A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(December 2023) |
Christopher Charles Benninger | |
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Born | Hamilton, Ohio, U.S. | November 23, 1942
Alma mater | Harvard Graduate School of Design MIT University of Florida |
Occupation | Architect |
Awards | Great Master Architect of India IIA Excellence in Architecture Doctor of Philosophy (Honoris Causa) in Architecture, CEPT University |
Practice | CCBA Designs |
Projects | Mahindra United World College Suzlon One Earth India House Supreme Court of Bhutan CEPT University College of Engineering Pune Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad |
Design | Principles of Intelligent Urbanism |
Website | ccba |
Christopher Charles Benninger (born 23 November 1942) is an Indian architect and urban planner. Born in the US, he permanently migrated to India in 1971. Benninger contributed to the field of critical regionalism [1] [2] and sustainable planning in India. [3]
Following his departure from the position of professor at Harvard in 1971, Benninger came to Ahmedabad, where he was appointed as a Ford Foundation advisor to the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology. [4] At CEPT, he co-founded the Faculty of Planning with Yoginder Alagh and BV Doshi in 1972. He also founded the Center for Development Studies and Activities in 1976 with Aneeta Gokhale Benninger. He serves on the board of directors of CEPT University. [5] In 2024, he was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy (Honoris Causa) in Architecture from CEPT University. [6]
He has worked with various banks concerning policies, and with various countries and states to create development plans.
Benninger has written two books, Christopher Benninger: Architecture for a Modern India, a collection of his works, and Letters to a Young Architect, a collection of lectures and articles, which is a bestseller in India [7]
Benninger's architectural studio CCBA Designs is based out of Pune, which specialises in sustainable design solutions.
Benninger was able to attend United Nations Security Council Meetings as an observer. Sir Robert Jackson, a friend of Benninger's uncle Adlai Stevenson II gifted Benninger a lifetime subscription to the development journal Ekistics , introducing him to a science of human settlement centered around Constantinos Apostolos Doxiadis's theories. Barbara Ward became Benninger's lifelong mentor, inviting him to the 1967 Delos Symposium in Greece. [8] [9]
Benninger graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Florida in 1966. While at the University of Florida, he was a student founder of the Freedom Party. Under Martin Luther King's leadership, he and his sister, Judith Benninger Brown, actively supported the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), entering segregated cinema halls and restaurants with their African-American friends, and forcing the owners to allow access to African-Americans into their establishments. [10]
Benninger completed his Master of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1967. He studied under Josep Lluis Sert, Jerzy Soltan and Mirko Basaldella. Benninger studied development economics under John Kenneth Galbraith, past ambassador to India and author of The New Industrial State . After this, he first visited India as a Fulbright fellow in 1968. He continued his post-graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, under Horacio Caminos, working on the book Urban Dwelling Environments. He received a master's degree in city planning from MIT in 1971. [11]
In early 2024, Benninger was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Philosophy from CEPT University.
Benninger is married to Aneeta Gokhale Benninger, an environmentalist, and has one son. [12]
In 1971, Benninger returned to India as a Ford Foundation consultant to the Ahmedabad Education Society to help set up the School of Planning in 1972 along with Yoginder Alagh and B.V. Doshi. [13] Benninger shifted to Pune in 1976 where he founded the Center for Development Studies and Activities. [14] In 1983, Benninger wrote the theme paper for the United Nations Commission on Human Settlements 1984. In 1986, he successfully argued to the Asian Development Bank the case for extending financial assistance to the urban development sector. [15] Benninger is on the board of editors of Cities journal, published in the UK. [16]
One of Benninger's first projects was an Economically Weaker Section (EWS) township in Jamnagar developed with the Gujarat Housing Board in 1972. In 1973, he worked with the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority and developed a site-and-services approach to EWS housing in Arunbakkam. In 1976, Benninger assisted Hyderabad Urban Development Authority in its first project, a 2000-unit township for government employees. [17] He designed the SOS Children's Villages in Bawana in 1975 and in Kolkatta three years later in 1978. [2] In 1976, designed the Alliance Fraincase Centre in Ahmedabad. In 1984, he designed the campus for the Center for Development Studies and Activities which he had founded in 1976. [18]
As a World Bank consultant, Benninger planned out the site and services, core housing, and slum upgradation programmes for the Calcutta Metropolitan Development in 1974. In 1979, he was a part of the team to design and programme Indonesia's first National Rural Development Program, in collaboration with the newly established Urban Development Ministry. Later that year, under Christopher Benninger and Aneeta Benninger, CDSA developed India's pilot Integrated Rural Development Program. [19] [20] In this period, CDSA also prepared social inputs for Area Development Plans in Goa and Almora. [21] With UNICEF, he led a CDSA team to prepare a plan of actionfor the development of Bhutan (1979–80). [15] He was engaged by the UNCHS to develop plans for six cities in Sri Lanka: Jafna, Ratnapura, Kalutara, Hambantota, Galle and Matara. [22] In 1986, Benninger worked on the development plan for Thane and Kalyan with a focus on urban management and poverty upliftment. [23] In 2001, Benninger was appointed to prepare the structure plan for Thimphu. [24] [25] In 2004, the Government of Bhutan along with the Government of India appointed him again to prepare plans for three towns along their shared border. [26] [27] In 2012, he designed the new town of Denchi in East Bhutan. Benninger's work in urban design, city management and town planning resulted in his principles of intelligent urbanism. [28]
Benninger's designs include the Mahindra United World College of India, the Samundra Institute of Maritime Studies, the YMCA International Camp in Nilshi, India, the Kirloskar Institute of Advanced Management Studies, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. [29] Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis have noted Benninger's work as one of the first instances of critical regionalism in India. [30]
Mahindra United World College of India won the Designer of the Year Award [31] in 1999. It also was the recipient of the Business Week Architectural Record Award for Excellence in 2000. Business Week called the Mahindra United World College of India one of the ten super structures of the world in 2000. [32]
Constantinos A. Doxiadis, often cited as C. A. Doxiadis, was a Greek architect and urban planner. During the 1960s, he was the lead architect and planner of Islamabad, which was to serve as the new capital city of Pakistan. He was later known as the father of ekistics, which concerns the multi-aspect science of human settlements.
