Last week when Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked off events to mark the 75th year of India’s Independence, tucked away in one corner of the venue at Sabarmati Ashram was a 59-year-old architect staving off any media attention. Not many in attendance aware that it was this man who was at the core of the Rs 1,200-crore ambitious project to redesign the Mahatma Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad.
This was not the first time Bimal Patel had tried to stay incognito avoiding a constant media focus on prestigious projects that he is working on. He has chosen to stay silent avoiding any ‘publicity hankering’ over the Prime Minister’s pet project, the Central Vista that aims at redesigning the ‘power corridors’ of India.
Bimal is the architect for the Rs 14,000-crore project that was given a go-head by the Supreme Court recently.
The Ahmedabad-based architect was conferred the Padma Shri in 2019 for architecture. Apart from the Central Vista project, Bimal has also designed the Sabarmati Riverfront development project, another pet project of PM Modi. The Ahmedabad-located Entrepreneurship Design Institute (EDI), designed by him, bagged the Aga Khan award for architecture and it was this award that made him return to India from University of Berkley. He has also designed the new campus of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad.
But not many know that being a physicist was the first choice for this architect. Though he used to accompany his father Hasmukh Patel, who was also a prominent architect, to his design office as a child but it was physics which attracted him and that meant frequent visits to Vikram Sarabhai Community Science Centre.
“Having studied at St Xavier School in Ahmedabad, a senior Jesuit had a very great influence in order to enable us to think about social and nation development. He used to run something called the Social Service League that enriched the minds of the kids and help them think,” recollected Bimal in an exclusive conversation with News 18.com
“The thoughts on why India as a country was not being able to achieve its potential influenced me to explore urban planning which was necessary to do after architecture,” said Patel.
After he cleared his 12th, he chose architecture as his choice of profession and topped the entrance examination at CEPT, Architecture, Planning and Design University that he heads now. Though he had many award winning projects under his belt, it is the Central Vista project that pushed him right under a media glare. Asked what his reaction was when he bagged the prestigious project. “It was like wow, unimaginable but that comes with huge responsibility,” he quipped.
He is more of a reader than ‘viewer’ perhaps explained by the fact that he doesn’t have a television set at home. And someone who experiments with designs, blends the old with the new, seems quite fixated when it comes to choosing colours for his wardrobe. He is spotted more often in blue, black, grey and white but has his own explanation behind that, “Why use your brains in what you have to wear, there are other creative things that you can use your brain for, though off late I have stopped wearing white,” says Patel.
His wife, Ismet Khambatta, a practicing furniture designer, too prefers staying away from the limelight. Bimal says he was fortunate to grow up in a modern architecturally sound house designed by his father and that is where he had learnt on how to describe a project as he would listen to his father telling visitors about the design and the concept. He still visits the house daily for lunch though it has been years since his parents passed away. “It makes you feel good to be connected to a house that you have grown in.”
The new IIM Ahmedabad building that was probably one of the biggest challenges of blending the new with the old brought in some praise and even criticism but as Patel says, “You learn not to repeat your mistakes when you intently listen to all the criticism.”
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