Les heures fragiles

Virginie Grimaldi

Description

This book explores and celebrates the life and work of the Indian modernist architect Aditya Prakash through a series of visual essays, augmented reality audios, videos and lavish illustrations
Featuring many previously unseen pictures and maps
Also enhanced with augmented reality audio interviews, video interviews and slideshows, available through the custom-made BooksPlus app

Vikramaditya Prakash (1924-2008) belonged to the first generation of Indian modernists that came into its own in the Nehruvian era. Built around a multi-disciplinary oeuvre that was unique amongst his peers, Prakash's life was dedicated to finding the 'one continuous line' which linked art - as the search for the beautiful, architecture - as the enabler of life, and planning - as the ethic of protecting the interests of poor.

Interspersed with a series of visual essays, this book is conceived as an introduction to Prakash's vast body of work. Besides practicing architecture, he was an academic, a prolific painter, sculptor, furniture designer, stage set-designer, poet and public speaker. This volume documents Prakash's education as an architect in Delhi and London, his early modernist works, his deep artistic impulses, his love of theatre, and his efforts to rally a culture of academic inquiry. The narrative describes his successes and failures, his arguments for and against modernism, postmodernism and globalization, and his passion for sustainable urbanism, the animal and the acoustic. The book concludes with an interpretive essay on Prakash's life and legacy, along with lavish illustrations of a portfolio of select works.

"More than just a biography, this book is a criticalassessment of Aditya Prakash's oeuvre as a designer, painter and philosopher" - Mark JarzombekProfessor of History, Theory and Criticism, MIT

"At once deeply moving and seriously informative, this book details a life in architecture in post-Independence India dedicated to social service, education, and environmental reform." - Anthony Vilder, Professor of Architecture at The Cooper Union

"This book charts the intellectual odyssey of thepioneering artist, architect and urban planner, Aditya Prakash, a multi-talented renaissance man." - Partha Mitter, writer & historian on art & culture

"An intimate, revelatory analysis of a life that exemplified the cosmopolitan modernism and national commitments of India's founding, Nehruvian generation." -Sunil Khilnani, Avantha Professor & Director, King's India Institute, King's College London

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