Architectural Storytelling - Movies In Architecture III

What changes when architecture is imagined not as an object, but as a lived story?

In the earlier essays, I suggested that one way to understand space is to think of it narratively: how someone moves through it, what they encounter, what remains hidden, what is revealed, and what they ultimately remember after leaving. Architecture, in this sense, begins to operate less like static composition and more like a sequence of lived moments unfolding over time.

This third part takes that idea further.

Rather than analyzing architecture directly, the piece attempts to experience it through fiction. The campus is not described through plans, sections, or formal architectural language, but through movement, memory, atmosphere, climate, conversation, light, silence, and everyday occupation. The focus shifts from the building itself to the life unfolding within it.

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The drawings had remained pinned to the studio wall for weeks, yet none of them felt complete, capable of becoming the institution he had imagined. Some sheets carried long brick corridors interrupted by deep shadows. Others held courts without buildings around them, shaded pathways stretching without destinations, staircases leading nowhere yet still revealing how light should enter. One drawing contained only circles repeated endlessly in charcoal, each one slightly altered from the previous attempt, as though geometry itself was being searched for rather than designed. Another showed thick walls cut apart by openings whose geometries and proportions kept on changing night after night. There were sketches of trees, winds moving through courts, notes about heat, silence, shadow, movement, gathering. No finished elevations. No polished renderings. Only fragments of something unresolved.

Every evening, he returned to the same drawings, and every evening the institution felt closer to realization, yet somehow seemed to slip further away at the same time.

The problem, he slowly began realizing, was that he was still trying to design the institution as a building.

And institutions were never remembered as buildings.

Nobody remembered a campus through plans. Nobody carried sections and elevations in memory years after leaving. People remembered returning to their dormitories after midnight while warm light spilled softly through corridors into the darkness. They remembered the sound of footsteps beneath shaded passages during harsh summer afternoons and the dry cracking sound of leaves beneath their shoes while crossing the campus during winter evenings. They remembered waiting outside classrooms with tea in hand before presentations they believed would decide their lives. They remembered the smell of the first rain touching warm soil after weeks of heat, the sudden wind moving through open courts before storms arrived, and the relief of entering deep shade after walking beneath an unforgiving sun.

They remembered certain trees more clearly than buildings. The tree beneath which friendships first formed accidentally through repeated meetings. The corner where someone waited every evening, pretending not to wait. The grounds where entire nights disappeared into conversations, arguments, laughter, music, and unfinished assignments. The dormitories where strangers slowly became inseparable through years of shared exhaustion and routine. They remembered wandering through the campus long after midnight, slipping quietly between buildings, hiding behind trees whenever security guards crossed the pathways, convinced for those brief moments that the institution belonged entirely to them.

They remembered the silence of open courts early in the morning before the campus fully woke up. Birds crossed above the lawns while someone slept on a parapet after working all night. Certain staircases, certain corridors, certain shaded edges where conversations quietly altered the direction of their lives without announcing themselves at the time.

The life inside an institution always outlived the architecture itself.

Perhaps that was the real difficulty.

For weeks, he had been drawing walls, but the walls still carried no memory within them. He understood climate, structure, orientation, and material. Brick. Concrete. Open courts. Light wells. Deep shadows against heat. Wind moving through shaded passages. Thick walls capable of holding silence properly. Yet none of these things alone explained why certain institutions remained alive long after generations passed through them, while others became obsolete almost immediately.

Late one evening, after everyone else had already left the studio, he stood for a long time before the drawings without touching them, simply staring at them, trying to understand what was still missing.  Outside the windows, the city continued through its ordinary rhythm. Traffic lights shifted across wet roads after a brief spell of rain. Somewhere in the distance, a train passed faintly through the night before disappearing again into silence. The studio itself remained quiet except for the soft movement and sound of tracing papers beneath the wind of the ceiling fan.

He looked again at the plans, the sections, the sketches...

Then, suddenly, almost with frustration, he realized the drawings were asking the wrong question entirely.

He was trying to decide what the institution should look like before understanding what it should feel like.