UWC Mahindra College is a pre-university international boarding school, located 40 km (25 mi) west of Pune in Maharashtra, India. The college is a two-year programme with about 250 full-time boarders, and follows the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program (DP). It is one of the 18 United World Colleges. The school was established in 1997 with the support of Harish Mahindra and Anand Mahindra of the Mahindra Group.
Ekistics is the science of human settlements including regional, city, community planning and dwelling design. Its major incentive was the emergence of increasingly large and complex conurbations, tending even to a worldwide city. The study involves every kind of human settlement, with particular attention to geography, ecology, human psychology, anthropology, culture, politics, and occasionally aesthetics.
CEPT University, formerly the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology, is an academic institution located near University Area in Ahmedabad, India offering undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral programmes in areas of natural and developed environment of human society and related disciplines.
Principles of Intelligent Urbanism (PIU) is a theory of urban planning composed of a set of ten axioms intended to guide the formulation of city plans and urban designs. They are intended to reconcile and integrate diverse urban planning and management concerns. These axioms include environmental sustainability, heritage conservation, appropriate technology, infrastructure-efficiency, placemaking, social access, transit-oriented development, regional integration, human scale, and institutional integrity. The term was coined by Prof. Christopher Charles Benninger.
The Center for Development Studies and Activities, (CDSA), is a research and post graduate teaching institution located in Pune, India. Founded by the architect and urban planner Christopher Charles Benninger and geographer and sustainable development planner Aneeta Gokhale Benninger in 1976, the institute became known for its pioneering work in decentralised planning, micro-level planning, and watershed management. The institute has carried out policy analysis for the World Bank, United Nations, various central ministries of the Government of India, the Government of Sri Lanka, the Royal Government of Bhutan, the Asian Development Bank and various countries in Asia.
The MIT School of Architecture and Planning is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1865 by William Robert Ware, the school offered the first architecture curriculum in the United States and was the first architecture program established within a university. MIT's Department of Architecture has consistently ranked among the top architecture/built environment schools in the world.
Alexander Tzonis is a Greek-born architect, author, and researcher. He has made contributions to architectural theory, history and design cognition, bringing together scientific and humanistic approaches in a synthesis. Since 1975, he has been collaborating in most projects with Liane Lefaivre. In 1985, he founded and directed Design Knowledge Systems (DKS), a multidisciplinary research institute for the study of architectural theory and the development of design thinking tools at TU Delft. Tzonis is known for his work on the classical canon, history of the emergence and development of modern architectural thinking, creative design by analogy, and introducing the idea of critical regionalism.
Otto H. Königsberger was a German architect who worked mainly in urban development planning in Africa, Asia and Latin America, with the United Nations. He also proposed some plans for developing new cities like Bhubaneswar and Jamshedpur under the vision of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who wanted to build planned cities in India.
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The National Aptitude Test in Architecture (NATA), is conducted by National Institute of Advanced Studies in Architecture (NIASA), which is a body of Council of Architecture, New Delhi in India. The National Aptitude Test in Architecture is a national level examination for admission to undergraduate courses in architecture. The test measures the aptitude of applicants for a specific field of study in areas like drawing and observation skills, sense of proportion, aesthetic sensitivity and critical thinking, qualities that have been acquired over a long period of time and that are related to architecture.
Mary Jaqueline Tyrwhitt was a British town planner, journalist, editor and educator. She was at the centre of the transnational network of theoreticians and practitioners who shaped the post-war Modern Movement in decentralized community design, residential architecture and social reform. She contributed in developing methods for the application of the ideas of Patrick Geddes, as well as publicizing them. Even Tyrwhitt had never met Geddes, she was able to extract from his many writings key ideas and concepts to disseminate among her colleagues and injected Geddesian thinking into conferences, discussions, curricula, publications, and policy documents.
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Hasmukh Chandulal Patel was an architect credited with making significant contributions to contemporary architecture in India in a career spanning over four decades in the latter half of 20th century. His works are held in high-regard alongside those of prominent Indian architects in the post-independence era like Achyut Kanvinde, Charles Correa, Anant Raje, B.V. Doshi and others.
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