Architect, planner and theoretician, Charles Correa is Principal and founder of Charles Correa Associates of Mumbai, India, and the A Farwell Bemis Professor, School of Architecture & Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA.

Born in Secunderabad, India in 1930, he studied architecture at the University of Michigan and MIT.

His work combines architecture with issues of low-income housing and urban planning. Projects include the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial at the Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad; the State Assembly building for Madhya Pradesh; and housing projects in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru (Bangalore).

Over the last four decades, Correa has done pioneering work on urban issues and low-cost shelter in the Third World. From 1970-75, he was Chief Architect for “Navi Mumbai”, an urban growth center of 2 million people, across the harbor from the existing city. In 1985, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi appointed him Chairman of the national Commission on Urbanization.

In private practice in Bombay since 1958, his work covers a wide range, from the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial at the Sabarmati Ashram, to the Jawahar Kala Kendra in Jaipur, and the State Assembly for Madhya Pradesh - as well as townships and public housing project in Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru (Bangalore) and other cities in India.

Charles Correa was awarded the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1998, Praemium Imperiale for Architecture (Japan) in 1994, Gold Medal of the International Union of Architects (UIA) in 1990 and the Royal Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) 1984.

Charles Correa has held visiting professorships at leading universities including the University of California at Berkeley, Tongji University in Shanghai, and Harvard University, and has been the Sir Banister Fletcher Professor at the University of London, the Albert Bemis Professor at MIT, and the Jawaharlal Nehru Professor at Cambridge.

[last updated 20-March-08]