1 50 157 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/25b161363e5fc6d40918c3e720c7ea5a.jpg 559bceaca7f515e98088b68391ba9036 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Original Greenery where the Southern Laboratory now stands.jpg Description An account of the resource A view of the green space overlooking the NCBS old campus, c 2005. By 2012, this space was filled by the Southern Lab Complex. 2-Autonomy https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/0c9aa7f98eb6a6e41412d05d8a1cf195.jpg 3dfa32f3f67c88180cde233810905562 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource IMG_7376 - TIFR - Lab space - 1.JPG Description An account of the resource A current view of one of the fly labs at the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, some of the original lab spaces for the faculty that eventually moved to NCBS. 2-Autonomy https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/4571b2b3e6852e2f0c913d8dc434839e.jpg b334af3091288a8cb6131f4b68c40db5 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1993 July - TIFR Council Meet - Natl Centres - 7.pdf Description An account of the resource In a unique meeting at the Bombay House in July 1993, the TIFR Council headed by JRD Tata recognized the need for a formal process for creating National Centres like NCBS and NCRA. The by-laws of the institute were changed to allow for this autonomy. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Office of the Registrar, Tata Institute for Fundamental Research 2-Autonomy-PS4-3 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/48efdd8a17e040a26b329d820b50411d.jpg 2006126c94f3e82be2c363f269f3179d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1993 July - TIFR Council Meet - Natl Centres - 2.pdf Description An account of the resource In a unique meeting at the Bombay House in July 1993, the TIFR Council headed by JRD Tata recognized the need for a formal process for creating National Centres like NCBS and NCRA. The by-laws of the institute were changed to allow for this autonomy. NCBS already had this autonomy detailed in a memo from TIFR in May 1992. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Office of the Registrar, Tata Institute for Fundamental Research 2-Autonomy-PS4-2 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/89ad346774749a8d35780cf83d1fc078.jpg 711ad6f8fe7ecaf900c0697e4f67992b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1993 July - TIFR Council Meet - Natl Centres - 1.pdf Description An account of the resource In a unique meeting at the Bombay House in July 1993, the TIFR Council headed by JRD Tata recognized the need for a formal process for creating National Centres like NCBS and NCRA. The by-laws of the institute were changed to allow for this autonomy. NCBS already had this autonomy detailed in a memo from TIFR in May 1992. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Office of the Registrar, Tata Institute for Fundamental Research 2-Autonomy-PS4-1 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/cd4e97c93d03cfe64e60b4d869145c67.jpg 431c9efa1e9fa56e237ab1b79727aa5b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1992-05-14 Fr.V Singh - NCBS - Centre Director authorities - 7.tif Description An account of the resource In May 1992, TIFR issued a set of guidelines for the extent of autonomy at NCBS and the kinds of decisions a new 'Centre Director' at NCBS could take, including some faculty appointments, purchasing freedom and "official entertainment". Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Courtesy of TM Sahadevan 2-Autonomy-PS4-10 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/ace59461581ad8ffd64cf7a3500b7a4f.jpg 92addeb9ad973baf48d75c3ceb7854ef Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1992-05-14 Fr.V Singh - NCBS - Centre Director authorities - 6.tif Description An account of the resource In May 1992, TIFR issued a set of guidelines for the extent of autonomy at NCBS and the kinds of decisions a new 'Centre Director' at NCBS could take, including some faculty appointments, purchasing freedom and "official entertainment". Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Courtesy of TM Sahadevan 2-Autonomy-PS4-9 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/42e4a07ebe6db57624153593933b10d5.jpg 2e99823e11bbbc08c43ed2d3daa31fe7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1992-05-14 Fr.V Singh - NCBS - Centre Director authorities - 5.tif Description An account of the resource In May 1992, TIFR issued a set of guidelines for the extent of autonomy at NCBS and the kinds of decisions a new 'Centre Director' at NCBS could take, including some faculty appointments, purchasing freedom and "official entertainment". Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Courtesy of TM Sahadevan 2-Autonomy-PS4-8 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/0766dda196a78004bbac81b7cfc793e7.jpg 706fdee61ced12e5831a9bc6a9f4f309 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1992-05-14 Fr.V Singh - NCBS - Centre Director authorities - 4.tif Description An account of the resource In May 1992, TIFR issued a set of guidelines for the extent of autonomy at NCBS and the kinds of decisions a new 'Centre Director' at NCBS could take, including some faculty appointments, purchasing freedom and "official entertainment". Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Courtesy of TM Sahadevan 2-Autonomy-PS4-7 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/871967f8a1e533617aff4b710ce0dc2a.jpg 22ec900fbda798d2504f8b472650e863 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1992-05-14 Fr.V Singh - NCBS - Centre Director authorities - 3.tif Description An account of the resource In May 1992, TIFR issued a set of guidelines for the extent of autonomy at NCBS and the kinds of decisions a new 'Centre Director' at NCBS could take, including some faculty appointments, purchasing freedom and "official entertainment". Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Courtesy of TM Sahadevan 2-Autonomy-PS4-6 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/0ce3587a7cd82b4d6b46ec98ae9326d5.jpg 0235d793909339d055958e399ea404c0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1992-05-14 Fr.V Singh - NCBS - Centre Director authorities - 2.tif Description An account of the resource In May 1992, TIFR issued a set of guidelines for the extent of autonomy at NCBS and the kinds of decisions a new 'Centre Director' at NCBS could take, including some faculty appointments, purchasing freedom and "official entertainment". Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Courtesy of TM Sahadevan 2-Autonomy-PS4-5 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/86904530681745dd907bc6ca85e3129a.jpg 75d4f7c0ef11f568e83ec817260f6471 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1992-05-14 Fr.V Singh - NCBS - Centre Director authorities - 1.tif Description An account of the resource In May 1992, TIFR issued a set of guidelines for the extent of autonomy at NCBS and the kinds of decisions a new 'Centre Director' at NCBS could take, including some faculty appointments, purchasing freedom and "official entertainment". Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Courtesy of TM Sahadevan 2-Autonomy-PS4-4 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/a78c11a9eea174eca071b6790bd51808.jpg 0de0ad46f3f50d88ccc2cb62c4d8c68f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1991 Oct 23 Narayanan DAE To TIFR - NCBS Sanction Order - 1.tif Description An account of the resource The DAE sanction order to TIFR to set up the Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences, which would eventually become the National Centre for Biological Sciences. The Oct 22, 1991, letter was followed up by another one on Oct 23 due to a typo in the cost breakdown. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Records Office, TIFR 2-Autonomy https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/a289b5941e0dc2a053509154b5b7756f.jpg e0da4e5077e15bd3c9e55679d9f15a32 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1991 NIAS Lecture - Science Trends - OS Hand Written - 3.tif Description An account of the resource Discussion on institutional autonomy are closely to its administration. In his lecture at the new National Institute for Advanced Studies in 1991, Obaid Siddiqi shared his concern for the administration of science, saying that "one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure." Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Siddiqi Family / NCBS Archives 2-Autonomy-PS1-3 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/cb34ad82191b050bc545c90121dcfdd2.jpg eb8ca5616a8816e81d6709eba0a26d1b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1991 NIAS Lecture - Science Trends - OS Hand Written - 2.tif Description An account of the resource Discussion on institutional autonomy are closely to its administration. In his lecture at the new National Institute for Advanced Studies in 1991, Obaid Siddiqi shared his concern for the administration of science, saying that "one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure." Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Siddiqi Family / NCBS Archives 2-Autonomy-PS1-2 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/16642a0c9c280c628449cbd10affabb3.jpg 3d5a7966cf780c5dc6b4714dd31d9eca Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1990 NCBS Proposal - UAS sketch.pdf Description An account of the resource The final version of the proposal to build a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences (soon to become the National Centre for Biological Sciences). Included in these excerpted pages are the vision for the centre, the planned staff size, and the expected objectives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource NCBS Archives 2-Autonomy-PS2-5 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/5d765c05328825ed2b315986327fbc90.jpg 801a8152a7498e36c69b351171acf2a4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1990 NCBS Proposal - Summary.pdf Description An account of the resource The final version of the proposal to build a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences (soon to become the National Centre for Biological Sciences). Included in these excerpted pages are the vision for the centre, the planned staff size, and the expected objectives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource NCBS Archives 2-Autonomy-PS2-2 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/edd7fcceae803a797fc82bee91ef7ccc.jpg c5892c19451c2b919d4ae519e5aca5d8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1990 NCBS Proposal - Staff number.pdf Description An account of the resource The final version of the proposal to build a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences (soon to become the