Becoming Hafeez Contractor: The Making of an Architect

By Harshad Bhatia

The ABC of Success: Architect, Building and Creativity From doodling on the edges of his schoolwork as a child to designing some of the iconic buildings in the country, Hafeez Contractor has had an outstanding career. Offices, residential complexes, hotels--he has done them all. From the trendsetting buildings at Hiranandani Gardens at Powai and the Imperial Towers at Tardeo, both in Mumbai, the futuristic Russi Mody Centre for Excellence in Jamshedpur and the ITC Grand Central hotel in Mumbai to the swanky apartments at DLF Gurgaon, Apollo Hospital in Delhi, the corporate offices of ONGC in Dehradun, IL&FS in Mumbai, and Infosys in Bangalore, Hafeez's creations have altered the physical profile of architecture in urban India. They may be loved or loathed, admired or avoided, but these monuments of modernity cannot be ignored. So, who is the man behind the architect? What drives him to continually outdo himself with each of his designs? What contributes to his brilliance and eccentricity? Based on extensive research and personal interactions with Contractor, Harshad Bhatia brings us a fascinating book on the life and work of India's most widely acclaimed architect-designer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9789353574031

Harshad Bhatia

Harshad Bhatia is a skilled urban designer, architect, ekistics intellectual and writer-editor based in Mumbai. He is a 1981 graduate and gold medallist from the Sir J.J. College of Architecture, Mumbai University, and a 1984 postgraduate and gold medallist from the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi. His professional firm, since 1986, has dealt with a wide range of projects. He is now a solo practitioner, tenure professor at Rizvi College of Architecture and visiting faculty in other local colleges. An innovative communicator, he has been invited to present papers at various conferences and his writing is featured in dailies, magazines and refereed journals.

Book preview

1

BEING BOTH: HUMAN & KIND

‘THERE IS NO LUCK WITHOUT HARD WORK,’ he wrote again. It was his daily ritual to scribble those words on the chalkboard every morning before class began. Sometimes he changed it to ‘THERE IS NO WORK WITHOUT HARD WORK’ or ‘THERE IS NO SUCCESS WITHOUT HARD WORK’. He was called Mr Tattoo and made fun of by the students in the Boys Town School at Nashik, Maharashtra. The students, primarily boarders, came from other towns. One of the boarders was Hafeez Contractor, a resident of Bombay, as the city was known then.

Hafeez Contractor is an architect of independent India. He was born on 19 June 1950 in Bombay to Roshan (1931–2006) and Sorabe Contractor (circa 1910–1950), who belonged to the Parsi Zoroastrian community in India. Unlike Hafeez’s aunts and other family members who would go on to live well into their nineties, his father passed away at a young age, just a fortnight or so before Hafeez was born. His mother, then nineteen years of age, decided to complete her college education and take up teaching as an occupation. Their only child was named Hafeez, meaning custodian, protector or keeper.

‘Contractor’ is a Parsi surname that derives from the occupation of doing contract work, mainly in construction. It seems that Hafeez’s grandfather had powerhouses in Ratlam and other locations in India. The Contractor family were inhabitants of the princely state of Baroda, which has a notable history of art, architecture and literature. Hafeez’s paternal forefathers seemed to have been the main contractors in Baroda State in their time. Among other notable institutional buildings, the city’s first privately owned and managed Agiary (house of second grade of fire) was built by them in 1923 at Sayajiganj.

Hafeez spent his toddler years in his maternal grandparents’ hometown of Navsari. He then schooled for two years at a Gujarati-medium institution run by the Tatas. Navsari is a township with a prominent rail junction on the Western Railway line and is the birthplace of Sir Jamsetji Tata (1839–1904). Navsari also has one of the main centuries-old Atash Behrams (fire of victory)—which are highest order of temples in the Parsi faith.

It is in this setting of the Atash Behram at Navsari that the young mind grew to appreciate the idyllic low-rise. This temple was a handsome and humble structure with a garden full of vegetation. At that age, of course, Hafeez did not know that it was an architectural insight of sorts. He felt good being there, and full of faith in good thoughts, good words and good deeds.

One day, during an excursion to a beach near Udvada—a coastal town which is the main centre of Zoroastrian Parsi community in India today and lies seventy-five kilometres north of Navsari—the child Hafeez, in his playful zeal, fearlessly ran across the sands and towards the ocean. He was seeking to explore the mighty waters ahead, out there, seemingly limitless, and ever in motion. He was simply curious. This was an episode that the adults, his mother and aunts, would see differently. They were worried. Here was a child who needed to be watched with care, they felt. His carefree enthusiasm was difficult for them to manage. And so, at the tender age of seven, Hafeez was admitted into a boarding (residential) school away from home. These traits of independence, of being born in a free India and a passion to explore, had framed his identity even then.