That night, instead of sketching further, he sat down at the table, pushed the drawings aside, opened an empty notebook, and began writing.

Not about walls.

Not about plans.

But about the life he hoped the institution would one day hold.

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The Story of an Institution

The city arrived first.

Not the institution.

The city with its restless movement, traffic gathering endlessly beneath the afternoon heat, scooters weaving through impossible gaps, tea stalls crowded beside roads lined with dust and uneven shade. The air carried the familiar heaviness of summer. The heat rose visibly above the asphalt during afternoons until the horizon itself seemed unstable. Rickshaws drifted lazily through intersections while shopkeepers sat beneath trees waiting for evening to soften the day.

The road toward the campus remained part of that same city for as long as possible. There was no dramatic separation. No monumental gateway announcing arrival from a distance. Instead, the institution began quietly.

Trees appeared first.

Long brick boundary walls stretched beside the road, concealing the institution almost entirely from the city outside. The buildings within rarely rose beyond a few floors, and beneath the density of trees, they disappeared into the landscape rather than standing above it. From the street, one caught only fragments, a circular opening between branches, a surface of brick briefly visible through foliage, shadows moving somewhere deeper inside. The campus never announced itself completely. It remained hidden within its own density, like an urban forest quietly existing inside the concrete rhythm of the city. Even the sound of traffic began softening there, absorbed gradually by distance, trees, walls, and shadow before one had fully realized they had entered the institution at all.

Even first-time visitors instinctively slowed their pace there.

The campus seemed to demand observation gradually rather than through spectacle. It never tried to become the focus immediately. Instead, it announced itself quietly, almost as though one was slowly becoming part of it rather than simply arriving before it.

The pathways inside never moved directly toward a single monumental center. Instead, they curved gently through the site, extending movement long enough for the body to adjust to the rhythm of the institution itself. Certain walls stretched further than expected, hiding larger spaces, courts beyond them. Openings framed fragments rather than complete views. A student crossing another corridor became visible only for a moment before disappearing again behind the brick.

The institution always felt inhabited before it became understood.

During the afternoons, the difference between the city and the campus became physical. Outside the walls, the heat remained harsh enough to empty roads and slow conversations. Inside, however, the architecture absorbed climate differently. Long shaded corridors stayed cool even at noon. Thick brick walls gathered shadow deeply within their recesses. Wind travelled carefully through openings carved into the mass rather than the surface. One moved continuously between sunlight and relief, brightness and shade, openness and enclosure.

The campus never tried to resist the climate aggressively.

Instead, it allowed heat, wind, rain, and changing light to become part of the experience itself.

By late afternoon, sunlight moved unevenly across the brick surfaces, creating shifting depths of shadow throughout the campus. Certain corridors darkened completely while some courts and grounds remained flooded with light. Students crossing between one condition and another felt the changes physically each time.

The corridors became some of the most lived-in spaces within the institution. Students rarely moved through them directly. They paused there. Sat against walls during long nights of work. Waited outside the classrooms before presentations. Shared tea while conversations drifted slowly between seriousness and distraction. Someone always seemed to be writing near an opening while another student slept beside a column after working all night.

The passages were never treated merely as circulation because life itself unfolded there repeatedly over the years.

Certain corridors narrowed enough that the sky almost disappeared overhead. Brick rose heavily beside the pathways while footsteps echoed more sharply beneath concrete ceilings. Then suddenly the space would release itself into openness again. A large lawn. Wind crosses uninterrupted through the distance. The sky expands completely after minutes spent within shadow and compression.

These transitions altered the body before thought could explain why.

The central court of the academic block remained the quiet heart of the institution.

Even while filled with movement, it carried a strange stillness. Students crossed the lawn constantly throughout the day. Some rushed toward classrooms while others remained beneath trees, avoiding the heat. Someone slept on the grass with books open beside them. A boy waited near the edge of the court, pretending not to wait while watching one particular corridor repeatedly. Nearby, two friends argued softly over an assignment before dissolving into laughter a few minutes later.

