Didi Contractor

Delia Narayan "Didi" Contractor (née Kinzinger; born 1929) is a German-American architect known for her work on sustainable building in India.[1][2][3][4][5] She is a winner of the Nari Shakti Puraskar, India's highest civilian award for recognising the achievements and contributions of women.[6]

Didi Contractor
Born
Delia Kinzinger

1929
USA
EducationUniversity of Colorado Boulder & self-taught
Occupationarchitect
Known forsustainable building in India
Spouse(s)Narayan Contractor
Parent(s)Edmund & Alice Fish Kinzinger

Buildings

Contractor is self-taught in architecture and was inspired as a child by seeing a talk by Frank Lloyd Wright. She specialises in buildings that fit into, rather than contrasting with, the landscape, and are made of natural local materials: mainly mud, bamboo, and stone, with small amounts of deodar wood. They also include frequent use of staircases as a design element. They can be found in the area around Dharamsala, and include over 15 homes and three institutions, including the Nishtha – Rural Health, Education and Environment Center and the Dharmalaya Institute in Bir.[1][3]

Personal life
President Ram Nath Kovind presenting the Nari Shakti Puruskar to Didi Contractor in 2019

Contractor is the daughter of expressionist painters Edmund Kinzinger and Alice Fish Kinzinger, both associated with the Bauhaus movement.[2]

After growing up in New Mexico and Texas, and taking a year off from school to work in theatre,[5] she became an art student at the University of Colorado Boulder.[3] There she met her husband, Indian building contractor Narayan Contractor. They moved to Nashik in the 1950s, Mumbai in the 1960s, and after separating from her husband she moved again to the Kangra Valley in India in the 1970s.[3]

Contractor's daughter is author and academic Kirin Narayan. Narayan has written about the Contractor household in Mumbai, in a beachside compound in Juhu which Contractor ran as a combination youth hostel and literary salon, in her memoir My Family and Other Saints.[7]

Recognition

Contractor was the subject of two feature films, Earth Crusader (2016),[4] and Didi Contractor: Marrying the Earth to the Building (2017).[2] She was the 2017 winner of the Women Artists, Architects and Designers (WADe) Asia Life Time Achievement Award.[4]

In 2019 the president of India gave her the Nari Shakti Puraskar, India's highest civilian award for recognising the achievements and contributions of women.[6][8]

References
  1. Rao, Parikshit (September 13, 2017), "Meet the octogenarian architect who speaks the language of mud and clay", Architectural Digest
  2. Giaracuni, Steffi (2017), Didi Contractor: Marrying the Earth to the Building
  3. "Didi Contractor: A Self-Taught Architect Who Builds In Mud, Bamboo & Stone", World Architecture, May 11, 2018
  4. Farida, Syeda (March 22, 2018), "This Self-Taught Octogenarian Has Been Creating Sustainable Homes for 30 Years!", The Better India
  5. Varghese, Shiny (January 14, 2018), "Unto the Earth: Didi Contractor's oeuvre is a story of rare beauty", Indian Express
  6. "Didi Contractor Receives India's Highest Civilian Honor for Women", Earthville, March 21, 2019
  7. Patel, Bhaichand (10 November 2008), "An Old Haunt: A tale of turbulent adolescence and life in a bicultural household, we visit '60s Bombay and a mystic's haven", Outlook
  8. Pandit, Ambika (March 8, 2019), "From masons, barbers to creators of forests and sustainable homes, nari shakti takes charge", Times of India
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