The mid-twentieth century marked a new era for India. The pre-Independence decades had been fraught with what I consider struggles to achieve ‘freedom from’ colonial rule. The history to be written by those born after Independence would be about survival, with a ‘freedom to’ attitude. There are architects in India of the ‘freedom from’ era, whereas those born after India’s Independence are the ‘freedom to’ generations. Hafeez Contractor is to be understood as belonging to the set of architects of post-Independence India. However, the well-known architects of India after independence, though born before India achieving it, were seeking an ideology for a free-nation-type of Indian representation in terms of its architecture.

But was there ever a standardized Indian-ness in architectural representation before Independence? For Indian history was dotted with various empires—Maurya, Gupta, Mughal and British in addition to local kingdoms who sought to protect their territories. India consisted of heterogeneity in expressing diversity of the built-up landscape. There is no one type of character that unified India through a common architectural style.

And so, architectural identities in a newly independent nation are also brought about by architects from the developed countries. Without an existing Indian expression in architecture, their designs relied for inspiration on the earlier creations prior to the advent of the British in India.

The quest for an Indian architecture is not restricted to structures meant for Indian occupants and local functions. It is in every type of projects in India that sought an architect to design the facility. For example, the US embassy building in New Delhi, designed by the American architect Edward Durell Stone (1902–1978) in the 1950s, marked a shift from his modernist rearing to include romanticism of a local context in expression. It was hailed by the popular media as one of the finest architectural edifices of its time. They cited its blend of American and South Asian design concepts—its expression of American stability through form and a courtyard typology, including sunscreens for local climatic protection, showing an Indian adaptation. Its design blend used the ornate concrete jali (perforated screen) walls, as found in temples of south India, the high plinth and gold leaf work on its pillars from Mughal buildings.

Interestingly, this design also marked a turning point in architect Edward Durell Stone’s standing within the architectural fraternity. His work and voice were largely kept away from critical debate due to this move from modernism to a sort of Beaux-Arts influence, albeit much lighter in effect. But the commissions in his work space grew rapidly, and he became a sought-after name in the field of architecture. His office took in more staff to meet the delivery needs of the project inflow. His was a successful practice, but his work seemed to be wilfully ignored by architects in general. The Durell example also indicated that even India looked to overseas architects to design for the new nation. The design of this US embassy in Delhi demonstrated that the architecture for India would possibly be hybrid, crossbred, fusion, mixed, but was there ever anything that came before it that could be considered the one and only Indian style in public building design? And was it even necessary to seek that route at all as India’s pre-Independence story is largely built on different independent empires? Would it matter as time went by?

This was also the quest of the ‘freedom from’ and ‘freedom to’ generations, each looking for an architectural vocabulary. But the difference was that the tendency of the ‘freedom from’ generation was to look at the past—including the one from which they broke away, ironically—whereas the ‘freedom to’ lot sought to make a future life of greater meaning and qualitative purpose. The former wanted to go back to their roots, if any, or to an existing familiarity, while the latter wanted to chart a direction towards an unseen future and forge an identity for the new nation.

The 1950s being the first or infant decade of new-born India, it became the age of the ‘freedom from’ generation. Given the situation, the search for the roots of an Indian architecture is but natural. The population of the world in 1950 was 2,556 million, of which India’s share was 359 million. This was remarkable for new India, which had more than a seventh, or 14 per cent, of the world’s population. This was a vital numerical headcount that could not be ignored for India’s future development as a nation. Somewhere, in the enthusiasm of the search for an Indian architecture—a search that was more visual in approach than based on the need for shelter—this quantifiable of a newborn nation with a large population count was swept aside. It would be a price to pay in the years to come.

At the time of Independence, Bombay city had been limited to the seven islands, joined together through reclamation, with Colaba in the south and Mahim and Sion in the north. Bombay district was formed in 1950 to merge the suburbs of Bombay up to Jogeshwari with the city along the Western Railway line and the eastern suburbs up to Bhandup along the Central Railway line. The population of Bombay in 1951, after this addition of geographical space, was about 2.34 million, and the total area of the city 235.1 square kilometres, with a density of 9,950 persons per square kilometre. This was populous by international benchmarks. This was urban India in the 1950s, to begin with. Staring in the face of development, architecture in Indian towns and cities then had to be seen against the backdrop of this irrefutable statistic.