National Centre for Biological Sciences). Included in these excerpted pages are the vision for the centre, the planned staff size, and the expected objectives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource NCBS Archives 2-Autonomy-PS2-7 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/0417ae404de6f0ac0a61f2bd7947fe70.jpg 4db7bb7aac42923c4f2ba4c7bef96f69 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1990 NCBS Proposal – Objectives_2.pdf Description An account of the resource The final version of the proposal to build a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences (soon to become the National Centre for Biological Sciences). Included in these excerpted pages are the vision for the centre, the planned staff size, and the expected objectives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource NCBS Archives 2-Autonomy-PS2-6b https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/4434252d08f75cfe06727ac4d13bcff7.jpg 98a1e78b8d398b49c268b59abfdb5fa0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1990 NCBS Proposal – Objectives_1.pdf Description An account of the resource The final version of the proposal to build a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences (soon to become the National Centre for Biological Sciences). Included in these excerpted pages are the vision for the centre, the planned staff size, and the expected objectives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource NCBS Archives 2-Autonomy-PS2-6a https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/9ba0045fb3d51293f4a17f46862be182.jpg 3343270644b3a8324ba682b47e616b97 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1990 NCBS Proposal - Founding members.pdf Description An account of the resource The final version of the proposal to build a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences (soon to become the National Centre for Biological Sciences). Included in these excerpted pages are the vision for the centre, the planned staff size, and the expected objectives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource NCBS Archives 2-Autonomy-PS2-4 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/27c86e40d5e9d59500fcaecd96d0e114.jpg 3578ccc5277717daba33b96b190cfb20 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1990 NCBS Proposal - Financial outlay.pdf Description An account of the resource The final version of the proposal to build a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences (soon to become the National Centre for Biological Sciences). Included in these excerpted pages are the vision for the centre, the planned staff size, and the expected objectives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource NCBS Archives 2-Autonomy-PS2-3 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/14d9c771c9887bc07e43aca0f7ef82f6.jpg 11a17ba4330a926927d5b75a71d038cf Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1990 NCBS Proposal - Cover Page.pdf Description An account of the resource The final version of the proposal to build a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences (soon to become the National Centre for Biological Sciences). Included in these excerpted pages are the vision for the centre, the planned staff size, and the expected objectives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource NCBS Archives 2-Autonomy-PS2-1 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/c0a817a348513e15dff2f70f7aea62f1.jpg c7c2eb2d636e39d66c8c710d0bcdce3d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1990 NCBS Proposal - Conclusion IAS Princeton.pdf Description An account of the resource The final version of the proposal to build a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences (soon to become the National Centre for Biological Sciences). Included in these excerpted pages are the vision for the centre, the planned staff size, and the expected objectives. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource NCBS Archives 2-Autonomy-PS2-8 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/aed131ed597d5d409fa8e7379223d7d1.jpg ff94e3b70707fef9a709c06885918479 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1988 March - OS ppt to TIFR faculty - incl 1978.tif Description An account of the resource Notes from Obaid Siddiqi's presentation to the TIFR Faculty in 1988, on his proposal to set up a new centre for biology. Siddiqi summarizes the journey from 1978, based on an invitation from S. Ramaseshan to start a joint TIFR-IISC centre for biological research. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Courtesy of Indira Chowdhury 2-Autonomy-PS1-1 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/e00510f25d828f328659b10e782c5965.jpg a6572c829f2aa36cae48449867b61949 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1985 Sep - DST to Siddiqi - Approval for 1980-85 plan biology centre.tif Description An account of the resource The National Biotechnology Board sends its approval in September 1985 to TIFR for allowing the set up of a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences under the Department of Atomic Energy. 2-Autonomy https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/3894ed9a872bb55881e16b79b1f5077c.jpg 2694c6840b0b32e726ebfe73ef11f8aa Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1985 Jul Rajgopal To Sreekantan (Planning Commission) (1).tif Description An account of the resource The central government's letter to TIFR in July 1985, indicating the Planning Commission's approval of the biology centre and other proposal made by TIFR. The "Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences" is included as a "National Scheme" under the Department of Atomic Energy. 