Timeless Living Houses Under the Sun

The book takes you on journey of 33 different but interesting residential projects across Singapore, Australia, United Sates of America, India, Sri Lanka and Bangaldesh with inclusion of Plans, section and elevation, full color photograph and interview with architects each one of them distinct in their style and concept. 

you will be taken by surprise in the journey by looking at not only contemporary style but also those offering a hint of traditional segments.

you will see how a project is carved out of its own site, each differing in geography, bringing out the best of it. The book provides an insight into how the modern home look like, how much still remains, so let’s together begin this journey and evolve together, creating a benchmark in architecture.

Civilization has been a continuous narrative of people gathering together into larger and larger communities,

composed of family groups joining into social milieus, holding cherished sets of common values and ideals!  Responding to this, civilization has created habitable artifacts that enshrine social structure and culture within dwellings, thereby becoming more complex, as social groups became larger, more articulated and organized! So, the plans of houses, from prehistoric times to the present, are the footprints of our history. 

Thus, this book is a marker on the timeline of Asia’s historical evolution, documenting the state of society and its dwellings.

Redefining the “family” from a biological group to a social entity, was the first step of mankind toward the creation of civil societies, and the first shelters to be found are simple dwelling-forms, even adapted from caves. These early dwellings were simple shelters, protecting their inhabitants from climatic extremities, essential for survival in extreme conditions of rain, cold or heat. 

Even today, in the dwellings showcased within this book, adaptation to climate is a major determining design factor, generating house-forms and shapes.

Families vigorously protected their genetic blood lines, running through child birth, in matriarchal or patriarchal lineage! Over the eons of time, families aligned into tribes, formed of genetically related clans, wherein marriage rites and convivial living modalities were key organizing elements of social processes.

The settlement footprints of these early societies illustrate clusters of similarly shaped houses, organized into “sociometries” where the patriarch’s house, while being of similar shape, was larger and took on a more central position within the cluster. The location of spiritualists’ houses and shrines likewise began to take positions in the sociometry of settlements. House plans became microcosms, or mirrors, of these settlements, with each house having a “sacred place,” and a secure portal, and protective walls. These generic features live with us in our homes today!

About The Author

Professor Christopher Charles Benninger is an overseas Citizen of India, registered with the Council of Architecture, a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Architects and the Institute of Town Planners, India. 

Professor Benninger first entered India as a Fulbright Fellow (1968) from MIT, where he was studying on a Carnegie-Mellon Fellowship. During that period, he designed houses for Vadodara slum dwellers, and taught architecture at CEPT University.

In 1969 he accepted a teaching post at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, his alma mater (Master’s in Architecture, 1967). In 1971 he traveled overland to Mumbai, stopping in Ahmedabad to discuss the idea of a new course in city planning. This idea quickly transformed into a reality, necessitating him to resign from Harvard University, returning to India forever on the 27th of October 1971. With Balkrishna Doshi, at age 28, he founded the School of Planning, teaching there and remaining a Distinguished Professor until today. Leaving Harvard, he resigned from a tenure track position of Assistant Professor, being his graduate school’s youngest member of the Faculty Senate.

Professor has published more than fifty articles in national and international journals, chapters in international books, including the chapter on India in Urban Design (2012) for the Royal Institute of British Architects. His book, Letters to A Young Architect (2011) was on the Top Ten Best Selling Non-Fiction Books in India, and also his book CHRISTOPHER BENNINGER - An Architecture for Modern India (2016) was published by Europe’s leading art publisher, SKIRA, and distributed by Rizzoli in Manhattan.

Timeless Living Houses Under the Sun