Voices travelled differently there. They moved across the open space without becoming noise. Wind changed direction continuously between the surrounding masses of brick. Birds crossed overhead during mornings before classrooms filled completely. The light shifted visibly hour by hour across the facades.

From the edges of the lawn, the buildings appeared impossibly heavy against the sky, their massive brick surfaces balanced carefully by deep fenestrations and carved voids that allowed light, shadow, and air to move through them. Giant circular openings punctured the brick walls like absences carved from mass rather than windows applied upon surfaces. During mornings, sunlight sharpened their edges clearly. By evening, shadows gathered inside them until they resembled dark voids holding silence within themselves.

The openings never felt repetitive. Some widened beneath concrete lintels, while others narrowed into brick arches carrying weight differently. One could sense the structure changing from space to space, as though the building adjusted itself according to span, gathering, light, and use. Concrete transferred loads into brick differently across the campus, and because of that, each opening carried its own atmosphere. Some spaces felt compressed and intimate, while others expanded into monumental stillness.

The structure was never hidden from the experience of the institution.

It became part of the feeling of the spaces themselves.

Students often paused beneath the large shaded undercrofts surrounding the court, especially during summer afternoons when the heat outside became difficult to bear. These spaces existed somewhere between interior and exterior. Neither fully enclosed nor entirely open. The temperature shifted immediately upon entering them. Voices softened naturally there. Footsteps echoed longer.

One could sit for hours beneath those shaded masses simply watching the life of the campus continue beyond the openings.

Sometimes after examinations, groups of students remained near the edges of the lawn long after everyone else had left. Some lay silently upon the grass, staring upward, while others argued about questions they had answered incorrectly. Someone always carried tea from the nearby stall. The architecture held all these moments without interruption.

Nothing in the campus demanded formal behavior continuously.

That was perhaps why the institution remained alive.

The classrooms themselves carried a different quality of light from the corridors and courts outside them. Sunlight rarely entered directly. Instead, it arrived softened through depth, reflected from brick and concrete surfaces before reaching the interior. During the afternoons, the rooms remained calm despite the brightness outside. Dust moved slowly through the light near the edges of openings.

Even silence felt different inside classrooms.

Not empty.

Expectant.

The institution understood learning as a careful balance between isolation and collaboration, the exchange. Conversations continued long after lectures ended. Students gathered beneath trees discussing economics, cinema, politics, architecture, homesickness, futures they had not yet understood. The institution continuously created places where people crossed each other accidentally and remained longer than intended, while also allowing moments of solitude, reflection, and quiet thought to exist without interruption.

That was why the corridors mattered.

That was why the courts mattered.

That was why the shaded edges between buildings mattered.

The architecture never separated movement from gathering.

Near the center of the campus stood a tea stall beneath deep shade. Architecturally, it remained almost insignificant compared to the larger brick masses surrounding it, yet students gathered there endlessly. Before deadlines. After classes. During exhaustion. During the celebration. During heartbreak. The institution revealed itself most honestly there.

Steel cups struck against counters. Steam rose into warm afternoon air. Someone waited in line, rehearsing a presentation silently beneath their breath. Another group argued loudly about finance while monsoon clouds gathered slowly above the courts. Tea stains darkened low parapet walls where generations of students had sat without ceremony.

The mess hall carried another rhythm entirely. During lunch hours, movement spread rapidly through the campus toward the food. Stainless steel utensils collided continuously against trays and counters while conversations overlapped into a strange collective sound belonging only to institutions. Soft indirect light entered from above, diffused gently across the dining hall, and reflected quietly against steel surfaces before dissolving into the deeper shadows between tables and brick walls beyond

The architecture here felt less monumental, more immediate, more occupied.

Food dissolved hierarchy briefly.

Professors, students, workers, visitors, everyone moved through the same queues, sat beneath the same ceiling fans, and complained about the same heat.

Institutions were remembered through such ordinary repetitions as much as through monumental spaces.