2-Autonomy https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/da3c87328b9dd80cf8b28f550e95add8.jpg b27bce7975c09cce9d22aecd22d84506 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1981 TIFR Council Meeting - Dec - NCBS idea - 3.pdf Description An account of the resource Obaid Siddiqi wrote a proposal for a new biology centre as part of TIFR’s 1980-1985 Five Year Plan, based on S. Ramaseshan’s invitation to set it up at IISc. But even though it was approved by the government, the IISc plan lost steam. This extract shows the first time the idea came up for discussion in the TIFR Council Meeting Minutes. December 2, 1981. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Office of the Registrar, Tata Institute for Fundamental Research 2-Autonomy https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/cc779b13b8e90ad23bbb797c6897c41e.jpg 96f5a3f66b4c226db2f306df18424134 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1981 TIFR Council Meeting - Dec - NCBS idea - 2.pdf Description An account of the resource Obaid Siddiqi wrote a proposal for a new biology centre as part of TIFR’s 1980-1985 Five Year Plan, based on S. Ramaseshan’s invitation to set it up at IISc. But even though it was approved by the government, the IISc plan lost steam. This extract shows the first time the idea came up for discussion in the TIFR Council Meeting Minutes. December 2, 1981. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Office of the Registrar, Tata Institute for Fundamental Research 2-Autonomy https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/e2518367d3aab3d34e6752c0bb73092c.jpg 9c408529333d677f793807a0b29f842b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1967 Mol Bio Course - TIFR - lawn photo.tif Description An account of the resource Participants at a molecular biology course at TIFR in the 1960s, including P.K. Maitra (first from left). Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Courtesy Department of Biological Sciences, TIFR 2-Autonomy https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/712940bfcb6c4fdd68b9a066440d510e.jpg 725f96e702c2a57830b782cb6944f832 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1960s 70s TIFR - Molecular Bio lab - 2.jpg Description An account of the resource The molecular biology unit floor in the 1960s and early 1970s. Lab spaces were shared when the unit started as was the case decades later when NCBS started in the TIFR-IISC centre. When the first NCBS building was built in the late 1990s, individual labs were incorporated in the design. The 2012 Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) design is a departure from that, opting for a large, shared lab space. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource TIFR Archives 2-Autonomy-P1 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/a892b8e4fb234451642a3ca11d1f055a.mp4 0e99463a7546f3573c28c9d4a33fc145 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Sound Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 2012-Reminiscing_Jayant-angry-letter_INSTTN-PAPER-TRAIL.mp4 Description An account of the resource The long wait for an NCBS - Jayant Udgaonkar 2-Paper https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/28ecb4f43c1fd03f7e808181f292b92c.mp4 418a41900d7c11d9dac46a934843160e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Sound Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 2012-Genes-to-olfaction_Vijay-Role-of-OS-hi-level_INSTTN-CHAR.mp4 Description An account of the resource Obaid Siddiqi and institution building - K VijayRaghavan 2-Autonomy https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/e6f5d03ac6793b387e6117ac4d6930a4.mp4 03017c33633cfd0c1031e03ed4255112 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Sound Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 2014-KSK-memorial-KV-KSK-marine-bldg_INSTTN-AUTONOMY.mp4 Description An account of the resource K S Krishnan's marine biology building - K VijayRaghavan 2-Autonomy-V1 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/17288f22192164458a63a8e7a7d3255b.jpg 141919d4177c43ca64a71076a24c1967 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1991 Feb Lease Deed Bw TIFR and UAS (9).tif Description An account of the resource The first page of the lease deed signed by the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) and TIFR for 20 acres and 10 guntas of land at the rate of one rupee for 50 years, and extendable by another 50 years. February 8, 1991. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Courtesy of TM Sahadevan 2-Paper https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/79b1d39385855ed489c4e424da19db9d.jpg e9d948be6151c33be2f67fb7506df7a0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1991 Feb Lease Deed Bw TIFR and UAS (8).tif Description An account of the resource The first page of the lease deed signed by the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) and TIFR for 20 acres and 10 guntas of land at the rate of one rupee for 50 years, and extendable by another 50 years. February 8, 1991. