Prof. Christopher Benninger

Born and brought up in America in an Academic and Artist family, Prof. Christopher Benninger is one of India’s highly decorated architects. Perhaps, very few architects would have had three different approaches to the profession as Benninger would have had spanning a career of 4 decades as an institution builder and professor, as a UN and World Bank consultant advising many governments and pioneering social planning, designing several thousands of low cost housing for the less previledged in Jamnagar, Chennai, Hyderabad and many other towns, and as a Master Architect designing many modern Institutions fueling development in India. His well known award winning projects are the Mahindra United World College of India, the Samundra Institute of Maritime Studies, and the YMCA Camp Site at Nilshi, Suzlon One Earth, Supreme Court of Bhutan, Large Housing Projects like Lodha Belmondo and Green Fields factory for Forbes Marshal and his own studio and residence “India House” in Pune are well known of his creations.

Benninger studied urban planning at MIT and architecture at Harvard University where he later taught. He settled in India in 1971, founding the School of Planning at Ahmedabad, where he continues as a Distinguished Professor. His name appears along side Geoffrey Bawa, Charles Correa and Balkrishna Doshi as one of the few recipients of the Great Master Architect Award in India presented every three years.

His firm, CCBA Designs, has recently been awarded one of India’s most sought after commissions: The Azim Premji University at Bengaluru; and the Indian Institute of Technology at Hyderabad, along with the Indian Institute of Management at Kolkata. His city and regional planning works range from Sri Lanka, across India to Bhutan. He is also the advisor to the Govt of Andhra Pradesh for the Capital at Amaravati besides being the chairman of the Jury. He is also on the jury for PMO initiated Ministry of Defence project National War Memorial and Museaum in New Delhi apart from being on board of CEPT University and many Committies as a distinguished academician, City Planner and an Architect.

His book, Letters To A Young Architect, focuses on the practice of architecture in transforming societies, and was on the Top 10 Best Selling Non-Fiction Books List for 18 weeks in India. The book is also translated into a Chinese language and a Gujarati edition and being translated into Bengali, Arabic and Malayalam currently.Now his latest book, ‘Architecture for Modern India’ covers his work over the last 40 years of practise in India, published by Skira-rizzoli.