Sankt Petri Malmo Sweden

Sankt Petri parish church in Lund’s peninsula is a parish church in central Malmo, Sweden and may be began to be built in the 1300s. Parish churches have been at the heart of local Catholic communities for centuries. It is a Gothic Architecture building built for modern day Church

                                                                                               

                                                                                                                                           

 
 
 

The church is built as a basilica with three ships and cross-ships. Basilica derived from the Greeks and is meant a royal reception hall. Basilica in architectural sense is a building of the hall type, a model of many Christian Church Buildings. The present church is actually married to two saints, St. Peter and St. Paul. St. Peter's Church's medieval building chronology can be determined by the various building phases that today are visible in the church's masonry. Tinted glass windows are a treat to watch

JUST MORE THAN HUNDRED YEARS AGO

JUST MORE THAN HUNDRED YEARS AGO

Question of the ultimate fate of Sibpur Engineering College has created a great sensation among the people of Bengal. It is declared that the site of the present college has been sold to the Port Commissioners, as Sir Andrew Fraser conceived the idea of removing the college to Ranchi. But if the proposed removal be not advisable owing to the town of Ranchi being in a separate province, the land sold to the port authorities may be taken back as they can easily find scope elsewhere for their development. The present site of the college extends over half a mile along the Ganges and is a quarter of a mile in breadth. In order to erect similar buildings elsewhere for the proper accommodation of the college the government will have to spend at least 20 lakhs of rupees exclusive of the cost of removal of the laboratory and workshop fittings which will be another two lakhs. The maintenance of an engineering college in Bengal is absolutely necessary for the proper development of her resource, it is therefore extremely desirable to retain the college where it is.......

A residential college in Sibpur is much superior to one at Calcutta. It is away from temptation of the town and it has splendid recreation grounds which cannot be had at Calcutta

As the discussion is a very important one, the attention of the government is drawn to the fact that the committee is constituted does not properly represent the people of the province whose interest are deeply concerned. It is desirable that at least the opinions of some of the well known Indian engineers and other leaders should be consulted before deciding upon a final scheme.

To all well wishers and ex student of the college-please give a thought.

An Indian Engineer written more than hundred years ago       The Statesman

The University was established in 1974. President Fakruddin Ali Ahmed (1974-1977) laid the foundation stone. Chief Minister of West Bengal (1972-1977) inaugurated the Agricultural University in the newly built campus at Mohanpur, Nadia. An Architectural firm was entrusted to visualize and plan the project with development of all basic infrastructures. State PWD was entrusted to implement the construction. This process was in force may be around five years. Buildings like Administrative Building with later additions, Agricultural Building with vertical additions at a later date, Central Library Building, Communication Center, Undergraduate and Post Graduate Students Hostels, Horticulture Unit and few staff quarters and Vice Chancellor’s Residence. It is sad to see the Campus. There is no consistency in character of works done at a later date in the campus. It may be done by other authorities but still. It was really not expected.

Persons involved in the process among others were (mostly dead) S. B. Chattopadhya, Biswanath Chakraborty, Gopal Mukherjee, Prasanta Mukherjee and Dilip Roy, Pradip Bose, Sujit Sil, Subodth Nandy, Prabir Chakraborty, Indra Nath Mukherjee, Kalyan Das, Gautam Sen, Ranjit Mitra, Ratnamala Misra,

IISER established on 2006, under construction West Bengal University of Technology, University of Kalyani, University of Dairy Technology, Haringhata Dairy Farm and other big and small upcoming educational Institutions including privately conceived ones are all within striking distance. 

The area can be potentially developed as an Educational Hub of great National importance. 

                                                           Cambodia- an Angkor  Art

Angkor meaning city is the name of a region near the modern city of Seam Reap, part of Seam Reap province in Cambodia, that was the Center of Kambuja or Kambujadesh, the historical Kingdom of the Khmer-people from the 9^th until the 15^th Century AD. This area is the confluence of Siem Reap River and Tonley Sap River, part of it forming a great fresh water lake of about 2500 sq km area. Ultimately it meets mighty Mekong River 120 km away on the south. This great body of low depth water as is natural for any sustainable development maintained the Angkoran Civilization and the Khmer Empire from 802 CE of powerful Hindu-Buddhist Rule in the South East Asia with its greatest and crumbling legacy is Angkor. Some of the floating fishing villages are worth visiting during the visit of Angkor. 

