It is now a landmark building on Greams Road, off Anna Salai — the city’s commercial lifeline. The headquarters of MRF Tyres, known for its spacious lobbies and terrace gardens, was designed by Charles Correa, the world renowned and master architect who died in Mumbai on Wednesday.
Another building in the city to Mr. Correa’s credit is Sundaram Towers on Whites Road, off Anna Salai, completed about 15 years ago. More recently, he had designed the Mahindra Research Valley in Mahindra World City, near Chengalpattu.
K.M. Mammen, chairman and managing director of MRF Tyres, describes Mr. Correa as an amazingly bright person. “He interviewed each and everyone in our family and made a complete study of what we wanted. He was able to see things which we could not,” he says.
Mr. Correa, he adds, became friends with everyone in the construction site while work was on. He was very particular about the colour combination and even after work was over, he would come unannounced with a video camera, shooting how the office was being maintained.
“He was the best architect in the country. He used magenta, a colour I would not have imagined using. He demonstrated the ‘street concept’: the building follows the curve of the street and has a lot of greenery — terrace gardens and plants on all floors.”
“We have to admire the corporates who used Mr. Correa in building their office spaces, but it is a tragedy that Chennai did not have more buildings designed by him,” says city architect Pramod Balakrishnan. Calling him a guru for all young and budding architects, he says Mr. Correa is among the best architects in independent India whose buildings did not “shout at people.” “He did not work to get brownie points and the embellished purity of his buildings were their simplicity and clarity.”
A former urban planner says Mr. Correa did not construct buildings like assembling match boxes, but created interiors and exteriors very interestingly, altering the face and heights of spaces to make better office spaces. “Common spaces had a lot of height, now seen in city malls. He was far ahead of his times,” he sums up.
