Pritzker Prize: How the Bihar Museum breaks the mould

The Bihar Museum is India's first building designed by a recepient of the Pritzker Prize, dubbed the Nobel Prize for architecture. Manavi Kapur finds out what truly makes it a benchmark

A  museum should not be a fixed, one-time activity. It should be a dynamic space that keeps improving on its collections,” Anjani Kumar Singh, Bihar’s chief secretary, says emphatically. It is this strident, bold tenor that defines almost every conversation about the newly opened Bihar Museum in Patna. In fact, the entire project to conceptualise, build and create the museum exudes this unprecedented confidence. And, the biggest feather in its cap is its chief architect, Fumihiko Maki, who has the prestigious Pritzker Prize for Architecture to his credit. The Bihar Museum is India’s first building designed by the Pritzker winner — a prize that is often dubbed as the Nobel Prize for architects.

It all began in 2011, when Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar put together a small team to conceptualise the revival of the culture and history of the state. Singh, then the principal secretary of education, was made the nodal officer for the Bihar Museum project. “It was a bold decision to create such a huge museum and one that required a lot of research. I was granted permission to visit all leading museums across the world to understand what it took to build and run an institution that large,” explains Singh. To identify what management consultants call best practices, Singh visited several renowned museums across the world such as Tate Modern and the British Museum in London, and the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Courtyards are a key aspect of the architecture | Photo: Courtesy Opolis

“Architecture was one of the key components of the Bihar Museum project,” adds Singh. It was then that Lord Cultural Resources, an international cultural planning firm, was roped in to select architects and execute the project. A competition was held, inviting international architectural firms to partner with Indian architects and present a detailed brief for what the spanking new museum should look like. Of the 26 entries, five were shortlisted, among them well-known names such as Norman Foster, the British Pritzker-winning architect who designed buildings such as the iconic 30 St Mary Axe (informally, “The Gherkin”).

“Some of the leading entries were quite futuristic. Par woh sab Bihar ki setting mein fit nahi ho rahe the (But those didn’t fit into the Bihar setting),” explains Singh. It was Maki’s clean, straight lines and simplicity that made an international jury panel tip the scales in the Japanese architect’s favour.

Maki and Associates with Mumbai-based Opolis Architects won the mandate for this ambitious project in 2011. “The four months that led to the final selection process were gruelling. We were working round-the-clock, but it was seamless because we had worked with Maki before and we understood each other’s working style,” says Sonal Sancheti, principal architect at Opolis. Maki, Sancheti and her business partner, Rahul Gore, formed the dream team of sorts and things were finally set in motion.

Maki (left) with Opolis’s Sonal Sancheti and Rahul Gore | Photo: Courtesy Opolis

“Because of the time constraint, it was decided that instead of an iconic, tall building, the Bihar Museum will have a campus feel — spread across 13.9 acres with a ground-plus-one format. This allowed us to build several areas of the museum simultaneously,” explains Sancheti. 

Materials indigenous to Bihar were used for the building that now sits elegantly off Bailey Road in Patna. The dark exteriors complement the brighter, lighter interiors, “like an onion”, says Sancheti. For the impressive children’s sections — with tactile galleries to engage a young audience — terracotta bricks were brought in from south India. 

While respecting and keeping local traditions in perspective was important, it was also essential to create an inviting, accessible space. This is the reason the Bihar Museum “campus” has several courtyards that are at once sprawling and intimate. “We wanted to have a lot of natural light and connection to the exterior, while keeping people and artefacts sheltered from the harsh climate. So we introduced many courtyards and secondary circulation spaces to bring light and air into the building, and preserve existing trees on site,” says Maki. 

The play of light also has another important function. “The control and restraint of light also breaks down the spaces and makes them less intimidating,” Sancheti says. “Generally speaking, we try to consider museums, first and foremost, as large community centres — where citizens can come and enjoy the experience of the artefacts, and the experience of being together in a public place,” adds Maki.

The construction site | Photo: Courtesy Opolis

Like the buildings of Charles Correa and Le Corbusier’s time — part of Jawaharlal Nehru’s vision for “greatness” — the Bihar Museum dream team also consists of other legends. Mahendra Raj, the 90-year-old structural engineer who helped create the Hall of Nations at Pragati Maidan among other renowned public buildings, was responsible for the structural design of the Bihar Museum. In what he describes as a “lifetime experience”, Sukhbir Singh Mann, executive director of Mahendra Raj Consultants, marvels at the professionalism that Maki and Associates, Opolis and the Bihar government brought to the table. 

At the start of the project itself, the government of Bihar appointed senior-level secretaries to monitor day-to-day progress. The project managers and the team from the Building Construction Department in Patna shared a lot of enthusiasm and worked very hard to achieve tough, time-bound targets,” says Mann.

Sancheti laughs that the experience of working with the Bihar government “spoilt” them. “With Maki’s Japanese discipline and a hands-on attitude from the government, working on the museum was a breeze.” This is also the reason why the “Amaravati incident” came as a rude shock to Maki and the architects from Opolis. 

After winning to competition in March, 2016, to design Andhra Pradesh’s new state capital, Maki and his team were informed a few months later that another firm now had the mandate for Amaravati. In a strongly-worded letter to the Council of Architecture, Maki spoke of the “choreographed appointment” of new architects and the opaque manner in which the events panned out.

Experts believe that it is perhaps because of such bureaucratic misdemeanour and a general lack of interest from the governments so far in creating stellar public infrastructure that world-class and renowned public spaces haven’t been recently created. “There was fervent activity where architecture was concerned till the 1980s in India. The ’90s and 2000s saw a slowdown. I think we are about to witness a revival,” says Madhav Raman of Anagram Architects. Raman also believes that there aren’t those many open competitions and opportunities such as the Bihar Museum for architects in India. “There continues to be great talent in India, but it is a matter of exposure,” he adds.

Akanksha Bansal, a young architect and recent graduate, too, believes that while the opportunities for architects in terms of urban buildings and residential complexes have only increased, a closed political set-up prevents young professionals from participating in government projects. “That is one of the biggest reasons that not many striking buildings are seen in India. Government projects are awarded on the basis of a firm’s turnover and connections rather than its design abilities. And for other private projects, low fees and unrealistic timelines are criteria that are held much higher than good design,” she says.

A quick glance through the list of Pritzker winners points to an abysmal absence of any Indian architect or even building. India’s contentious neighbour, China, not only has Pritzker buildings but also a Pritzker awardee in Wang Shu. Incidentally, Indian architects have even been on juries of the Pritzker Prize. “But the problem is that we rarely find the work of Indian architects analysed or described in ways that lift the building from a mere ‘building’ to ‘architecture’, that recognise universal values, aesthetic integrity and intellectual depth,” says Jagan Shah, director of the National Institute of Urban Affairs and former director of Sushant School of Architecture. 

“My advice to young Indian architects is they recover the meaning in architecture and devote themselves to enhancing the public domain with works that speak to the collective consciousness or, in our situation, even create that consciousness,” says Shah. “This can be done only when the architects can achieve mastery over the craft of constructing buildings, the art of meaningful form and the science of organising space. This is essential if they want to survive in the competitive global environment and want to be recognised by such foundations as the Pritzker,” says Shah. 

While it seems like a tall order, Sancheti believes that buildings such as the Bihar Museum herald a change in the way architecture can be viewed in India. From their lips to the Pritzker jury’s ears.