Restoration project of Naga and Singha images at the Causeway and outer gateways of Bayon Angkor are in progress under UNESCO. Bayon serves as the monument that serves as the " Churning of Sea of Milk around which is coiled the Serpentine Vasuki." This is the belt that the gods and demons use and by their exertion in rotating it as demonstrated on each causeway from the depth of water come the Elixir of immortality.

In the Face Towers depicting Bodhisattva - Avalokiteshvara are some of the spectacular sculptures that are witnessed in Bayon temple in Angkor Thom. In Buddhist philosophy and thoughts a Bodhisattva is a state in being who has not attained enlightenment and may refrain from Nirvana in the hopes of aiding others to reach. In Theravada Buddhist, conventionally the term is applied to hypothetical beings with a high degree of enlighten and power. These are dated late 12^th to 13^th century in a period in Angkor where, may be Hinduism giving way to Buddhism.

Almost all the exterior galleries, that are, today without roofs have Bas-reliefs on the walls. The Chinese appear in many places, they form a troupe of foot soldiers, shop owners with Khmer women as wives and in drunken dance abroad a boat. Other Bas-reliefs show small stall at the market place, Construction workers plotting a route, Women preparing grilled fish on skewers and women suffering sickness, Such varied scenes eloquently portray the daily life of the people. The Bas Reliefs of Angkor Wat also portray the same sort of daily life including Apsaras, Devata.

Over the years the area has overgrown with tree overgrowing the structures, an interesting piece of architecture.

Pictures taken in early October 2015.

                                                                                                  

                     “Villa Le Lac” A House for the parents

Georges Edouard Jeanneret, a watch engraver and enameler and his wife Marie Charlotte Amelie Jeanneret- Perret, a music teacher of little Suisse village was presented with a “Small House” by his architect son at Vevey near Lac Leman in the year 1924. The architect did prepare some initial sketches of the building, which incidentally is lost to us, but the project was delayed in finding a suitable site. The “Villa Le Lac” was ultimately built at 21, Rue de Lavaux-1802 Corseaux on the shores of Lac Leman (Geneva) Suisse in the year 1924.

I along with my wife (on a seminar) was on holiday in July 2004 to Switzerland and stayed for a few days in Vevey, a beautiful city on the north east of Lac Leman and with Alps all around. While exploring the city which is the headquarters of Nestle and Montreux, famous for great Jazz festival we came across a statue of hungry Charlie Chaplin, the great British director and actor. I knew that the great man spent around last thirty years of his fruitful life in a little village in Vevey and interned in Corsier-Sur-Vevey cemetery after his death on Christmas day 1977. We decided to visit the place one afternoon and after lot of inquiry were able to locate the tomb stone and pay homage to the hungry man. During our inquiry in the same locality we were told by the locals to visit a “Small House” now converted to museum by the “Foundation Le Corbusier” on the eastern end of Lac Leman.

After some time we found the “Small House” at 21, Rue de Lavaux-1802 Corseaux on the shores of Lac Leman Suisse just besides the road. After initial formalities, the curator said to spent as much time we want and eat as much fruits we like from the blooming cherry tree, which stands on the left hand side of the villa. We did enjoy our stay with fruits picked from the roof while the curator was engrossed with his book. The single storied little house is really little with not more than 700 sq ft with lake on the south and road on the north, which is blocked with boundary wall with creepers. The south east of the small premise has a beautiful sitting area with uninterrupted view of the lake for the owners. The lake side has long windows to have the view of the lake and the high peaks of Alps in Italy. 

The inside has no partitions and compartments except for toilet with door opening without the shutter to facilitate wheel chair bound old parents of the great architect. I was told that the father stayed there for about five years and the mother for more than twenty years. I don’t want to go into further details and my impression of the building and its furniture as it may be immaterial to others. 

While wandering through the area and furniture designed by the architect for its famous inhabitants, I remember suddenly the famous words of the famous architect “You employ stone, wood and concrete and with these materials you build houses and palaces, that is construction, ingenuity is at work. But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good. I am happy and I say, this is beautiful, that is architecture, art enters in”

Charles Edouard Jeanneret, the Swiss born French architect born on 6th October 1887. He adopted Le Corbusier as his pseudonym in 1920. He is also well known in India as architect planner of union territory Chandigarh, which I saw for the first time during my student days forty six years back. But alas it is nightmarish vision now and I avoid visiting its famous buildings and structures for fear of forgetting the awestruck impact on me forty six years back, which I still cherish with strong will not to forget. He and his collaborators also did some wonderful masterpieces in and around Ahmedabad, details of which are well known to all of us including we in Calcutta enjoyed their presence to some extent.

Nov- 2011.

