Riyaz Tayyibji

Riyaz Tayyibji is a practicing architect and partner at Anthill Design, Ahmedabad. Anthill Design is a studio based practice focused on the particularities of program, locality and place that has designed and built projects across India.

Riyaz is actively involved in architectural documentation, research and academics. He has been an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Architecture, Cept University and the Co-ordinator of the Gandhi Heritage Sites Mission set up to document buildings made by and related to the life of M.K. Gandhi. He has also restored the bicycle used by Mr. Gandhi.

Riyaz has curated exhibitions on the architecture and urbanity of Ahmedabad in India and abroad. The Stepwells of Ahmedabad: A Conversation between Water and Heritage opened at the Kanoria Centre for Arts and the Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad, in 2016. Riyaz has recently published a guide to the city’s architecture.

Contributions

Asia

Gandhi’s Buildings and the Search for a Spiritual Modernity

Riyaz Tayyibji considers the little-known architectural collaborations of Mahatma Gandhi, charismatic leader of the Indian freedom movement, in light of discourses of modern architecture. Weaving in discussions of phenomenology, material, and a discipline of privacy, the essay explores aspects of Gandhi’s philosophical and political thinking that propose a notion of the modern with an ethical and spiritual underpinning for 20th century architectural practice.