However, as with most building projects in the world, Indian architecture too chose to follow the path of least density. The architectural works being featured in design magazines seemed to be patron-drawn and rarely people-driven. Historically, architecture is seen to be supported by patronage, and this is what gets documented for further research in the discipline. People-oriented projects tend to be done and over with, but seldom noted by the fraternity or even considered as architecture by some.

Just as old habits die hard, popular definitions too are difficult to change, even when times change. And so, even in the 1950s, the era of vinyl record players, architecture was mentally stuck in its age-old description of being an art before it is a science in the making of a building. The marked difference in the field now was the necessity to include the importance of allied utility services in addition to technology towards achieving shelter for habitation in terms of density. Architects seemed to have taken a direction that left the nuts and bolts of construction and numbers for others to cope with. Design was primary, building was not. This gave enough fodder for philosophical discourse as to whether the practice was about knowing architecture rather than doing it.

Joining the boarding school in Nashik in 1957 or so, the child Hafeez entered a life of freedom with control. This place imbued in him a sense of discipline, but it was in his final year at school that Hafeez grasped the seriousness of learning. As time went by, the subjects being taught did not seem important, but living with others of his age gave him a sense of being among equals. His independent nature kept him from textbooks, which were what the world around him was reading. But his keen sense of observation stirred his ability to draw, and to create objects with his hands.

Hafeez considered himself a toughie, disinterested in studies, but he was quite good at games and sports. Failure in exams seemed commonplace with him, and he was often deemed to have passed in class if his scores were borderline. During his time at home on vacations, his aunt would make him study his lessons. She would hold a cane while she supervised him at study, but she never really used the stick. Hafeez was the only male member at home amidst his mother and paternal aunts, and this devout family wanted the best for him. Here he learnt humility, righteousness and gratitude in prayer.

As might be expected from a boy, Hafeez drew designs of bikes, time bombs, dams, tanks, guns and forts with bastions and moats. He also made playthings from objects he found around him. His imagination converted historical battles into stories, depicted through drawings, models and character-based games, which he created with his close friend Behram Divecha. One day, Miss Nergis Bharucha, his English teacher in the primary school section, who had observed Hafeez over the years, told him, ‘You are such a useless boy. You are not studying or doing anything; but remember that when you grow up, become an architect, don’t do anything else.’ It seemed that she had noticed and sensed his true potential. Though Hafeez could not understand what she meant then, he made the connection later. His sketches were similar to the plans of the sort designers do for buildings.

There was a definite inborn skill at work here. While the mind was not yet mature enough to understand where exactly it was heading, the hand was busy, either drawing or fashioning something. He did this in times of distress. For example, out of necessity once, he made a button from a piece of chalk and stuck it to his shirt during the daily morning inspection of boarders before they left their dormitory for school.

The period of transition from childhood to adulthood is a turning point that affects a person mentally and physically. Mentally, a youth tends to seek clarity, and physically, endurance.

As Hafeez entered class on the first day of his Senior School Certificate (SSC) year, the principal, Bejon Desai, called him and said, ‘See son, don’t think I don’t know what you are doing. All this time I was in control of your destiny, but from now on you have to take charge.’ It was then that Hafeez realized that he had been promoted on account of the principal’s discretion. The principal also told the teen Hafeez that everyone came with a destiny and that he would have to study with determination; success came to those who worked hard. This caring advice left a positive mark on his morale, and during the entire final year of school Hafeez did not allow himself to be distracted by his usual pursuits but spent most of the time on his studies.

Suddenly he was mature, responsible, serious to catch up with his subjects, all the way from his fifth standard lessons onwards. However, being rather averse to textbooks and not being an avid reader, he relied on his uncanny instinct to sense logic from observation and by making connections to understand his school subjects. In 1968 he managed to clear his school examinations. This was a feather in his cap. His self-confidence, his focus and his dogged determination to get through the exams taught Hafeez that he could use his head in a practical way. This was the trait of a mind capable of objective analysis.