                                                                                                              

Professor Fakrul Alam came to FD-462 Salt lake on 22nd February 2017 and gave us his recent book Ocean of Sorrow of Mir Mosharraf Hossain, translated by Fakrul from very famous work of the writer "Bishad Sindhu", published by Bangla Academy Dhaka on November 2016.
I am yet to start reading the book. Just a few years ago on 30th December 2012 I, Somdatta and Nazma visited the museum on Mosharraf Hossain, may be not fully complete in Kushtia Bangladesh.

                                                   Villa Tugendhat

                            A journey to Brno by - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

I was fortunate to learn of Villa Tugendhat through a reporting by Alice Rawsthorn entitled “Reopening a Mies Modernist Landmark” in the “The New York Times” dated February 24, 2012. The villa was built for Fritz and Greta Tugendhat’s by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. House owners were from rich Jewish families of industrialists and businessman from Germany working in the textiles industries decided in staying permanently in Brno then in Czechoslovakia. The big plot of land was part of property of Greta’s parents the Low Beer villa sloping down towards west from the main road has beautiful and magnificent view of historic skyline of medieval Brno, where about fifty years ago Gregor Johann Mendel (1822-1884) founder of science of Genetics studied and wrote his historic Pea plant experiments in St. Thomas Abbey.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) had basic training in his German father’s stone carving shop was Dutch from his mother’s side. Mies joined in a studio of Bruno Paul as draughtsman for around four years from 1908. The three great 20^th century Architects besides Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) were Le Corbusier (1887-1965) of Swiss- French origin, Walter Gropius (1883-1969) and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe worked together as architect for a brief period on 1910-11 in the office in Berlin of Peter Behrens (1868-1940) who was part of modernist movement. Walter Gropius the German architect is considered founder of Bauhaus school and Mies subsequently formed their office. Mies settled in Chicago and Gropius in Harvard University left in 1938. Both settled in USA and pursue their carriers in architecture and teaching.

Design of the German pavilion for the Barcelona World Exposition in1929, which was pulled down but rebuilt in 1986 as a building of merit has already made his mark as radical architect of the 20^th century with design principle of “Less is More”. This may have influenced Fritz and Greta Tugendhat to appoint him as their architect. The brief was precise and specific may be with little or no financial considerations. This induces Mies in his early 40s to design the living spaces with radical abundance through an open plan. This unique work of art with its spatial arrangement, interior furnishing, new and modern technical features, and merged with the natural environment.

Alfred Low-Beer gave his daughter Greta the plot with its marvelous panoramic setting for a scheduled visit of the architect to the site in September 1928. By New Year’s Eve the architect’s vision with finance playing no significant role is reflected in the completed project drawings as prepared and discussed in the architect’s studio. In the words of Greta , we asked about the small crosses at five meters apart in a huge room with one circular and freestanding wall, which we were told as steel columns to support the entire structure. For the first time in the history of architecture a residential house was built with 29 numbers of steel columns of a unique cross profile with riveting L profiles, Italian travertine, onyx from the foothills of the Atlas in northern Morocco, Rosewood, Zebra wood and Macassar ebony from South east Asia. At that time private house of steel structure is completely new in concept.

The permission to build on owner’s application dated April 1929 was granted on the 26^th of October 1929. The completed house on 45 Cernopolni Street for exclusive use of Greta Tugendhat was granted on 1^st December 1930. Construction was executed by the brothers of local contractors Brno Construction Company of Arthur and Moric Eisler. Besides the brothers, Interior designer Lilly Reich and garden implementer Marketa- Roderova - Mullerova were involved.

The three storied detached building with main entrance from the road is situated in a vestibule behind the arch of a milk glazed wall. It is of very simple planning of creating living space is very much revolutionary in concept and execution. Entrance is through third floor, may be called the bed room floor with bed rooms of the owners, children’s and guests on the south side detached by terraces from the garage and Chauffer’s suite on the north. The wide staircase from the central hall leads to second floor of huge area with dining, living, study, pantry, kitchen, storage and servant’s rooms and other areas. The west side has 10mm thick, mirror plate glass wall which entirely slides down to first with electric motor to look out over the garden and beyond. The huge area with a small spiral staircase and dumb waiter is divided into areas with velvet curtain and Onyx wall is to change colors with light.

The first floor, which is called technical floor has boiler room and storage for coke, the cellar, hot air heating and cooling system, store for garden furniture now used as exhibition - auditorium, motor room for operating sliding window, drying and ironing room now it is used as exhibition and book shop, storm water reservoir and laundry room and dark room and moth chamber. Villa is equipped with an electric eye at the entrance besides the other safety signaling systems.

