Name: A Call to Return: A Journey with Didi Contractor
Author: Lakshmi Swaminathan

Published on June 24, 2024

'A Call to Return: A Journey with Didi Contractor' offers a record of the life, values, and creations of an extraordinary self-taught woman architect. Born in the United States to Expressionist painters in 1929, Didi met an Indian student at college, married, and moved with him to India in 1951. She remained in India for the next seventy years and became a legend to many: as a painter, interior decorator (particularly of the Lake Palace Hotel in Udaipur), furniture and textile designer, and early proponent of solar energy.

In her forties, Didi moved to Kangra in Himachal Pradesh where she studied the vernacular traditions; in her sixties, she began designing adobe buildings with respect for local materials, traditions, and environments. By her eighties, she was gaining students from India and across the world, becoming widely celebrated for her visionary contributions to vernacular architecture, as a radical female outsider to the architectural establishment. During those three decades, Didi has trained artisans and architects inculcating ecological values and reviving local skills. She was featured in multiple articles, theses, a book ('An Adobe Revival: Didi Contractor’s Architecture' (2018)), as well as two documentary films ('Didi Contractor: Marrying the Earth to the Building' (2017), 'Earth Crusader' (2016)), Didi was honoured with multiple awards including the Nari Shakti Puraskar (2019).

'A Call to Return' emerges from a collection of transcripts of conversations that Didi had with students and admirers in the last decade of her life. With her passing in 2021, the emerging transcripts coupled with published interviews and articles continue to offer a source of knowledge and inspiration for diverse undertakings. Collated by her student Lakshmi Swaminathan, this book covers Didi’s biography, philosophy, approach to architecture, ecology, tradition, and the creative process. Each chapter moves between Didi's words and anecdotes of her everyday life.

With a close focus on Didi’s lived experience and the ethics manifest in her relation to the natural and material world, this book offers insights for all who are committed to a more sustainable way of life. Also, as the chronicle of a vibrant exchange across different generations, 'A Call to Return' reminds us to cooperate with nature in all of our endeavours.

Table of Contents:

Foreword by Satish Kumar
Meeting Didi Contractor
Birth of the Book

Part 1. From Delia Kinzinger to Didi Contractor - As a short biography on Didi’s life, this chapter focuses on the crucial influences and turning moments that shaped Didi’s philosophies and values with a close focus on her personal journey of becoming a self-taught architect.

Delia to Didi
Daughter of Artists
Arrival in India
Magical Decade
Turning Points

Part 2: Guiding Virtues - This chapter is a detailed record of Didi’s core philosophies and values that guided her life and approach to architecture.

Enhancing Tradition
Learning from Vernacular
On Tradition
Re-defining Sustainability
Understanding Cycles of Nature: Thoughts on Ecology
Bringing Qualities of Play to Architecture
Beauty and Aesthetics

Part 3: An Alternative Practice -This chapter gives a glimpse into Didi’s design and building processes throwing light on her fundamental approach to building.

From Imagination to Reality: Didi’s Design Process
Light
Vaastu
Garbage Reuse
Building Activities
Evolution of Self and Work
List of Projects

Part 4: Lectures and Q&A - A set of frequently asked questions and answers that covers many other aspects of Didi’s creative processes. This chapter is a collection of the wisdom Didi shared from her lived experience with many students supporting and encouraging them as a loving mentor.

Architecture as a Setting for a Particular Drama
Finding one’s Passion
On Finding Inspiration

Letters
Remembering Didi Contractor
Post Script
Image Caption & Credit
Credit for Published Articles