Hafeez remembered his primary school teacher’s advice that he become an architect. However, the necessary minimum percentage for admission was set at 80 per cent, and he had passed his SSC examination with just 48 per cent. Unsure if it would be possible for him to get admission to an architecture college, Hafeez, who had done well as a boy scout, prepared to join the defence forces as he was nearing the maximum age limit to be admitted for training as a cadet. On his own, he had applied to the National Defence Academy (NDA) at Khadakwasla, a place south-west of Poona (now Pune). A letter received in reply was torn up by his aunt as she did not want the only child in the family to spend any more time away from home. Hafeez was unaware of all this. He now told his mother about his wish to join the police force.

That too was denied and he was informed of the torn letter. At his mother’s insistence to first get a degree and his aunt’s advice to graduate from a Bombay-based institution, Hafeez decided to join a local college. Sent away to boarding school at a very young age and having lived a lot of his life away from home, Hafeez now stayed in a small, one-room-kitchen tenement in a charitable block near August Kranti Maidan in south Bombay. It was only in his final year at school that he had gathered that his widowed mother was managing the household on Rs 90 a month. His late father’s business partner Nariman Nallaseth kept sending her a monthly amount, which enabled her to take care of Hafeez’s expenses like any normal, aspiring child. As Hafeez was in boarding school, on his school holidays, mainly spent at Navsari, his mother showered the boy with whatever he wanted. However, his upbringing being modest, Hafeez’s demands were occasional; for an independent mind there is nothing called peer pressure.

The family seemed to be blessed that their only child, though demanding, had minimal wants. His wants never went beyond the needs for survival. For example, while his mother unquestioningly bought him whatever he wanted on his asking, such as a shirt for Rs 10 once, she declined to allow him to go on a tour to Delhi and Agra as she found it unaffordable. But Hafeez did go for the tour as his architect cousin Tehmasp Khareghat offered to pay for it.

The eventuality of getting whatever he asked for was following a pattern. There was a guide always appearing to grant his requests, much like a light that showed the path ahead. It was all fitting in, enabling him to reach a destination, yet unknown. During these formative years, whenever a stumbling block happened, en route, there was always a kind soul who helped Hafeez.

2

BOMBAY CALLING

WHILE Hafeez’s school years kept him largely shuttling between the green campus of the low-rise institutional buildings at Boys Town School in Nashik and the quaint old domestic town neighbourhood in Navsari, his family’s main place of residence was Bombay. By 1957 this growing city had geographically included the extended suburbs up to Dahisar and Mulund in the north-west and north-east, respectively. This area came to be known as Greater Bombay. This once port city had now expanded through reclamations that joined the seven islands of Colaba, Al Omanis Island (also known as Old Man’s Island), Bombay, Mazagaon, Parel, Mahim and Worli. It was called the island city, and connected with the mainland in the north, consisting of the western and eastern suburbs. Within the next three years, the larger Bombay state was dissolved to create the two separate states of Maharashtra and Gujarat in 1960, with Greater Bombay made capital of the former. As a major gateway for India to connect overseas, and with a railway terminal that linked the north and south of the country, Bombay was poised for rapid progress. This city of dreams was now more attractive than ever.

To ensure that growth opportunities were managed through controlled development, the city’s first development plan was finalized in 1967 (DP-1967), within a year of enacting the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act 1966 (MR&TP Act 1966). However, DP-1967 was preceded by the Development Control Rules in 1964, where the concept of Floor Space Index (FSI) was introduced. FSI defined the ratio of the total covered area on all floors of a building to the total area of the plot on which it stood. DP-1967 was to be implemented in a phase-wise manner over twenty years after which the next Development Plan would be made, as stipulated by the MR&TP Act 1966.

Greater Bombay was a strategic place, where land development and planning mattered. The message it sent to the world outside was of a bustling, fast-paced city of money, fortune and progress. The ‘statue of Progress’ stands atop the Greater Indian Peninsula (GIP) Railway headquarters edifice of 1888 (then known as Victoria Terminus and now renamed Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus). Similarly, the insignia of the Municipal Corporation of the city under the winged statue crowning the central gable at the main facade of the head office building of 1893 was inscribed with ‘Urbs prima in Indis’, stating that Bombay is the foremost city of India.

Bombay was the place that gave hope to people. It had become a site of prospect for settlers who came looking for work and prosperity. Offering the scope that it did, with a social mix of people that also offered a sense of belonging and connections that mattered for the enterprising to make it big, Bombay beckoned all. It was a successful city of pull. More brains meant more innovation, more hands increased production, more talent meant progress, and more money meant an investment advantage in the variety of options that resulted. People felt a sense of worth to be living here. This is where Hafeez’s future seemed to be calling him.

