Mill Owner's Building, also known as Mill Owner's Association or Ahmedabad Textile Mills Association (ATMA), is a modern architecture building in

Ahmedabad Ahmedabad ( ), also spelled Amdavad (), is the most populous city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It is the administrative headquarters of the Ahmedabad district and the seat of the Gujarat High Court. Ahmedabad's population of 5,570,585 ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , ; ), was a Swiss-French architectural designer, painter, urban planner and writer, who was one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture ...

History

In 1891, the Mill Owners' Association (ATMA) was formed in

, with Ranchhodlal Chhotalal as its founder president. Anasuya Sarabhai, sister of

Ambalal Sarabhai Ambalal Sarabhai (23 February 1890 – 13 July 1967) was an Indian industrialist, philanthropist, institution builder, and a supporter of Mahatma Gandhi. He was born in a Śvetāmbara Jain and Shrimal Jain, Shrimali family. He served as the cha ...

, served as its President. She played a key role in

Mahatma Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2October 186930January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalism, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethics, political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful Indian ...

-led Champaran Satyagraha. Le Corbusier came to India to design

Chandigarh Chandigarh is a city and union territory in northern India, serving as the shared capital of the states of Punjab and Haryana. Situated near the foothills of the Shivalik range of Himalayas, it borders Haryana to the east and Punjab in the ...

in 1951. He was invited to Ahmedabad by mayor Chinubhai Chimanbhai. Surottam Hutheesing, then president of Ahmedabad Mill Owners' Association, commissioned Corbusier to build the new headquarters of the association. It was completed in 1954.

Design

A ceremonial ramp makes for a grand approach into a triple height entrance hall, open to the wind. Arrival is on the first floor, where (as per the original design) the executives' offices and boardroom are located. The ground floor houses the work-spaces of the clerks and a separate, single-story canteen at the rear. On the third floor is a high, top-lit auditorium with a roof canopy and a curved, enclosing wall, in addition to a generous lobby. The east and west façades are in the form of sun breakers or ''brise-soleil'', one of Corbusier's many formal inventions, which, while avoiding harsh sun, permit visual connection and air movement. While the ''brise-soleil'' act as free façades made of rough shuttered concrete, the north and south sides, built in rough brickwork, are almost unbroken. On the second floor of the Mill Owners' Building, the lobby is treated as "an open space defined by harsh, angular forms and the auditorium as an enclosed space delineated by soft, curvilinear forms …two contradictory elements that both need the other in order to exist."

Philosophy

In designing the office, Le Corbusier understood the essence of the Association very well. Since 1891, AMOA had provided an institutional framework for the close family ties of the city's largely Jain,

textile mill Textile manufacturing or textile engineering is a major industry. It is largely based on the conversion of fibre into yarn, then yarn into fabric. These are then dyed or printed, fabricated into cloth which is then converted into useful good ...

owners. Corbusier expressed the institution's dual character - the public and the private - through his concept of the house as a palace (Une maison - un palais).

Villa Cook Villa Cook or Maison Cook is a house built by the noted architect Le Corbusier, located in Boulogne-sur-Seine, France. History of the commission William Edwards Cook's father died in 1924, at which time he became an heir (along with a sister an ...

, designed by him in 1926 and based on this same concept, is considered to be the closest antecedent of the Mill Owners' Building. Conversely, many of his later projects, most notably the

Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts is the only building designed primarily by Le Corbusier in the United States—he contributed to the design of the United Nations Secretariat Building— ...

at Harvard, benefited from some of the experiments carried out in this particular building.

References

External links

Official website of ATMA
{{Le Corbusier Buildings and structures in Ahmedabad Le Corbusier buildings in India Tourist attractions in Ahmedabad Textile industry in Gujarat