The result is one of the brilliantly conceived ideas and materially used in as door stopper, door and window handles as designed by Walter Gropius and lighting fixtures in some areas as designed by Poul Henningsen. The house was equipped with a collection of furniture, like armchairs and reclining chairs primarily being designed by Mies for the Tugendhat.  Part of the built in works was built by local builders. Architect and designer Lilly Reich’s has the contribution to the look of the interiors. Owners were fond of the part of art work of the Villa including The Observing Female Torso by German Expressionist Wilhelm Lehmbruck.

Owners enjoyed their stay in the building but only for about eight years and left for St. Gallen in Switzerland in May 1938 before the Nazi invasion and annexation of Austria in 1938. In January 1941 for further safety Tugendhat family left for Caracas in Venezuela. The house was confiscated by the Gestapo on early October 1939 and became the property of the German Reich from January 1942. By this time the curved inner wall of Makassar ebony has already been removed along with the majority of the furniture.

The cavalry unit of the Red army of Marshal Malinovsky devastated the house during the liberation of Brno in April 1945. Red army liberated Czechoslovakia in 1944 and the

Communist era continued from 1948 to1989. It uses the first and second floor as stable for army horses. Woods of the remaining furniture served as fuel, while the linoleum on the floors destroyed by the hoofs of the horses. Dancing and rhythm school of Karla Hladka continue to function from August 1945 up to June 1950. The structure was placed under the ownership of the Czechoslovak state in October 1950 and a rehabilitation centre for children with spine defects was established with the control of the nearby children’s hospital.

Greta who lived at the time in St. Gallen, Switzerland returned to the Villa for the first time after twenty nine years, has to say that I was horrified by the state of the house and changes in construction which have been carried out are awful and nobody would be able to imagine that this can be considered a special construction work.

An exhibition on the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe took place in the Brno House of Arts in December 1968 and January 1969. Greta with architect Dirk Lohan Grandson of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe also visited Brno at this time. Mies’s Chicago studio was prepared to coordinate renewal work of the structure. The political situation of socialist Czechoslovakia however changed dramatically after the Soviet occupation in 1968. This less than sympathetic atmosphere along with the deaths of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

(1969), Greta Tugendhat (1970) brought all considerations regarding renewal work on the villa to a halt for a number of years.

The first Renewal and Reconstruction work on the villa was carried out over the years in 1981-1985 by the State Institute for Reconstruction of Historical Towns and Buildings in Brno which served for gala events for the city and occasional accommodation of guests. It was not open to public.

After the Czechoslovak Velvet Revolution in November 1989, Villa Tugendhat was briefly made accessible to the public while remaining a government building. At that time it was under democratic Czechoslovakia from 1989 to1992. Brno is at easy distance in between Prague and Bratislava which resulted in political negotiations regarding the separation of Czechoslovakia took place in Villa. It is to witness the signing and creation of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic in January 1993 under its roof and in the garden. In July 1994 it was placed under the administration of the Brno City Museum and in August 1995 the Villa was declared a National Cultural Museum.

UNESCO designated Villa Tugendhat as a World Cultural Heritage in December 2001. Reconstruction and restoration started in February 2010. The old roofing assembly was replaced and waterproofing of the entire surface of the roof carried out. All non original built in walls and brick walls were removed. The cladding of the columns and onyx wall was cleaned. Certain elements were specially produced for villa, like original linoleum floor surface of DLW. The original veneered Makassar ebony of the original built in book shelf was removed from the villa in 1940. Major part of it served as cladding for another Brno building until 2011. This authentic element has since returned to its rightful place after demands has been made on the part of the restorers.

The project organizers are the City of Brno, Brno University of Technology, Architecture Faculty and the Brno City Museum as partners. Overall cost amounted to approximately 180 million Czech crowns. The built up area is 907 sq m, the main living area is 237 sq m and area of the garden is 5650 sq m.

It reopened in March 2012 for visitors with all furniture and fixtures as planned and built more than eighty years ago. The response is to see with personal visit.

People who visualize and create art and architecture are scared of misuse of their creation over the years. In the case of buildings, which are planned and built for specific purpose of use of the owners. More than eighty years old Villa Tugendhat was built exclusively for residential use only which they had the benefit of enjoyment for eight years only. Rest of its subsistence it accommodated people of varied taste and used it for their specific purpose. The goodness of design and structure is the hallmark of good architecture which witnesses time and withstand the ravages of people “less said is better”.

February 2017.