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Courtesy of TM Sahadevan 2-Paper https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/1314dad2370a8b09b6b83fec510baac7.jpg fc2fb3b6321e840d7e31951c110b44b1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1991 Feb Lease Deed Bw TIFR and UAS (7).tif Description An account of the resource The first page of the lease deed signed by the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) and TIFR for 20 acres and 10 guntas of land at the rate of one rupee for 50 years, and extendable by another 50 years. February 8, 1991. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Courtesy of TM Sahadevan 2-Paper https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/a1365a435d9beac9155622815d01ace1.jpg 5781e9b508813bb8ffb3240680675f8c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1991 Feb Lease Deed Bw TIFR and UAS (5).tif Description An account of the resource The first page of the lease deed signed by the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) and TIFR for 20 acres and 10 guntas of land at the rate of one rupee for 50 years, and extendable by another 50 years. February 8, 1991. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Courtesy of TM Sahadevan 2-Paper https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/b05db412dc3774e5b2b9c874c93dfa50.jpg 10a3d82cb458f2ff07049bb402606939 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1991 Feb Lease Deed Bw TIFR and UAS (3).tif Description An account of the resource The first page of the lease deed signed by the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) and TIFR for 20 acres and 10 guntas of land at the rate of one rupee for 50 years, and extendable by another 50 years. February 8, 1991. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Courtesy of TM Sahadevan 2-Paper https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/0720dbc665490b476abfdb42c5263d0f.jpg f575bb64860237366425db7fceb01252 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1991 Apr 8 UAS to TIFR - Hand over letter.tif Description An account of the resource University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) hands over the 20 acres of land to TIFR in April 1991. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Courtesy of TM Sahadevan 2-Paper https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/e43deffc7fa60307c72150e989e22506.jpg ff93dd67a6aa35df0832816abc0d3219 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1991 Apr - TMS to UAS - stop work on GKVK land.tif Description An account of the resource After the memorandum of understanding was signed between the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) and TIFR, there was the additional problem of ensuring that it didn’t get used for other purposes. 2-Paper https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/fb6af6a4fc9563e6da0fd9841e9faf2b.jpg 9b20d93fd869f46c10a57eb4be0cdb5e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1990 Nov TMS To Vijay Raghavan - Telecom strike.tif Description An account of the resource Even though TIFR had in principle got confirmation that they could get land in the University of Agricultural Sciences and they were very close to a memorandum of understanding, much depended on the vagaries of the people in power. TM Sahadevan, one of the main administrative officers for NCBS, expresses his concern to K VijayRaghavan. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Courtesy of TM Sahadevan 2-Paper https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/8425085f6235247fdacb94b3f5645b37.jpg ba85892d1e4f23b48d40996ad729189c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1985-1990 TIFR_5-yr-plan_2.pdf Description An account of the resource Excerpts from the 1985-90 Five Year Plan from TIFR. It includes the proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences, stating that a "strong school of basic research in modern biology in India is of great and vital interest to the country". 2-Paper https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/c8804e9de5939396bcbd23d052d1a80e.jpg 8c1cbaee34655bf18ddd0469d9f519c5 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1985-1990 TIFR_5-yr-plan_1.pdf Description An account of the resource Excerpts from the 1985-90 Five Year Plan from TIFR. It includes the proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences, stating that a "strong school of basic research in modern biology in India is of great and vital interest to the country". 2-Paper https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/b3b0e83ca316b172ad0fa8f7dd1999b4.jpg d8bf9f33b1b0de42c5c8366b5cae70d8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1989 June - TIFR Council Meet - 90-95 Proposal UAS approval - 7.pdf Description An account of the resource In June 1989, the TIFR Council approved the proposals for the eighth Five Year Plan, including the set up at the University of Agricultural Sciences campus and the hiring of faculty and administrative staff. This was also a time when the country faced a resource crunch, and the Council discusses various ways in which they could manage the money. