Behind The Trees
Channel: Prahlad Gopakumar
Date: 2020-04-06

Producer & Research : Ar. Thomas Oommen
Direction, Camera, Edit :  Ar. Prahlad Gopakumar


The history of Indian modern architecture as conventionally told, is primarily associated with Western ‘Masters’, Indian ‘disciples’ and their associates who worked in certain urban centers in the North and West of India. This has meant that the story of Indian modernism is mostly told from the perspective of the Delhi – Chandigarh – Mumbai -Ahmedabad architectural circuit. This has lead to two dominant ways of understanding Indian modern architecture. In the first ‘diffusion’ model, modernity and modernism emanates from these cities and then ‘trickles down’ to the rest of the country. In the second model, the discourse of architecture ‘centers’ around these places and other geographies and locations are consigned to categories such as “alternate” or “regional”.

This way of understanding history has resulted in the strange reluctance of architects in locations like Kerala, to accept their own histories of modernity and modernism as relevant and worthy of close study. What then are the histories of modern architecture in Kerala?

This feature length documentary attempts to trace one account of this history through the narrative thread of the life and work of Prof. Oommen T. Prof Oommen is a graduate of the first batch of architecture in Kerala (1963-69), the first full time head of the Department of Architecture, College of Engineering Trivandrum (1979 -91) and a 1994 recipient of the IIA Madhav Achwal National Gold Medal for excellence in architectural education. He currently enjoys a retired life in Trivandrum.