Shirish Patel was unlike any other engineer I have known. He could not be boxed into labels of “urban planner”, “structural engineer”, “civil engineer”, “activist”, “innovator”, “aesthete”, and so on. He was all of that but also so much more. If there is a word that would perhaps describe him succinctly, it would be “thinker”.
As a structural engineer, it is difficult for me to find a project of Patel that is not suffused with a flourish of innovation. The Kanchanjunga apartment building on Pedder Road, still holding its own quite regally amongst the ragtag new development that has come up around it, can be attributed as much to Patel’s innovative structural design as to architect Charles Correa. A few may know that the upmarket triple towers, Rambha, Urvashi and Silver Arch apartments at Nepean Sea Road were one of the first sets of highrise buildings in Mumbai. Designing tall towers was a novelty enough, but he needed to layer another layer of complexity – the use of new precast technology, of which little was known in India at that time in terms of empirical data.
On Patel’s suggestion, the monotony of the tall, bookend shear walls was broken by affixing thousands of empty beer bottles as a spectacular façade feature, making the towers the most talked about buildings of that time.
I have often wondered what made him such a refreshingly different structural engineer, always thinking at a system level and adding something novel to every project he would undertake. I attribute it partly to his education. Undergraduate civil engineering programmes in India appear to be designed with the secret mission to strangle the independent thinking skills of the civil engineering student, making them pliant subordinates to the architect or the Authority that they work for. Patel had the good fortune of escaping this fate, having graduated from Cambridge University with a Master of Arts (Hon.) in Mechanical Sciences. It may explain his refreshingly different take on designing industries, railway stations, bridges and buildings.
A decade-and-a-half ago, Patel and I worked on a paper on urban layouts, densities and the quality of life along with a fellowship student. The topic fascinated him, and he continued to work on it with numerous researchers until the very end. I recall the mild winter Tuesday mornings when he would show up at my little home, week upon week, after his meeting at the nearby Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT), where he was working with some scientists on his “Ecocooker”. I would always marvel at how lithely he could switch from rice cookers to urban densities. His most recent research project was a study of six metros (published in two volumes) with two young researchers/architects. He could transcend not just one generation but two when it came to working on his passionate projects.
We were comrades-in-arms whenever Patel would want to protest an engineering-related travesty being committed in the city of Mumbai. In 2019, following the partial but fatal collapse of the Himalaya bridge floor at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT), Mumbai, the Municipal Corporation went on an overdrive, declaring perfectly good bridges as unsafe. As a result of a loud protest by Patel and myself and an outreach programme by the online magazine Moneylife, the Municipal Commissioner formed a Citizens’ Technical Advisory Committee (CTAC) with three private engineers (Shirish Patel, Dr VV Nori and I), along with other government persons to inspect and opine on the bridges. Patel would be ready at the crack of dawn to inspect the numerous bridges. Our committee deemed a lot of the “unsafe” bridges “good for use”. The bridges department of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) demanded a safety guarantee from CTAC if its opinion was to be heeded. It was disingenuous of the bridges department to request this as the committee was working pro bono. Patel nevertheless agreed to provide the stability certificate of the bridges on his license. The bridge department had not bargained for this sort of enthusiasm and desperately tried to find an honourable way to get rid of us.
The most recent project Patel and I had worked on was the Malabar Hill reservoir (MHR), where he took the lead to call out a fraud amounting to more than Rs 650 crores. The MHR was described as dilapidated and in need of demolition and reconstruction. We co-wrote an open letter to the Municipal Commissioner on this issue, which was carried by many newspapers. Déjà vu. Thanks to the citizens’ protests, a citizen’s technical committee was formed, and we made compelling arguments about how the reservoir was safe and in excellent condition. It was a long and fatiguing battle against powerful interests, but for now, at least, I think we have won. All credit to Shirish.
Patel had a sharp eye and a passionate spirit. On his trips to the continent, he fell in love with the works of architect/engineer Santiago Calatrava. He chased Santiago’s works all across Spain and Europe, taking extraordinary photographs and putting together a delightful, stunning presentation of Calatrava’s works, which he showed in colleges and meetings of engineers and architects.
I think, at some point, he lost interest in structural engineering. Perhaps it was due to his disappointment with the profession as it was being practised, which, in his opinion, left much to be desired. Or, perhaps it was because most projects did not afford room for creativity. I do not think he would ever take up a project simply because it was commercially lucrative. Unless a project seemed to have innovation potential, it would not interest Patel. He was a strong critic of the government’s policy of awarding infrastructure consulting projects to the lowest bidder, which has given rise to this spectacularly ugly (and not-so-safe) city and wrote numerous letters and articles on this issue. I think he played a significant role in getting the government to review the tendering process and awarding projects to L1 consultants (albeit after the collapse of scores of under-construction bridges in the past five years).
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Patel was disillusioned by the use of FSI as a tool for development and the havoc it has wreaked not just in Mumbai but in many cities across India. He protested against the slum redevelopment schemes of the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA), which gave rise to monstrous up-market high-rises in essentially low-rise, low-income areas. He raised the alarm about the very tall urban landscape being made without adequate heed to air and light, but alas, his voice was unheeded in the loud clamour of greed.
He taught me to show truth to power. He was an intrepid and independent soul, unbeholden to anybody and refused to carry any brief for anyone. I will miss the annual three-hour lunch ritual with the most distinguished gentleman. In his passing, our profession has lost its polestar.
The writer is a practising structural engineer based in Mumbai and is chairperson of Bureau of Indian Standards Special Structures Committee
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