Dear Mr. Curtis,

As a student from Mr. B. V. Doshi’s (now erstwhile) School of Architecture, I was introduced to your scholarship in early years of my training and hence I am a great admirer your work on history of modern architecture.

As you have now taken cognition of the restoration program announced by IIMA and have decided to educate us Indians about heritage with a grand statement of “as if anyone can step into the master’s shoes” I am tempted to write this open letter to you about “modern” architecture that you have been an intellectual flag-bearer of.

But before we jump to “modern architecture” that you are a champion of, let me point out that I do love IIMA and other works of Louis Kahn that Asia is blessed to have.

Even though his climate-agnostic ideas like thick walls (that disallow heat to escape from indoor spaces making them a nightmare for residential areas used mainly during the night) and making cardinal technological error of mixing brick and concrete without any protection (that IIMA has been paying through its nose just to maintain), I love IIMA for its scale and Kahn for his ability to impress poor natives so much that they allowed him to spend humungous amount of their money to realize his personal fantasy (at the time when the GDP of entire India was less than 4000 crores, i.e. one fifth of the cost predicted for Central Vista today).

Kahn belongs to the Indiana Jones Franchise (in case of IIMA, complete with a white hero, an expert on ancient cultures with a local side-kick) as his architecture scattered across Asia is more of a fragmented and shallow caricature of visual themes from ancient nations as perceived by a westerner, but I will have to admit that I have always been impressed by his audacity because what he did is key aspect of modern architecture.

Modern architecture and its “masters” deserve a lot of appreciation for one reason and that is the iconoclastic attitude they have displayed by departing from traditional visual themes.

Modern architecture makes a lot of sense because I feel that architectural themes of each era are always driven by the prevailing technologies of that era and hence it was the duty of modern architects too to follow that greater underlying tradition of absorbing technologies of their own era instead of sticking to the superficial visual themes from past.

So “modern masters”, especially Corbusier, for me is a true master who did what great masters from past must have done, and that is to give architecture a new direction by allowing technologies of his era to speak honestly through his work without worrying about the peer pressure of past “masters”.

Now, as you are worried about “as if anyone can step into the master’s shoes”, I want you to take a walk down a street of a modern city in China or Dubai and see what has happened while you thought that the world produced its last masters who could not be replaced by anyone today.