(b Hyderabad, 1 Sept 1930). Indian architect and urban planner. He studied architecture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1949-53), and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA (1953-5), under Buckminster Fuller. He then returned to India and in 1958 opened his own practice in Bombay. Correa was influenced by the later work of Le Corbusier but sought to develop new forms of modernism appropriate to Indian culture, producing designs that reflect a sensitive understanding of local climate and living patterns. His first important commission was the Gandhi Memorial Centre (1958-63), Ahmadabad, a study centre and museum on the site of the ashram where Mahatma Gandhi lived in 1917-30. The centre is designed with modular pavilions grouped asymmetrically around a central water court in a manner analogous to an Indian village (see fig.). Some of the pavilions are open and others closed, with wooden-louvred unglazed openings. The pyramidal roofs reflect the traditional overhead canopy of the chatri; and the use of simple materials, including whitewashed stucco, brick, red clay tiles and stone floors, in conjunction with a reinforced-concrete frame, exemplifies Correa's transformation of modern architecture in relation to local building traditions. Similar concerns are reflected in several individual houses designed in the 1960s, for example the Ramkrishna House (1962-4), Ahmadabad, arranged around a series of interior courtyards, as well as in the Electronics Corporation of India administrative complex (1965-8), Hyderabad, where office units are sheltered by a huge roof on columns, which is covered with a sheet of water reflecting the sunlight.
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