The legendary architect Balkrishna Doshi's approach to creative freedom and playful design was deeply influenced by his mentor Le Corbusier's mischievous personality, according to his granddaughter and fellow architect Khushnu Panthaki Hoof. In an exclusive interview, Panthaki Hoof revealed that the Swiss-French modernist pioneer "used to prank a lot," which shaped Doshi's lifelong philosophy that architecture should be fun rather than overly serious.
"Doshi would never want anyone to be serious," explained Panthaki Hoof, co-founder of Studio Sangath. "He would say to me, 'You've been too serious.' It was because he worked with Corbusier, who used to prank a lot." As a child, Panthaki Hoof said her grandfather spoke so highly of Le Corbusier that she initially mistook him for a family member. "Doshi considered him like his grandfather. They had a very close relationship. Growing up, I didn't know who Corbusier was, so I thought he was a relative."
The deep bond between the two architects was evident in Doshi's daily routine. "There was a picture of Le Corbusier in his room and every morning he would look at the picture, and it was a picture he had taken of Corbusier looking at him," Panthaki Hoof recalled. "He really revered his teachers." This reverence stemmed from their first meeting at a conference in England, shortly after Doshi graduated and Le Corbusier had been commissioned to masterplan the Indian city of Chandigarh.
Their professional relationship began when Doshi worked in Le Corbusier's Paris studio for four years before returning to India to supervise the firm's projects in Ahmedabad. According to Panthaki Hoof, Le Corbusier's influence on Doshi's working style was profound and lasted throughout his 70-year career. "Every day he had to challenge himself," she explained, noting how this philosophy resulted in Doshi's remarkably diverse portfolio, from the Aranya Low-Cost Housing development to the brutalist Tagore Memorial Hall.
"If you look at his work, the projects are all very different," Panthaki Hoof observed. "There's not a single style that he followed because he really believed that every day he had to challenge himself through something new." This approach originated from Le Corbusier's memorable advice to his protégé. "Corbusier told him that 'You must always remember that every morning you're born in the skin of a donkey,' so you have to reinvent yourself every single day. That was very important to him."
Doshi passed this philosophy of creative freedom to his granddaughter, encouraging her to forge her own architectural path rather than simply continuing his legacy. "Working with him was not about doing what he was doing. It was really about learning to follow your own path and staying true to the profession," Panthaki Hoof explained. "It was more about a philosophical way of looking at things. He was somebody who wanted you to be free – he wouldn't hold you back."
This liberating approach became particularly evident during the development of Doshi Retreat, a winding meditation space at the Vitra Campus in Germany that represents Doshi's final project and his first work outside India. The building was completed by Panthaki Hoof and her husband Sonkë Hoof, with whom she leads Studio Sangath. When Vitra chairman Rolf Fehlbaum originally commissioned a modest meditation space, Doshi characteristically pushed the boundaries of the brief.
"Rolf was looking for a two-meter-by-two-meter space, and then Doshi got so excited we did this," Panthaki Hoof said, referring to the final 75-meter-long structure. Despite her nervousness about presenting such a daring design, Doshi maintained his lighthearted philosophy: "If it doesn't get built, it doesn't matter, we'll have fun." This attitude reflected his fundamental belief that the creative process itself was more important than the final outcome.
The playful design process Panthaki Hoof described reflects the two decades she spent working with her grandfather at Vastu Shilpa Consultants, the studio he founded in 1955. "We worked with him for almost over two decades. It was a very open-ended process. He was not someone who would tell you that this is how it's to be done. And I think that has been the biggest learning from him as a teacher," she explained. "It was more about provoking me, because he loved to provoke, asking 'Let me see what you can do with this.' We just had fun."
Doshi's love of gentle mischief extended beyond his immediate family to visitors of his iconic studio space, Sangath, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad where Studio Sangath is now based. "At our own office space, Sangath, you come from the busy road and then you walk in, and it's not a linear path," Panthaki Hoof described. "Then there are these long steps, 20 steps, going up. You would think that's where the entrance is, but that's not where the entrance is. Every visitor would get confused – that was his favorite story to tell, how he would confuse people."
Doshi passed away in 2023 at the age of 95, shortly after receiving the 2022 RIBA Royal Gold Medal. Throughout his career, he completed more than 100 built projects and was widely celebrated for his transformative influence on modern Indian architecture. In 2018, this recognition culminated in his becoming the first Indian architect to win the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize.
In his final days, Doshi imparted one last piece of wisdom that perfectly encapsulated his nonconformist approach to architecture. "In the last days he was at home, and I used to go there and sit with him in the garden. He would be on a wheelchair, and he would just stare at nature and sometimes say a few things," Panthaki Hoof reflected. When she asked him about the most important thing to remember in life, his response was characteristically unexpected: "Fiction."
"I said, 'Why fiction?' And he said, 'Because it has no beginning and no end. It constantly evolves, and it expresses fluidity of time. It's free, and that is what you should remember,'" she recalled. This final conversation reveals the essence of Doshi's architectural philosophy – one that valued imagination, storytelling, and the freedom to continuously reinvent oneself, all lessons learned from his pranking mentor Le Corbusier decades earlier.
