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'Tree of knowledge'
LARSEN & TOUBRO's Madras-based construction division, ECC, the biggest construction organisation in the country, has done it again. For the fourth time it has won a fib award for `outstanding concrete structures', this time a `Special Mention' fib, the international federation for structural concrete, was founded in the 1950s and presents its awards at its Quadrennial Congress, this year's, in Osaka, Japan, the 14th
The 2002 award was presented to L&T for its `Knowledge Centre' built to house the Engineering Design & Research Centre of the ECC. The Centre, within 100 metres of three other buildings of outstanding design, is part of a campus that has more eye-catching buildings than any other area of the same size in the State, perhaps in the country. I am not the greatest fan of modern architectural design, but must confess to always looking at the ECC campus while passing by, to spot what's new after I had seen its first construction here, in Manapakkam, just before Porur, on the Bangalore road. That first building, its headquarters, had won the `Most Outstanding Structure' award in 1994, when L&T-ECC also won `Special Mention' for the Sri Sathya Sai Nigamagamam in Hyderabad. In 1998 it won the award again, for the Sree Kanteerava Indoor Stadium, Bangalore.
The headquarters building, designed by architect and Parliamentarian Piloo Mody, was striking for being built on four pillars, each supporting an inverted four-sided pyramid supporting a generously-windowed, four-storied square block. The Knowledge Centre, to a basic design - deriving from the `Tree of Knowledge' concept - provided by K.S. Ranganath of Bangalore, is even more striking than its neighbour, the headquarters building, supported as it is by a single trunk. From the first floor level spread its branches, each a four-floored curved triangle that looks more like the petal of a flower but is conceived as a branch. In fact, the citation stated that the Jury "liked the impressive architecture... made of a series of levels with different orientations in a floral pattern spreading out from the central column".
The third eye-catching building in the campus is the ECCs multi-domed Convention Centre, each of whose three circular blocks is surmounted by a shell-domed roof. The Centre houses a dining room, a column-free 1000-seat auditorium, two conference halls and a management centre. But its most significant feature is `The Dizi Gallery', named after Dattaray Gunda Kulkarni (Dizi), one of Mumbai's leading artists who belonged to the era of Ara, Souza and Hussein. The Gallery, created through the efforts of Anjani Desai, wife of former L&T Chairman N.M. Desai, is unique in India, for nowhere else are there so many works of one artist exhibited under one private roof. This permanent exhibition, both in the gallery and on the walls of the Centre, comprises 187 oils, watercolours, linocuts, drawings, cartoons and sculpture. The Centre, designed in-house, won the `Most Outstanding Concrete Structure 1997' award from the Indian Concrete Institute.
Inaugurated on the campus in August is its newest building, the L&T Infotech Park - another landmark construction. Much quieter is the Construction Skills Training Institute offering vocational courses to Class 10-pass students. And across the road are the buildings of other L&T companies, AUDCO and LTM, reflecting the same attention to architecture, gardens and environmental ambience. All this and the Gallery deserve greater public attention. Wouldn't it be nice if ECC opened out the grounds and the Gallery to conducted groups once a week? It might get more people interested in a better Madras - and modern art!
S.MUTTHIAH
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