The dormitories softened the gravity of the academic buildings even further. The pathways leading toward them became quieter beneath thicker tree cover, while the architecture there felt more appropriate, more lived within. Clothes hung casually from railings. Music drifted faintly through partially open windows during evenings.

The institution did not resist ordinary life.

Students sat along staircases speaking late into the night. Some studied alone near corridor lights because their rooms felt too small or too warm. Others wandered aimlessly through the campus during periods of uncertainty, unable to sleep before interviews, presentations, or departures.

Some staircases remained occupied by only one person for hours. Someone cried, someone meditated, and someone just sat there thinking of the choices she had made.

Certain corners belonged quietly to memory. A parapet wall where someone first confessed love. A corridor where friendships formed through repeated crossings over months. A tree beneath which students gathered every winter evening simply because the light there softened beautifully before sunset.

Architecture became meaningful because emotions settled into it gradually.

The campus carried the weather beautifully.

During monsoon afternoons, rain transformed the institution entirely. Brick darkened deeply beneath water while the smell of wet earth and stone spread through corridors. Reflections gathered across courts. Students slowed instinctively during rain, lingering beneath shaded passages instead of rushing directly toward destinations.

Someone always extended a hand briefly beyond the corridor edge to feel the rain before pulling it back again.

The architecture made such small gestures feel memorable.

Rising above the lower brick masses stood the water tower, visible from almost every part of the campus. Students used it for orientation while moving between courts and corridors. In the heat rising above the lawns during afternoons, the tower stood still against the sky like a silent marker holding the institution together. One could lose oneself within the passages and shaded courts repeatedly, yet the tower always remained somewhere above the trees, quietly restoring direction.

The institution revealed itself continuously through walking.

Morning carried one atmosphere. Afternoon another. Evening transformed the campus once more.

By dusk, shadows stretched slowly across the courts while the brick deepened into darker tones. Warm light gathered beneath corridors. The air cooled enough for movement to slow naturally. Students remained outside longer during these hours. Conversations drifted across lawns and staircases while birds crossed overhead toward trees lining the edges of the campus.

At night, the institution became quieter but never empty.

Warm light spilled softly through certain openings while other parts dissolved completely into darkness. Footsteps travelled further through the corridors at this hour. Distant conversations echoed beneath concrete ceilings. Brick surfaces that appeared heavy during daylight began disappearing into shadow until only fragments remained visible beneath the night sky.

A student returning late to the dormitories could still feel the campus awake around them.

Not loudly.

But gently.

As though the institution itself understood that learning did not end when classrooms closed, but continued quietly through walking, waiting, gathering, silence, friendship, loneliness, tea, rain, light, memory, and time.

…

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The writing stopped there.

For a long while, he did not move. The notebook remained open before him while the studio slowly settled deeper into the night. Outside the windows, the city had grown quieter now. Traffic no longer moved continuously through the roads below. Only occasional headlights crossed briefly against the wet surfaces outside before disappearing again into darkness. Somewhere nearby, water still dripped slowly from a roof after the evening rain. The tracing papers pinned to the walls shifted gently beneath the movement of the ceiling fan.

He looked again at the drawings spread across the table, and for the first time in weeks, they no longer felt entirely distant from the institution he had been searching for.

Until that night, the plans had felt strangely incomplete despite their precision. The proportions were there. The geometry was there. The courts, corridors, walls, and openings had all begun finding their place, yet something still remained unresolved within them. The drawings carried order, but not yet atmosphere. The corridors connected buildings, but not fully the life between them. The spaces had begun to suggest an institution, yet they still lacked the quiet presence of people, memory, movement, and time that would one day make the campus feel alive.

Now something had shifted.

The corridors were no longer for circulation alone. He could suddenly imagine footsteps moving through them at different hours of the day. Someone sitting against a wall after midnight with unfinished work spread beside them. Someone is waiting outside a classroom, rehearsing a presentation silently beneath their breath. The passages had begun carrying time within them.

