BV Doshi’s last project opens at the prestigious Vitra Campus in Germany | Architectural Digest India
Imagined by the late BV Doshi and realised by Khushnu Panthaki Hoof and Sönke Hoof of Studio Sangath, the Doshi Retreat opens at the Vitra Campus in Weil Am Rhein, Germany.Stillness. Contemplation. Memory. Ritual. Movement. These were among the many words that BV Doshi scribbled on a paper, along with a sketch of a place that was part building, part landscape and part journey, and gave it to Khushnu Panthaki Hoof, his granddaughter and principal architect at Ahmedabad-based Studio Sangath. This was in 2020 and over months of being homebound during the pandemic, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect, in company of Khushnu and his grandson-in-law, Sönke Hoof—also principal architect at Studio Sangath—imagined this place as a sanctuary in response to an invitation from Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman emeritus of Vitra, to design “a shrine” for the Vitra Campus in Germany. Fehlbaum has been a regular to India since the late ’70s, particularly to Ahmedabad for its history with Ray and Charles Eames, Louis Kahn and Le Corbusier. But once he and his wife, Federica, met Doshi, “India became a very different place.” It was on one of their trips in 2019 when the Fehlbaums visited the Modhera Sun Temple in Gujarat. And soon, they looked towards Doshi to recreate “that spirit” they had felt there and to bring it to the campus in Germany. Doshi passed away in January of 2023, but that artistic drawing, and those discussions and story-telling became the point of departure for Khushnu and Sönke, who, in the following years, brought to life the Doshi Retreat as we see it today at the Vitra Campus.
