This page: Osmania
University Site & Layout,
Report, 1923 comprises
twenty-eight dense pages
of observations and
propositions, both spatial
and pedagogical. In
comparison, his
Ahmedabad report was a
mere eight pages.
Geddes was passionate
about developing
universities, and worked
on a number of(unrealised) institutions
around the world, including
at Benares, Indore, and
Jerusalem. Frustrated by
the lack of fruition, the last
decade of his life spent in
Montpellier, France, where
he established “College
Des Ecossais.”Courtesy Archives and
Special Collections,
University of
Strathclyde Libraryto the city of his birth to take up a position
as Chief Town Planner in the newly created
Nizam Government’s Town Planning
Department. Having studied under Claude
Batley at the Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay,
and subsequently at the Architectural
Association in London, the young Fayazuddin
briskly set to work planning cities, town and
villages throughout Hyderabad State — with a
substantial amount of success through
realiSed projects — almost all of which are
unknown today.
Fayazuddin’s vision for the capital, illustrated
in his “Greater Hyderabad Masterplan of
1944,” built upon the the improvement plans
of the early 20th Century by renowned civil
engineer Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya —
who visited the city in a “urban fire-fighting”
mode after the devastating floods of 1908.
The biophilic master-stroke was Fayazuddin’s
proposition of an Ebenezer Howard-inspired
mile wide green belt wrapping around the
city like a green insulation. Supplementing
the verdant perimeter were twenty-six new
public parks along with a detailed zoning to
direct growth for the next century. Writing
on the balancing act of expansive growth
and organic stewardship, Edward O. Wilson
writes in Biophilia:
“Natural philosophy has brought into clear
relief the following paradox of human existence.
The drive toward perpetual expansion — or
personal freedom — is basic to the human spirit.
But to sustain it we need the most delicate,
knowing stewardship of the living world that
can be devised. Expansion and stewardship
may appear at first to be conflicting goals, but
they are not. The depth of the conservation
ethic will be measured by the extent to which
each of the two approaches to nature is used to
reshape and reinforce the other.”
Although Mohammed Fayazuddin’s Masterplan
for Hyderabad was approved by the Nizam
in 1944, it would flounder for decades
following the integration of Hyderabad
State with India. Through the 1960s
Fayazuddin would continue to advocate for
the Masterplan’s implementation, and in 1963Top: A photograph of
Patrick Geddes by Gopal
Advani, taken days
before his first trip to
Hyderabad in 1922.Courtesy: Archives and
Special Collections,
University of
Strathclyde Library