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Office of the Registrar, TIFR 2-Paper-PS2-7 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/e1c016ca7021a5d93038acfb2aed9f70.jpg c8ee16126d2324ebd3ab1aa5793414e3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1989 June - TIFR Council Meet - 90-95 Proposal UAS approval - 6.pdf Description An account of the resource In June 1989, the TIFR Council approved the proposals for the eighth Five Year Plan, including the set up at the University of Agricultural Sciences campus and the hiring of faculty and administrative staff. This was also a time when the country faced a resource crunch, and the Council discusses various ways in which they could manage the money. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Office of the Registrar, TIFR 2-Paper-PS2-6 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/30d5de82fc673fd25115606f4fe23b1b.jpg 0679698028e61379dced6e5d90560dd2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1989 June - TIFR Council Meet - 90-95 Proposal UAS approval - 5.pdf Description An account of the resource In June 1989, the TIFR Council approved the proposals for the eighth Five Year Plan, including the set up at the University of Agricultural Sciences campus and the hiring of faculty and administrative staff. This was also a time when the country faced a resource crunch, and the Council discusses various ways in which they could manage the money. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Office of the Registrar, TIFR 2-Paper-PS2-5 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/108a72e520a612b2669d8fbed72ffb56.jpg db5737b4177826823832638e8b06eda9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1989 June - TIFR Council Meet - 90-95 Proposal UAS approval - 4.pdf Description An account of the resource In June 1989, the TIFR Council approved the proposals for the eighth Five Year Plan, including the set up at the University of Agricultural Sciences campus and the hiring of faculty and administrative staff. This was also a time when the country faced a resource crunch, and the Council discusses various ways in which they could manage the money. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Office of the Registrar, TIFR 2-Paper-PS2-4 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/12d938a0ef5af30c02694a2c6acfb039.jpg f677735a7bb34f14948d25844a5c2442 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1989 June - TIFR Council Meet - 90-95 Proposal UAS approval - 3.pdf Description An account of the resource In June 1989, the TIFR Council approved the proposals for the eighth Five Year Plan, including the set up at the University of Agricultural Sciences campus and the hiring of faculty and administrative staff. This was also a time when the country faced a resource crunch, and the Council discusses various ways in which they could manage the money. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Office of the Registrar, TIFR 2-Paper-PS2-3 https://stories.archives.ncbs.res.in/files/original/433f1870cb80bfc17c761856c1ff0126.jpg 374916cf2ace91413a3b8c0e5c1efb85 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Institution Building Description An account of the resource A need for more space and autonomy is echoed throughout the history of TIFR. It’s seen in the development of NCBS, the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, and at other national centres that grew out of TIFR. But the desire to have an autonomous space for biology is very different from having the means to get it. The odds are typically stacked against the process. And so, there exists an ever-fragile gap between idea and realization. The chapters in the Institution Building theme dig into the aftermath of an accepted idea. To build NCBS was to wade through a paper trail justifying the funding agency, the choice of city, and the very need for an NCBS, all steps that seemed tedious in the heat of the moment, and instructive in hindsight. Building NCBS was also a serious quest to define the relationship between scientific research and the built landscape, down to every tree. 2-Autonomy-P1 In the late 1980s, the TIFR Centre at IISc was like a waypoint for TIFR scientists working on large-scale projects. By July 1989, Govind Swarup’s team of radio astronomers, which had spent the previous few years at the Centre, packed up and moved to Pune to build the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. Soon after they left, the first biologists moved in from TIFR Bombay. They would stay there till the completion of the NCBS campus on land leased from the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS). The radio astronomy group in Pune morphed into an independent national centre for radio astrophysics (NCRA), much like the independent biology centre coming up in Bangalore. TIFR has had a tradition of developing different and spinning them off as <a href="http://www.tifr.res.in/" target="_blank">separate research centres</a>. This incubator role is perhaps one of its biggest contributions to the spread of Indian science. But the degree of decentralisation from the mothership tends to not be completely spelt out in documents. Some of it is covered in board meetings. Listen, for instance, to Govind Swarup. He narrates a unique TIFR Council meeting in July 1993 to discuss the trajectory of such new centres incubated at TIFR 2-Autonomy-A0. These meeting minutes, along with a set of guidelines sent in May 1992 by Virendra Singh, then director of TIFR, can be seen in the slideshow below. 