The Little Book of Architecture, a must-addition to the school curriculum!

The Little Book of Architecture’s authors, Prof. Harshada Bapat Shintre and Prof. Yashwant Pitkar, have successfully managed to take us to their world of Architecture. And not to the technical and intricate one but a vibrant and humble one. A new realm created purely for understanding and discovering the regular architectural objects that do not find a place anywhere in our vocabulary, per se.

The Little Book of Architecture may be designed for the little ones but even adults cannot resist the not-so-little-in-its-content book. Such illuminating is the literature! Did you know the meaning of the term ‘transom’ or ‘saltbox’? Wait, is not ‘saltbox’ the container where we keep the salt? Well, no. It is a kind of residential structure. This is the very thing our education lacks, practical knowledge about terms that every person should know about. Perhaps, this reason alone is enough for the book to travel miles and places to make a lasting impression on young minds. A perfect conduit through which they can channelize their inner curiosity constructively.

The book engrosses children with its story about Era and her friends playing in a neighbourhood merrily. And the little readers get to know about the lesser-known-and-talked-about architectural words woven candidly into the story. Like the ABC books where kids learn A for Apple and B for Ball, The Little Book of Architecture promises to vividly teach the A to Z of architecture to fresh minds.  

The candid environment of the book took me back to my childhood. A time when I was eager to peep my head into any book with colourful pictures at the book fairs my parents took me to. At that time I did not know the deep impact of visualization on learning. But today, as I flipped the first page, I got enthusiastic to move on to the next one. If a 23-year old got so obsessed with the book at the first glance, imagine a child’s excitement. Just multiply it by 100 or infinity, maybe?  

Children usually read a book on Monday and forget about it on Tuesday. The Little Book of Architecture is not the average book, it promises as well as delivers imprinting positively on the nascent intellect of the young readers. As we speak about this, children are being held captives in the digital world with absolutely no fault of their own. The book can help parents rescue their children from the hypnotic online world. And give the kids a meaningful yet fun experience that will motivate them to spend more time playing outside.  

The first edition of the book got immediately sold out within a month, a staggering response that came as a surprise to both the authors. Here’s wishing them more triumphant outings with the book!

About the Authors:

Prof. Harshada Bapat Shintre, an architect, is co-author of the book, The Little Book of Architecture. A post-graduate from CEPT, Ahmedabad, she has also collaborated on a book titled ‘Architecture: Space, Issue and Material’ published by CEPT University press 2013. Presently, she is the Assistant Professor at Rachana Sansad’s Academy of Architecture, Mumbai.

Prof. Yashwant Pitkar, the co-author of the vivacious book, is an architect and a devoted collector of fountain pens and inks. The man, Prof. Pitkar, has held and organized 13 architectural photographs exhibitions single-handedly across the country. He’s also written a book titled ‘The Romance of Red Stone’ on Mughal Architecture – a sheer testimony to his comprehensive architectural knowledge. He’s been teaching in Sir J J College of Architecture since 1987 and is a visiting faculty in many Architecture Colleges.

Not only to the field of Architecture, but he has also contributed infinitely to the world of Fountain Pens and Inks. Nicknamed as ‘The Traveling Inkpot’, the 64-year old multi-tasking Professor has been a passionate collector of fountain pens and accessories for the last 40 years. While he has generously given away his substantial collection of 200 pens, what remains with him are inks, inkwells and blotters. He further plans to write a similar book on the ABCs of fountain pens to educate young adults and pique their interests in the subject.    

• Jyotshna Agiwal