainted with Development Group principles”.’ Well, that was 20 years ago, and a lot of effluent has passed into the waters of Lagos since then it was not on Otto’s advice that Lagos came to exceed Venice in one respect only. Since that time when, in fact, the Tropical Department was already ten years old, much has happened. The Department itself became the Development Planning Unit (DPU) at London University, and many of its former students were actively engaged in practice, while others ran or were associated with other courses in various parts of the world.

The development of a school: An account of the department of development and tropical studies of the architectural association

In March 1953, a conference on ‘Tropical Architecture’ was held in London. The initiative for this came from a Nigerian student, Adedokun Adeyemi, who approached Otto Koenigsberger then a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for support in mounting a short course on designing and building in what is now referred to as the Third World. Adeyemi. who was in his fourth year at the Manchester School of Architecture, recognised that he had been well trained to practice effectively in the UK, but did not feel that he was equipped to design for the climate, culture and economy of his own country to which he was shortly to return with the title of Architect. He also observed that there was a growing number of students from the Commonwealth and colonies in the same position as himself, as well as English architects with ambitions to practise overseas although with no experience of conditions in the Tropics. Rather than mount a course straightaway, it was decided to hold a conference of experienced professionals to examine areas of specialist study needed in the training of architects for work in developing countries and to drum up support for such training. An Organising Committee of eminent professionals, academics and government advisers was assembled and the conference was duly held at University College London. During the week’s proceedings, 15 papers were read. many of which still have considerable significance. However, of most importance was a resolution unanimously carried on the last day of the conference that called upon members of the Organising Committee to ‘I. . . continue its work and foster:

Disasters as agents of change?: Or: Form follows failure

“Under the immediate impact of a disaster people are ready to change longstanding methods and customs. Therefore act quickly to introduce improved construction methods and bye-laws.“’ Those privileged to reflect from the vantage point of their mid-seventies can look back on the rapid rise and even more rapid demise of some of the more extreme stylistic aspects of the Modern Movement in architecture and planning. Throughout the period a clutch of cryptic aphorisms capture some oversimplified concepts of architectural expression. Horatio Greenough invented ‘Form follows Function’” which became the basis for Louis Sullivan’s philosphy of architecture. One hundred and fifty years later this concept was challenged by Robert Venturi’s rather cynical reversal ‘Function follows Form’, to be followed in close succession by some new arrivals ‘Form follows Culture’ of Hendryk Skolimowski” and ‘Form follows Fad or Fashion’ of uncertain authorship. I am using this paper to add another to the overcrowded and already confusing list ‘Form follows Failure’. Disasters as catalysts, the agents of change within the built environment? To what extent does architectural history endorse the wise words that failure provides opportunities “to change long standing methods and customs”? What are the conditions for such radical changes to occur in reconstruction planning, and can the process for the production of safe buildings and settlements be retarded or accelerated by intervention and if so of what type and character? By examining some rather randomly chosen historical precedents I hope to look at some of the issues which surround a neglected subject, close to the heart of Otto Koenigsberger. Most historians have described the sequence of architectural or planning developments as if they were solely a response to cultural, social, technological or economic, or more frequently aesthetic developments and constraints, without ‘learning from failure’. These comprise isolated events that have resulted in interesting innovations, or they may have had widespread implications for an entire building tradition on a national or even global scale. This paper explores a more systematic overview.