Kolkata evokes extreme reactions, Kolkata's buildings even more so. Some have called it the city of palaces, while for others it is nothing but rococo rubbish. Either way, architect Dulal Mukherjee is not willing to let them simply rot away or be pulled down to make way for stone and glass monoliths.
Having graduated from BE College, Shibpur (now the Bengal Engineering and Science University) in 1964, Mukherjee is no heritage specialist.
He is better known for the many high-rise apartments he has designed and corporate projects like the British Deputy High Commission building and the PricewaterhouseCoopers office.
Mukherjee's association with heritage conservation goes back only to the late '90s when he was appointed advisor to the Town Hall renovation project.
Mukherjee is at present associated with the restoration of five major buildings in Kolkata. These are: Metropolitan Building on the corner of Esplanade, MacKinnon MacKenzie Building on 16 Strand Road, Minerva Theatre, Great Eastern Hotel and Park Mansions.
Mukherjee's credo in heritage-work is "adaptive re-use" - repairing, renovating, restoring, even re-modelling, so that the buildings are not frozen in time, but ready for use again in the present context.
This is not to say that he is not alive to the historical dimension or "the beauty, the sense of proportion, and the ingenuity of construction that these buildings display". But for the heritage structures to survive, Mukherjee believes, they must be financially viable.
This belief in "adaptive re-use" has, at times, led to a tussle with the purists. For example, Mukherjee's ambitious proposal to build a business centre on the grounds of the Town Hall was shot down by those who felt that it would be out of character for the august 200-year-old structure.
But in the case of the MacKinnon Mackennzie Building on Strand Road, Mukherjee's "adaptive re-use" may be the only hope. The grand building on the river-front was severely damaged in a fire in November 1998, and the courts ordered its demolition after a survey found it unsafe.
But the plan that Mukherjee, working for real-estate developer The Diamond Group, has come up with along with heritage-specialists, Manish Chakraborti and Shivashis Bose, will retain a "flavour of old grandeur" while ensuring that all the amenities of a modern efficient building are put in place.
This will entail retaining the southern and western facades of the building, declared heritage structures for their ionic pillars, delicately carved ornaments in the Roman style, and other distinctive features.
This portion of the building will be carefully strengthened with braces and realigned with the rest, which will be demolished and rebuilt, complete with the dome and marble pillars of the original.
When completed, 16 Strand Road will be a milestone in "adaptive re-use", comparable in scale to the British Museum in London and the Reichtag in Berlin.
The same principles will work in the refurbishing of Park Mansions, another building damaged by fire. The stately structure, strategically located on the corner of Park Street and now sadly run-down, is being re-modelled into an exclusive destination with boutiques, service apartments, and convention centres.
The courtyard, now quite literally a dump, will be developed as an open-air arena to be used for anything from addas to exhibitions.
"Adaptive re-use", however works only if there is an economic logic for re-use. But what if the economic logic is very thin, or largely absent?
For Minerva, Mukherjee realised early on that a stand-alone theatre would be difficult to sustain in the age of multiplex. So, he journeyed to London to see how the Westend theatres kept themselves afloat at his own expense. He also held a workshop with theatre personalities to gauge their needs.
The result - the refurbished Minerva will not only provide a more conducive destination to directors, actors and theatre-goers, it will also be something of a tourist attraction with a theatre archive, a memorial to Utpal Dutt, and a souvenir and book-shop.
Heritage work can be tedious affairs, not least because it's difficult to get the materials used originally. For the palatial Metropolitan Building, for example, Mukherjee was careful to use lime mortar to evoke the period feel, but the beautiful lead-jointed Belgian stained glass panels were too expensive to replicate and by local craftsmen and in
cases, tinted glass, had to be used.
Even now, there are the endless delays caused by the obduracy of the tenants, which means the restoration can only be done in patches.
Mukherjee's biggest challenge, however, will be to renovate and restructure the Great Eastern Hotel, a project in which he is collaborating with Architects 61, the Singapore-based, heritage-specialist firm best known for its work with Raffles Hotel.
Besides heritage conservation, he will have to make provisions at the more-than-150-year-old hotel for car-parking, a swimming pool and other amenities, as also refurbish the adjoining buildings to make them more in keeping with the five-star destination
It would be simpler to build anew, Mukherjee says. Indeed, but then would the new ever have the magic of the old?
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