Savitri Bhavan – The Buildings

Helmut Schmid

Before coming to Auroville in 1979, Helmut Schmid was working for 10 years in a professional environment in Stuttgart, Germany, planning and designing University Campuses and Medical Schools.

Here he is involved in architectural designs and construction, mainly of institutional buildings.

Building design should not put the designer’s personality in the foreground. Louis Kahn says “the architect’s greatest worth is in the area where he can claim no ownership – the part that doesn’t belong to him is his most precious”.

Looking in this direction, the exploration of the creative process becomes a very exciting and rewarding experience. “Uncompromising rules, robust and varied rhythmic expression, distinctiveness of melodic line, clarity and harshness of harmonies, trenchant radiation of textual hues, last but not least simplicity and transparency of the musical tapestry as well as firmness of the formal structure” – that’s what Igor Stravinsky tried to achieve in his musical compositions. In Helmut’s view this would also apply to good architecture.

But architectural designs – however fine they may be – cannot be separated from the wider urban environment. “The life between buildings” (Jan Gehl) affects human wellbeing and growth even more. For this a clear and systematic planning approach is required, based on an overall vision of the whole city in all its complexity of life, as well as an effective decision-making structure. Only through this will Auroville become “the city the earth needs”.