The AMA Building at Ahmedabad

Speaker: Bimal Patel

6.30 pm | September 11, 1998
Little Theatre, National Center for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

The primary objective of the Ahmedabad Management Association is to provide continuing education for the staff of its 400 member firms and industries. Classrooms, seminar rooms, an auditorium, a library, and an exhibition hall take up a large portion of the AMA Building. The building is located in the `institutional enclave’ of western Ahmedabad, surrounded by fine examples of modern architecture – the Indian Institute of Management, the ATIRA building, the School of Architecture, the Newman Hall Jesuit Novitiate to mention a few.

The design of the AMA Building is wholeheartedly `modern’ – it eschews what might be broadly termed as `post-modern’ concerns, which over the last fifteen years, have preoccupied many architects in India. Being disenchanted with the assault of kitsch all around the seemingly widespread belief that modernism and all that it stood for should be thrown out of the window, the opportunity to design the AMA Building was used to unashamedly explore the modernist way of doing things. The same approach was followed in the design for the building’s interior. For the design team, this was rejuvenating experience convincing us that what is needed today (probably even more than in the sixties) is a return.