Amongst documents stored at Achyut Kanvinde's Delhi office, a box file holds a thick batch of the architect's written commentaries and essays. One of India's most significant and prolific modernists, Kanvinde's design speculations and built work were sporadically complemented with writings. Of the set of articles dated to the culminating years of his working life, a nine page, unpublished manuscript entitled, "Form and Design: Milk Processing Plants" , (1991) describes his approach to the design of milk factory buildings. As the lead title "Form and Design" registers, it is with a quotation of Louis Kahn's terms of reference that Kanvinde begins. Within literature on Kanvinde, Kahn's influence is consistently highlighted with many of Kanvinde's best known buildings read in terms of Kahnian tropes and strategies. Despite such explicit association however, Kanvinde's adjustment of Kahn's approach to local particularities remains understudied. Through a close and synthesised reading of Kahn and Kanvinde's "Form and Design" essays, written three decades apart, this paper reflects on their respective architectural priorities, as they align and deviate. The paper will argue that Kanvinde's reiteration of "Form" and "Design" translates Kahn's creative process to a framework for cultural localisation and a method by which an iconic architectural image for independent India is made manifest.