The OG Women in Design: Nisha Mathew Ghosh believes architecture must create powerful canvases for people to dream, imagine and find inspiration

Continuing our homage to #TheOGWomeninDesign who have left an indelible mark, today we spotlight Nisha Mathew Ghosh – the visionary co-founder of Mathew and Ghosh Architects. For Nisha, the world of architectural ideas took shape under the tutelage of Late Kurula Varkey at CEPT Ahmedabad. From interning with stalwarts like Padalkar and Vasavada to her first commissioned house published in ‘Inside Outside’ magazine, every step fueled her passion that hasn’t dimmed.

On the need for reforms in public architecture, Nisha advocates a fair system to evaluate and appoint architects based on their expertise, not just lowest bids. She calls for long-term professional committees to uphold architectural visions beyond government tenures.

Nisha’s pioneering journey proves how women architects can shape India’s landscapes with resilience and conviction when given opportunities.

That moment when you realised you wanted to pursue architecture.

Twelve months into the most amazing introduction to architecture by Late Kurula Varkey, as a gawky first year student at the School of Architecture, Ahmedabad. The world suddenly opened up and bricks became exciting, and suddenly the world of architectural ideas began to occupy my thinking! After graduating from CEPT, I interned in Bengaluru at the office of late Ar. Padalkar because MUD got exciting at the time. I also briefly interned at the office of Mr R J Vasavada, a brilliant mind who taught us about materials and their potential and vital link to the making of architecture. My first project was in Ahmedabad to design a house for Nimitbhai Parikh a friend of a friend, and Soumitro and I worked laboriously to prepare drawings for it. This never got built. Our first built commission was for my mother in Bengaluru and we learned everything from scratch from buying material to managing people on a site. The late Jeanne Roby saw the house and said that she wanted to publish it in the only magazine for design in India at that time– Inside Outside. Our practice was very young, and we took in every detail with excitement, and that excitement hasn’t died, perhaps it has matured.

The architects you admire and why?

NMG: During my student days, I was a great fan of the work of Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn (wandering around IIM Ahmedabad was a source of endless delight) and later Rem Koolhaas, and of course there were works by BV Doshi and AD Raje and Leo Pereira that we gorged on visually and critically at our site visit studies that probed questions and begged responses. Today I am more likely to like or admire a particular project in the way that it reads. The intellectual climate at the School of Architecture in the late 80s and early 90s with Kurula Varkey at the head thrived on understanding our Indian roots yet not in a nostalgic-romantic way but more a Richard Lannoy sort of exhortation.

A project that gave you the most satisfaction

The Bhopal Gas Tragedy Memorial entry, though a theoretical projection, really enabled us to engage with the mechanics of hope in a context of utter tragedy and seemingly irreparable damage. This was vital to work through to a place of bringing together the complex entanglements of ongoing water and earth contamination, ongoing birth defects in generations and the desperate plea for rehabilitation of all. I also thought the final resolutions were seminal in the way that they set up a framework for these to be addressed.

What materials are you drawn to?

I am drawn to natural materials and like to express them as they are in all their pristine rawness. Perhaps because it tells a tale of the local region and the technology, we used to build it by mapping the state of a society’s skill. It embeds stories more easily and more directly.

Architecture is a powerful weapon. How do you think you can use it to create a better world?

Architecture creates the canvas on which people should be able to dream, to imagine, to love, to hope—what a challenge that is and how tuned in we must be. Clients should recognise this (and some do, but very few) because the architect should be allowed the moment to envision this within the constraints of budgets and FAR.

Your thoughts on public architecture in India. What needs to change?

This is a very broad question, but I will answer it with our own experience of designing and building the Freedom Park, Bangalore and the National Military Martyrs Memorial, Bangalore; both clients were the local Government public works bodies (the BBMP and the BDA respectively) but our engagement was by a professional appointment via a public competition (in case of the former) and the latter by a recommendation from the former. A visionary at the head is the only way these can happen. This is the first vital need—architects need to be freed from the dreadful need to be the ‘lowest tender’, and that without recognition of the role of architect as architect professional. So, an institutional system needs to be put in where a fair matrix of evaluation can become the basis along with a quotation pitch. Secondly, the architecture and landscape vision need to be adhered to which implies a long-term committee of qualified professionals along with the government bodies (whose term is limited to their term). In the case of Freedom Park, the BATF played this role with the implementation of the vision by Kalpana Kar: I wish it had continued to see the vision through, and more importantly to ratify the vision over a decade or so. So, it is a government/quasi-government visionary who can make the difference until these issues can be addressed with policy change.

(All excerpts are from her November 2021 cover story by Seema Sreedharan)