This book attempts to recover the stories of the women architects whose careers nearly parallel the development of modernism in colonial and postcolonial India. Extensively illustrated, featuring drawings and photographs, this book will be a milestone in the modernist narrative of South Asia.

As the first inclusive study of how women have shaped the modern Indian built environment from the independence struggle until today, this book reveals a history that is largely unknown, not only in the West, but also in India. Educated in the 1930s and 1940s, the very first women architects designed everything from factories to museums in the post-independence period. The generations that followed are now responsible for metro systems, shopping malls, corporate headquarters, and IT campuses for a global India. But they also design schools, cultural centers, religious pilgrimage hotels, and wildlife sanctuaries. Pioneers in conserving historic buildings, these women also sustain and resurrect traditional crafts and materials, empower rural and marginalized communities, and create ecologically sustainable architectures for India. Today, although women make up a majority in India’s ever-increasing schools of architecture, it is still not easy for them, like their Western sisters, to find their place in the profession. Recounting the work and lives of Indian women as not only architects, but also builders and clients, opens a new window onto the complexities of feminism, modernism, and design practice in India and beyond. Set in the design centers of Mumbai and Delhi, this book is also one of the first histories of architectural education and practice in two very different cities that are now global centers. The diversity of practices represented here helps us to imagine other ways to create and build apart from "starchitecture." And how these women negotiate tradition and modernity at work and at home is crucial for understanding gender and modern architecture in a more global and less Eurocentric context. In a country where female emancipation was important for narratives of the independence movement and the new nation-state, feminism was, nonetheless, eschewed as divisive and damaging to the nationalist cause. Class, caste, tradition, and family restricted—but also created—opportunities for the very first women architects in India, just as they do now for the growing number of young women professionals today.

A ground-breaking visual survey of architecture designed by women from the early twentieth century to the present day 'Would they still call me a diva if I were a man?' asked Zaha Hadid, challenging as she did so more than a century of stereotypes about female architects. In the same spirited approach, Breaking Ground is a pioneering visual manifesto of more than 200 incredible buildings designed by women all over the world. Featuring twentieth-century icons such as Julia Morgan, Eileen Gray and Lina Bo Bardi, and the best contemporary talent, from Kazuyo Sejima to Elizabeth Diller and Grafton Architects, this book is, above all else, a ground-breaking celebration of extraordinary architecture.

The primary era of this study - the twentieth century - symbolizes the peak of the colonial rule and its total decline, as well as the rise of the new nation state of India. The processes that have been labeled 'westernization' and 'modernization' radically changed middle-class Indian life during the century. This book describes and explains the various technological, political and social developments that shaped one building type - the bungalow - contemporaneous to the development of modern Indian history during the period of British rule and its subsequent aftermath. Drawing on their own physical and photographic documentation, and building on previous work by Anthony King and the Desais, the authors show the evolution of the bungalow's architecture from a one storey building with a verandah to the assortment of house-forms and their regional variants that are derived from the bungalow. Moreover, the study correlates changes in society with architectural consequences in the plans and aesthetics of the bungalow. It also examines more generally what it meant to be modern in Indian society as the twentieth century evolved.

A place of astonishing contrasts, India is home to some of the world’s most ancient architectures as well as some of its most modern. It was the focus of some of the most important works created by Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn, among other lesser-known masters, and it is regarded by many as one of the key sites of mid-twentieth century architectural design. As Peter Scriver and Amit Srivastava show in this book, however, India’s history of modern architecture began long before the nation’s independence as a modern state in 1947. Going back to the nineteenth century, Scriver and Srivastava look at the beginnings of modernism in colonial India and the ways that public works and patronage fostered new design practices that directly challenged the social order and values invested in the building traditions of the past. They then trace how India’s architecture embodies the dramatic shifts in Indian society and culture during the last century. Making sense of a broad range of sources, from private papers and photographic collections to the extensive records of the Indian Public Works Department, they provide the most rounded account of modern architecture in India that has yet been available.

Warum erhalten Architektinnen nicht die Anerkennung, die ihr Werk verdient? Women in Architecture ist ein Manifest für die großartigen Leistungen von Frauen in der Architektur. 36 international tätige Architektinnen kommen mit einem eigenen Projekt zu Wort. Dieses vielfältige Panorama wird ergänzt von Essays zu Pionierinnen in der Architektur und Analysen, die der strukturellen Diskriminierung von Architektinnen auf den Grund gehen. Mit Mona Bayr, Odile Decq, Elke Delugan-Meissl, Julie Eizenberg, Manuelle Gautrand, Annette Gigon, Silvia Gmür, Cristina Guedes, Melkan Gürsel, Itsuko Hasegawa, Anna Heringer, Fabienne Hoelzel, Helle Juul, Karla Kowalski, Anupama Kundoo, Anne Lacaton, Regine Leibinger, Lu Wenyu, Dorte Mandrup, Rozana Montiel, Kathrin Moore, Farshid Moussavi, Carme Pinós, Nili Portugali, Paula Santos, Kazuyo Sejima, Annabelle Selldorf, Pavitra Sriprakash, Siv Helene Stangeland, Brigitte Sunder-Plassmann, Lene Tranberg, Billie Tsien, Elisa Valero, Natalie de Vries, Andrea Wandel und Helena Weber.