With a reference from his fua or uncle (paternal aunt’s husband) Sarosh Wadia, and armed with a heap of certificates in athletics and other sports in which he had excelled in school, Hafeez took admission at Jai Hind College near Churchgate in south Bombay. The failure to get admission to an architecture college opened his eyes to the world of competition. Realizing where he stood in real terms, he took it upon himself to get serious about his studies and not pass time in pointless play and entertainment. While pursuing his Bachelor’s degree course at Jai Hind College, Hafeez took German as his second language. When the German language teacher passed away mid-term, the college offered to refund Hafeez his fees. His other option was to take French as his second language, which he did. But he needed outside lessons to catch up with the mid-term class.

Fortunately, his architect-cousin Khareghat’s wife, being good in French, agreed to teach him. She did the typing work in her husband’s office, a small outfit with about two other staff. As this office was in Fort, within walking distance of his college, Hafeez started visiting this place to learn French from her. She taught him when there was no typing work for her to do. When she was busy, Hafeez watched the other staff work on the drawing board, with equipment like the T-square and set squares, the measuring scale, and the sharpened pencils and special point-pen type stationery for drafting.

Once the setting of an architectural drawing had seeped in, Hafeez’s sight went into the content of the drawing itself. The childhood trait of his disinclination to read text still lingered, and a graphic always aroused his curiosity.

One day, Hafeez noticed that the drawing being made by an assistant staff was for a window. This technical drawing would be used for construction and could be interpreted by a qualified eye only. However, Hafeez had always done similar diagrammatic representations of the bikes and forts he imagined since his early years. As a child, while he may not have known the terminology—of plan, section, elevation and the like—Hafeez could visualize a three-dimensional (3D) object and represent it in a two-dimensional (2D) drawing. So here he was, viewing the section drawing of a window. His mind started reading the details with closer understanding. There was something not quite right about this drawing. It was obvious that if executed in the manner shown, the window would not open. And he spoke aloud, ‘This window will not open.’

The assistant preparing the drawing looked up at Hafeez with defiance and said, ‘How the hell would you know? Of course, it’s a window, and it will open. You don’t know such things.’ In short, he was saying, ‘Do not teach me.’ Hafeez responded to this with conviction, ‘Let’s take a bet?’ Just at that moment his architect cousin walked in. Hafeez asked him, pointing to the drawing, ‘Don’t you agree this window shutter will not open?’ Tehmasp Khareghat looked at the drawing and agreed. He was curious to know how an untrained eye could comprehend the architectural drawing. Hafeez told him that he had always been making drawings of three-dimensional (3D) objects that interested him to understand them. Drawing was Hafeez’s daily diet. To test Hafeez, Tehmasp asked if he would draw a two-bedroom house. Within a few minutes, Hafeez presented him a sketch of his design. Having seen that Hafeez had an unusual talent for drawing, Tehmasp showed him an axonometric, which is a 3D representation, but with parallel lines, unlike a perspective drawing, and asked him to draw the house design in this manner. Hafeez put his pencil to paper and drew an axonometric (3D) view with ease. His cousin was astonished. He told Hafeez, ‘Do one thing, forget your French language classes and everything. Just enrol for an architecture degree course immediately.’ This was music to Hafeez’s ears, as it was in tune with his earliest memory of the school teacher’s observation that architecture was what he was cut out for. But how could he enrol: ‘No college is giving me admission,’ he told Tehmasp.

Realizing that Hafeez had a natural talent for architecture, Tehmasp made a call to their other architect-cousin Dinyar Wadia, who was now settled in the US, to know if he could get admission for Hafeez in a local Bombay college. Till Tehmasp heard from Dinyar, Hafeez was visiting Khareghat’s office daily to study architectural drawings and also to work, for which he was paid a sum of Rs 30 every month. In one instance, he did a freehand drawing for a school in Khandala. His mind was made up—he would pursue a degree in architecture with dogged determination. He even spent the pocket-money amount of Rs 10 from his mother on buying stationery like stencils, which cost him Rs 8, just to make his drawings look like those of an architect. He cherished his drawings with a joy all his own. Hafeez was elated to see the school building at Khandala shaping up along the lines of his hand-drawn sketch. He was now even more motivated to become an architect.

The only two colleges offering courses in architecture were the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of Arts (Sir J.J. School of Arts), the oldest architecture institution in India, which began offering a degree in that discipline in 1907, and the Academy of Architecture, which was in existence since 1955. While the Sir J.J. School of Arts campus also had a degree course that was a full-time five-year programme in its Sir J.J.