Architects in City Development Plans: Ar. Rahul Dalvi, Baroda

The journey is quite interesting for a person who dreamt of being a Mechanical Engineer throughout senior school, but landed in architecture college by a stroke of luck and then stuck to it like plaster on brickwork.

We had a very strong family background in sports wherein my dad, brother and uncle played Ranji trophy cricket even as my dad represented India in table tennis and retained state championship title for 5 consecutive years. As was expected, I took to sports naturally as I represented school & city in football, skating and badminton with a distinction of having played nationals and state level cricket.

My professional journey started right from my 1^st year when I decided to work for Ar. Dipak Panchal on a part time basis to gain experience. This experience changed my perception towards this field and made me aware of the expectations from this profession much before time. Contrary to everyone’s expectations, this experience made me sail through my academics with ease. After having worked in this office for almost 7 years, I moved to the office of Baroda’s veteran architect Anand Shirgaokar, and worked there for a year and a half.  This was another big step in my professional life. This experience made me see forms and appreciate minute spaces and details – differently. I feel lucky to have been blessed with an opportunity to have worked under both these gurus, as their genuine practice style, loyalty towards the profession and their conduct is what has inspired me and shaped me into what I am today.   

Friendship and later marriage to my batch-mate, Ar. Swapnil was yet another big step in my professional journey. Swapnil has the knack of adding elements of aesthetics in my structured designs, creating wonderful inner spaces. She has also given absolute support and encouragement in the most trying times that each one faces in initial years of practice. Her approach to problems helped me realize that design is way beyond paper & pencil. She has more than 50% of stake in making our designs look and feel good though I take the most credit and compliments - in our male chauvinist society.

Bagging urban design work for Vadodara city in a stiff competition with IIA and nationally reputed architects, just a couple of years after graduation, was a major turning point in our professional life as we became the first ever consultants to the Vadodara Municipal Corporation for traffic decongestion solutions and urban design issues.

Being a visiting faculty for years at M. S. University & Vadodara Design Academy, jury member to many colleges of Gujarat & Maharashtra, conducting workshops & giving presentations, being EC committee member at IIA Vadodara and being Chairman IIID Vadodara are factors that have directly and indirectly impacted my professional practice & conduct….

I feel it is good to be in a smaller city to practice creativity and know everything about the trade.

Larger the city, more the financial power of clients, lesser the space, better access to material & new technology, faster implementation, lesser interference of the client, more consultants to share the load… but in this whole positive jargon there is very less time allotted to create pure architecture or give justice to design.

I feel the smaller the city the more are its financial constraints, more creative liberty and hence more the learning. According to me financial constraints incites better logical creativity. Improvisation, innovativeness arising out of limitation and purity of design is seen more in smaller cities. Smaller (educated) towns with limited financial resources have well informed clients who wish to equip themselves with proper information to save money. This aspect indirectly strengthens design and engineering concepts of all designers as they, at times, work on projects devoid of all required consultants. As a great deal of time is saved in travel and office working costs, the design practice is more pure, real and less cosmetic. Smaller cities have the Design community more integrated, interactive and sharing. 

Institutions like IIA and IIID help designers to understand and practice ‘good conduct’ not by preaching but by organizing meetings, workshops & presentations. The field of design and architecture is all about getting exposed to new ideas, new creations & updating our knowledge bank. This aspect is never fulfilled by being on the paper all the time… these institutions organize seminars and presentations of masters and designers who have contributed to the progress of this noble profession. Attending such events is the easiest and the most important way of getting required exposure.

These institutions also help in creating a strong relationship amongst the fraternity, this bond/relationship incites a different level of confidence and open-ness. Also, they help in strengthening educational norms, getting in byelaw reforms wherever required and most importantly bring in a high level of dignity to the profession. 

I firmly believe that just earning bread and butter should not be the sole purpose of our life. Our profession directly affects the society and hence we should go beyond the call of duty towards our clients who pay us. Our philanthropy for the society should be in the form of giving time and effort towards the well-being of our city, towards our fraternity in the form of volunteering for efforts of associations like IIID & IIA, towards the aspiring youth by teaching or guiding students at design colleges and as a true designer in creating ‘design for the masses’ and not for the classes alone. 

Transparency and openness is the key to success in this present world. A properly instated and managed architectural cell headed by qualified planner/s & architect/s in each city corporation is the first step towards controlling haphazard development and in providing a systematic city development. A panel of professionals from associations like IIID, IIA amongst others to oversee all city development proposals would ensure unbiased opinion and a healthy outcome.

A controlled (but necessary) political interference and basic educational qualification for politicians would further ensure logical use of tax money.

The present committee’s focus was and is to build efficient bridges between various organizations as we believe that only collectively we can achieve a constructive outcome with respect to the development of the city. IIID Baroda has managed to get maximum respectability (till date) from the society and the authorities, as the corporation seeks our views (as we closely involve ourselves) in all its development plans.

Baroda is an apt sized city, one which is cosmopolitan and modern yet strong in tradition and culture with its glorious past as being one of the best developed cities of the country, much before its time. However, the city is still surviving on the provisions made by our visionary ruler - the great Maharaja Shri Sayajirao Gaekwad. Hence, preserving the sanctity of the city, its essence and still growing to the present modern needs of the civilization is a challenge our city is experiencing, just as many in our country.

Making the city development authorities aware of how to address development issues without denting the heritage value, preventing them from blindly following other cities with the ‘maximum flyovers & glass box skyscrapers’ theory, inculcating better lifestyle rather than faster lifestyle interventions and introducing culturally rich strong points (learning from the past) in the new Town Planning schemes, is our initial and long-term thought for the city’s future.    

According to me, giving rebirth to a dilapidated city is more important than creating a new town altogether, as the fight to change a mindset to bring in a change is a challenge in itself… it also talks about designing awareness programmes and convincing the authorities and the citizen for humongous amount of patience that is required to see desired results.

Paris is one such place. It was a real shabby city of slums till Baron Haussman redesigned it in 1853 and laid a fresh blueprint for what we see today… the city has distinctly placed huge boulevards throughout the city with squares, new railroads, modern structures that compliment the heritage and a business district development that decongests the tight European planning. Even today Paris remains one of the most visited cities of the world just as the residents feel proud of their city and are more than comfortable to the floating /visiting population.

I also give full Credit to the ‘aware’ development council of towns like Bruges, Amsterdam & Brussels which are as responsible as the planners who laid their development plans; Heritage, culture, progress & development is a consistent process which may /may not be rightly anticipated on the designing table of planners or architects all the time. Hence, it is ultimately the maturity of the governing development authority that makes or breaks a city, town or district.

With the recently revamped bus depot (pic: 5) and the swanky new air terminal (pic: 6) inaugurated last week, Baroda is looking at further, lesser but more significant urban interventions. Involvement of local architects in the city's development plans seems to be the most sensible way forward; however, the dialogue is often limited by varied factors. The initiative taken by Ar. Rahul Dalvi in his position as the Chairperson of IIID BRC, in establishing the connect between the city's municipal authorities and the design fraternity is commendable! It is this that one sees a real effort to take forward the IIID President Mr. Pratap Jadhav's mission of "taking design to the masses"!

On another note, the architect's personal portfolio is also getting more prolific and impressive. Besides a refined aesthetic that marks his work, it is the keen sense of detailing that adds dashes of chutzpah and charm. (pics: 7-15). One of TFOD's earliest members and supporters,  we wish the dashing designer more success on the way ahead!

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