2-Autonomy-PS4 Molecular biology started in one large lab space in the 1960s, as shown in the featured image. But to grow, the discipline needed more physical lab space. The first slideshow is an extended extract from the 1990-92 NCBS proposal. It outlines the Centre’s research objective that underscores the need for space. NCBS’ issue of needing space was also closely linked to autonomy from an institutional setting that was not always receptive to the needs of biology. In small and big ways across TIFR history, this strained relation between disciplines surfaces. 2-Autonomy-PS2 Biology could still use more space in TIFR Mumbai. In the late 1990s, around the time the NCBS construction was being completed in Bangalore, the TIFR Department of Biological Sciences submitted a petition for a new biology building on the TIFR campus. Listen to Shobhona Sharma’s interview excerpt to learn about the decade-plus process that got sidelined partly by institutional disinterest. 2-Autonomy-A2 2-Autonomy-PS1 Autonomy for NCBS is mostly to do with administrative oversight and it has had to figure out the right balance over the last 25 years. Listen to Sudhanshu Jha, former director of TIFR, who discusses the need for record keeping as institutions grow and offers some historical context for the origins of the tussle. 2-Autonomy-A4 In 1991, Siddiqi shared his concerns at a National Institute for Advanced Studies speech that “one of the major impediments that hinder the progress of science in our country is its administrative structure”. The NCBS proposal quotes Abraham Flexner who proposed the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and said that “administration should be inconspicuous, inexpensive and subordinate”. In his audio clip, PP Ranjith reflects on his role as the glue between administration and science. 2-Autonomy-A3 Arguably, the distance and autonomy has let NCBS accomplish much. Listen to Vidita Vaidya for a view on NCBS’ autonomy from the TIFR biology faculty and not letting the minutiae disrupt the view of the broader accomplishments. 2-Autonomy-A1 And on a lighter note, see K VijayRaghavan’s talk below on when one of NCBS' own faculty members, KS Krishnan, decided to set up a remote marine biology laboratory. 2-Autonomy-V1 More? Check out the Gallery for more oral history interview excerpts from Krishanu Ray, Obaid Siddiqi, and Virendra Singh on autonomy. 2-Paper-P1 In the early 1980s, Vidyanand Nanjundiah and Obaid Siddiqi, faculty members at TIFR, worked on a proposal for a Centre for Fundamental Research in Biological Sciences. It was to be set up as an independent space under the TIFR umbrella. The proposal went through after a series of conversations within TIFR, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Planning Commission. The next step was to find land. It was the beginning of a trail of papers. In early 1986, Nanjundiah, along with two other TIFR colleagues, came to Bangalore to scout places. They needed help from someone who knew the system and would bat for them in Bangalore. Listen to his interview as he reflects on the critical role played by H Sharat Chandra, a professor at IISc, in negotiations with the Karnataka government. 2-Paper-A0 2-Paper-PS4 The biology centre project was still up in the air through the late 1980s despite the approval from the Planning Commission. The slideshow below has almost three dozen records placed in sequence, to give a flavour of the negotiations happening at the time. (Also see the Timeline section in the Sandbox theme). It shows how non-consequential each paper document seemed all the way up to the Oct 22 Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) sanction letter (or the Oct 23 letter, if one counts that the Oct 22 letter had a typo in the financial breakdown). 2-Paper-PS1 Hurdles and pressures came at every step. In his audio clip, BV Sreekantan talks about the resistance from the Karnataka Government to offer new land to external scientific institutions. They circumvented this by looking for land within another institution. 2-Paper-A3 But even after they had more or less finalized on Bangalore, they just couldn’t find the right option. 2-Paper-PS2 Then, after a series of negotiations, it looked like TIFR would get land on the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) campus. The TIFR Council discusses this in a June 1989 meeting -- see the slideshow above. In this meeting, the Council approved the UAS campus land, and also hiring of faculty and staff. But their approval wasn’t the end of the road. There was no ink on a dotted line on any real estate document. And in the end, that’s often what matters. By mid 1990, Jayant Udgaonkar, who had been made an offer to join the new Bangalore centre, was starting to doubt whether it would come up and shot off a letter to the director of TIFR. Udgaonkar narrates this incident. 2-Paper-A1 K VijayRaghavan, also a young prospective faculty member at the time, recounts the pace of work and the different ways in which they and Siddiqi approached the problem. 2-Paper-A4 At the same time, there was a push for them to look for land in Maharashtra. Listen to TM Sahadevan’s memory of that time, an odd situation when they were being offered tons of space in different parts of Maharashtra. But the place where they really wanted land – Bangalore – was becoming a struggle. 