History of Architecture

On retirement from central PWD as a Senior Architect, South Zone, Bombay, I felt that I should not engage myself in architectural practice. Before being selected as a Jr. Architect for the Architecture department of the Central PWD, New Delhi, I had been teaching some subject of architectural syllabus in the Govt. School of Arts and Crafts, Hyderabad. One of the subject, I was interested in, had always been "History of Architecture’. While coming back to Hyderabad from Bombay after retirement, I went to Nagpur to see my brother who was not well. There I contacted Prof. Shirish Deshpande, who was Head of the Department of Architecture at Regional College of Engineering, Nagpur. We discussed about how I should engage myself after retirement. I told him that I would prefer teaching in any institution where students are taught to appear for the five year Diploma course in Architecture. I began to prepare myself to get an idea of origin and further development of architecture right upto the middle of the twentieth century. He said it is a good idea to compile History of Architecture on these lines. It is of great importance to look back in the past and study the origin and progress of architecture critically in order to help us to proceed further in handling the subject.  When I began preparing myself to teach History of Architecture at the School of Architecture and Planning in JNTU, Hyderabad, my friend Sri Narhar dev gave me an ancient verse, compiled by Ved Vyas Maharshi which is a follows. It means, History must be protected with great efforts. When wealth comes and goes, one looses his importance temporarily, but if history is lost, it is a death, worse than the actual death itself. While teaching History of architecture in JNTU as well as in the architectural sections of the college of Engineering at Gulberga and Visakhapattanam, I used to prepare my lectures with the help of various well known books about the History of Architecture and several articles I came across in various architectural journals. My script of this book is nothing but compilation of the material thus collected. I was told that Indian Institute of Architecture is ready to publish this in the form of a book. In this connection, the institute sent my script to Prof. Shirish Deshpande who was their past president, forhis opinion. Shri Deshpande had intimated them that the History if Architecture by D.D. Bindoo is a stupendous amount of work and it represent a life time contribution of his career. In its coverage, it follow ‘Fletcher’ but goes beyond it in handling the Architecture of the sub-continent. It covers adequately the typical syllabi of History of Architecture in any school of Architecture. However the IIA later on gave up the idea of publishing this book. This book consists of three parts. (1) Development of Architecture in the west. Starting with the earliest examples from the southern region of the Mediterranean+sea and its further development in Greece, Rome and Byzantium as well as Church architecture of Europe including Architecture of the renaissance period. (2) Development of Indian Architecture form the Indus Valley period and right upto the nineteenth century. It also includes development of Architecture from west Asia from eight century onwards and ultimately its introduction in India by the Muslim Sultans (from twelveths century onward). (3) Rise of modern Architecture in USA and its spared all over the world. Development of modern Architecture in India from nineteenth century onwards.