Christopher Charles Benninger
Prof. Christopher Benninger in 2016
Born (1942-11-23) November 23, 1942
Hamilton, Ohio, U.S.
Alma materHarvard GSD
MIT
University of Florida
OccupationArchitect
AwardsGreat Master Architect of India
PracticeCCBA Designs
BuildingsMahindra United World College
Suzlon One Earth
India House
ProjectsSupreme Court of Bhutan
CEPT University
College of Engineering Pune
Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad
Websiteccba.in

Christopher Charles Benninger (born 23 November 1942) is an Indian architect and urban planner. Born in the US, he permanently migrated to India in 1971. Benninger is an important figure in Indian architecture and planning and is noted for his contributions to the evolution of critical regionalism and sustainable planning in India.[1]

Following his departure from the position of professor at Harvard in 1971, Benninger came to Ahmedabad, where he was appointed as a Ford Foundation Advisor to the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology.[2] In collaboration with B.V. Doshi, he co-founded the Faculty of Planning at CEPT University, where he currently serves on the Board of Management.[3] He also founded the Center for Development Studies and Activities in 1976 with Aneeta Gokhale Benninger.

He has provided advisory services to international organizations such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank for the formulation of investment and development policies. He has worked on the preparation of regional and urban development plans for Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal, Malaysia, Indonesia, and various Indian states.

Benninger is also an author in the field of architecture and urbanism. His book, "Letters to a Young Architect", a collection of past lectures and articles, has achieved significant popularity amongst architects in India.[4]

Benninger's architectural studio CCBA Designs based out of Pune specialises in sustainable design solutions.

Early life and education

Christopher Benninger’s father, Dr. Lawrence Joseph Benninger, hailed from a working-class Czechoslovakian immigrant family to America and was a professor of Economics. Benninger’s mother, Ernestine Minerva Eberlein, came from a French aristocratic family.

His mother's sister, Roxane Eberlein, was in a relationship with Adlai Stevenson II, a connection that allowed Benninger to attend United Nations Security Council Meetings as an observer. Stevenson's circle of associates brought Benninger close to people such as Sir Robert Jackson, Chairman of the United Nations Relief Organization. Jackson gifted Benninger a lifetime subscription of the development journal Ekistics, introducing him to a science of human settlement centered around Doxiadis's theories. Barbara Ward became Benninger's lifelong mentor, inviting him to the 1967 Delos Symposium in Greece. The Delos Symposium featured world thought leaders, including Buckminster Fuller, Arnold J. Toynbee, Barbara Ward, Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, and Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis, who presented their theories and practices of development. They reviewed Barbara Ward’s plan for the first Habitat Forum at Vancouver, Doxiadis’ plan for Islamabad, and Jaqueline Tyrwhitt’s strategies for sheltering the poor in India as a UN human settlements advisor, setting up India’s housing department.[5][6]

Benninger graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Florida in 1966. While at the University of Florida, he was a student founder of the Freedom Party. Under Martin Luther King's leadership, he and his sister, Judith Benninger Brown, actively supported the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), entered segregated cinema halls and restaurants with their African-American friends, forcing the owners to allow access of African-Americans into their establishments.[7]

Leaving Florida for Cambridge, Massachusetts, Benninger entered Harvard's Graduate School of Design as one of 12 students studying under Josep Lluis Sert, Joseph Zaleski, and Jerzy Soltan, who were all Le Corbusier collaborators. He studied art under Mirko Basaldella, the Italian sculptor there. Benninger studied development economics under John Kenneth Galbraith, past Ambassador to India and author of The New Industrial State. After completing his Master's in Architecture at the GSD in 1967, he first visited India as a Fullbright Fellow in 1968. He continued his post-graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, under Horacio Caminos, working on the book Urban Dwelling Environments. He received a Master's degree in City Planning from MIT in 1971. After this, he returned to India in 1971 as a Ford Foundation consultant to the Ahmedabad Education Society for helping set up the School of Planning in 1972.[8]

Personal life

Benninger is married to Aneeta Gokhale Benninger, an environmentalist, and has one son, Lawrence Siddhartha Benninger, a development planner who has developed new digital planning analysis and management tools.[9]

Career

Throughout his career spanning over six decades in Asia, Benninger engaged in a diverse range of fields including architecture, urban planning, academia, institution building, international development consulting, and writing.

Academic & Research Work

After founding the Faculty of Planning in 1972 in Ahmedabad, Benninger shifted to Pune, India, in 1976 where he founded the Center for Development Studies and Activities.[10] In 1983, Benninger wrote the Theme Paper for the United Nations Commission on Human Settlements 1984. In 1986, he was engaged by the Asian Development Bank to author their position paper on Urban Development, successfully arguing the case for extending financial assistance to the urban development sector[11]. Benninger is on the Board of Editors of CITIES journal (UK).[12]

Architectural works

Benninger's designs include the Center for Development Studies and Activities, the Mahindra United World College of India, the Samundra Institute of Maritime Studies, the YMCA International Camp, Nilshi, India, the Kirloskar Institute of Advanced Management Studies, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru and the International School Aamby. The Centre for Life Sciences Health and Medicine in Pune radically departs from his earlier work.[13]

The Mahindra United World College of India won international recognition as the recipient of the Business Week/Architectural Record Award for Excellence in 2000. This award was sponsored jointly with the American Institute of Architects. Business Week called the Mahindra United World College of India one of the ten super structures of the world in 2000.[14] The project also won the Designer of the Year Award [15] in 1999.

