RÉPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE 
MNAM/CCI
CENTRE POMPIDOU

To whomsoever it may concern

Paris, le 20 Septembre 2015

Between 2013 and 2015, it was our honour to present the work of Raj Rewal architect in the Musée national d’art modern in Centre Pompidou (Paris) and exhibit the major buildings he designed in last fifty years in India.

The monograph we devoted to his practice and was the occasion to highlight about fifteen buildings which remains major for the worldwide contemporary architecture. Among them, the Hall of Nation and the Nehru Pavillion (sic!) in the Pragati Madan, (sic!) both built to celebrate the 25 years of Indian Independence, express a new step in the development of modernity in terms of aesthetic, constructive innovation and social engagement. On one hand, the Nehru pavilion is probably the first attempt of a contemporary interpretation of the multi-secular traditional architecture in India; on the other hand, the Hall ofNation is known, in Europe as in United States, as the first large scale spatial structure n concrete in the world.

Built toward the future, those two buildings opened to a new identity of an Indian architecture. At the age of globalisation, as the debate on the contemporary architecture leads scholars and curators to increase the study and the cultural knowledge of the sub-continent architecture, these two buildings remain today as masterpieces

As curator of Centre Pompidou, in charge of a program of research and exhibition on the south Asia architecture, our duty is to promote the creation in this field. From our understanding, the Hall of Nation and the Nehru Pavillion should be considered as a major heritage of the post-independence architecture and need to be preserved. We want then to express our support and our wish to contribute to the recognition of these two great pieces of architecture and their proper maintenance as part of the architectural heritage.

[signed]
Aurélien Lemonier
Curator, department of architecture, Mnam-Cci, Centre Pompidou, Paris