Over the last few decades, Bombay has become India's New York - the embodiment of modernity, hope and squalor - the mythical city. Land values have increased dramatically and the high-rise solution to housing the developers choice. In 1970 when Correa received this commission to build high-income flats he wondered whether he could use the principles of climate control, zoning of spaces, and views that he had used in housing elsewhere (especially those ideas he had explored in the unbuilt projects for the Cosmopolis apartments of 1958, the Boyce Houses of 1962 and the Rallis Apartments of 1973). The challenge was irresistible, and with images of Corbusier's skip-level sections, Safdie's Montreal's Habitat and his own housing experiments, he characteristically plunged into the task which finally resulted in the completed work in 1983; some fifteen years after its inception. This project was done in conjunction with Pravina Mehta as associate architect and Shirish Patel as structural engineer. The Bombay climate and location present architects with a contradictory situation: the east-west axis affords the best views (of the Arabian Sea to the west and the harbour to the east) and catches all the sea breezes, but also brings into the buildings the hot afternoon sun and the hard monsoon rains. Correa decided to use the organisation of a bungalow of wrapping around the main living spaces a protective veranda, the traditional covered open space often used in hot climates. He developed this idea further when he realised that; ”another interesting variation on the principle of the bungalow is to turn the veranda or buffer zone into a garden which not only protects the living areas from the sun and rain but actually thrives on them". Combining climatic considerations with that of views he settled upon a configuration of interlocking units which faced east and west. Kanchanjunga (a name taken from the second highest mountain of the Himalayan range) is a condominium of 32 luxury apartments of three to six bedrooms each. The building is 28 storeys (85 metres) high and square in plan: 21 metres x 21 metres. The basic interlock is that of a three and four bedroom apartment with the larger flats formed by the addition of another half level. The structure is built around a central service core which was constructed first. Each of the flats has large usable garden-terraces which have dramatic city views. In section, there is a continuous variation of internal spaces best expressed as shear walls on the north and south elevations of the buildings. Correa’s housing normally focussed on low-rise cluster housing. The Kunchanjunga Apartments gave him the opportunity to explore his ideas in a dense and land-scarce expensive urban environment, in a vertical expression of his architectural principles. Using concrete to form the structure, the central core containing the elevators and services was built first allowing the apartments to wrap around it with more plasticity than would have been possible using brick or other materials. Concrete permitted the complexity in volumetric composition and section, all within a deceptively simple skin composition. The building is distinctive in Bombay's urban landscape. The apartments are well ventilated and appear to suit the contemporary life-style of the city's well-to-do. The highly articulated and complex interiors do not follow the geometric rhythms of the exterior but create their own spaces within their envelope. The two-floor height veranda-like terrace acts as a mediator between the internal and external spaces by becoming the ordering element of the building. The cut-out shapes of these terraces on two facades (the other two punctuated by smaller openings) enliven, through the use of coloured tiled walls and brightly painted ceilings, a variety of internal spaces. From within the flats themselves, there are views out from the living and bedrooms and from the terraces the city is overlooked, presenting the habitants with an ever-changing panorama.

Aus der Ausgabe 01-2005