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| Modern with historic touches |
This is the third in a series of reports from a three week study trip to Kerala and Tamil Nadu in southern India
The tour of the Chettinad houses began with chai in a modern home, so new that the final coat of paint had still to be applied. Mutthaiah Kathiresan (or short: KT) stands proudly among the colorful walls of the house he had designed for his parents. This is the first Indian house our travel group sets foot in, not counting the apartment building in which we reside for our stay in Kozhikode, Kerala. We, that is a group of architecture students from Morgan State University in Baltimore, their professor and I. We had taken the trip from Tanjavur in Tamil Nadu to Karaikudi to see the houses of the Chettinar. After leaving our shoes in the yet to be tiled front entry area we are welcomed with coffee, tea and warm water. Like many new homes in southern India, this new structure is modernist in a way that reminds of the Bauhaus but could also have been derived from the traditional rectangular white Mediterranean architecture found on some Greek islands or in North Africa. The popularity of the austere modernist style for new homes in Southern India is quite surprising, given the ornate sculptural (Read
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[Klaus] Philipsen FAIA
Archplan Inc. Philipsen Architects
Baltimore MD
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