2-Paper-A2 Finally, on February 8, 1991, UAS and TIFR signed a lease deed. And after a few more months, the DAE sent the sanction order for the Centre. But it is only in hindsight that the Oct 22 letter carries weight. This is especially evident when we see the TIFR Council Meeting minutes from October 16, 1991, where they discuss the projected plans for the new biology centre campus in Bangalore. There is no mention of an impending sanction order from the DAE, suggesting it was viewed as more of a formality. If anything, an illegible photocopy of a letter from the Bangalore authorities on Mar 2, 1991, to clear the lease deed between UAS and TIFR, could be viewed as the last bureaucratic hurdle. Whatever followed after was pro forma. Want to see more? Check the Gallery for more oral history excerpts and documents. 2-Arch-P1 It is six o’clock in the evening and traffic has come to its daily chest-thumping halt on the Airport road just south of NCBS. Nobody is moving, a lot of cars are honking, and the air over the flyover is thick with exhaust. UB Poornima, the chief resident architect at NCBS, looks up from her phone and out of her car window at the full jaam, as these things are called in Bangalore. And a question pops up in her mind. The construction agency that built this flyover – would it have planned for this kind of a dead load, this static weight of dozens of cars? That’s her question. Planning and visualising is, more often than not, Poornima’s preoccupation. She joined NCBS after responding to a job posting in 1994, partly to be the link between NCBS faculty, Raj Rewal, the NCBS architect based in Delhi, and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) civil engineering team. Today, Poornima is one of the few continuous links to the original campus design. Listen to the audio excerpt where she talks about the form of a building, her philosophy in design, and how it feeds back into the function of the building. 2-Architecture-A1 Raj Rewal’s design built on his desire to use natural material quarried from the hills beyond Bangalore. His plan for NCBS included a series of inter-linked and landscaped courtyards, and the main research building was designed with individual lab spaces. Check out Rewal’s audio slideshow, where he meditates on the rasa of architecture of a science institution. 2-Architecture-A0 2-Arch-PS4 The form of a building is the least likely element to change, and it has long lasting impacts. Have a look at the slideshow below that chronicles documents and photos from the start to end of the first phase of NCBS’ construction. 2-Arch-PS1 Siddiqi was known to be fairly insistent if he felt strongly about something. And he usually had his way. Listen, for instance, to Shobhona Sharma as she shares a story from TIFR where she had to accede to his insistence for exactly six feet wide lab benches. 2-Architecture-A3 And in her interview excerpt, Poornima shares a story on Siddiqi and Rewal debating over the size of windows on what is now the Simons Centre building, and the after effects of their decisions. 2-Architecture-A2 Much of institution building – architecture included – is about imagining. It started with the idea of moving to the then pensioner’s paradise. Ironically, partly because Bombay was becoming too congested, but driven more by a need to be somewhere else that was also a good climate for biology. Listen, for instance, to Obaid Siddiqi’s interview, where he talks about his informal survey of scientists to finalize Bangalore. 2-Architecture-A4 In the early days, NCBS had called SD Vaidya, one of India’s first landscape architects, to walk around and build a vision for its future look. This was to imagine it, as Siddiqi had commented then, when the trees have grown. The slideshow below gives a glimpse into the early design models, to landscaping and to early days of an aesthetic committee. 2-Arch-PS2 The difficulty of space design, especially communal spaces, is that they are interpreted differently by floating populations. How a space eventually gets used is anybody’s guess. The new Southern Laboratories Complex (SLC) is a departure from the older buildings, opting for an open shared lab space among many research groups, and potentially more interaction between groups. But it is also a space where more theft has been reported; the SLC is now dotted with web-cameras. Take another example of space use. The elevation view of the NCBS campus shows columnar structures on top of the buildings. When Raj Rewal designed NCBS, he included these chatris on the roofline, places on the roof that would provide respite from heat. When they designed it, they felt these would be spots where staff could stand in the shade and discuss their work. That doesn’t happen. Instead, as it turns out, air conditioner modules occupy some of the chatris today. More? Check the Gallery for more photos from the construction phase. Table Of Contents A list of subunits of the resource. Space & Autonomy, Paper Trails, Architecture Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Still Image Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1989 June - TIFR Council Meet - 90-95 Proposal UAS approval - 2.pdf Description An account of the resource In June 1989, the TIFR Council approved the proposals for the eighth Five Year Plan, including the set up at the University of Agricultural Sciences campus and the hiring of faculty and administrative staff. This was also a time when the country faced a resource crunch, and the Council discusses various ways in which they could manage the money. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Office of the Registrar, TIFR 2-Paper-PS2-2