Locating Modern Living: Charles Correa, Asia and the Third World

This chapter traces national and international networks of individuals and institutions, ideologies and processes of advocacy that influenced policies of living standards in India between the mid-1970s and late-1980s. It examines the interior spaces of two housing projects in Bombay/Mumbai, designed by architect Charles Correa: Belapur, also known as Artists Village, and Kanchanjunga apartments, completed in 1986 and 1983, respectively. While the former resembled an Indian rural idyll, the latter was informed by the International Style, highlighting two frameworks of ideologies that were subsumed in modern housing during this period. It reveals a complex history of modern living, inflected by class divisions, Third World development agendas, Asian spirituality, and international aesthetic trends, highlighting the role of the architect as a channel of transnational ideologies, as well as professional power. This essay, therefore, challenges the oft-narrow interpretation received by these two housing projects as regional, and places them within a transnational context, underscoring wider networks that influenced notions of modernity and lifestyles of the residents in the post-colonial Indian city.