The courts no longer appeared as empty spaces between buildings. They had become pauses within movement. Places where wind gathered, where conversations lingered longer than intended, where the institution slowed itself down enough for people to notice each other. The openings no longer belonged only to geometry. Their depth began making sense now. The shadows within them. The silence they carried. The way light would enter differently during mornings, afternoons, monsoons, and winter evenings through light wells.

He stood slowly and walked toward the wall where the drawings had remained unresolved for weeks. One by one, he began studying them again.

A corridor needed to remain narrower for longer before opening toward the lawn. The transition into light had happened too quickly. One of the courts felt too exposed, too immediate. It needed more distance before fully revealing itself. A shaded edge between two buildings had to widen slightly; students would gather there without planning to. The dormitories needed to feel less separated from the life of the campus. The pathways approaching them should allow movement to slow gradually instead of ending abruptly.

Even the sections began changing in his mind. Until then, he had been drawing them as arrangements of floors, slabs, and walls. Now he began seeing them through the atmosphere instead. Light descending indirectly into classrooms. Air is moving slowly through deep openings. The coolness beneath the undercrofts during unbearable afternoons. Shadows thickened along the brick as evening approached.

He pulled one tracing sheet away from the board and placed another above it. Then quietly, almost instinctively, he began drawing again.

Certain lines disappeared immediately. The geometry softened in some places and became more certain in others. One opening deepened further into the wall. Another widened toward the court. A staircase shifted slightly because someone would eventually sit there every evening watching light move across the lawn before sunset. A corridor extended longer because conversations should not end too quickly before entering classrooms.

The institution had stopped becoming an object. It had started becoming a sequence of lived moments.

Outside the studio, the city remained awake in fragments. Somewhere far away, the sound of a train moved briefly through the night before dissolving again into silence. The smell of wet soil still lingered faintly through the partially open window. On the table beside him, the notebook remained open to the final lines of the story.

He looked at them once more, then back at the plans, and suddenly the distance between writing and drawing no longer felt separate.

The story had not come after the architecture.

The story had always been the architecture.

The buildings, the walls, the courts, the openings, the corridors — they were only attempts to hold the life that would one day move through them.

He continued sketching. The pencil moved more slowly now, but with greater certainty. Some spaces grew quieter. Others opened more generously toward light and gathering. The brick walls thickened where shadow needed to deepen. Pathways curved slightly longer through trees before entering the courts. Certain openings aligned carefully with movement instead of symmetry.

The institution was becoming clearer now. Not as an image, but as an experience.

Years later, generations of students would move through those spaces without ever knowing about the night the institution had first been written before it was drawn. They would occupy corridors, sleep on parapets, fall in love beneath trees, wander through courts during rain, sit silently on staircases after difficult days, wait outside classrooms, gather around tea stalls, and carry fragments of the campus with them long after leaving.

Most of them would never think about the drawings.

But perhaps, quietly, they would feel what had once been imagined for them there.

He sharpened the pencil once more, and beneath the soft sound of tracing paper shifting in the night air, he continued drawing not the building, but the life that would one day remember it. The Sketches

Source: moma.org

Indian Institute Of Management, Ahmedabad by Louis Kahn.

The Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad campus. Source: IIMA 

See the building yourself through the official virtual tour of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad campus:  https://iima.ac.in/the-institute/about-iima/virtual-tour Read Movies In Architecture

Read Movies In Architecture II

References

Brownlee, D.B. and De Long, D.G., 1991. Louis I. Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture. New York: Rizzoli International Publications.

Dalal, S., 1985. Two Projects by Kahn. Ahmedabad: CEPT University.

Kahn, L.I., 1985. Between Silence and Light: Spirit in the Architecture of Louis I. Kahn. Boston: Shambhala Publications.

Kahn, L.I., 2003. Louis Kahn: Essential Texts. Edited by R. Twombly. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Khan, W., 1994. Search for an Order: An Inquiry into the Contemporary Direction in Indian Architecture. Ahmedabad: CEPT University.

Ronner, H. and Jhaveri, S., 1987. Louis I. Kahn: Complete Work 1935–1974. Basel: Birkhäuser.

Wiseman, C., 2007. Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.