Benninger's work in urban design, city management and town planning resulted in his principles of intelligent urbanism, which guided his planning of the new capital of Bhutan.[16]

Awards and recognition

Benninger is the sixth winner in India of the Golden Architect Award for Lifetime Achievement (2006), conferred in May 2007 by the A+D and Spectrum Foundation.[17] Six Indian architects had previously been honored with the Great Master's Award.[18] Over several years he was recognized as one of the top ten architects in India by Construction World Magazine.[19] He was conferred with the Singapore Lifetime Achievement Award by the Singapore-based Business Excellence & Research Group (BERG) in 2015.[20] 2000 | Top 10 Best Buildings of the World | The Business Week Architectural Record Awards of American Institute of Architects, USA for Mahindra United World College of India.[21]

  • 2001 | The Aga Khan Award for Architecture nomination for Mahindra United World College of India as the top 20 best projects of the world.[22]
  • 2002 | The World Architecture Awards, Berlin for Mahindra United World College of India as a finalist.[23]
  • 2006 | Recognition for Excellence in Design, U.K. - Lifetime achievement award.[24]
  • 2006 | Golden Architect Award for Lifetime Achievement by A+D and Spectrum Foundation.[25]
  • 2010 | World Architecture Community, U.K. - Citation for Nabha House, Haryana Cultural Centre, New Delhi, India.[26]
  • 2011 | Holcim Sustainability Awards, Switzerland for Lifecare Multi-specialty Hospital, Udgir - Certificate of Appreciation.[27]

Publications

  • Letters to a Young Architect | 2009[28]

Letters to a Young Architects is a memoir of Christopher Benninger's life in India and his personal concerns about Architectural Theory and contemporary urban issues.[29]

  • Architecture for Modern India | 2015[30]

This is a book about the practice of Architecture in South Asia and the kinds of artifacts CCBA Designs has produced over the past many years.[31]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "CRITICAL REGIONALISM IN THE POST-COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE OF THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT by Sumantra Misra - Issuu". issuu.com. 2018-11-16. Retrieved 2023-08-17.
  2. ↑ "CEPT University". cept.ac.in. Retrieved 2023-08-17.
  3. ↑ "Board of Management CEPT University". 5 October 2017.
  4. ↑ "10 Must-read books by Indian Architects". www.surfacesreporter.com. Retrieved 2023-08-18.
  5. ↑ "CHRISTOPHER BENNINGER: CYRUS JHABVALA MEMORIAL LECTURE 2018". THINKMATTER. 28 March 2019.
  6. ↑ Shoshkes, Ellen (April 2006). "Jaqueline Tyrwhitt: a founding mother of modern urban design". Planning Perspectives. 21 (2): 179–197. doi:10.1080/02665430600555339. ISSN 0266-5433.
  7. ↑ Debeljak, Aleš (1998). Reluctant Modernity: The Institution of Art and Its Historical Forms. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-8476-8583-7.
  8. ↑ Nichol, Jon; Lang, Sean (1990), "Germany, 1919–45", Work Out Modern World History GCSE, London: Macmillan Education UK, pp. 170–183, ISBN 978-0-333-46875-3, retrieved 2023-11-28
  9. ↑ "People". CDSA.
  10. ↑ Archpresspk.com Archived 2011-07-07 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ↑ Benninger, Christopher C. (1988). "Human resources development for the improvement of human settlements". Ekistics. 55 (328/329/330): 12–30. ISSN 0013-2942.
  12. ↑ Elsevier.com
  13. ↑ G-therapy.org Archived 2010-05-12 at the Wayback Machine
  14. ↑ Businessweek.com
  15. ↑ "Archlib.njit.edu". Archived from the original on 2010-08-05. Retrieved 2010-06-23.
  16. ↑ Dudh.gov.bt Archived 2010-06-23 at the Wayback Machine
  17. ↑ "AESA HONOUR FOR BENNINGER". Times of India. Retrieved 17 September 2014.
  18. ↑ "Expressindia.com". Archived from the original on 2012-10-05. Retrieved 2010-06-04.
  19. ↑ Constructionupdate.com Archived 2012-07-22 at archive.today
  20. ↑ "'India should consider making 100 existing cities smart'". BLoC. 25 July 2015. Retrieved 2021-11-15.
  21. ↑ "Christopher C. Benninger Intl. Assoc. AIA - Profile | AIA KnowledgeNet". network.aia.org. Retrieved 2021-11-16.
  22. ↑ "Contact". UWC Mahindra College | Discover your Purpose. 2020-03-03. Retrieved 2021-11-16.
  23. ↑ "Architect Christopher Charles Benninger". www.surfacesreporter.com. Retrieved 2021-11-18.
  24. ↑ "legends of india lifetime achievement award News and Updates from The Economic Times - Page 8". The Economic Times. Retrieved 2021-11-18.
  25. ↑ Shaikh, Asseem (March 22, 2014). "Indian architects are receptive to new ideas, Benninger says". The Times of India. Retrieved 2021-11-20.
  26. ↑ "Nabha House, New Delhi". worldarchitecture.org. Retrieved 2021-11-18.
  27. ↑ "Journal of Indian Institute of Architects" (PDF). Journal of Indian Institute of Architects. 84 (7). July 2019. ISSN 0019-4913.
  28. ↑ "Letters To A Young Architect". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved 2021-11-16.
  29. ↑ "Letters to a young architect". Architectural Review. Retrieved 2021-11-16.
  30. ↑ "Book: Christopher Benninger: Architecture for Modern India". Matter. 2016-11-17. Retrieved 2021-11-16.
  31. ↑ "Christopher Benninger: Architecture for Modern India (Hardcover) | The Book Stall". www.thebookstall.com. Retrieved 2021-11-16.
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