Antonin Raymond - A Long Journey Home To America

A Long Journey Home To America

In January 1938, Antonin, Noémi and their son left Tokyo bound for America. This six-month journey took them initially to the Indian subcontinent and then on to Europe, including a trip to Prague.

In 1935, Raymond's office had accepted a commission to design a dormitory for the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry in southeast India. A preliminary site visit was made by George Nakashima and the schematic design was completed in 1936. Although Raymond had envisioned that the dormitory would be completed in six months, Sri Aurobindo was concerned that the noise of construction would disturb the ashram, so he decided that the building would be constructed by its residents.

Initially, Nakashima, Francois Sammer (a Czech architect who had worked for Le Corbusier in Russia) and Chandulal (a devotee who had trained as an engineer), built a full scale model of the dormitory in order to test the feasibility of the design, and then used it as a laboratory to further refine the construction methods. Nakashima's duties included doing very explicit detail drawings showing, for example, the design of the concrete formwork. Devotees even donated brass utensils so that they could be melted down to make door handles and hinges.

Raymond sought to mitigate the effects of the Puducherry climate and oriented the Golconde dormitory (as it became known), so that its main facades faced north and south to make use of the prevailing breeze. A combination of moveable louvres on the exterior skin and woven teak sliding doors permitted ventilation without compromising on privacy. The building is still in use as an ashram today.