HOW ONE MAN CHANGED THE FACE OF THE CAPITAL

J. C Alexander spear-headed the changing urban landscape of Thiruvananthapuram, perhaps even of Kerala

If one is introduced to the architecture of Thiruvananthapuram purely through popular literature, one would imagine it as a city with terracotta clad sloping roofed structures in timber or brick, painted red, perpetually stuck in the colonial era. Any resident of the capital can say that this is far from the truth.  Yet everyone walks past the clear modernistic statements like the Trivandrum Coorporation Office and the The Student’s Union Building, without giving a second thought about how these came to be and ignorant about the man who made it all happen.

After the capital of Princely Travancore was shifted to the present location from Padmanabhapuram in 1790s, the close relationships with the East India Company aided the construction of various public and institutional buildings in the colonial era, mostly along the ‘Rajpath’ from the Kowdiar Palace to the Padmanabhaswamy Temple. Even after independence, this British influence could be seen, even in the residential structures in the city. A drastic departure from this, starts in the 1960s, after Prof. J C Alexander ascends as the Chief Town Planner and Chief Architect of the Kerala Public Works Department (KPWD). Though the architecture of the city is a clear reflection of his ideologies, little is known about this historic figure, not only in Kerala, even within the capital itself.

The Architect

Fig 1: Prof J C Alexander’s along with other lecturers at CET.
Source: http://sharatsunderrajeev.blogspot.com/2018/07/

In the 1940s, J.C Alexander, a civil engineering graduate from Madras University, was teaching at the College of Engineering Trivandrum (CET). His deputation to Colorado University, USA, to learn architecture in 1950s was followed by his internship, for almost a year, with Harrison and Abramovitz in New York while working on the United Nations HQ Building. This moulded J C Alexander into an “American professional” with strong minimalistic and utilitarian ideologies. Being appointed as head of KPWD in 1957 on his return, he designed the civil stations in several districts like Kannur, Palakkad, Calicut and Kollam, introducing the clean aesthetics of rectilinear ‘Modern’ forms, possibly for the first time, in Kerala. The epitome of his modernist doctrines, can be seen in his own residence at Thiruvananthapuram.

In some of his early works a hint of revivalist architecture can also be spotted, comments Ar. Thomas Oommen, as in the façade of the otherwise purely functional design for the University Library (1962), Palayam. His designs for the Main Block building for the relocated CET campus and the Thiruvananthapuram Coorporation Building, resonate his visionary approach to every building as a monument while incorporating “generous spatial planning” for future expansion.

Fig 2: Main Block, CET, designed by Prof J C Alexander

Source: Google Images

Fig 3: Thiruvananthapuram Coorporation Office building, designed by Prof J C Alexander

Source: Google Images

The Educationist

Most of the engineers working in the KPWD were already his former students. As founder, and the first Head of the Department of Architecture at CET, he was the torch-bearer of architectural education in Kerala. These students went on to head the KPWD in later years or establish many of the first private architectural firms in Kerala, in the 1970s and 80s, when the general public did not even know what architecture was or what architects did.

The video documentary by Ar.Prahlad Gopakumar, based on the research by Ar. Thomas Oommen, “Behind the trees”, provides revealing insights into how J.C Alexander moulded the first generation of modern architects in Kerala. Prof. Oommen Thomas, one of his students to went on to become a prominent architect in Kerala, as well as the Head of the Department of Architecture at CET, recollects how J.C.Alexander, along with some KPWD engineers used to give orientation classes to explain what ‘Architecture’ was. A. K Jayachandran, a civil engineer from CET, worked with J.C Alexander for five to six years before going on to become one of the established architects of Trivandrum and yet another influential professor. Jayachandran reminisces how all the structures in Alexander sir’s office were “all straight lines and long spans”, something that he himself tried to carry forward in his work. The Kerala University Students Union Building (1969) in Thiruvananthapuram and the Cooperation Bank building in Kollam, both by A K Jayachandran and Thomas Panicker - an IIT Kharagpur graduate J.C Alexander had taken under his wing - clearly portray their classical modern approach and influence from Breuer’s works. The strong backing of geometrical forms stands out in Oommen Thomas’s works too, like in the St. Thomas Orthodox Church (1983) in Kottayam. Greatly inspired by American architecture and modern architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius, A K Jayachandran is remembered for encouraging his students to refer to publications and journals from the United States Information Library (USIS) in Palayam, Trivandrum.

Fig 8: Kerala  Legislative Assembly Building at Thiruvananthapuram designed by Ar.Thomas Paniker

Source: Google Images

Through the dual roles he played as the Chief Architect and an influential educator, J.C Alexander introduced and propagated Modern Architecture in the sleepy town of Thiruvananthapuram. The ‘box’ structures dotted the urban landscape not only of the capital, but of the State of Kerala as a whole, and changed its fate forever.  While many architects adapted their design philosophies in the course of their practice, they could never let go of the deeply rooted modernist ideologies. The Modern Monuments built by the KPWD under J.C Alexander and his team of engineers stand along with and adjacent to the now romanticised Indo-saracenic buildings. The Kerala Architecture Fest in 2019 went so far as to call it J C Alexander’s Trivandrum, and rightly so.

Reference:

Thomas Oommen (2018) RETHINKING INDIAN MODERNITY FROM THE MARGINS: ARCHITECTURAL POLITICS IN THIRUVANANTHAPURAM IN THE 1970s, Architectural Theory Review, 22:3, 386-409, DOI: 10.1080/13264826.2018.1516684